demo reel 4/2010

I haven't been very good about updating this blog. I'm in class 6 now, Short Film Production. After completing classes 3 and 4 (Acting and Advanced acting), I decided to retake Body Mechanics. I didn't have a workflow that I was comfortable with, and I found that making any kind of changes in my animations threw me off. I'm really glad I did it.

I learned to treat every frame as if its a separate drawing. I'm working longer in stepped mode now. This seems to work for me. Here's some of my newer body mechanics tests.

I just realized I'm halfway through class 3 and haven't updated this blog yet. So here it is. My thoughts on class 3, Intro to Acting, are that is a lot more fun than classes 1 and 2! I have to admit I was worried starting out, my body mechanics are not great. I told my mentor this at the start, and he said sometimes its more motivating to work on a shot that's your idea, instead of just an exercise. I'm paraphrasing, that's not exactly what he said. But he was right. It's more fun to work hard to make an idea work, not just trying to make the animation work. Not to say that my animation works, but I'm getting better.

Our first assignment was a pantomime shot. This is what I finally turned in, but I'm continuing to work on it. I've ripped out some of the animation and replaced it with some stuff that doesn't work as well. But I really like doing that, especially without the pressure of having to hand it in. I'm learning a lot from that.


Our current assignment is a dialog shot. I'm beginning to block it out, trying to take care not to create any large body mechanics problems for myself at this point. I'll let you know how it goes.

Here's my progress reel for class 2 Animation Mentor. I'm not very happy with it, but I think I did the best I could. I'm trying to figure out why this was not as successful as I had hoped, and I think it has a lot to do with communicating over the internet. I'm not used to asking questions in full sentences. I'm also not used to reading complete sentences. So props to whomever is reading this right now. On the bright side, I feel like I'm more capable of defining what I'm struggling with. As in, "Is there another way to track arcs besides going frame by frame with a dry erase marker?" I can't believe that's what people do, it takes forever to do 200 frames. Seriously, is there?

Just starting to blog...

I'm towards the end of class 2 (Body Mechanics) at AnimationMentor.com, and I'm just figuring out this blogging thing. I'll be posting my animations, even though some of them are really bad. I don't know why I'm doing this, honestly. Because everyone else is, I guess. Peer pressure.

A little about me: Painting is my first love. I graduated in 1990 from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Fine Art and English, but was never able to (never really thought I could) make a living in Art. So for the past 10 years or so, I've been a mortgage loan officer. Luckily for me, the market bottomed out, and I've been forced to find a new profession. I'd actually been thinking about animation for a long time, and had taken a few classes at a community college, where one of the instructors told me about Animation Mentor. So I quit my job, before it quit me and am now animating full time.

I am always mindful of similarities between animation and painting. The process is similar, in that there are a lot of elements to manage at once, and they're both a lot more difficult than they seem, but at first I didn't really feel the connection. The other day something happened, though. I was looking at my street through my painters eyes, noticing shape and color, then my brain clicked, and I thought, "this is boring, nothing's moving". So I think I've made the leap to concentrating on movement. Another thing I have in common with my cat.