Back to the land of the living!

Sorry to leave you all hanging! Despite popular belief, I still exist. Things progressed with Animation Mentor extremely fast after my last post. I've learned a lot and come a long way. Unfortunately it did not leave me with as much time as I thought I would have to update this blog. I feel that trying to keep up with every assignment is going to be too time consuming, so I will be posting more general things from here on out. But I'm always happy to answer questions.

Today at 3pm, the AM site shut down, signalling the official end of Class 1. Earlier this afternoon I had to upload my progress reel. My new mentor in Class 2 will be able to view the progress real to get a feel for where I am at. I of course, will share this progress reel with you all. (keep reading!)

My 'eye for animation' has been improving slowly but steadily. So slowly that I hadn't even noticed. It was made apparent when looking back on my older work, and being thoroughly embarrassed. I was noticing things now so clearly that I struggled to understand just a short month ago. I would watch my bouncing ball and think 'Oh gawd, the spacing! The timing! What was I thinking!? There's no weight!".  The school has done an excellent job of nurturing my skills by systematically building on each assignment with the next. I loved every minute of it! I knew it was going to take a lot of time, but even I was surprised at just how much. I told myself I would work hard, and I'd be the best that I could be. At the end of class 1, now looking back, I feel confident that I reached my goal. Not that it was free. My social life is non existent, and I don't get much sleep...but it's temporary right? Now on to Class 2!


My progress reel from Class 1:




Our last assignment was a "Walk with personality". I chose to do a zombie-style walk. This was the most difficult and time consuming assignment yet. When I finally finished it and had a day or two to myself, I put the adrenaline dump to use and modified the AM "Ballie" rig (we are provided rigs to do our assignments, and Ballie is what we used for this one), to look a little more zombie-like. It was a lot of fun, and worked well with my animation!