Acting Acting Acting

I found these acting videos on AM student Adam Strick's blog. If you have the time, you really should watch them. Even if you don't have the time, watch them! They have tons of great info about how to deliver a performance.





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Part 6:

Recent stuff and some news of sorts

Well, the knight animation is coming along nicely, but there are plenty of things I wish I would have done differently when I started that would have saved me loads of time. I suppose that's the benefit of animation experience is that you know what to do and how to work.

I just subscribed to Keith Lango's VTS series, and let me tell you, its a godsend. There's so much great information in those videos, its hard to believe I was trying to animate without them. I definitely feel like I have a much better understanding of animation because of them. I love how he draws from a traditional animation work flow and relates it to how CG animators should approach their work.

As for the Animation Club, I'm still waiting on an answer from the Animation Department. So, until they give me a yay or nay, we'll have the meetings on our own. I'm working on the flier right now, and trying to tell as many people as I can. Hopefully, we can get a sponsor, because without a teacher, we'd only be drawing from our own experience (or lack there of), and nobody wants that.

Anyway, take it easy, keep animating, and I'll post any news about the club as soon as it gets to me.

Animation Club

Lately I've been trying to get an animation club started here at Full Sail. I think its important that the animators from different classes can come together to have a look at each others work and better their reels. I'm trying to get the word spread around so we can have descent turn outs. Theres nothing definite as of right now, but I'm really hoping this catches on.

It'll be a really relaxed meeting where people just come to learn and share ideas about animation.

An outline for the club would be something along the lines of:

Instructors showing demos with different animation principals/rigging tutorials
Watching and critiquing reels/shorts/pencil tests
Competing in bi-monthly or monthly animation challenges (2d, 3d, stop-mo)
Character design/story challenges
Sharing work flow ideas
Sharing assets (tutorials, websites, sound files, rigs, models, scenes)
Networking
Group project collaborations

Obviously we won't cover all of this every meeting. I'm just trying to get a feel for what we could be doing. People of all skill levels are welcome, so spread the word!

Knight Scene Blocking

So this is the first post of the blog. I've been meaning to get one for a while, but just never got around to it. The reason I got a blog is because I'm always checking the Animation Mentor guys/girls' blogs for new information, seeing what they're working on, and finding out things that are useful to know in this industry. I'll probably link a few of them from time to time, as well as other stuff that's interesting/useful to know.

Now the business end. For the Fundamentals of Animation class I'm taking this month, we have to get a knight character though an obstacle course in 550 frames or less. The knight has to walk over a log, up some stairs, jump off a platform and over some water, then navigate his way though a swinging axe, and finally pull out a sword stuck in a stone.

I've worked though the blocking stages and I'm starting to get all my extremes in and fixing some poses. Some areas are still just contact positions. Here is what I have so far. I should be getting to the inbetweens near the middle of the week. Feel free to critique it.