Animation Mentor

I could have also called this post "Broken Record," because for a lot of you I'm sure that's what it starts to sound like when I start talking about The Ment. That being said, I got an email today from someone who saw my videos on YouTube, asking if I thought AM was worth it or not. I've posted my reply below, though slightly edited, because I think there are many people out there wondering the same thing.



The choice really has to be yours. Everyone's experience is different at AM, but if you put in the time, it will pay off for you. Before I went to AM, I was an SDET (Software Development Engineer), which means I did a lot of coding and testing. I did not do ANY animation. Upon graduating, I landed a job as an Animator with Microsoft Game Studios, and I'm currently working on a bunch of different things for them.

AM is an amazing school, but if you aren't sure if Animation is what you want to do in the world of 3D, or if don't have the time to commit to it, I would probably say don't spend the money. AM doesn't teach you how to use Maya, though they do offer tutors (at an extra cost) that can. They also don't teach modeling, rigging, or anything else. It's all about animation there, and with good reason. That being said, they have a great group of students who can help you if you want to learn more about modeling and the like. As I said, I didn't know Maya before I started, and I did fine without the tutors.

Before AM, I had taken classes in Max, but had forgotten 90% of what I learned. So what you see on YouTube from me, and on my site is what I've done since starting AM. That being said, I also sunk around 2-6 hours into the assignments EVERY week night, and around 16-20 hours on weekends. That goes back to my original point that if you don't know if this is right for you, buy some books first, or hit up digitaltutors.com and get some of their DVDs. I knew that I wanted to animate, and didn't care as much about the model or rigging side of things. If you aren't sure, dabble in everything first and then pick what you really enjoy!

As far as pay goes, it's like anything else. It depends on the market, your experience, and where you get a job. I happen to make (at least what I think) is a great living, doing what I love. I can pay the bills, and provide a roof for my wife and kid. That's good enough for me. Most people probably won't become crazy rich, but you can make a good living as an Animator.

While my response was tailored to the person's questions, the bottom line is the same: AM will give you the foundation to become an amazing Animator, but it's up to you as to what you do with that foundation. I've still got a lot to learn, but I'm taking what I got from The Ment and applying it each and every day, and I'm loving every minute of it. Animation Mentor is by no means a silver bullet that will make you an amazing animator overnight, but it didn't get it's reputation so quickly by accident either.

Hope this helps some of you, and best of luck with what ever you decide!

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I had a blast!

This week is my final Q&A ever at Animation Mentor. It's also the final week of my final class, and the end of one of the best (if not the best) educational experiences I've had in my life.



I had no idea what to expect going into AM, but now I can honestly tell you it's one of the key reasons I landed my new job (see previous post). I've said it before, but I learned FAR more at this online school than I ever did from my previous Art education, where I attended an actual physical campus.

My time at The Ment was an absolute blast, and I met a ton of great people, some of which I even got a photgraph with while standing next to Yoda. I got a ton of great training, but more importantly I made a ton of new friends along the way.

Here's to the future, and here's to Spike and the staff at Animation Mentor!

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Almost Done

This one is very close to final, but still needs a few extra tweaks, so there will probably be one or two more updates that follow this one.



I had never entered The 11 Second Club competition before this month, and there are some kick ass animators who compete, so I didn't know what to expect going in. However everyone has been extremely supportive and helpful, and the experience has been nothing short of incredible.

I'm still not sure if I'll enter next month, since things have been crazy busy for me, but if I don't enter next month, I'll enter the following for sure.

Take care!

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My Short Film - Polish 1

Here is the first polish pass of my short film for Animation Mentor. Please understand that the audio is not final, nor are a few of the transitions, and the scene has yet to be properly lit.



I've got a full quarter to get this sucker up to a final polish level, so any suggestions/comments/feedback you have is greatly appreciated! You can leave a comment or drop me an email (davesj at gmail dot com) and let me know what you think!

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Progress on my AM final short.

Hi Everyone!

No fancy images with this post tonight, just a link: LINK

Clicking that link will let you view (after some loading of course) the second half of the short film I'm working on at AM. This is NOT final animation, but it's getting close.

