Steven Holland's Animation Mentor Blog

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED!

2010-11-23T16:37:00.001-05:00

come check out me new and improved blog at

www.stevenmholland.com

thanks!!!

Class 3 - Advanced Body Mechanics

2010-02-22T12:50:00.005-05:00

This is the first post since the end of Class 2 and I'm currently in week 7 of Class 3! What a slacker. Well this is Advanced Body Mechanics. We got to choose any three shots we wanted to do that are physically intense. I chose to do a fireman theme.

The following two videos start out with the polished version, then blocking plus, blocking, and I've thrown in my video reference at the end. It's a backwards progression.

My first shot of the term involved a fire hydrant...

In the second shot he's trying to coax a fire victim out of a window.

I'll upload the finished rendered versions at the end of this class, which is in a few weeks. I'll try to post my progress more regularly. Thanks for checking it out!

AM 212 - Class 2 Finished!

2009-12-18T02:23:00.002-05:00

Intro to Body Mechanics is done! The past three months seriously flew by. The video below is my progress reel. It includes my work from Classes 1 & 2 as well as the Maya Springboard Workshop (that stuff is atrocious!). Thanks for checking it out. I'm off the next two weeks, but I'm entering an animation contest during that time so I'll still be posting.

AM 211 - Dance Final

2009-12-13T16:06:00.003-05:00

This past week I polished my shot, which I turned in today. I'm revising it though, because I didn't get a chance to track the arcs on the feet or the elbows, and I want to get back into the graph editor to smooth things out. That final version will be posted next week in my progress reel.

AM 209 - Dance Blocking Plus

2009-11-29T20:58:00.003-05:00

I fixed some poses and added some more breakdowns to the dance. I also went ahead and set it to splined tangents and began cleaning it up today. Lots to be done!

AM 208 - Dance Blocking

2009-11-22T15:47:00.005-05:00

I finished the first blocking pass of my dance animation today. The only thing I concerned myself with was creating the poses, 70 in total. I didn't even touch the timing yet, so it's way too fast. Unfortunately, 250 frames is the limit and I need to slow it down, so it looks like I'll be cutting out pieces so it'll fit!

It's now 10:30 and I've been up for over thirty-six hours, so it's bedtime for me. goodnight.

208 - New Dance Reference

2009-11-19T23:58:00.002-05:00

I decided not to go with Carlton. Instead I chose the dance opening to Superbad. I was dying in the theater when this played...no one else thought it was as great.

207 - Jump "Final"

2009-11-15T18:30:00.003-05:00

Here is what I submitted for my final.

I'm not terribly happy with it. I'll put some more work into over the next couple days and post the final final.

For my next and last assignment of Intro to Body Mechanics I'm doing a dance. Not just any dance, mind you, a Carlton dance!!

now let's hope i can pull it off.

Jump Blocking Plus

2009-11-11T21:50:00.002-05:00

I switched my shot over to splines this week. Lot's of work left to do to get it right before I start polishing. This is where it is now.

Oh yeah, fun computer problems in the past week. Been to the apple store twice before finally just reformatting my computer. It's blank, mam.

First and Second Assignments of Class 2

2009-10-25T15:56:00.006-04:00

Week five of the second term just ended. We finished our first assignment last week, and I just turned in my first blocking pass for the second assignment, but I'll talk about that in a minute.

We have a few different options when choosing assignments, and for the first assignment I chose a 180° turn. The main focus of these assignments is to try to understand the way the body shifts its weight and also to keep it in balance throughout the shot. Animation Mentor has two classes focusing on body mechanics, because this is so effing important in creating believable movement.

We had four weeks to complete the first assignment. The first week was shooting video reference and sketching thumbnails of our key poses. Week two we blocked out our shot, which means we take our sketches of the poses and recreate them using our character. After getting our critique at the beginning of each week we do another blocking pass of the shot, and in the final week polish the shot. Each week I receive an eCritique from my mentor Drew.

Meet Drew Adams. He's my mentor for this term and works at Dreamworks where he is currently an animator on the sequel to Kung Fu Panda. He's such a cool dude and a GREAT teacher. I love our Q&A sessions and his eCritiques are really great.

(this is Drew critiquing my first assignment)

This is my first assignment. It goes from my final version to the very first blocking stage:

Today I turned in my first blocking pass for the second assignment. I chose "jump on and off a box". Below is the video reference I shot followed by my blocking. This week I'll be going through the blocking plus pass of the shot. See you next week!

Seriously? Weeks 6 - 11!?

2009-09-13T23:08:00.004-04:00

If you were expecting me to keep up with this blog you were way off my friend.

So this is the work from the second half of the term. The assignments in this reel include:

★ Animating a pendulum to portray overlapping action
★ Using the Tailor rig (a ball with a tail) to continue to demonstrate overlapping action.
★ Animate a plain walk, aka a "Vanilla Walk", cycle with no character to it.
★ Animate a character walk cycle. For this assignment I chose a side stepping sneaky walk.

