#animationmentor

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

AN01 - Week 1 - Introduction to Animation

Happy New Year! (Okay, maybe a little belated...)

After a couple months' break, we're good and rested and ready to move onto the main event. For the next 12 weeks, I'll be taking the AN01 - Animation Basics course for AnimationMentor's Character Animation Program. We're already finished with week one, so here's what I've accomplished so far!

The first part of the assignment for week 1 was animating 3 cars demonstrating the animation principle of Fast In, Fast Out, Ease In, Ease Out -- basically a timing exercise. Alright, simple enough.

Neat.

After that, we worked on another character posing exercise like back in Week 4 of the Maya workshop. Part of this assignment was filling a sketchbook page with many different poses to choose from. Once again, @jookpubstock comes to the rescue! (Seriously, this site is SUCH a valuable tool. Fantastic, I love it!)

So here's what I came up with for sketches--

--and here's how the 3D pose turned out!

(I love this guy. Super fun rig to pose with.)

Seems like the next few weeks are going to have a lot of these posing assignments with different expression themes, so I'm really looking forward to that! That's it for last week's work. Onto the next project! ~

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The reference photograph I used for my pose is (once again) from the amazing @jookpubstock. Check out their huge gallery of reference photos here!

(Also today is my birthday! Nice! 🥳)

[davidfernandezanimation]

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A walk cycle I did recently for practice since it’s been a while. The Darius rig from Animation Mentor is awesome :D

[marcos123socram]

Allora vi piace il video musicale di Auro Zelli montaggio di Kevin Zingarelli e disegnato da me medesimo Marco Fiorenza ? Guardatelo tutto fino al ballo 💃 finale e lasciate un 👍 anzi due! Grazie e buona giornata fumettosa Marco https://youtu.be/comj4V4Y0rY @auro_zelli @kevinzingarelli @zelliauro @marco_fiorenza_official #canzoneitaliana #musica #cartoon #animazione #amazing #marcofiorenzaart #cartoonist #marcomix #fiorenzaemaipiusenza #fiorenzamp4 #lartedimarcofiorenza #music #animationmentor #animation #drawingcartoons #youtube #youtuber #seituqui #canciones https://www.instagram.com/p/Ckxez-LIQaK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[evanwhosjusthere]

Video Game Artist Spotlight: Nick Kondo

Nick Kondo is an artist and animator who worked in both the game and film industry. Growing up he loved Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 and they convinced him to join the film world through DigiPen’s digital art and animation program. After graduating in 2003, he would land his first gig working for Nintendo through Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, located within Nintendo Of America. Working as artist and animator on games like 1080 Avalanche and Metroid Prime Hunters. He would continue to work in the gaming space until the mid-2010s where he would join Sony Pictures Imageworks and contribute to the groundbreaking film "Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse"!

Till this day he still works at Sony Pictures Animation as an animation director. Contributing to Spider-Verse's sequel, "Across The Spider-Verse" and "The Mitchell's Vs. The Machines". His most recent work has been with mobile gaming giant, Supercell, and their upcoming game, Squad Busters.

His Twitter, Instagram, archived website, AnimationMentor page, and Vimeo page.

Titles Worked On:

1080° Avalanche (2003) - Art, Models, Texture, Animation

Metroid Prime Hunters (2006) - Concept Art, Animator

Arkadian Warriors (2007) - Concept Artist

Condemned 2: Bloodshot (2008) - Animator, Storyboard Artist

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (2009) - Animator

The Lord of the Rings: War in the North (2011) - Artwork

Toy Soldiers: Cold War (2011) - Animator

Middle Earth: Shadow of War (2017) - Senior Artist, Animator

[not-quite-normal]

What online schools do you recommend to reach a good level of animation like Spiderverse or the industry in general (AnimationMentor, iAnimate, Animum, etc) to be able to send a reel?

I'm not super up to date on what the best online schools are these days, but i would recommend starting by researching the teachers. look for folks that are currently working in the industry, preferably in a supervision position. there are some people out there that discovered they are better teachers than animators and have done teaching for like ten years now. this is okay for learning the basics, but i personally feel like, for higher quality work, it's better to get feedback from someone that's used to giving it every day in a real production environment

i also recommend focusing on your acting skills. action stuff is cool, but all it tells us is you can do technical stuff and body mechanics. unless you're really really good at action, you're not going to get hired if that's the only stuff on your reel (unless you want to go into games i guess). acting requires all that body mechanics and technical know-how on top of a believable and natural performance. try to not fall into the trap of animating gestures that we've all seen before in animation and instead study real life/live action movies to see how real people move. try to surprise people with your acting choices, make it feel specific, fresh, and observed

[sandrarzeczyca]

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A post shared by Sandra Rzeczyca Art (@black.knights.studios)

Karate kick animation study. . . . #animation #animator #animationmentor #artist #3danimation #animationstudent #animations #animators #animatorsoninstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CQbafSADoqI/?utm_medium=tumblr

[borjapons]

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Secretary animation I made a while back, hope you like it :)

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

Maya Workshop - Week 4 - Intro to Character Animation

Last week's assignment was all about how to manipulate a more complicated (but still relatively straightforward) character using rig controls and how to pose it following a real photo reference. The "real photo" aspect being crucial so that as a student you avoid the bad habit of creating a "caricature of a caricature" if you try to create your pose using another animated or illustrated example for reference. Have a look at my pose and silhouette for "Stewart"!

