My blog hasn't been updated in FOREVER...

So prepare for massive updates for everything I've done so far!

Basic Foundations Class: Assignment one!

This assignment was pretty basic but challenging in its own ways. I've been reading Walt Stanchfield's "Drawn to Life" books, which cover figure drawing and how animators should handle practice drawing from a live model.

The book presents a lot of new ways of looking at how to draw from life and interpret it so it applies to an animator's work.

I've always been a very staunch advocate of drawing straight from the model. I never thought that using the model and interpreting him or her in a creative way could benefit my work. So I tried this method, in conjunction with drawing with my left hand (working with your non-dominant hand really loosens you up!) and I got some pretty interesting results!

  My first sheet.... (I chose to work with 15& 17)

My second sheet (I chose to work with 31)

And my Stu Pose sheet! I've chosen the middle one to be evaluated....

I can't wait for feedback from my mentor. I really want to know if I'm missing something and how I can improve my basic posing skills.

First Class of Basic Animation!

This class was more of a meet and greet. I'm very excited to chill and learn with my new mentor and classmates!!

My Mentor:
Mathew Rees (http://mathewrees.blogspot.com/) . Mathew is a Senior Animator at Aardman Animations. Pretty cool, right? I know! Check out the pieces he has up on his blogs!

Also check out some of my classmate's blogs:

Lucas Degani: http://lucasdegani.blogspot.com.br/#
Stan Paillereau: https://sites.google.com/site/stanpaillereau/blog
Si-Qi Ho: http://www.szekeiho.co.uk/
                http://szekeiho.tumblr.com/
Forrest Keyes: http://vimeo.com/user3023523
                         http://forrestart.com/

Next class is bumped up to tomorrow! :D

So excited!!

My first true blue Animation Mentor animation based classes start today!! I'm so excited! I'll update after the first class with my mentors name and all the fun stuff that happens!!

Behind the Scenes of Pixar's "Brave"

Check it out!

Drawing day!

This past weekend I went into NYC to visit the Museum of Natural History, or as most of you know it as, that museum from that film "Night at the Museum", haha. 

My friend and I walked all around, but I settled into the African Animals exhibit and drew up some animals. Here's a sample of some drawings that were done over a 3hr period. 

One bad thing: There was no place to sit so it was basically me standing the entire time, gripping my sketch book. Next time I shall bring a small folding chair :)

Believe and Achieve!!

Final Assign-all! (I tried to rhyme! I tried!)

That ball hopping marks the end of the Maya Springboard class for me and about 30 other students :) It's been fun and I've made a lot of friends, so here's looking towards our future first class! Yay!

The claw!

This was a lot of fun! This felt like the first "character" that I've been able to animate for the AM program. I started animating with just a simple straight forward idea, and that evolved into animating the claw in a bird like fashion. I think it turned out pretty well! Could use some tweaks here in there but it's a pretty good second pass. 

Oh my...

I've waited a bit too long to post again! But that's alright! I've been very busy at work, which is both good and bad, and busy with Animation Mentor (of course!) and my Krav Maga classes. 

This'll just be a random post about some of the side projects I'm up to when I get spare time.

I like to jump around a lot, and many of my ideas are still in very early stages so I'll show you the couple that have gotten a bit farther:

Pompadour Von Bombfist

This guy's probably the latest thing I've done. I came up with what I thought would be a fun idea for a game I'd like to play, where you're the bad guy who's forced into playing a good guy role just to achieve something so that you could go back to being the bad guy. 

Let me explain that jumbled mess. 

Pompadour is the villain character, in a world where rubber-hose heroes and villains interact in a very stereotypical way; villain does something bad, good guy counters. It's the natural way of things. Pompadour is one of the more high profiles bad guys so of course he's the antagonist to one of the very well known and much loved protagonists of the world, until the day his good guy gets nabbed by a big, new, nigh invincible bad guy. So Pompadour has to either accept his unemployment and become a hired low life for a real villain with a real protagonist or he can decide to play rescuer and go after his good guy in order to save his reputation and be able to go back to his much loved villainous ways. 

I liked the idea of playing as a bad guy, in a simplistic world, because it reminds me a lot of the simple and clean games I really enjoyed as a kid like Sonic or Mario. Those games are still fun for me to play, so maybe one day I could make something like one of those!

Some test animation. Not very good but hey I'm tryin:

More to come in the next post :)

Combo Assignment post! Or Assignment 2&3 are best buddy's forever...

Sadly, I do not know how to render in Maya correctly, so here are some screenshots of my recent assignments 2&3.

Assignment 2 was to build and rig up a character through parenting.
Assignment 3 was to use our new knowledge of modeling to create a scene.

Here it is!

I'll figure out how to render it out really nicely soon. :)

First Q&A Horray!

I had my first Q&A yesterday with my Maya Springboard mentor, Grzegorz Dalek. Greg (as he's told us we can call him) has worked at Reality Pump (game development studio, Poland) and Meindbender (Sweden). Meindebender is a pretty sweet studio that's been putting out some really badass work. If you've seen the spots for Cartoon Network they've done, you'll totally agree. See below:

Both by Meindbender, both very cool. I am excited to start learning Maya, and a bit nervous too. It could be that I am scared about the work load coming up, or that my mentors name makes me think of this:

((I laugh at my own Doctor Who reference. Bwahahaha))

Draw animals!

Drawing animals is always fun and offers its own different set of challenges. Here are some of my attempts at animals in motion drawn from videos and photo reference :)

And now for something completely different:

Figure Drawing, mi amor!

I love drawing, and more specifically figure drawing. It's a relaxing practice that allows me to fall into a zone of complete concentration. I get in drawing time between work and life and krav classes, drawing in the car or on the train or at my desk at lunch!

Here are some of my favorites from the past two weeks:

All of these images were done using references from various websites and books and videos. I wish I could get to a live model class, but sadly I can't find the time or one within driving distance...

Some of the most wonderful reference can be found from older films. Chaplin and Keaton were amazing at pantomime, and inspired a lot of comedic animation. Although they're acting outlandishly, it doesn't feel contrived. Watching this decades later, it still holds up, the acting and the comedy. I recommend any and all of Chaplin's and Keaton's work for a good watch and for a good study in acting.

...And so it has begun!...Kinda!

Hello all! If you've stumbled on to this blog, you are most likely enrolled in the Animation Mentor program as well! So welcome! :)

This blog will be used to log my progress through my AM. As of now I am enrolled in the Maya Beginners class.

I'm a bit anxious still, but everyone seems so nice, I don't think I have much to worry about! I feel that I've already started making friends that will be with me through my journey and after graduation. I'm very very excited! I think the relationships that are formed with people in this specific course are the most valuable thing that can be gotten from AM, besides learning animation of course! Haha!

I look forward to studying and learning with all of you who are my classmates, and to growing into amazing artists.

<3 Julz