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End of Class 3

Yup, it's that time again, the end of Class 3. This time we have 10 days break, and although we're only on day 3, I'm bored and missing my old AM friends. It's not the same talking to real people, you have to look them in the eye and interact socially! Bah, I'd much rather have the keyboard/web cam and my headset. Far more sociable. I think next time I go out on the town or something, I might even wear my headset so I feel I can talk to people!!

In all honst though, the break is good. I've had a few lie ins and got some quality time under way on my 360. Picked up Prototype on my birthday trip to metro centre with Neil. Took me a good 30 mins to get into it, but with every mission you do, you unlock more and more things to disembowel and more and more way to do so. It's fun!

Anyways, Class 3 was great. I learned a hell of a lot had some great banter with my class mates and mentor, Mike Belzer. It was definately the hardest class so far, and the frustrating thing was that we were picking up stuff in new lectures and QA's along the way, so now I look back at my shot, I would change the whole thing and do it completely differently. I see this as a good thing though, if I was happy with my work, then why would I need to learn anymore?

I have enclosed my new reel below. I think the sound is a bit off, I'll have a look at that later. Next term we get to play with the full rig that includes the facial controllers, so I will be able to control his emotions and lip sync!! HIYO! Also, turns out we have to do a shot that is double the length...with double the characters...and we only have one week more. That includes the whole acting, body and facial. So basically twice the amount of work in 7 weeks rather than 6!! I think I'm going to go into hibernation for the rest of the week to prepare for the new class.

Roll on class IV!

Down and out

Well Boro have gone, but at least we took Newcastle with us. 9 people came to watch the 4 relegation matches at my house and with 20mins to go only one was still watching Boro, the rest were cheeringvon Villa to beat Newcastle! We were never going to win 4-0 in a million years. Rubbish.

But every cloud has a silver lining. For the next year at least I won't get distracted by Match of the Day anymore coz we won't be on it!! So I can work double hard on a Saturday night now!

AM is still going really well. It's beginning to really grate on me now that we haven't had a break in almost 6 months. I completely knocked off my sleeping pattern last week (due to alcohol and rockband...) and am now completely knackered again! Nevermind.

As I've been promising for the past few months, I will get some work up soon. I need to finish off this shot and then I'll be putting up my class 3 reel. I'll make some cheeky progression shots too. Coz I said I'd do that before. But this time I will. Unless I lie again. mwah hahaaa.

Best get going, got loadsa work to do. Peace out my friends!

I know, I know...

I promise all the time that I will update this badboy and then I don't. I have some excuses though, 1) I'm lazy/animating too much to do this. 2) I forgot coz I got emotionally caught up in Middlesbrough's relegation struggle. c) I've had the computer troubles from hell.

OK, so we'll start with point c) As you may remember from previous posts, my laptop broke. The screen went crazy and then it got slower, and slower. I went to get it fixed/upgraded, but decided I might as well just buy a new PC coz of the price. So I did. A few people recommended I build my own as it would be far cheaper. Turns out it was. SO I built a machine so fast it could rip through the space time continuum. The only thing was, Maya didn't really work on it. So for the past few weeks, since leaving Marlon's class I've been struggling away using the PC. I've just started my first AM dialogue shot (more of that to come) and the pc would load the dialogue into Maya. That was when I finally lost my mind. A couple of hours later I was in Sheffield purchasing a brand spanking new MacBook Pro. My new mentor Mike Belzer keeps talking about his mac, and I was impressed. So I asked around, got myself a personal shopper in Sheffield and went ofr it. It's beautiful. I would actually make it my wife. Except it's a machine and therefore incapable of love...or is it? Oo, I just freaked myself out.

So, now I can work on maya on my new awesome Mac. I know what your thinking, what did you do with the old PC? Well, I was going to throw it off a cliff, but I couldn't find one high enough for the damage I wanted to impact upon it, so I sold it to Neil. It works for him. Which is supicious coz he's the one who helped me build it...

Ok, so now we'll breeze through point B. Boro. Yeah not too good. We'll know by Saturday if we're down or not. We pretty much are. Basically, Hull and Newcastle have to lose and we have to win. BUT that will leave us on the same points as Hull. Hull have a 4+ better goal difference than us. However, if they lose, they will have to lose by at least one goal, meaning the goal difference is +3. They play Man Utd, who will probably be fielding a much weakened team as they have already won the Premiership and have the FA Cup final and Champions League Final to worry about. So, if Hull lose, then Boro have to win 4-0 at the most. Obviously, if Hull lose by more, say 2 or 3 goals, then Boro will only have to win by 3 or 2 goals, respectively. I think we've scored 3 goals in one match this season. Against Hull. Probably not going to happen then. If we go down, it will be sad, but if local rivals Newcastle come down with us, it will soften the blow a bit. I listen to the local radio football show most nights whilst doing my work and the majority of Newcastle fans are very up themselves on their. So it will be nice to let them suffer a bit. We'll see though!! Role on Saturday!