The important thing to remember here is that a reference is your guide, not a rule! It's okay to break the reality if the end result is a more clear shot. For example, my goal here was to ensure a nice clean-to-read silhouette of the final pose. I didn't like how the left elbow was a bit hidden in the original reference, so I pushed it out some more to get a better read.

Here's some additional shots from other angles!

There was an optional part of last week's assignment which involved animating a head-turn for this character. I have a reference I'd love to use, but unfortunately I ran out of time to complete it. I'll be working on that in addition to my assignment for this week so I'm hoping to have it ready in time for my next update! Back to work then! 💁‍♀️

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The reference photograph I used for my pose is from the wonderful @jookpubstock. Truly an invaluable resource, check out their huge gallery of amazing reference photos here!

[sjase]

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A post shared by @stevenjase

On break from @AnimSchool ; this was my last class assignment. I was less than happy with it, and still not satisfied. #acting #bodymechanics #AnimSchool #characteranimation #animation #walkcycle #blueskystudios #disney #animationmentor #bluesky #waltdisney #disneygram #disneyanimation #pixar #dreamworks #cinema4d #cartoon #autodeskmaya #maya #3d #cute #3danimation #practice #nofilter #selfie #cake https://www.instagram.com/p/B-HgaTAD96a/?igshid=13e0g0jwbc3ev

[black-solitaire]

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So this year I started at Animation Mentor! It’s been an awesome experience so far! This is my progress reel from Class 1.

[not-quite-normal]

Do I need a university degree in animation to get into Sony or can I take courses like AnimationMentor to get to Canada without a university degree? I have a technical degree from another career

i think you only need to be eligible to work in canada in order to work at sony it doesn't matter what kind of degree you have. it doesn't necessarily need to be an animation degree. you can always email recruiting@imageworks.com to confirm

[waywardbasementcat]

My very old short animation I did for the animation course I went through. This was done over a decade ago. Oh how things have improved... :'D Been working on a re-animation of one of the shots in this for an improvement meme thingy. Thought I'd post it here and on my Twitter just for the hey of it! #animation #2danimation #2d #2008 #animationmentor #cat #artistsoninstagram #improvement #dog #dogsofinstagram #catsofinstagram #humor https://www.instagram.com/p/B2Lo-xxJn-7/?igshid=1soytt2zgc0ee

[jebcozby]

Here’s the finished short film that myself and four others have been working on for the last five years. Enjoy!

[punching-pandas]

Panda teaching new 6-week workshop for @animationmentor on visual development. Course begins 9/24 and seats are limited, sign up at goo.gl/1RL8UY. #PunchingPandas #🥊🐼 #AnimationMentor

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

Maya Workshop - Week 5 - Character Animation Continued

This assignment was more challenging as it involved animating a longer sequence with more motion and acting. I found myself being slightly too ambitious with my initial idea and had to cut my scene quite a lot to account for time. I'm fairly pleased with the final result, though it isn't quite as polished as I would have liked it to be.

I can definitely see myself coming back to work on this one some more. I'd like to completely redo the squirrel's bouncing animation, and add some overlapping motion to the movement of the crane. When I was planning this shot originally, I had a whole bunch of rough storyboards drawn out for it that I would like to see animated eventually. Here I've lazily slapped together the storyboard frames in gif form with complete disregard for timing. It's good enough for an example, you get the point. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Needless to say, after this last strectch of the course I was pretty wiped out and decided to spend an entire month recovering as a couch potato. And then it was time for the holidays, so at that point you might as well potato the rest of the year, right? Right.

--

Anyways. Now you're caught up. I'll be coming back to this sequence eventually. Regular weekly posting will resume tomorrow beginning with an overview of my first submitted assignment for week one of my new class AN01: Animation Basics. Fun stuff! Ciao ~

[sjase]

Come hang out on @twitch animating now, link in bio. #acting #bodymechanics #AnimSchool #characteranimation #animation #walkcycle #migos #disney #animationmentor #parkour #disneyanimation #pixar #syperhero #cinema4d #cartoon #autodeskmaya #maya #3d #cute #practice #nofilter #selfie #cake https://www.instagram.com/p/B9rRzZYDUp-/?igshid=1xqpgw96j26rr