alexiss dawn

Here’s my final assignment for class 5! Worked on refining the timing and posing, jumping into a few more details, and not get too ahead of myself.

Oh, and the ending after the credits. That stems from a Q&A session with my mentor and class and a 4 am video chat with several other AMers the other night. Yes, we think we’re hilarious. Gracias to John and Teresa for that!

Class 5 has been incredible. It’s definitely been the most challenging class at AM for me so far. So many different elements are involved but it was great to be able to explore so many areas. I was able to jump in deep with other classmates and develop my understanding of appeal a little bit more. Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned this term is to stand by my ideas. It was so incredibly tough for me at first as I was trying to find a story idea that would please everyone. Just as a heads up for those of you who haven’t hit class 5 yet — it’s not possible! No matter what your story is, it just won’t fit everyone’s tastes. You just work to make the best story you can. So a huge thanks to everyone that supported me again this term over at AM — you guys are family and I appreciate it!

I’ve had an amazing mentor and group of people in my class this term. It really is an amazing process to see films develop from ideas, to pitches, to boards, and on. Probably the most creative time I’ve been able to be involved in.

Anyway! I’m off to California for the week! There’s no break between terms this time around, but during week 12 there’s technically not as much to do. But I’m still bringing my laptop with me to animate! Addiction? Possibly. But more like I’m knee deep in production…and I love it. I leave in 5 hours and I have yet to pack…or sleep. See ya guys in a week!

Just a heads up that the new eCritique is up for the winner of the February competition over at the 11 Second Club. This month’s eCrit was done by Dave Burgess! Dave is a great animator — I’ve been able to watch several of his critiques over on the AM member’s site. And now you guys can check it out. 33 minutes of gold for all animators. And it gives you a great insight into what we get every week as students at Animation Mentor!

Carlos just put this list up on his blog and all I can say is holy cow! We had 22 Animation Mentor graduates and former students work on Horton Hears A Who!! When I saw it with AMers last Friday we had a lot of fun trying to point out all of the names we knew — it was incredible. People we know! And this isn’t counting all of the amazing mentors. But people that started off just like us at AM. Dang, it’s amazing. It was a great feeling to see all of these names scroll by. Congrats to everyone that worked on it. And a huge congrats and thanks to AM for making it possible for so many of these people to have the ability and chance to do this!

AM graduates:

• Aja Bogdanoff
• David Sloss
• Gordana Fersini
• Jeff Kim
• Miles Southan
• Lluis Llobera
• Shahbaaz Shah
• Max Perelman
• Eric Luhta
• Pete Devlin
• Ken Music

Former AM students:

• Greg Rizzi
• Nathan Engelhardt
• Steve Melagrano
• Ryan Hobbiebruken
• Dan Barker
• Lance Fite
• Anthea Kerou
• Rebecca Perez
• Scott Farrell
• Venece Lyman
• Paul Diaz

Heavens knows I didn’t get to spend as much time as I wanted to on my film last week with everything going on, but I was able to accomplish all of the goals I set for it last week. Sweet. So here’s the full layout, with some temp music on there. I’m in the process of getting the final music so it’s coming! Anyway, a few more tweaks then it’s time to get really blocking this baby.

Have I mentioned that I’m really enjoying this short film process? Man it’s fun.

It’s been a great week - and for so many reasons! First off, a huge congrats to all of the AMers that got jobs this last week. I cannot even put into words how excited I’ve been as news has popped up each day of yet another and another friend getting a job. A huge congrats especially to Ron (PDI/Dreamworks) and Maciek (Dreamworks). Seriously guys, you’ve earned it! It’s totally made my week to hear your news! There’s no better feeling than seeing my friends’ dreams come true. It’s an incredible sight! Been bouncing in my chair all week in excitement! It just seems like things are going great for people — things falling into place bit by bit and I absolutely love seeing that happen in these guys’ lives. An incredibly exciting process.

Of course Friday was the opening of Blue Sky’s new movie, Horton Hears a Who. I got to go see it with the amazing group of Utah AM animators. Gotta love it. It was a great movie with some interesting quirks. But the animation was stellar and the movie had us laughing at several parts. It was so great to watch the credits and see so many names of friends and people from AM. Man, this stuff is becoming real! Of course dinner and several hours of talking followed the movie. I love those guys.

Also this week my brother came home after living in Peru for the last two years. Crazy stuff to be seeing him. But it’s a lot of fun. He’s just as crazy. And I’ll admit that this week that event took up a lot of my time. Today we had a ton of people over and man was it loud. I totally enjoyed being able to kick back and just play with my niece for several hours though, watching movies and chasing her around. A great day and night off.

Life is good. Film update coming tomorrow!