I shot video footage of myself doing a bunch of different walks with character and I included the one I chose in this reel. Shooting footage of yourself doing the actual movement is crucial! Reference footage shows all of the subtleties of the movement, things that you wouldn't think of. I also find myself continually getting up and acting out the movement over and over again to make sure I'm getting it right. Once you have that down it's time to start exaggerating. After all this isn't rotoscoping!

I'm constantly video chatting with my classmates throughout the week. They're awesome dudes, and I put up some links to their blogs. We tend to drink together. How can you not love a school where pants are optional and you can drink during lectures?

I realized I never introduced you to my mentor for this term, Sean Ermey. Check out his IMDB page here. He's a freelance animator from Texas and has worked on Jimmy Neutron, TMNT, and Ice Age 3. Really cool guy and I learned a lot from him.

Since this is our final week in Basic Foundations, our assignment is to revise our work and upload our class one reel. I'll post that next week on here. I promise.

Weeks 3 - 5

2009-08-02T21:31:00.003-04:00

I've been slacking on updating, so this post will encompass three weeks worth of classes. I'll start where we left off. Week three's assignment was to animate a bouncing ball with the weight of a soccer ball or a basketball bouncing across the screen. I need to go in and revise this, because it has a ton of problems and I've learned a lot since then.

Next up we have not one, but two balls! One has the weight of a beach ball and the other of a bowling ball. Again, I need to do a revision of this assignment and I'll post any revisions in subsequent posts.

That brings us to the latest and greatest (which isn't saying much). This past assignment was to take a ball and move it through an obstacle course while incorporating squash and stretch. This one was by far the most difficult, and thankfully was my best work so far. I learned a lot while working on this, and I started video conferencing with some fellow students and participating in study groups which really made a difference for me. This also needs to be tweaked and slowed down, but I'll get to that soon enough.

Finally, these are the three poses we had to first sketch and then recreate using our 3D model, Stu. The first one is the random pose, the second had to clearly show excitement and the third had to show devastation. After the first pose I decided to stop creating elaborate backdrops and using props. I want to make sure I'm not using that as a crutch, but rather have a strong pose that says what it needs to without relying on those things. With that being said I don't think my excitement pose clearly shows excitement, because without a facial expression it could be confused with curiosity.

Now It's time to begin learning overlapping action and apply it to a pendulum. Wish me luck.

Basic Foundations

2009-07-13T21:56:00.004-04:00

Lots of goings on in my world as of late. Animation Mentor has gone hardcore and I'm currently in week three of the first class. Our first week was spent getting acquainted with the online campus and getting everything set up and ready, or at least that's what we thought. Week two's assignment was to observe and sketch real people doing their thing out in the real world. I hung out in Rittenhouse Square and sketched some random people there, and my drawings totally blew!

We then had to choose a drawing and recreate that image using the 3D character Stu. I ended up going with the one circled in red on the bottom. I then jumped on the computer and decided to create an environment for Stu, mainly to see if I still remembered what I learned in the Springboard workshop, i.e. basic lighting and modeling. Here is what I turned in. Overall I'm happy with it, but some fellow classmates pointed out some stuff I'll remember to do/not do next time.

Well, I just finished the lecture for this week. We have to plan out and animate a bouncing ball from the side view, and then I have to observe and sketch people who show "excitement", and avoid the pitfalls of cliché poses. Wish me luck!

One Leg

2009-06-04T00:22:00.003-04:00

This is One Leg. Our assignment was to make him jump, so I decided to give him a reason to.

Tomorrow's our last class of the workshop, and I hope my first class of the program will be as fun as this one. Everyone in the workshop was awesome and my instructor, Jeff, was a really cool guy. He taught me a ton of stuff. The first time I opened Maya back in April I didn't know how to make a sphere. Now I can animate a ball with a leg! Soon I hope to move onto animating balls with two legs. Whoa! Better not get ahead of myself here. Anyway, Class 1, aka Basic Foundations, begins at the end of June sometime, so you better get ready!

Animation Mentor on Forbes.com

2009-06-03T01:58:00.002-04:00

I just saw this video after it was posted by a fellow animation student of mine. It's only a few minutes long and gives a great back story on my school.

Awesome, right?

Crane Assignment

2009-06-03T00:13:00.002-04:00

Over the past week I've been working on my latest assignment, which was to animate a crane picking up a cylinder and placing it on a block. Let me start out by saying that the way to approach a shot is to first block out the key poses, that is, the main storytelling poses, and then refine the shot with in-between poses. This is called blocking. Since this was my first attempt at blocking I didn't actually cover all of the poses and go as in depth as I should have, so when I went to finish the animation in the second half of the week I had a lot more work to do then I would have if I had properly blocked out the shot. So from now on I'll try to do a better job at the blocking phase.

