Week 2 (Week 14)

Alright so it's week 2 (not really though, it's really week 7 at the time of writing) and there is more stuff to cover from last time. First, my new mentor. His name is Morgan Kelly and he's an awesome guy! (His blog can be found at http://www.morgankelly.blogspot.com/) He currently is an animator at Dreamworks and has worked on practically every CG movie they have done so far! The amount of knowledge and insight that he has is remarkable. I'm really glad that I have him as a mentor, though I'd be happy with anyone probably, although the class time is a bit odd, 11PM-Midnight! But whatever, I'm usually up anyways. There are a bunch of new people in my class, 2 from my previous class, and they are all great and super helpful in feedback. We all feed off each others' excitement and enthusiasm and it makes the class really fun and entertaining. I'm really looking forward to see how everyone progresses and what great ideas they will come up with for shots!

Right, now on to the meat and potatoes. This weeks topic, getting the most clarity out of your blocking phase. Hosted by Brian Mendenhall (thanks Brian!), he went over how much is enough to get across your point in just blocking, which is essentially just the key poses and maybe a breakdown or two. There needs to be enough information in your shot, but not too much as that it will probably be changed around with the notes received from the mentor, so you have to find a happy medium. After which, we were to apply this new found knowledge to our blocking of the shot that we planned out last week. As I moved into Maya, I had to consider which poses were essential to the shot and which I could forgo at the moment. In the end, I pretty much used all my poses from planning and it came out alright. I had some difficulty trying to figure out how to show Ballie off balance, since he has no arms to help steady his balance, so I gave it a shot, but in the end, had to change it.