Coming back up for air to say "I have completed class 2!!"

Hey Everyone!

This is just a short post to say class 2 for me at Animation Mentor is now history, and officially ended about 3 hours ago! I now get a week off to "relax". I have really been looking forward to having this break...but you know its only been 3 hours...and I am already back on the computer animating again. =) Whats wrong with me!!????....ha ha.

Well what I plan to casually do this next week is put together my class 2 reel for all of you to see. So please do check back for that sometime mid to late next week.

For this week off I plan to catch up with friends that live near and call ones far away.

I am so excited!!...you don't even understand...I just know that I am another step closer to achieving my goal of being a professional animator. So I thought I would do a little celebration video with lady Jade.



Definitely not afraid of making a fool of myself, eh?!....ha ha.

Its fall here now and I thought the yellow tree in the backyard was awesome. Its going to snow here soon which will make it tougher to film reference outside. But for those of you that know me...you know that won't stop me...ha ha. It will probably just be more fun. :)

Thank you!

Busy, busy, busy....

Hey Everyone!

I am really noticing Animation Mentor is becoming more and more busy for me. Weekends are no longer breaks, they are just more days that I have to animate and improve my shot. Every week our knowledge base and assignments are becoming more complex. I have a feeling its going to get even more busy in the next classes. I get a week break between classes in a couple weeks which will be nice.

Just thought I would put up my blocking for my assignment so you can see where I am heading with it. I am really busy with this nearing the end so I will keep this post short.

Hope you enjoy it!

Thank You!

A toboggan slides better on snow then grass.

Yes...its a weird title for this post. But you will see why if you keep reading. =)

Hello Good People! Alright its been a whole month since I have posted any work. So I am going to try and get you caught up on everything I have done. I will try to have less reading and more visuals for you. I will start with my oldest work and bring you up date to where I am at currently.

Here we go!!

Here is my final for my 180 degree turn around.



Yes I know...its not exciting, so I had to try and spice it up a little with some 80's sunglasses and drop in a smile. The final settle at the end could still use a little more attention, but I am pretty happy with the way it turned out, and feel I learned a lot about the hips and the way they move.
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So onto the next assignment. We were given another version of Stewie, but he has no arms. At Animation Mentor they gradually build us up to using full bodied characters. First we started with Ballie (hips and legs). Now, we get Stewie (hips, legs, spine, neck, and head), and then for the next assignment we get Stewie with arms...which is what I mean by a "full bodied" character. I think its a great way to teach us the mechanics of the way our bodies move.

So my next assignment said take Stewie and "Jump from one post to another and regain balance." So getting back to my creative ways for this one I came up with a little idea.

Heres my planning. You can click on the images to make it larger if you like.



After I had an idea of what I wanted to do, I went outside and filmed over 30 minutes of reference video over 2 days. After sifting through the video, I narrowed it down to this plan.



Yes...I agree the video ends at a weird spot, but in my other planning you will see why.





So there you go. Basically I wanted Stewie's arms to taunt him to come and get them. But, when Stewie is about to land on them at the end....the one arm would lift the lid and Stewie would fall down the pipe. Then the other arm will flick the lid closed with its wrist. I had only 8 seconds for this assignment, but it seemed feasible.

So I then blocked out my plan.



Next I went ahead and started smoothing it out to become a polished piece of animation. But...I will have to show you that at a later time. It still needs work and I am not really happy with it quite yet. Maybe I will show you at the end of the term if I can squeeze in extra time here and there to get it looking good. =) Sorry.

But to cheer you back up...I have some fun video for you! So...after 30 minutes of jumping around in 30 degree Celsius heat....86 for you Farenheiter friends of mine, don't think for a second I didn't have a few spills and falls. So I give to you my bloopers video. =)


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What else, what else...oh yeah!...on July 30th we had a Q & A webcam session with two animators that worked on Pixars most recent film "Ratatouille". There were probably well over a hundred students involved in this, but I was still able to get my question in there to ask. It was real cool.

Tomorrow I have another Q & A webcam session with an animator that worked on the recent action and adventure film "Transformers". Should be real cool as well.
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Alright...so last week I went to San Diego to attend an annual animation convention called Siggraph. Last year it was in Boston Massachusetts. The convention was cool...yeah...but my lovely best friend Claire and I got to see David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox hit a home run in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the game. Fenway Park went crazy!!! Such a great memory.