Animation Mentor just released it’s first ebook today! Each month in the AM newsletter the ever hilarious Shawn, co-founder of AM and animator at ILM, writes up some tips and tricks for animation. It’s seriously chock full each month with so much information. And now, it’s all been compiled into an ebook!! And it’s totally free! So head over here and get your copy now! Seriously, this is animation gold. And you may even run into some fried chicken talk.

Also when you request the free ebook, you’ll have an opportunity to sign up for a Q&A with Shawn in April! C’mon, it can’t get much better than this for you guys. I know there are plenty of you out there that have been thinking about joining AM — I’ve been reading your emails and your comments! Now’s your chance to get a lil more taste of it all!

Ok, so technically it’s more than the 2/3. I actually did it all last week, I just ended up trashing the last two shots right before deadline as I really wasn’t satisfied with how I had done them. Plus, I figured I’d save it for this next week. Having done a lot of detailed movement in my storyboards has really helped me do my layout so far. I have a better idea of how the action is happening and the timing of it all. Given tweaks have to be made in Maya, but it’s easier than if I had just done a couple of drawings for an entire shot. It’s been great sketching out movements, figuring out how things work. And man, it’s so fun seeing it start to come together.

So this week I’ll get those last two shots in there and also get some more detail/make some changes to shots 1-9. I was only so-so on making my own film earlier in this class but I’m really, really enjoying it now. It’s great to have so much freedom creatively and set my own timing. I’m really happy with where I’m at right now — really enjoying it. I’m still amazed I’ve managed to keep it under one minute and only one character. Many of you around AM know my reputation for pushing beyond those limits. Ha!

Goal this week is to finish the set (since those shots with the bus behind him don’t have anything behind the bus!), finish those last two shots, and refine the whole thing. I’m also still looking for music. Hmmm. It’ll be a bit busier week — my brother has been living in Peru for the last two years and he comes home on Wednesday. Weird! I’ve also been adjusting to my new schedule. We’ve decided to call is a sabbatical — and man I love it. I slept in a bit this morning, spent the morning/afternoon outside doing yard work (it’s finally warming up at 55 degrees!), and did some stuff around AM. Gotta love it.

Last week I was playing around with the lighting to make sure my set would work how I wanted it to as I built it up. So aside from the one I posted late last week, here are a few test renders I did. Still a bit of tweaking to do but getting close. Really going for that just before a snow storm weather — seems like we’ve been getting a lot of that around here in Utah! It’s a lot of fun to see it all start coming together. My big goal I’m playing with right now is messing things up — getting away from everything having those perfectly straight edges. Click on them to make them bigger!

So here’s my first third of my film in layout and then the rest on there as the animatic. It is really, really cool to see this translating into Maya. I’m enjoying it a lot — it’s starting to come to life by seeing it in there. It’s rough but that’s cause it’s only layout!

This week I’ll get a lot more done for sure. Last week was just crazy. Thank you to all of you who sent such incredibly kind messages after last week — I really, really appreciate it and it means so much. Animation people are amazing!

As an ending note, I thought I’d pass on a lil’ quote. Every week at Animation Mentor we have video news with a bunch of people at AM offices. This week Bobby started it off and after mentioning a few things school wise he said something I absolutely love:

This is Animation Mentor — the place where your dreams become reality. And the only way that happens is by pursuing and pushing yourself forward and working super hard.

We’re in week 9 and things always tend to get a bit hectic and it’s that final push for the term. And amazingly enough everyone of us struggles at one point or another questioning if we’re really cut out for animation — it’s just part of it all. So it was great to hear him say this. This morning I was talking with a friend that’s about to get a great job in the industry. Talking about his excitement (as I was bouncing in my seat in excitement) he noted how he hasn’t been this excited before. Then we said how it’s because it’s a dream coming true. That doesn’t happen every day — and I absolutely love seeing it all happen for my friends. It’s an incredible feeling when I hear about another person having that dream come true. Awesome.

Eight weeks into class 5 and you finally get an update complete with video. It’s been two months of exploring different stories, simplifying, pitching, simplifying, storyboarding, and even a bit more simplifying. So here’s my animatic for my film tentatively titled “Frozen”. This week shows why I do 3D animation and not 2D! Woo!

I have to say, it’s been a rough process. I’ve found class 5 to be the toughest class so far at AM. I of course came in with big ideas, most of which were just too big for this project. I always push my assignments beyond the limit and it’s been a lot of fun to do that as it’s pushed me to learn a lot and work really hard. So this is a change to actually only be doing 1 character like they recommend. It has a great setup to really push what I can do and to develop my animation skills farther. So this week I start layout on the film. Now is when things start to get busy again. So excited.