I've decided to re-take my final quarter at AM to really get this baby polished, so I've got a good 14 weeks or so to work this puppy into shape.

Drop me a line and let me know what you think!

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Short... Short Update

Just wanted to give you folks a quick look at my upcoming short for my final project at Animation Mentor.



Click on the image above to check it out, but understand that this is a blocking-plus pass and not final animation. It's (obviously) also just a playblast and not a final render.

Back to work!

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Run, Bishop! Run!

EDIT: I tossed up a side view of the animation which you can see with the link at the bottom of the post, if you're into that kind of thing...



The model that Animation Mentor provides is named Bishop. Over the weekend I learned (with the help of the AM forums) how to convert the adult Bishop into a more child-like rig. This will help a great deal since my final short film at AM will feature a child.

Once I got him converted over to a child, I had to animate him, so I threw a baseball cap on his head, slapped a goofy smile on his face and made him run!

Click on the image to check it out.



The timing is a bit slow, but fixing that will be a snap. I can't wait to get started on my final short film. Right now we're in the planning stage (storyboards, animatics, layouts, etc), so it's still going to be after the first of the year before I begin animating the piece, but I'm really excited for all of you to see it!

Take care.

Side View of Kid Bishop Run

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Life In Prison

Someday I'll probably get wrongly accused of a crime that will get me sentenced to life in prison, and when I do... this guy will be my cellmate.



I'll let you figure out which one of the two I'm talking about!

Something for Sleep?

Or the low-res YouTube version:

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Prison Block... ing

Here is my latest blocking pass for my current assignment at AM.



The walls are missing in this playblast, but the setting is two men in a very cramped prison cell.

The fact that they're both naked was not intentional, but simply a happy coincidence.

Prison Block Movie

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Prison Life

Here is a quick peek at an upcoming animation that I'll be working on for the rest of my current term at The Ment...



Should be a lot of fun, and I'll make sure to post updates as I progress through it.

Take care!

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Say CHEESE!

Even if you don't want to, my animation now will, thanks to some fancy new lip sync that I added!



I need to adjust one more thing in the animation, and then it will get tossed into my demo reel! Feels good to have this one done, and now I get to move on to a two person dialogue shot. Should be fun!

Click the image or the link to see the lip sync goodness!

Lip Sync Goodness!

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Laugh It Up!

This week we continue working on our lip sync, while at the same time trying to recreate facial expressions found in photos, like this one I did of a laugh:



I love doing these, and will probably kick out a few more than the required two, and then pick the best two of the bunch.

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Cheese Face Block

I started blocking in the face shapes on my cheese animation this week, and thumbed out some expressions as well.





Click below to check out the playblast of the roughed in lip sync.

Cheese Lip Sync Block

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Facial Rig!

My first new quarter at "The Ment" started today, and we got to have our first fully-functional facial rig!



Of course, the first 20 minutes were spent with me just making goofy expressions like the one above, but now I actually have to get down to work and block out some facial expressions.

You wouldn't believe how excited I am!

I peed a little.

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Cheese Is Near Final

UPDATE: I've updated the animation quite a bit. It's still not final, but it's getting there...

Cheese Movie

My dialogue shot for this quarter of Animation Mentor is almost done.



What you'll be seeing is not final animation, and is only a playblast of the latest version. I've got lots of refining to go on this bad boy, and we don't have access to full facial rigs yet, so true facial expressions will have to wait for next quarter.

I should also mention that the mouth is a bit off, timing-wise, especially in the middle portion of the animation. This will be fixed as well.

Oh how it will be fixed...

I should also mention that I made a bunch of changes to my 3D Artwork section, namely re-lighting three of the animations on the page. So if you haven't stopped by in a while, go have a look!

Cheese Pre-Final Movie

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Where I've Been, and Where I'm Headed

So if you didn't catch yesterday's post, I put up a link to my latest blocking pass for a dialogue animation that I'm working on.



As I often do, I like to bounce animations like this off of various people, to get as much feedback as I can, and one of the groups of people who have been more than a little supportive have been the fine folks over at Blur Animation Studios. Now trust me... they didn't find me. In other words, nobody at Blur stumbled upon my work and said, this kid has "IT," and we need to keep an eye on him. No... no... I stumbled upon Blur through my own dumb luck.

