I Just Flew In From Berlin and Boy are My Arms Tired

Heya! We just got back on Sat from our gigantic European roadtrip. Europe sure is a big country. No, really, we hit Austria, Switzerland, France and loads of Germany. It was really great seeing all that stuff. I wouldn't have thought it before I went, but I was most surprised by the fact that it seems like they just finished last week rebuilding Germany from the mess there was there in WWII. Really, they're putting back up all the monuments and churches and citys, alot of them exactly as they were.

I'll post some photos when Fabri gets around to getting them to me... in the meantime here was our route:


VIEW THE ROUTE IN GOOGLE MAPS

Weeks 3&4 - Bouncing Balls

Heya! So much has happened since I started AM. For the last 2 weeks we've been working on our bouncing balls assignments, but I've been away on my summer holiday and getting the work done in the wee hours of the morning via the laptop and oftenly overpriced wireless connections.

So we had to submit 2 bouncing balls yesterday... One being heavy and the other light. I think my downstairs neighbours were beginning to freak out cause of all the golf balls, softballs and gummy balls bouncing on their heads, but they didn't come up to yell at me so that's great! Anyways, I found out that even doing the video reference is fun.

Week 2 - Shawn Kelly & Live Q&A

Had a Q&A with Shawn Kelly today and it was totally cool. What a cool cool guy. The Q&A started at 6:30am, and was supposed to run an hour, but in the end he talked with us until 9am... man... that's dedication! he even gave us a tour of the stuff that surrounds his desk. Neat!

Biggest piece of advice was to make sure we learn how to take and give critique, and develop a tough outer skin. Oh, and to have lots of fun!

My assignment for the week is to go out to a public place and to draw people. I then have to pose the stu character in one of the poses I got from the observation drawings. I was looking at the syllabus and am a bit nervous cause later on in the term we have to finds a pose for EXHAUSTION, DEVESTATION, EXCITEMENT etc. and when i try to think of poses that represent those feelings I start to feel overwhelmed and confused. I'm sure I need to work more on my understanding of body language and acting. It'll come in time though.

I think I'm going to head off to the gym for that and get 2 things done at once. That way I can observe really active poses for the assignment as well as getting in a workout. It's all about balance right?

Updates & New Blogs

Have a look at the new Animation Mentor related blog by going to http://qwertyjuiceam.blogspot.com I decided to open up a new blog for that stuff cause maybe it's not as interesting to alot of people. (of course, what'0s here isn't interesting either, but on a different level of disinterest.

I've also created a wedding planning blog, but I'm only going to be giving out the URL to that one to people I know. If you want that URL, let me know and I'll decide if I know you.

We're off for a secret holiday destination for my birthday tomorrow. It's a surprise from Fabri and I have no idea where we're going! So exciting, but I have no idea what to pack!

Week 1 at Animation Mentor

Animation Mentor started Monday and I'm already feeling great about it.

My mentor is CHRIS CHUA. He used to work for PDI, Rough Draft, Rhythm and Hues, and Dreamworks Animation and studied animation at CalArts. He worked on Shark's Tale and Flushed Away while at Dreamworks. I met with him for the first time in the weekly Q&A on Wednsday. There were quite a few technical he still got our hears churning.

I went out and bought a new sketchbook (and a vintage 2nd-hand leather bag to carry it in) in honour of the start of classes. Chris said that we chould be drawing all the time. The drawings don't ahve to even be good, but that we should just practice practice practice. I managed to get some rough sketches in while on the tram yesterday, but nothing which stands out too strongly. This one here is a woman reading the paper.

No assignment for this first week except to introduce ourselves to the rest of the class and Chris, fill in the profile, upload a video diary entry (mine is pathetic I should change it), and participate in the scavenger hunt.

I've been watching everything the site has to offer. Tons of info and alot of help. I especially liked the segment on 2D animation. Everything is starting to make sense. And I'm also learning why my attempts at learning this stuff went so badly in the past.

I'm almost half-way throogh Disney's Illusion of Life. It's fascinating. WALT DISNEY is now almost my greatest hero.