Fellow Students of AM get hired by Disney!

So there are 2 students of Animation Mentor that recently got hired by Disney! They are Anthea and Rebecca from class 3! (I don't want to post any last names without them knowing it) Congratulations ladies! In case any of you are wondering, class 3 is one class ahead of the class I am in. Paul, who was in my class last term, but had a different mentor, is now at Blue Sky working on Ice Age 2!

PIXAR animators blog!

So there's a new blog out that most of you probably already know about. The name of it is Spline Doctors. Those of you that aren't character animators, or bad character animators that don't know what the graph editor is, you might be wondering why they call themselves spline doctors. My guess is from the extensive use of the splines in the graph editor during the clean up process of character animation in the computer. All of the animators that created this blog teach at The Academy of Art University, which seems like a very nice school! Stephen Gregory, one of the spline doctors, was my mentor last term at Animation Mentor and was a very good teacher. Since having him, I know a bit about his workflow method and he is definitely graph editor friendly.

If you go to splinedoctors.com you can find a list of thier students from AAU, which have some AWESOME demo reels to check out! One person's demo reel that I seem to be watching almost daily now is Nick Rasario's! His work is very inspiring!

My mentor for this term!

If anyone was curious about who my mentor is for this term, it is Brett Coderre from PIXAR! He's a great mentor and has been really pushing the idea of seperating actions! It's been something that not a lot of other mentors seem to be talking about but I find very important. It seems that when I mention this subject to other students that are studying character animation nod and say they know about it but when I view their work they seem to really miss the mark. (bear in mind that I'm sure that I am guilty of doing that very thing with many different parts of animation) My suggestion would be to pop in a PIXAR movie and frame by frame their work and see how they are moving the different parts of the body at different times. Everything shouldn't move at the same time!

Here's a bit about Brett Coderre!

Brett has been working with PIXAR Animation Studios since A Bug's Life. He is currently working on PIXARS 2006 CARS. Brett won The Visual Effects Society Award for Oustanding Character Animation with his fantastic work on Finding Nemo, for the Dory Whale speaking scenes.

Ok, Ok! So I haven't updated.

Alright, so I didn't put up my work from last term. Sorry guys. One thing you must all know about character animators is that once we so-call "finish" a piece, we always see many improvements that need to be made! As far as last term assignments they were mainly foundation assignments and nothing really there demo reel wise so I don't really think it would be worth the time to really go in and polish them up and because of that, I don't plan on posting them. I'm really only posting this now that I see some of my fellow AM classmates seem to be starting come here, lol.

So I don't think I'm going to put up my work from last term but here's something that may tide you over. I am currently working on a four emotion pose test and am in the middle of cleaning up a heavy push assignment. There are quite a few things in it that I need to tend to so it's not a finished piece by any means!

HEAVY PUSH ASSIGNMENT

Any crits and comments are always welcome!

Updating My Blog!

Hey everyone and anyone who has been waiting to see new things! Someone, a very generous friend from Animation Mentor, has given me space and unlimited bandwidth for my animations so I should have all of my Animation Mentor assignments up within the next week! If I don't, then feel free to post here and complain about it. Later!

Animation Mentor Assignment 3 - Ball bounce

Here is the animation I've been working on and making progress with the help of some awesome Animation Mentor students. We are to animate a ball bouncing without squash and stretch with the bounce similar to a basketball or soccer ball.

Ball Bounce A
Ball Bounce B
Ball Bounce C
Ball Bounce D
Ball Bounce E
Ball Bounce F
Ball Bounce G

Let me know what you think!

Animation Collection

Here's a collection of the animations I've posted about so far. You can read about them in previous posts.

Ball_Bounce_test


Ballman_Backflip

Backflip Revised


Jump and Roll

So there's a summary of them. I hope to have a short skip animation done tomorrow, since I've been critiquing someone else's at AM, it has inspired me to do one on my own. So I started one an hour ago and it needs some refinement. When I get it to that point I'll be sure and post it.
Thanks everyone!

Animations Up!

OK guys, it looks like the site that I uploaded my animations on is back up so feel free to check em out!

Animations Down!

My animations are currently not working because the blog site that I uploaded them to is down. It is telling me that:

The blog system is currently down for maintenance to improve the service.
Thank you for your patience - please check back again soon.

So as soon as it is fixed or I find another place to upload them, then I will let you know.

If you are a part of Animation Mentor, then you can see the current animation I have uploaded in the my Puplic Review area. Or if you just can't wait to see something than, you can email me and I will send it out as an attatchment. Thanks for you support!

Jump and Roll animation blocking

Hey again! Just though that I would post another animation I'm working on. It's done using the character "Stu" that was given out to the Animation Mentor students. It includes Stu leaping out forwards and ending in a roll. This is just the blocking right now so still kind of rough. I'm just trying to figure out the timing, and see if my poses are OK. As always if you've got some time, feel free to check it out. Any comments are appreciated, even if you don't know anything about animation, you still might see something that just doesn't look right to you. Go ahead and tell me!

Jump and Roll

Thanks.

STEPHEN GREGORY IS AWESOME!!