Walk with me a moment on the way-back treadmill...

Around 6 or 7 months ago, I had finished a total of 1 animation in my entire life. Sure I had done some pencil tests to limited degrees of success, but I had done one 3D animation in my life. Want to see it? Click the link below this bad boy of a screenshot and prepare for 900 degrees of awesomeness to blast you square in the chops:


Dave's Super Awesome Wrestling Animation

If you were lucky enough (smart enough?) not to click the link, let me just tell you that the animation is awful. Terrible. It looks like someone created it as a bad joke.

It is a bad joke.

But it's all I had.

So back to that whole "six or seven months ago" thing...

I'm doing a search on the Looney Tunes DVDs on Google, as I've always been a fan of animation, and I get hit with a link to Blur's Academy Award Nominated film, "Gopher Broke," because the description on YouTube contains the line, "...elements of Looney Tunes in this amazing short..."



So I clicked the link, and watched the short.

You know that feeling you got as a kid, the first time you saw another kid fly by on a two-wheeled bicycle? There you sat on your little three-wheeled mound of mud, barely moving, and this kid comes racing by, wind in his hair, not a care in the world. You just knew that riding that two wheeled bicycle was where you wanted to be, but you could barely keep from biffing it on your tricycle.

Blur was my kid on a bicycle.

I knew I wanted to do what I had just seen for a living, but I didn't have a clue as to how to do it. Remember... I just had that one animation.

So I did what anyone in this day and age would do... I started a blog. I figured if I couldn't actually be an animator, I'd create a blog about the world of 3D Animation and at least have fun "collecting" neat shorts and other snippets of news from the 3D animation world.

One day, as I was out searching the various 3D forums for stuff to post on my blog, I stumbled upon a posting for a school called Animation Mentor. I figured it was just some lame online school, and was seconds from writing it off, but something made me click the link to one of the student demos.

I was blown away. Here was a student doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. They were bringing characters to life and entertaining people with them.

So I watched another student reel... and another... and then another.

I went in and told my wife, "I want to show you something."

She replied, "Oh, honey, I'm tired... my feet hurt... I think I feel a headache coming on..."

I said, "No... not that... I want to show you a video on the innerwebs!"

When we were done watching it, my wife looked at me and said, "That was really cool."

I said, "I want to do that too!"

She patted me on the head in a dismissive manner, not understanding exactly what I was saying, and said, "Have fun, Dear. Let me know how it turns out." Then I'm pretty sure she mumbled something like, "Hopefully it doesn't turn out like that awful wrestling animation..."

I said, "No wait... I mean I want to go to this school."

She said if it's what I really wanted to do, then of course she would support me. So I started researching the school. I talked to students and faculty, I read through forum posts, blogs, and anything I could get my hands on, and I'll be darned if I could find a single bad word to be said about Animation Mentor.

So I enrolled... and the rest is history.

Except for Blur...

So while all this was going on, I was (and still am) chugging away at my 3D blog. It had gained a decent following, and I decided it would be neat to try and interview some artists from the industry for the blog. I focused on 2 or 3 companies and Blur.

Not only were the artists I contacted from Blur quick to respond, and eager to answer the questions, some even suggested other artists within Blur to interview. When I told the above story (in a much more short-winded form), one of the key folks behind "Gopher Broke," Jeff Fowler, even offered to send me an autographed DVD of Gopher Broke, which sits next to me on my desk as I type this.



So I began bouncing my Animation Mentor work off of them, and they've been just as supportive as ever. They offer advice when they aren't overly swamped and have generally gone above and beyond the level they should have for a dork like me.

Fast forward to present day, and I'm well on my way. While I'm not a master of animation by any stretch, it's easy for even me to see the leap from that horrific wrestling animation and my most recent Guitar Zero animation, or my Sticky Door. Those animations have character and timing and appeal, and all of the other things that the wrestling animation lacks.

I owe a big portion of that to the crew at Blur, and truth be told, I'd love to have the opportunity to work for them one day. Is that because they answered my dumb questions and sent me a DVD? Truth be told, that's a huge part of it. In my limited contact with them, they've been great, and seem like a great group to work for.

