Week 12- Class One is over...

There's a wee break between Class I and II so I can recharge my batteries.

Over the holiday I'm going to watch some sculpting videos so I can make better props...

Well here's my progress video. It's the past weeks projects.... Behold!

It is most recent to earliest.... except on the poses, which are earliest to latest.

Looking forward to Class Two... Body Mechanics should be very helpful.

Well, over and out.... I'll probably post back "next year".

Ahh week 11.

At the beginning of our blogging adventures I intended to post weekly for you, my dear reader. That will not be the case since I am busy doing animation! I'm going to be a bit more lax about posting EVERYTHING... Instead I will update every so often and show a few things from past weeks. That being said, I'm almost done with Class 1! We're working on walks right now... After I polish this weeks walk I'll post some stuff. So I leave you with this....

Here are a few poses...

Exhausted

Concern

Strength

And just for fun...

Out of the mucky mucky of animation rose something more polished... I'm proud of my stuff the past few weeks but still have a long way to go... I think class two will be helpful. It's body mechanics.

Week 5

This week we made an obstacle course....

I'm really trying to digest all this animation information I've been getting recently... 

We also made a devastated Stu.

Poor little fella'....

Week 4 and counting...

A bit late on posting this... It's actually week 5! I've been learning so much already. Week 4 we experimented with different weighted balls.

Here was my first attempt:




I liked the ending but the balls didn't seem to have proper weight.


So I made this one.

But yeah, almost done with week 5!

Week 3

This week we were given a ball and told to make it bounce.




It's suppose to be a basket ball...

We were also instructed to give Stu an excited pose.

I didn't know if I should go for a shocked excitement or just a general "Yeah!"... I went for the latter.

School is underway and it's awesome! I'm already better than I was 3 weeks ago. Can't wait for the coming months.

Week 2

This week at Animation Mentor our assignment is to draw some people and pose Stu like so.
Here's a little movie or some sketches I made.

But people at the mall are mostly doing the same thing: Walking. I love to drawing people in mundane situations but, under the advice of my class mates, I went for a

more dynamic pose. So I decided to pose Stu riding a longboard.

In other news I switched back to regular ol' Leopard...
-->

Goodbye Snow Leopard. Someday I hope to tame you.

A few movies I've seen lately...

The other day I watched, for the first time, Monsters vs Aliens. I really liked it... Colbert as the president was probably my favorite part. This week I also watched Toy Story 1 & 2 in 3d! It was pretty cool seeing those classics in THE THIRD DIMENSION!!!

But what I wanted to talk about is the amazing progress of technology in the past decade. Just the amount of detail you notice from Toy Story 1 to 2 is cool but then watch a modern movie and be staggered! Monster's vs Aliens looked really really nice. The characters looked realistic... Their skin seemed alive. Of course a lot of things have good visuals... And in a few years, or decades I'll probably remember when we use to watch everything from a screen. How old fashion! Everyone uses holograms now!

The point I'm trying to make is that technology is refreshing at an ever quickening pace...
Animation is an art, I must resist the urge to let the computer do everything for me... but I can't wait for what will come next.

Learning to Animate

Made this picture at work today. Allas still in 2d...

First Post

Like OMG I have a blog! Now I can fill you in on every mundane detail of my life!!!

Actually not...

This blog is dedicated to my Animation endeavors. I am a first semester student of Animation Mentor. I will be update you, my cyber-friends, with my weekly projects and some of my art and whatever else I feel like blogging about. (Blogging. I hate that word.)

Anyway. A little about me.

My name is John. I am 20 years old and live in NW Arkansas. I have a cat and live with my 2 other roommates who have 3 more cats between them. I work at a coffee shop and was going to school for graphic design but decided to put it on hold and see where AniMentor takes me.
(I'm still taking one class a semester just to stay enrolled. This semester it's Art History. Blah!)

I've loved animation my whole life (see left). From watching my favorite shows as a kid (Wallace and Gromit, Rocko's modern life, Ren and Stimpy) to making movies out of Legos or Flash, I've grown up with animation. I think my first taste of 3d was with Toy Story. Every great animated film I've seen has inspired me to try to master this wonderful art form.

Some of my favorite animated films include: Miyazaki films like Howl's Moving Castle and Spirited away, Afro Samuri, Paprika, Pixar things like Bugs Life and Monsters Inc. (looking forward to Toy Story 3!), Shrek movies, Toy Soldiers and The Wall's animated bits. My shows are Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, Aqua Teen, Futurama, Mr. Show, Arrested Development, and of course Family Guy, South Park and The Simpson's.

That's a lot of shows you might be thinking. What do you do all day aside from watching TV? Well I also like to be outdoor enjoying nature. I live in the city but finding somewhere to explore is never far away. I like going longboarding and caving. Hiking and camping are nice too.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Blogs are for gripping so here goes mine: As of now Snow Leopard does not run well/at all with Maya. My Maya opens but there's some buggy stuff with my graph editor so I'll probably have to downgrade back to Leopard, which isn't really a big deal. Just kind of a drag. My roommate (we bought the family pack) said he had to manually take every file and tuck it into it's proper place. So that's going to be fun.

Well over and out.