A Real Life Ninja

Well im writing up my class 2 experience, im also currently planning my next animation titled Ninja's vs Robots just so people know what the hell im talking about, well whilst researching (because im not a ninja myself) ive stumbled upon an amazing resource on youtube.



Go to his youtube homepage check this out, fantastic stuff and even better he explains the whole process of his body mechanics movements as he goes through each move.

Cheers

Dave

Welcome Back to the Land of the blogging

Hello world (again)

Wowzers! what a long time its been since ive updated this blog, (my animation mentor journey! :)

As i said in a post or two ago the reason for the rubbish blogging was because AM was getting pretty busy (understatement of the year 2008) on the whole my entire life was getting pretty busy, i had a few nice ideas for the blog site and to be honest i completely neglected the thing, as you can see with my last bill bailey post i was getting pretty darn lazy.

So i did a lengthy class 1 retrospective 9 months ago, and had a general feeling of optimism (dont worry its still there), so now id like to go about the process of updating on what i was doing between now and then.

So whats happened?

Firstly ill start with now, it seems pretty current and most likley to be relevent! im living in Montreal Canada with my girlfriend and former classmate Mariya Kalachova :) you can see Mariya's blog on the bar to the side, as im sure you can appreciate, my girlfriend came before the blog (sorry to any dedicated readers if you still exist :P) now i wont go too much into the ins and outs of our relationship because, frankly, its probably not why you're here eh? needless to say the last few months have been crazy, awesome and all together crazy awesome :)

Ok so what about the animation mentor school you shout, did you go? did you stay? how many spike t-shirts do you own? etc.

well mr etc (if thats your real name) im currently on a 3 – 6 month AM haitus, and i completed class 4 Advaced acting. Thats the short of it. here's my mentor breakdown for AM thus far:)

C1: T.Dan Hofstedt
C2:Dimos Vrysellas
C3:Michelle Meeker
C4:James Chaing

Now looking at this list of mentors, one word comes to mind, LUCKY! yeah, thats how i feel and i guess that's the biggest draw of the school, having the good fortune to have contact and feedback with such accomplished people is nothing short of amazing. Ill go into my thoughts on these classes in my next few posts, and a few other catch ups of the experiences in the last 9 months. which ive had quite a few awesome things happen.

So ill be back really soon i promise, with more AM and animation learning goodness. I hope you're all having a smashing time! i am :)

Back!

Hey! sorry its been a long long time, im just finishing up a new post and itll be up over the weekend :) it shall explain everything.

For now enjoy the new half done colour scheme to closely resemble my new website!

Bad Blogging

Howdy

we are deep in the bowels of class 2 at the minute...........so writing things is a little on the non existant side.

Here is some Bill Bailey to make your visit here worthwhile. Enjoy!

T.Dan The Man

The last day of the break! i have just been reading Bobby's Blog about the AM BBQ, it sounds like a great time was had by all :) so Tomorrow we start again for another 12 weeks, and that means new Mentors! i don't know who i'm going to get yet but if they are anything like T.Dan i will be very happy.

So i just thought id say a big thanks to T.Dan for being such a great Mentor in Class 1,a great class we had, very talented, capable, friendly, funny and hard working. So to commemorate an awesome class i decided to have a go at a caricature of the man himself.Mahalo nui loa K.Kaniela

On Reflection: Animation Mentor – class 1

Its been an interesting 12 weeks to say the least. And I really wanted to write this sooner but the trouble with this kind of post is, where do you start?

I mean AM is huge, not just huge its just bloody massive! There is a lot more than meets the eye. The first week I was getting tense because I hadn’t explored everything and I was on there for hours, training vids, interviews, workflow tutorials, character introduction tutorials, all sorts. Just when you think you have got through it all you hit the forum…..man it just goes on and on.

I know a few people have gone on about what Bobby Carlos and Shawn have achieved with AM being special, but its all true, it’s the most immersive and amazing learning experience I have had. with AM it isn’t a case of having to do the work, you WANT to do the work. I think that attitude resides within a lot of people but the positive feeling in the school really brings that out. Infact, although the work is hard and you have to put extra time in, I have found I have more energy, more verve in the crunch of a weekend than I do at the time of writing in the break!

Class 1

It is a mixed bag in a lot of ways, and It is levelling the playing field for a lot of people too, some guys come to AM in a similar place to me, trained at uni and haven’t been able to break in (actually I just haven’t been good enough) some are working pro’s and other guys have never done much animation at all. The brand new guys impress me so much. I gotta holler out to the man Brett “wheels” wheeler, an ex Australian basketball player who went around the world and then discovered animation, his understanding of everything has come on leaps and bounds, and also to Carlo, the youngest person in my class, doing well at the age of 19 I expect good things in class 2 boxboy!

Class 1 is a slow burn at first too, but once you hit the fifth and sixth week it doesn’t really let up, each week the assignments turn the screw a little more, building on the one before, so there is no “oooh ill take it easy this week” because the harder you work, the more that you learn. The effort that you make one week directly affects the work you do the next week because of the things you discover. So it makes sense to keep your foot to the floor all the way through. And as soon as you hand in one assignment, another pops along to take its place, while it may feel relentless it gives you no time for complacency.

People

I have to mention the people, because this community is a large part of what makes AM as great as it is. This all stems from Shawn Bobby and Carlos im sure, the attitude that the support staff have is great too the Mentors are amazing and inspiring and it all feeds towards cultivating a positive creative atmosphere. I have encountered some brilliant people over the last twelve weeks of being a student of AM, and yes, I mean you Mariya and Oz in particular, all that help over the weekends has been nothing short of life saving.

Its people that give you feedback, people that help get the shot better and it’s the work of people that inspires you to do better. What I guess I should say is a big THANK YOU to everyone from AM the last 12 weeks, its been great.

Here’s to another 12 :)

Class 1 Progress reel

Hey howdy hey animatorinos!

So here it is, the class 1 reel! enjoy!!

update!! having some trouble with quicktime and stuff at the minute! so i have put up the photobucket version for now. Thankfully Mariya is helping me out tho! yay for Mariya!