Class 1 Week 4: Double Bouncing Balls

New assignment was to animate two balls, one heavy and one light.  Lots of fun with this one.
Also had to do a revision on last weeks assignment.  Who knew so much analysis could go into a ball bouncing.  It's almost purely mathematical at this level, which is fascinating.

Class 1 Week 3: First Animation - Bouncing Ball

Excitement

Our first animation assignment is the old reliable bouncing ball.  The most basic way to start talking about timing, spacing, and key frames.

The Pose this week was to convey Excitement.

Class 1 Week 2: First Pose

So, here it is.  First week of homework.  The assignment was to go out and observe people and do some quick sketches of them.  I spent a lunch at the Los Angeles Zoo, and here's my result.

Class 1 Week 1: One week down, 72 to go...

  Class 1: Basic Foundations

First week was pretty much like the first week at any class.  Introductions and going over the syllabus.  My mentor is Anthony Wong, a traditional 2d animator that's worked at Pixar for awhile now.  Going to be a good class.  Next week will begin blog postings with pretty pictures!

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

Today I once again become a student.

Why?  Did I miss having weekends and free time?  Miss having my worth assigned a letter grade?  Just felt like student priced movie tickets again?

After four years doing crowds work, I had the chance to try my hand at some real animation...and I was hooked.  It was a bit of a revelation - I realized that whenever I had free time at work, I was attending animation workshops and classes.  So, the path was clear - I was to be an animator.

Oh yeah, small detail.  That whole knowledge and skills thing.  I've been lucky enough to have quite a bit of classes held at work, taught by the animators.  But animation is a big crazy mountain to scale, and I'm still at base camp.  It was time to go back to school.

I had heard a lot about Animation Mentor.  A bunch of folks at work either came from there or have taught there.  Also, the Animation Guild union has a program in place to help pay for part of tuition.  I asked some of the Heads of Character Animation at work about it - and everyone couldn't recommend it more.  So, with a new year comes a new school and hopefully a new job path.

It's going to be a 16-month program when all is said and done.  It's all online, and done through videos and webcams.  The biggest benefit is that all the instructors all from the industry, from visual effects studios to animated features.  You can read more on the program here:

http://www.animationmentor.com/school/overview.html

So, wish me luck dear interwebs.  My goal is to update this blog with each weeks homework assignment.  Time to start climbing!