Class 3, Week 9...Round 2....

Further polishing on both first and second half (mostly second half now)

Class 3, Week 8...Round 2...

More polishing on first half, and first pass at splining on second half

Class 3, Week 7...Round 2...

More polish and more blocking on last weeks shots

Class 3, Week 6...Round 2....

This week I did some more polish work on my splining shot, as well as the blocking for my next shot

Class 3, Week 5....Round 2....

Polishing my splining from last week.

Class 3, Week 4...Round 2....

This week I did my first pass at Splining the Tai Chi shot as well as video reference and sketch planning for my next shot, which is a continuation of the Tai Chi

Class 3, Week 3....Round 2

Another pass at blocking for my Tai Chi shot, really started to focus more on refining the blocking as much as possible BEFORE going into splining, as well as refining a process of doing a LOT of blocking in a straight ahead fashion which means i try and block as much movement as i can in a contiuous motion rather than pose to pose.

Class 3, Week 2....Round 2.....

This week I did my first blocking pass for the Tai Chi shot.

Class 3, Week 1....Round 2....

So I felt that I struggled more than I should have with Body Mechanics during Class 3, my mentor as well as the head of the school all agreed that even though I passed the class I would greatly benefit from re-taking the class. So after much deliberation I chose to re-take Class 3 Advanced Body Mechanics.  This time around I got Drew Adams from Dreamworks as my mentor, handpicked by Bobby Beck :)

Drew is by far the best teacher I have ever had, he is truly great at preparing his own lectures, goes far and above the call of duty when it comes to answering questions quickly and providing multiple critiques throughout the week, and even is willing to look at our Maya files to help really identify problem areas and show exactly how to get in there and fix the problems.

This week I had to do video reference and planning sketches for my next shot, with some collaboration with Drew about what areas I need to focus on I came up with the idea to do a Tai Chi shot.

Class 3, Week 12.....

Final week, this week we had to put together a Progress Reel of everything we have done so far in AM.

Class 3, Week 11.....

Another pass at polishing my box jump shot.

Class 3, Week 10....

Polishing pass on my box jump shot.

Class 3, Week 9....

First pass splining my blocking from last week.

Class 3, Week 8.....

This week I did reference for my next shot, jumping up on a box, then jumping off, I also did my blocking pass.

Class 3, Week 7....

Took a pass at polishing my shot, also re-worked the camera angle again.

Class 3, Week 6....

First pass at Splining my shot from last week, also tried a different camera angle.

Class 3, Week 5....

This week I came up with reference for my next shot, I would do Stewie as a astronaut planting a flag in his foot by mistake, originally I was planning to do the shot with him pretending to be in a low gravity environment. But as per my mentors instructions i would just go for a real low gravity environment. So here is my reference  as well as a VERY rough blocking pass, had some issues with constraints so the hand is really messed up in this one.

Class 3, Week 4.....

This week I did a polishing pass on my shot, I also submitted planning and reference for my next shot but ended up changing what shot i would do :)

Class 3, Week 3....

This week I did my first pass splining my blocking from last week.

Class 3, Week 2....

This week I did some more video reference shots to work with the camera angle and did the first blocking pass for my shot

Class 3, Week 1.....

Now for Class 3 my teacher was Tim Crawfurd who works for Pixar :)

For our first week we had to submit Video Reference and Planning sketches for our first shot, i chose to do a viking eating a Turkey Leg and getting hit in the shoulder from behind with a rock and how he reacts

Class 2, Week 12

Yet another class done and over with, this week we put together a Progress Reel showing everything we have done in AM so far.

Class 2, Week 11....

This week I did some polishing work on my Heavy Push shot.

Class 2, Week 10.....

This week I began splinning my heavy push shot.

Class 2, Week 9.....

actually the last video i posted was what i did for Week 8, forgot i did it on my wifes laptop so i did not have the file on hand, and the video i posted for week 8 was actually my second pass on blocking. Also this was the week following CTNX. Since CTNX was held in Burbank I had my wife, son and parents fly out to meet me at Disney Land to spend the week of Thanksgiving there together. One hell of a good time, was great finally getting to see where it all began after all these years of going to WDW. Do not get me wrong i still prefer WDW with all its extra parks but DL is not nearly as small as I had always heard, just wish Cars Land was already open so my son could have seen it :)

Class 2, Week 8.....

For this weeks assignment I blocked out my heavy object push shot that i did the planning for last week, this was also the week that I went to CTNX and got to meet many of my fellow AM'ers in person for the first time. It was a very surreal experience getting to finally meet so many people that I had only met online, not to mention being surrounded with people that have a passion for animation. Getting to meet Bobby Beck who help found the school was amazing, as well as getting to meet Victoria Tripp who was instrumental in getting me into AM, of course my roomates there Joel Finney and Sean Harley. Then to make it even better getting to meet professional animators that had worked on old 2D Disney films and other great artists was just incredible.

Class 2, Week 7......

This week I continued to Polish my shot from last week going down the steep stairs and I also did the video reference and planning sketches for my next assignment

Class 2 Week 6.....

First pass splining out the animation, pretty rough with pops and what not, but it is my first time working with a spine and that is a whole new ball game. All sorts of overlapping effects working from the hips all the way up to the head.

Class 2 Week 5.......

This week I began blocking out the reference I did last week.

Class 2 Week 4......

This week, I continued polishing the shot from last week, as well as started doing the planning / video reference for my next shot.

Class 2 Week3.....

For this weeks assignment I splined out the blocking from the previous week.

Class 2...Week 2

So for this week we start blocking out the animation.

Class 2...Week 1.....finally updating :)

Really slacked off on this blog sadly, but I am attempting to get back into it and so I will start from where I left off and do my best to get it all caught up. For Class 2 my mentor was Scott Lemmer, he works for Blue Sky.  Scott was a great mentor, really did some great critiques. For the first week we were to do our planning sketches and video reference for a shot with ballie, a Ball with two legs. We had a list of shot options and I went with having him do a big side step