However it's more than just that. Blur seems to really foster creativity, with the best example being that everyone gets to put in an idea for a short film each time they're set to make one, and the best one is chosen. Everyone gets a shot, which is how "Gopher Broke" began.

Couple that with the fact that they consistently kick out amazing work (check out some of their game cinematics, or "A Gentleman's Duel"), and I'd be dumber than a brainless monkey to not want the chance to work there.

I wanted to work for Blur the second I watched "Gopher Broke," and that hasn't changed through any of the last 7 months. In fact, that desire to work for Blur is what spurred me to create the blog, join Animation Mentor, and learn the skills I've learned to this point.

I'm not going to say I owe it all to a company, but it sure as heck played a big role in where I've gone.

Maybe I'll work there someday, and maybe not... it's the bar I've set for myself, and I'm working hard to get there. If I continue to make large strides in my work like the one I made from the unwatchable wrestling videos to my current stuff, I may just make it.

Then all if this will seem like one big Blur.

Get it?

I sure hope I do.

To Jeff, Peter, and everyone else from Blur who has humored me, inspired me, or just plain tolerated me, thank you.

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Block of Cheese

Or should I say, "blocking pass" of cheese.



This is a rendered image from my latest animation. While the animation is still in the blocking phase, I'm working on some of the props and lighting in my free time. The big green block on the counter behind the character, for example, will eventually be a microwave.

This is my first dialogue shot for Animation Mentor, and I'm pretty excited. I've posted a link to the blocking pass below (in playblast form, not fully rendered as the image is above), but be aware that the lip sync is far from final. To begin with, we don't have full facial control yet, so I really just get to do a flappy up and down motion on the jaw. The other thing I should point out is that the lip sync isn't fully synced yet, so some of the words don't match the movements.

Again, this is not the final animation, but is instead a series of key poses and breakdowns, with no real in betweens. The final animation (I hope) will be much more flowing and not "pop" from pose to pose.

Just take a look... you'll get the idea.

Block of Cheese Blocking

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Guitar Zero Animation

UPDATE 05/15/07: The updated and near-final version is now up. This is probably the version you'll be seeing for some time, as I won't have a break in my schedule for at least 6 more weeks.

Guitar Hero Animation

Below you'll find a link to my finished Guitar Zero animation.



I'll tell you now that the walk up at the start of the animation is far too fast and winds up looking jerky. I had to speed this up to get the entire animation under the frame limit for the assignment.

Outside of that, she's pretty much finished, so if you have comments/critiques, I'd love to hear em'!

If you've got better things to do than watch a QT movie load, here is the YouTube version:



I would suggest the QT movie though, as the overall picture quality is much better and allows you to actually see the string break.

Guitar Zero Animation

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Quick Update

Just wanted to post a screenshot from the assignment I'm currently working on at Animation Mentor.



It will probably be at least another week before I post the final animation, but I wanted to show some kind of progress here on the ol' blog.

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Guitar Animation Blocking Pass

Here is my blocking pass for the animation I'm working on at Animation Mentor.



Just to be clear, the string on the guitar breaks. This will be animated in the final version, but it's a bit confusing as it stands.

As I mentioned, this is just the blocking pass, so the timing and some keys need to still be worked on a bit, but you get the idea.

I've got an illustration I'll be posting very soon as well, but just didn't have time to finish it up tonight.

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Reference Video

Shot some video reference for my next animation project at Animation Mentor.



While it's safe to say that this idea was somewhat inspired by my recent obsession with "Guitar Hero 2," I should also point out that I have played an actual guitar for close to 18 years now, so I didn't just go out and buy one to emulate the game. In fact, some might say that the game is emulating me.

Those people would be wrong.

Sorry for the video being wonky for the first second or so... no idea what happened there.

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Class 3 Begins Today

My third session/quarter/term began today at Animation Mentor, and I found out that my new mentor is Mr. Ryan Donoghue.



Ryan works for Rhythm and Hues and has done work on "The Chronicles of Narnia" and TV shows like "Futurama." I'm sure I'll learn a great deal from him and can't wait to get started with both my first acting shot as well as my first dialogue shot!

Should be loads of fun... if not oodles.

Ryan's Art Blog

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