OK everyone, I just finished my first Q and A session with my mentor, Stephen Gregory. Let me fist say that he was very nice and very humble. But here's what was so awesome about our Q and A! We are allowed an hour of time with each of the other students in our class. an hour with the mentor, and an hour after the mentor so the students can talk some more. But Get This, He stayed the whole extra hour after his time was suppose to be up! ( Oh just a sec, Stephen is emailing me!!) Anyways, we stayed as late as possible and then we were cut off just after 11pm. He was so generous with his time! So Stephen if you happen to check this out I, and I'm sure all of the other guys, would like to give a big THANK YOU for your time!

PIXAR in KC!

Hey there everyone!
If you happened to be in the big Q and A on the 20th and showed up early, you might have seen a couple of guys talking about the PIXAR presentation given at Johnson County Community College. Well anyways I thought I'd let you see a flyer that was given out that night! The presentation was lead by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, both storyboard artists at PIXAR. I was able to get both of them to sign my copy of The Incredibles, which was awesome!Brenda didn't work on it but since she was now a part of their team I definitley wanted her to sign it! Anyways I'm going to post the flyer as a photo so check it out!

Fellow Classmates

Hey there! Just had the Live Q and A for Animation Mentor last night with Bobby "Boom" Beck, Carlos Baena, and Shawn Kelly! Man those guys are awesome! So much energy there. My first Q and A with my mentor is tomorrow at 9:00pm here in Kansas! Anyways, here is a list of my fellow students from Stephen Gregory's class:

SAMUEL	EASTERLING	Birmingham	USA
BENNY	LEUNG	Hong Kong	China
BOON-YIK	LIM	Singapore	Singapore
VINCENT	FLORIO	Melbourne	USA
ERIC	SAPP	Park Ridge	USA
MICHAEL	HADWIN	Austin	USA
WILLIAM	BATE	CAROLLTON	USA
DEREK	ANDRE	Minneapolis	USA
KEITH	JOHNSTON	Leavenworth	USA
JAMES	THOMAS	Amarillo	USA
ADAM	STRICK	Kansas City	USA
AARON	STOCKTON	Joplin	USA
SEAN	MACNEIL	Edmonton	CANADA
MELVIN	MILTON	Provo	USA
DANIEL	BEEKMAN	Scottsdale	USA

This semester is going to be Great!!

My Mentor

OK, I just checked out the Roster for this summer's classes and my mentor is Stephen Gregory! It seems that he has worked on every one of PIXAR's feature films except for Toy Story 1. Here is his BIO: Since leaving Cal-Arts in 1996 Stephen has had the pleasure of working on some of the most influential animated films in recent years while being employed at PIXAR Animation Studios. At PIXAR Stephen has worked on “A Bugs Life”, “Toy Story 2”, “Monsters INC.”, “Finding Nemo”, “The Incredibles” and is currently working on “Cars” which is due out summer of 2006. While attending Cal-Arts, Stephen had several summer jobs which included an internship at Turner Feature Animation during “Cat’s Don’t Dance.”

I can't wait to learn from this guy!

Revised Animation

Well it is Saturday night at 10pm and no word from Animation Mentor yet telling me who my mentor is. Anyways, I've revised my backflip animation so if you want to check it out and leave any comments feel free.

Backflip Revised

Thanks.

Adam.

Currently Working

Hey everyone out there on the WWW! I'm at work right now and there isn't much to do since the recording studio here at my school is torn apart to install a new air conditioner. So I am currently across the hall enjoying a little bit of the Incredibles. Such a good movie!

To anyone and everyone that has commented on, hell even watched, my animations, Thanks a lot! Christophe, I completely agree that I should find a better pose at the end of the Backflip animation, so I'm going to try and work that in. I'm also going to try and have him doing something in the beginning, as someone suggested on CGTalk. As far as the ball animation, I am still debating on wether or not the timing is right on the balls rolling at the end. I understand the comment about "twinning" but I think that the way I animated it is the way it would possibly look in real life. I also agree that I need to add a texture that will better display the rotation of them.

To sum it all up,
THANKS FOR THE CRITS!
Always appreciate them.

Here It Is!

O.K. Sorry about the wait but I got sidetracked by my guitar.
Here is the animation I started yesterday and this is where it's at right now.

Ballman_Backflip

Let me know what you think if you've got some time!

Hope to add sound effects to it tonight and replace this one with that.

Currently Rendering

In the middle of rendering a new animation I started yesterday of the Ballman character doing a backflip over a missile. I'll try to post it tonight!

Animation

OK here is the ball animation. Any comments and crits are welcome!
Hope you enjoy it!

Ball_Bounce_test

Thanks.

First Post

What's Up (to whom it may concern)!

Well this is my first post on this new blog site! I had to create a new one because for some reason I couldn't get to my old one. It might have something to do with me not logging into it for a while?
I'm hoping to post an animation of a couple of bouncing balls soon, maybe tonight, so I can get some critiques from some of the Animation Mentor Spring class. They've been through it all semester so I'm sure they'll have some good insight.

Adam.