Mentor

Animation Mentor, the first online animation school, goes online this week. It's a pretty ambitious idea really, pairing students with established animators who critique their work and generally prod them in the right direction. It seems to be a fantastic learning environment, and the mentors themselves are all annoyingly talented geniuses, so it will be most interesting to see how the first batch of graduates turn out.

All the best to Bobby, Shawn, Carlos and the mentors!


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Hey Kevan
Dan here. (long hairy one from back in the bmouth days.)
came across your blogg on a lazy surfing afternoon.
though i would comment cos i have just started the Animation Mentor course.
Ambitious - yes.
fun - deff
scary showing work all the time to REALLY good animators
DEFFINATLY.
I got Chris Hurtt from Sony Imageworks as my mentor....
cant wait to see Mad in the cinema
laterz
dan

Posted by: Daniel | April 6, 2005 11:19 PM

Hay Kev, I found your blog through Shifer's link. Good to hear Mad wraped. Wish I could have been there.

Posted by: Ethan | April 15, 2005 01:01 PM

Mini

Eyes

Animation on our new film officially wrapped last week! Bar a few fixes and extra bits, we're all done. Working on a cartoony movie has required a very big adjustment from me, as I have never really attempted anything of this nature before. I hope that I have consistently improved over the course of the film, which is all i can ask for, really. I've benefitted greatly from being able to pester all of the really amazing people around me. It turns out that you can't animate in a vacuum, and taking the opportunity to bounce ideas off of another brain improves things tremendously.

Flashing back to a time not so long ago... When at University I was always terrified at showing my work to others, (a constant fear of being rubbish being the primary cause), to the extent that some people in my final year thought me a snob! That really wasn't the case at all, but it wasn't until I arrived in the States as a newly-hatched assistant animator that I began to get over my fear of showing work; it's hard to hide in a corner when you have to show to a theatre full of your peers and directors! I still have to psyche myself up to stride confidently down to the front of the room, present my shot and not get a burning face when my work appears, but at least it's getting easier.

It turns out that all of the best animators seek out another pair of eyes when creating a shot, which makes total sense given that the closer you become to your work, the less you can see. Each artist has a unique vision of how a shot should be realised - the aggregation of experience and personality, and things I would never have thought of have thus improved my work by an order of magnitude. Why I didn't spot this before baffles me, even when prompted by friends, coursemates and academics!

Oh well, at least I know now, while there's still time to wander off and pester someone about the something that's not quite working yet...


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One of the things that makes it easiest to get over showing your shot to others is to realize that people aren't judging your ability when they look at a shot... If you're with professionals, then everyone knows that animation is HARD. The only way to get better is to do it over and over and make mistakes and find things which work. If you can do this in a supportive environment, where people have a vested interest in you suceeding, then they're not going to belittle you or make fun of you or anything like that when you show a shot.. they'll be supportive and encouraging, which is what you want anyway!

So even if a shot turns out like crap (and everyone gets those), you gotta chalk it up to experience and think "okay, THAT didn't work!" :)

Posted by: Jason | March 24, 2005 09:19 AM

Wrapped

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wooooot!

Posted by: Jason | March 18, 2005 02:55 PM

Onions

Yesterday I was force-fed raw onions. They were sneakily snuck into my OT dinner, in truly malevolant diced form, so that i couldn't remove them. I can't understand why anyone would want to eat such a odorous vegetable - the smell clings to your breath, and possibly even your soul, for a good 16 hours after consumption. I suppose it's the same mentality as the whole kebab eating thing. You go out drinking in some over-priced London pub, and at closing time it makes complete sense to stagger into an eatery of questionable quality and demand a shiny, grey donner kebab from a man with more body hair than Lassie. Happily munching away on your quivering mass of unidentifiable flesh, you think little of the next day, when your mouth tastes like something crawled in there to die and you wonder whether you will ever feel right again.

bleurgh.

So, the moral of this story is that if you ever have to cook me dinner, please avoid kebabs and make the raw onions easily flingable.

Black Tuesday

So this post is named in honour of the foul mood in which I find myself this week, and is also a passing nod to Melanie who mentioned the phrase on the way to get Indian food. It seems that I am incapable of dealing with stressful work-related pressure in an adult manner, so should anyone pass by me in the next few days you will understand the motivation behind my scrunched-up face, as one very similar to a new-born infant forcibly dragged into being.

Gah! You have been warned.

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I was NOT saying you weren't handling stuff in an adult way. I was worried and more importantly i misunderstood what you were saying so i opened my mouth in a very patronizing manor (like i have a tendency to do)when i should have kept it shut and listened.

So ME the idiot. Me me me.

;)

Posted by: Melanie | March 15, 2005 03:49 PM

Birth

Hello,

I can't imagine why anyone would want to read this blog ever, but I thought that I would give it a try anyway.

Isn't it a little scary to commit thoughts to screen in such a public fashion? i am currently battling my reluctance with every keystroke, but hopefully this will get better with time. We assistant animators are not used to addressing large audiences as themselves, favouring to hide inside their 24 frames-a-second occupation, or within the comforting anonymity of a department.

Anyhoo. Maybe i'll write something else at some point. who knows?

Eek.

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assistant animator my ass!

no, I'm not asking you to assist animating my posterior.. I"m saying you're much better than any old "assistant" lable they stick on ya.

fooey!

Posted by: Jason | March 12, 2005 11:36 AM

I concur.

You can stick that assistant B.S. where the sun don't shine... You are quite good!

*m. waves at you in blog land*

Posted by: Melanie | March 13, 2005 01:39 PM