Half way there!

Class 3 just ended this week, and I am officially half way done with AM. THat's crazy to think about. It's been going by soo fast.
Here is my progress reel for the first three classes. THe dialog shot will be finished in class 4, where we'll be given a full facial rig to really be able to give our characters expression.
But for now, we have a week off before class 4. As much as I love AM, my brain could use the time to recharge. I have to move this week, too =(. It's only 3 miles, but it's a pain. I will, however , have my own office for the very first time! It will be nice not to have to have all my computer stuff crammed in my bedroom. I will actually have an entire 3rd floor to myself! woohoo!
Ratatouille comes out next friday! Everytime I see the commercials on tv, I get really excited. SO much so that my roommates make fun of me. Unfortunately, that's the day I'm moving, but I will be there! I can't wait!!!!
On a sad note, my mentor Michal Macarewicz is not going to tech with AM any longer. I feel incredibly lucky to have had him as my mentor. I learned sooo much from him, and he really took the time to give thorough critiques. I mean thorough! THey were often 20-30 minutes long! I'll always be thankful for that!
Comments are always welcome!

Craziness!!

Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything hits you in the face at once? THis month has been like that so far. Both good and bad things, but all crazy.
I just learned last week that I have to be out of my apartment by July 1st!! ahh!!! Two of our roomates are moving out ( one graduated, and one is starting school again) and our new roomie backed out on us. Long story short, me and my remaining roommie couldn't find anyone with such short notice, and we had to give our landlord an answer last week as to what we were doing. Sooo, we are moving out, and sadly going our own ways.
Finding an apartment while working full time and taking classes at night is not a pleasant task (although it is interesting seeing who you'll meet on Craigslist!). On top of that my weekends this month have been filled with graduation and retirement parties that I've been making cameo appearances at. Also, my sister is getting married in a week and there's still plenty of work to do on that.
Anyway, I haven't been sleeping much to get the extra time to work on my shot. I'm really into it and I don't want it to suffer because of all this crazy going on. I am wrestling with the details of it. THe hands and matching the elbows up to the legs are quite a challenge, but I'm enjoying it!! It's really exciting to see her come to life. I am taking some days of next week to help with the wedding and work on my shot. Some day I'll actually use my vacation days for a vacation.
On a good note, a very cool thing happened to me last week.I got a note from Keith Sintay telling me that he liked my work. That made my week! He has worked on Mulan and Tarzan, and I believe Surf's Up (which is a cool movie, by the way!). That meant alot to me coming from him and was really nice of him.
Gotta go! I am really tired and need to stock up on some sleep!

No more bathroom!

I started splining my shot this week. I just wanted to work out the rythym of the body and legs and make sure everything is working pretty good before I get into refining details.
I have to say, I'm loving doing this assignment. It's really fun and it's so exciting getting into new territory with the eyes and face, even with the limited rig. It sounds really corny, but I get more excited about animation every week. I can't wait to learn more!

Acting shot!

This was a busy week for me. My first pass of blocking for my acting shot! I was really nervous going into this project. I mean, we're into acting! It's so exciting and scary new all at once.
THe blocking came out better than I thought it would .I was nervous picking this line because it's more subtle than the pantomime and body mechanics shots we have done before. I was wondering what I would be animating. THere's no broad actions, and our face rig is limited to eye movements right now.WHile working on it , though, I realized there was ALOT of stuff going on. It didn't hit me in the face, but it's there. This took a long time to do, but I'm happy with the start I have on it. I took friday off off work to have more time to put into it. I was away aalll day Saturday taking my sister too NY city for her bacherlorette party. It raind the wwhole day, but it was fun. We saw a new show on broadway called the Pirate Queen. It was awesome and I totally recommend seeing it. The lead actresses were great!
Anyway, I'm really glad I took friday off to work on it because there's no way I would've finished with my saturday gone. I am going to change the setting to something less... bathroomish =) I believe the toilet's too distracting.
Animation Mentor has a tutoring program taught by fellow AM grads, and I went to this weeks and last week's session with Mike Stern. If you don't know who Mike is, check out his work at http://www.sternio.com/. His stuff is top notch. He kept a blog throughout AM and was a big inspiration to me to join. It's really cool that he's a tutor for us now, and it's really helpful to hear his comments on your work. He's a really cool guy to give his time to us like that.
Gotta go to bed!
Comments are always welcome and encouraged!

I need to watch more tv

I need to watch more tv, or something. This week we had to find audio clips for us to animate a dialog piece to. Sounds easy, right? Sit around, watching movies to try and find some dialog.... It's harder than one might think. For this project we have the remaining six weeks of this class to work on it, as well as the beginning of next class. That's a long time. I not only want to find a good quote to challenge me, but one that I'll be enthusiastic about working on for a couple of months.
So, I spent the last couple of weeks making myself watch an enormous amount of movies. My dvd collection has grown considerably from me raiding the local blockbuster sale rack. I wanted to find a quote that people wouldn't recognize right away, and to try and stay away from the overused ones that are so convenient to get on the internet. After ALL that movie watching, I found two of my quote options from a most unlikely source... Miss Congeniality 2. Yeah. Well, I'll be damned if anyone recognizes the quotes!
Up above id me acting out my potential quotes. I'm really undecided at the moment, and I really want to get the feedback from my mentor.
Anyway, enjoy watching me make a fool of myself! Me..? I'm going to read a book. I've watched enough videos this week already.
Comments are always welcome!

Cookie thief final!!

Here's the final version of the 2 beats pantomime animation. Well, final until I get my critique =)
Michal gave an awesome critique this week .It was a half hour long and really nit picked about polishing my shot. It;s great to hear him go through my assignment in such detail. If he didn't take the time to do that, I feel that I would never know to look for some of the stuff he pointed out. Now I know to look out for those details in future work I do,
For this week's assignment we have to find three audio quotes that we like for possible lines to animate. yay!!! Our models will have real faces now! They will be limited facial rigs at first, but I'm really excited to try this out. I started watching a bunch of movies last week to try and find some lines I want to animate. It's tough! I have a few in mind, but I'm going to watch a whole lot of movies this week too.
As always, comments and questions are welcome!

Cookie Thief part 4

This week was tough. I think refining and polishing your animation can be the toughest part because in the earlier stages you can see alot of prgress from week to week, but in the later stages you can work for hours and hours on little things.
Overall I think it's coming along pretty good. It's to the point where I have to put it aside and not look at it for awhile so I can see it fresh. It amazes me how absorbed you can get in your own animation to the point where you can't really see it anymore.
This week for class my mentor (Michal Makarewicz) posted some awesome tutorials he made for us. It was about concentrating on getting the main part of the body (the hip or root area down) before even worrying about arms, legs, and all the rest. It was so great to see those videos and how he works through it. I still feel sometimes that I am wrestling with the graph editor more than workig with it, but watching him work really helps. Michal is an awesome mentor and really goes the extra mile to help everyone out.
---In non AM news, my sisters wedding shower went off fine. We were blessed with a warm sunny day surrounded by not so nice days, which solved the problem of stuffing 55 people into an average size house.
Me and one of my roommates have been putting ads on craigslsit trying to find 2 new roommates. Sadly, two of my current roommates are moving out. It's really interesting seeing who responds to the ad and shows up at your door. Though the ad specifically says 'no psychos', some have responded anyway. It's like playing some weird people lottery and hoping you win.

--I'm off to watch some movies. We have to animate a line of dialog from a movie for an assignment soon, and I am definitely not a movie buff =0
As always, comments are most welcome!! If you have a critique, comment, or question about my assignment, or Animation Mentor in general, I'd be happy to hear it.