Scavenger Hunt Update

Well, I finally finished it. Was stuck on a few but got there in the end. I've also done something... bit embarressing. One of the questions was "Name a student whose video journal shows them singing/dancing to the theme song from an animated TV show?" Well, I found one person who danced to a song but don't know if it's from an animated TV show so I thought I would be silly and do one myself. Basically I made and wore a Pikachu mask and sung the Pokemon Theme Tune. I can't sing so makes it worse LOL
Sorry you all can't see it... It's only staying on the internet until the winner is anounced but I've taken a screen shot of it so you can see me in my mask :)

Also, While I was looking for a picture of Pikachu I found this! Made me giggle so thought I'd share. People do actually dye their cats, I've got a whole book on it and the are even competitions in it! Wouldn't surprise me if this picture is from a competition. They also do it with dogs, not sure if it's done to other animals.


Oh and I found this website where you can download print outs to make 3D models of pokemon and characters from the TV show and films! They are so cool! Might give it a go sometime :) Pokemon Paper Craft

Book Recommendations

Here is a list of books that I have found helpful or have been recommended to me by AM, Mentors, friends and other students.

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Wait before buying 'Acting for Animators'
as a new version is coming out soon_

• Figure Drawing for All it's Worth


• The Art of Animal Drawing


• Simplified drawing for planning animation

Emotions and Facial Expressions

This is something I've always struggled with and I am hoping Animation Mentor will help me to learn it too but I have stumbled across something amazing! I'm even going out and buying a new ink cartridge especially for it so I can print it out and put it on my wall. I know it is something I will refer to over and over again and here it is.


This image I found is too small to read though so I used tineye.com to do a search for it. If you haven't heard of it before; it is a website that does a reverse search for an image so you put the image link in or upload it and it will search the internet for that image. Any way, by doing that I found a version that is 2.5mb so better quality and big enough to read. To get that image click here.

7 animation planning and timing tips

The following is a excerpt taken from "A System For Planning and Timing Animation." It has been around for years and you can download the full pdf document at AnimationMeat.com.


1. Make a Positive Statement

• Do not be ambiguous in your approach.
• Thumbnail until you have that clear approach and conviction.
• Be bold and decisive.

2. Animate From the Heart

• Feel your drawings.
• Let your action be an extension of how you believe the character feels.
• Put yourself in the place of the character your animating- associate.

3. Make Expressions and Attitudes Real and Living

• Focus on the eyes and eyebrows- mouth and cheeks.
• Always lead with the eyes.
• Be sure the eyes are solid and placed securely in the head.
• Study your own attitudes. Ask yourself, "Does this drawing feel the way my face feels?"

4. Draw As If You Were Sculpting

• Describe the forms in dimension.
• Understand the character design in 3D.

5. Animate the Forces

• Allow the momentum of and already animated movement to suggest the next drawing.
• Draw the leading edge of forces.

6. Visualize and Feel Dialog

• Be sure you are truly capturing the inflection, volume and tone of the dialog with proper mouth shapes.

7. Simplicity

• What is the essence of your scene, your action , your expression- what is indispensable in communicating your thought?

Animation Mentor 2011 Student Showcase

Animation Mentor have posted their 2011 Student Showcase! It's really good and I can't wait to find out how to get the type of movements and poses that the students did, some you just can't act out... well, I cant.
The are some emotional ones too that touched me, especially the New York one as its something I've discussed with my boyfriend and the is even a clip from a student on the Animals and Creatures Course!

Click here to watch the 2011 Student Showcase

Animation Mentor Scavenger Hunt!

As an introduction to Animation Mentor, they have given us a Scavenger hunt!!! We have been given 12 easy clues and 12 hard clues and we need to find the answers to these clues within the site and submit them using the support ticket tool on the site.

Its a great idea to get a better understanding of the website and if I answer the 12 easy questions correctly, I will be placed in a draw for a super cool AM prize!
But if I correctly answer all the clues I will be placed in a second draw for another prize! When the closing date has passed I will post my answers on this post :)

Although, I only have till the end of week 11, specifically Sunday at 12:00pm Pacific Time.


THE CLUES

Easy

1. What link in the menu do you use to upload your assignments?
2. In which orientation video does Bobby discuss the Syllabus section?
3. We highly recommend taking detailed notes while watching the lectures, but we also provide printable notes for each one. What are these called?
4. Where in your Orientation workspace can you upload your reel?
5. Post a workspace comment to six different students and list the 6+ names here. Say hi, comment on their public reivew, have fun!
6. We e-mail a monthly _____ full of industry news, insights, and tips and tricks. What section can you find an archive of each of these ______?
7. What file do you download from the Tools section (beginning Week 1) that is used in the mandatory Video Standardization Procedure?
8. What Orientation Q&A is available to you in Week 11?
9. Updating your time zone in the My Settings is important since it will adjust all the times on your ______ to your specific time zone.
10. What is the second Helpful Tip for avoiding common technical issues?
11. What category of support ticket would you choose if you had an technical issue setting up your webcam for a Q&A?
12. Name one student who lives in Europe, one student who lives in Asia, and one who lives in Africa. Include their countries as well.


Hard

1. What is the penalty for submitting late work?
2. Beyond lectures, assignments, and eCritiques, what are other activities you can do at Animation Mentor to help you succeed?
3. What assignment(s) do you upload in Week 5 of next term?
4. When you verify your encode, what message is displayed that ensures your mentor can see your assignment in the eCritique tool?
5. Name one reason why we don't recommend rendering your assignments
6. Name a student who's favorite old school movie is "Blade Runner"
7. What month and year did Shawn Kelly give the tip "forget about the legs?"
8. When exporting your playblast in Quicktime, what compression type and Frame Rate do you use?
9. What did Spike "say" when asked for advice for incoming students?
10. Submit a ticket to the Q&A Technical Issue category with the topic "AM rocks!", who responds to you?
11. Name a student whose video journal shows them singing/dancing to the theme song from an animated TV show?
12. What time does the Office Hours Q&A happen this week?