After the blocking I went ahead and constrained the can to the claw. This way the crane actually picks up the can and takes it over to the block. I took my time and tried to make the animation smooth and hopefully interesting. This is what I turned in.

I'm happy with the way it came out, but I'm not finished with it yet. My instructor gave me some tips to clean up the animation and make things a bit more realistic and smooth. However, that's going to have to wait until after my next assignment where I'll animate a ball with one leg! I'll have that up when I'm finished.

Workshop Assignments

2009-05-22T16:32:00.006-04:00

I'm sorry for not updating sooner, but I've been pretty busy with moving and the Maya Springboard Workshop. I'm really happy I decided to take this course. I started with absolutely no knowledge of how to use Maya, but now I'm getting pretty comfortable with it. I've learned so much in the past month and a half!

One of our first assignments was to create a very simple character and develop parent/child relationships between the different body parts. My maya trainer, Jeff, was pretty adamant about keeping it simple and just replicating the example image we were provided with, so my character isn't anything special. I am, however, really happy with the way the environment came out. I decided to model my living room and the front exterior of my apartment, with my character eating some cereal on the couch. Next we learned how to use shaders, which allowed me to add color to my project. Finally we learned some basic lighting techniques and moved on to animation. These are some rendered images of my lighting assignment.

We just started our animation assignments. This was my latest attempt at animating two bouncing balls. Believe it or not but it was surprisingly time consuming.

For our next assignment we'll be working with a crane. We'll start by blocking out our key poses and then in subsequent sessions we'll finish it up. I'll post the blocking when I finish it next week. I'll make sure to update this more often from now on!

Workshop and Website

2009-04-02T19:35:00.006-04:00

It's been months since my last post. Sorry about that, but not much has been going on since I was just waiting for Animation Mentor to start. Well that time is now! I just had my first Q&A session with a bunch of other workshop students and it was really cool. Everyone was really excited and talkative on the chatroom side of things, meanwhile, two people from Animation Mentor, Jay and Victoria, were answering student's questions on screen and video of the student's asking the questions appeared under them. I asked a couple questions and it was a little weird at first but really cool talking and interacting with people across the world!

So what have I been up to? Well I'm about a quarter of the way through The Illusion of Life and half way through The Animator's Survival Kit. Both books are really good so far and I think I'm going to order another book to help me through the Maya Workshop called The Modeling and Animation Handbook. Other than that I've been working on my site again and I fixed a few things that were wrong with it and also added a 'Drawings' section to my portfolio! Most of them are from my Drawing 1 class back in freshman year of college. So check them out. I've also decided that I'm going to take a figure drawing class at the Fleisher Art Memorial over the summer or in the fall, because I need to brush up on my drawing skills.

For the next couple weeks we're settling into the Animation Mentor site and have access to new sections little by little. Then in week four everything gets hardcore! Two Q&As a week and assignments galore! I'm really looking forward to diving in and learning how the hell to use this program I just spent $400 on.

Animation Mentor!

2008-12-17T00:18:00.011-05:00

I just received the email today that I was accepted into the Spring '09 session at Animation Mentor! I'm crazy excited for it all to start, but now I have to wait until March...damn. And it actually took the whole three weeks for them to get back to me. Turns out my application got all mixed up and lost - and finally found! Once they found it I got in the next day! Whoopee!

Animation Mentor gives new students the option of starting one of two ways: either go directly into Class 1 (there are six classes that span approximately 18 months) or take that time learning to use the software, Autodesk Maya. I decided to take the Maya Springboard Workshop and postpone taking Class 1, because I really don't know my way around the program yet. Although I just want to start Class 1 right away I know this will greatly improve my work, and also I'll gain general knowledge in modeling and rigging characters as well.

So I can't wait to start. I'm already reading the books that are required - The Animator's Survival Kit and The Illusion of Life. I've also downloaded the trial version of Maya and I'm attempting to familiarize myself with it (before my 30 days are up!). Now I just need to start drawing again...

So yeah...I can't freaking wait!

My site is up!

2008-11-25T22:34:00.003-05:00

Thank god this site is finally up! It took forever because I went through a few different designs and domain names, but it's finally finished...kinda. I still have a few things that I need to tweak.

So I decided to start this blog mainly due to the help that other's blogs have given me through the whole process of researching Animation Mentor, as well as other animation schools. I've read through a bunch of blogs created by students, and they really gave me insight into what AM is really going to be like - ridiculously awesome and extremely challenging. So I'll try and keep up with it pretty regularly.

Anyway I just submitted my application to AnimationMentor.com a few days ago and I really hope that I get in. If I do then I'll start in March and will continue for 18 months or so while I learn character animation! I seriously can't wait to hear back from them. I should find out within the next few weeks, and as soon as I find out I'll let you know...and by you I mean me, because come on. Who else is reading this besides me?