But anyways...back to San Diego. Siggraph is a convention that all the major studios attend like Pixar, Disney, Dreamworks, Blue Sky, Sony Imageworks, Laika...all places in which I hope one will be a near future place of employment for me. Also attending Siggraph were several software and hardware companies showing off their latest programs and technology. It was a great event for just networking with people which is why I felt it was important I went. Thanks to a fellow animation mentor classmate I was able to meet several recruiting people from many of the studios. This year for the first time Animation Mentor also had a booth there. Students came from all around the world for this convention. So I met a lot of other online classmates which was real cool.

Heres a picture of Animation Mentors mascot "Spike" and myself in front of the booth.



To the Shaffer family (including Ollie & Polly)...you are ALL so special too me and I am so incredibly lucky and thankful for everything you have done for me and continue to do. Thank you. =)
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So now...my current assignment in which we now get Stewie with arms!! So exciting I know. We get 10 seconds for this one and I have to have him pushing or pulling a heavy object.

So in a nutshell this is my plan:

-It will start seeing Stewie as a paperboy really struggling to pull his overloaded newspaper filled red wagon uphill on the sidewalk. Then he hears something, look up hill and watches another paperboy across the street happily riding downhill on his newspaper filled wagon. Then stewie looks back uphill, takes a big breath, and then slumps and hangs his head over even more.

Heres my planning.







I also filmed some oh so fun reference video...which you will see why I called this post "A toboggan slides better on snow then grass."

I will not torture you with anymore reading this time. Plus I animated all last night and went to bed at 11:00am this morning so I am pretty tired. It is now 3:45am, but I promised you I would update my blog today because I really appreciate everyones support. So, I will leave you with my reference video for the next assignment.

Thank you!!!!....as always. =)

Long time no post...

Alright, I just wanted to apologize for not posting any work for almost a month. =(

I know its not good to make excuses...but I am going make some just for you. =)

1. It has been a really great summer with awesome weather here in the last month so I have been trying to take advantage of it before we begin to head into the deep freeze of a Canadian winter.

2. Which then ties into my second reason that I have been working extra hard on my animation so I can enjoy the beautiful weather.

3. My third reason is that I was in San Diego last week at a HUGE animation convention called Siggraph, which I will tell you all about in my next post which I am designating this coming Sunday (Aug 19) to doing.

I have lots of visuals for my next post on here, so stay with me here...I promise to get back on track. =) I really appreciate it!

Thank you!!

180 Degree Turn....and an un-tucking of a shirt.

Hello Good People!

I am almost done my third week already! Last week we had to block out our 180 degree turns with the Ballie character. I decided to go with none of the creative turns from last weeks reference video that you may have seen in my last post...and I will explain why. For this assignment we are learning specifically the mechanics of the hips. It gets really complicated when they are rotating on all three axis. Understanding how the hips work are so important because depending on what they do can affect the rest of the body. SO, I decided to take a mentors advice and just "keep it simple" and really focus on understanding the mechanics of the hips. So here is my reference video for my "non exciting" 180 degree turn.



Note: I'm not a shirt tucked in type of guy. But it was good to see the belt line so I could observe what is going on with the rotations of the hips. But after that...I quickly un-tucked...as you saw. =)



Alright alright...calm down...I know that was amazing reference video. But lets get back on track here. =) ....So then...after studying that turn I blocked it out in the computer with Ballie.



Even though its not exciting to watch Ballie do his turn, I really learned so much about how the hips work and am really happy I followed the mentors advice to keep it simple. But I'm not going to lie...it was tough to hold back on getting creative. So the next assignment...I'm not holding back. I have already been coming up with ideas. You'll see!

Thank you for the support!!

Class 2 - Body Mechanics

Hey everyone!

I have been getting back into the groove this week with my second class. I feel its going to a great class because we will eventually be getting into full body characters. We had our first Q & A on Tuesday night and met everyone in the class. My new mentors name is Brian Mendenhall. He works at Tippett Studio in Berkeley, California (near San Francisco). He did work on such movies as Charlotte's Web, Constantine, Starship Troopers 2, Hellboy. He seemed pretty easy going and cool. So it should be a great class.

This week we have to do some planning for Ballie to do a 180 degree turn. So I did some reference video today for it and narrowed it down to these 3 choices. I will be able to exaggerate them further in the computer so I think one of them should turn out pretty cool for me. I should give you some sort of visual...so here is my reference video. :)

Thank you for stopping by! :)