Ok, so now for the main attraction, Animation Mentor! I'm currently in Class 307. Just started blocking out my dialogue shot. I've only had one day working on the actual animating coz of my computer hell, (Autodesk messed up my license for my mac too, that took another day. Loooong story) and I'm pretty happy with it. It's great to be finally working on one of the dialogue shots. They are the ones that people really seem to enjoy when watching the AM reels. If I can pull off some good acting I will be really pleased. My last shot was a pantomime shot, acting without dialogue but with props (if needs be). I chose to do someone playing guitar hero. He was jamming away and then he noticed he was being filmed and got all shy. It started off pretty well, but as time went on I realised I was trying to get too much into the shot. I think that timing and indeed time management of the shot is the thing I've learnt most about whilst being here at AM.

Just thinking about it, this is my 10th month. It's unbelievable how much I've learnt. The AM journey truely is exciting and definately worth it. Hopefully I'll pass class 3 & 4 first time, I can't wait to get going on my short film, and finally get a job in the industry. But not quite yet, I still have a lot to learn.

Next week, my lecture is on Eyes and Blinks. I love this. People think I'm crazy coz I'm getting excited over learning about Eyes for an hour or so, but I can't wait to watch it. It's the subtleties in body language that really sells animation to me. I love it.

One final thing, go see Star Trek. :)

Wowza, that all's folks...for two days!

HIYO!

So, my second bout of class two is finish and I think I did pretty well. My final piece has been marked, and I'm pleased with it. It was a complete bitch at times and as Marlon pointed out, I definately did bite off more than I could chew, BUT I'D DO IT AGAIN!!! I liked the fact that I made it hard for myself, although as the weeks went on I ended up adding more and more little things to it, so some parts felt a bit rushed and I didn't really have enough frame for it to be super duper animation, but it's not too shabby.

I definately learnt some major about timing in this piece though, it is possible to do really quick movements over one or two frames and get good results, which is crazy talk. That's a 12th of a second! Some of my classmates ended up with some great shots that I have learnt a lot from that I will take into the next class, Introduction to Acting. That sounds sweet!!

Yeah, so now I have a semi-week off, no work to do, just my progress reel and have a gander through the next term's prospectus. Term officially ends here on Friday tea time and usually you have a week or two off. This time around for some reason (I'm going to blame the rescession and/or Middlesbrough FC, who are doing rubbish) we only have 2 days off. Which is good! I'm really psyched about the new term. Can't wait to get started!

Now though? Hmm, a week of FIFA methinks. Turns out I'm a far better manager than Southgate, but we all knew that. Mind you, I'm not sure Boro would ever be able to get Beckham and Agbonlahor, but they didn't try did they? Psssh.

I'll update in a few days with a full on progress reel of my last Indy shot, and talk through it. See if I can get something mildly educational in here. Peace.

Oh No! Oh Yeah!! Oh My!!!

Ok, so it's been an unusual last few weeks since I last updated. They say buses come in threes. Maybe. Something does. Triplets definately do.

So, We'll do it this way.

1. My laptop, is officially nearly almost dying. it is definately having trouble. the screen keeps flickering, it has 7 dead pixel lines now (it was one, but has built up over the days) and it is getting a bit slow. I may be in the market for a new PC. I will miss this one. Not going to get rid of it just yet, it still works, but I think it's going to be too expensive to fix.

2. Boro. Finally we play awesome and the whole country could see coz we were on TV. Get in.



3. NEW MAOAM!!!!CHEWTWO!



Get in. Two flavours in one bite. mmmmm. Here's a picture of Neil enjoying them. I'm not quite sure what flavour he is enjoying, but they were all pretty nice. I recommend the Cherry and Cola one. Combining to create the taste of Cherry Cola. Nice. Note how he came to watch the Boro match in a Sunderland shirt. Cheeky scamp.




Anyways, on the animation front, things are going very well I think. There is definately an improvement on my work from last term, and I got an email from my old tutor Ryan Donoghue. It was great to hear from him and he told me how he used to work in a music store. I had some time trouble over Xmas due to long hours at work and long hours needed for AM. So it was good to hear that the pro's were there once. Hopefully, I'll be where they are one day. But with an Aston Martin written into my contract and some sort of laser gun. I will post up some of my work from class 2 soon. I must sleep now though. I might even make on of those progression things so you can see how they have developed from the blocking stages. That might be good. Yeah go on then, I'll treat you.

7 Months Later...

WOW!! It's been 7 months since I started my journey through AM and what a rollercoaster ride it's been. Well, not really, I mainly go to work come home and then work my arse off on my AM work! No ups and downs, it's all up. It's more like going up a ladder. But really quickly. On a unicorn. That's flying. Eating skittles. And Pepsi Max. Watching Middlesbrough win the Premiership. Whilst finding a flux capacitor. I've never been good at similes...

Anyways, I have enclosed some videos below of my work. And to be honest, I think it's quite disturbing. The first vid is my showreel just after uni. I did it trying to get a job. I won't say anything about, sod it, I paid my fees, I think the people should know. I went to Teesside University and studied Computer Animation for 3 yrs. I wish I hadn't. If I had known about AM at that time, I wouldn't have even thought about going to uni.

So, here's the fabled showreel I've been promising. Compare it to the one I did a year ago. I hope agree that my animating skills have double XP'd beyond belief. Oo, speaking of which COD 5 is double XP again...

Oh what a difference a year makes...