Big thanks to Student Care

About a week ago I messaged Renee in the Student Care Team as I had a few worries about how I will cope with Animation Mentor with my Aspergers and also because I thought they should know about it. She messaged me back and actually arranged to call me and we spoke for about 20 minutes and she was wonderful! She made me feel so much more confident that I will cope with everything and made my worries go out the window! I recommend that if anyone who is doing Animation Mentor or about to and has any concerns or worries to contact Student Care. They are great and I'm sure they will do all they can to help.

Check out the lectures!

On the student area of the website in the News area a video called 'Check out the lectures' has been posted and its brilliant and I'm getting even more excited about AM so here is the first AM Can!

The video is made up of several excerpts from lectures from the Character Animation program and it looks like the lectures are going to be fun and memorable. Its also great to see the things I will learn for each class too. It also made me laugh as its a bit random in places, like a gun that shoots pencils and draws thumbnails and a dog in an AM top standing on its back legs. Random but fun and really inforamtive :D

I like how you can see how the mentors really know what their talking about and the tips are great and how they show you exactly what they mean by drawing or using animation or film examples. A wonderful way of teaching overall and I just don't see how I won't learn what I need to learn and not love every minute of it! It was also great to see the things I will learn for each class too.

Pixar Intern talking about his experiences

An intern at Pixar, Austin Madison talks about his experiences as an intern there, being a CalArts student and animation. It's really interesting and worth a watch.

Lecture with Mark Andrews from Pixar at CalArts

Here are 2 videos from a lecture at CalArts with Mark Andrews from Pixar. I went to a course where he lecturered with Escape Studios once. He was really good and I learned so much about storyboarding. I will post some of the notes I got from that lecture at some point too.

Video's of advice from John Lasseter

Here are some videos on YouTube of John Lasseter giving advice to students and how to animate an inanimate object. After each video I have put notes from it. This is also the first Tip Jar post!



Don’t forget to study the basics, even for computer animation.

• Basic drawing
• Basic design
• Basic fundamentals of animation
• Film grammar (how do you stage things)
• Story/writing (3 story act)

An inanimate object was made to do something so it would want to do it so anything that prevents it from doing that job would make it sad and full of anxiety. What would it be feeling? Try and not put a face on it. Consider the movement the object does in real life. Make the audience believe it is that object.

Why I've chosen to be a Character Animator

I've always been a fan of animation and grew up watching cartoons and animated films, especially the Disney classics. I've also been a big drawer, I even stopped talking when I was 1 and started to draw anything I wanted to say and when I was 8 I was told that I was an art prodigy as I drew a stuffed bird on an art course and it was an amazing life drawing even for an adult. I remember it and somewhere I have a clipping from a newspaper article, if I find it I will post it on here.

Well, that was the start and during high school my thoughts of a career changed a few times and at one point I was thinking of designing motorbikes but I wasn't in Higher Maths so I wasn't allowed to do it for A-level. So I decided to just do subjects I enjoy and hope my path comes to me. I took Art, Design Technology, Drama and started CAD (Computer Aided Design).

It was CAD that really struck me and I was found in the CAD room in most of my free time and my teacher even had to push me to go to lunch! I was great at CAD and was praised as the best student at it but I missed the creativity. I was basically given a drawing and I draw it on the computer or given a drawing that is missing dimensions and work out how to add them. Thats when my teacher suggested looking at animation. Thats when it all clicked and I realised it was just what I'd been looking for. I looked into the different types of animation and animating and Character Animation was what really grabbed me.

I have also decided that I want to specalise in animating creatures. This is because I've always loved animals. I watch films and documentaries about them, research them, draw them and find working out their movement really interesting and enjoyable.

This blog design

Well, I hope you like it. I've never done it before so I found a template and then changed the images in Photoshop and then changed the coding.

I also got a little bored and made a can of Animation Mentor. Think I may use it when I post about something new AM has done and I love, so its like a can of AM awesomeness! For instance, Orientation. I got access to about 20 videos about how the AM website works and how to do the course and what to do if I have any problems. This would get an AM Can as it is brilliant although it would be a smaller can image :P
I also made a Tip Jar so if any posts have any animation or career tips that I think are good I will post the Tip Jar there. I will also tag these with either "AM Can" or "Tip Jar".

I hope Animation Mentor doesn't mind that I used some of their logos for the can and tip jar, thanks if they don't mind me using them and they do then please let me know and I will change or remove them.

Oh and if your wondering, the cat is based on my cat, Remus. I designed the cartoon version of him for my final year animation at university and hes sort of turned into my logo. Remus is rather mischievous and you may well hear about him in this blog and in other AM places.

Welcome to my Animation Mentor blog

On June 27th I will be starting Animation Mentor and right from the start with their Springboard course and this blog will record my journey with them.

I have already been given access to the student area of the website and I've joined a group on Facebook called AM Eager Beavers and I'm loving it... Both are making me more excited by the day too! Everyone I've spoken to has been great and are all so friendly.

On this blog you will not only find my ramblings but you will also find uploads of my assignments, drawings, reference images/videos, animations and tutorials (I may even try making my own tutorials).

Oh, by the way. When I say AM, I mean Animation Mentor. Just encase you didn't guess that :p