Two Months Later...
Yeah, so it's been two months since the last post. So much for keeping things up-to-date, huh? :-)
The reason for the lack-of-posting is simply - time. Between work and school, I was getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a night for 8 weeks solid. Needless to say, it's been a bit rough.
First, here's where the last assignment for Class 4 stands - it still needs some little refinements, but it's very close to final at this point. (Gee... You guys haven't seen this since it was in Blocking. It's changed a bit since then!)
Two weeks ago I spent the weekend in San Francisco with Kim & Fox, primarily to attend the Animation Mentor BBQ. I went up last year for the BBQ as well, but this year we took an extra day, and stayed at a hotel right in the city, three blocks from the bay, and about a mile-and-a-half walk to Fisherman's Wharf (and no, the bum who said "Why lie, it's for the beer" was no longer there.)
On the drive up, we had breakfast in Santa Barabara and walked the pier. I was sure to make Kim and Fox stop at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo so they could see that frighteningly garish dining room and the waterfall/urinal in the basement.
Friday we found a coffee shop in the Mission district that had imported coffees from Rwanda (I never knew they grew coffee there), and we swung by the first Amoeba Records store in Haight Ashbury (bought 4 DVDs and a CD for $30), and we found a weird little greasy-spoon restaurant under the Bay bridge with chaep food and booze.
Friday night, we went to an opening night screening of Wall-E in Emeryville with about a hundred students and staff from the school. In fact, the entire audience was comprised of professional and student animators (a bunch of folks from Pixar walked over for the screening, since the theatre was only two blocks away from the studio.)
The next day was the BBQ, which was quite amazing. I met about a zillion people, and got stranded there, which was probably the best thing to happen that night...
Fox and Kim had left early to go find coffee shops and bars, and I was to call them when I needed to be picked up (Kim had the only car.) So, around 6pm, when things were dying down, I called them up - and they were in the Mission district, about a 20-minute drive from the Presidio (where I was,) and they really didn't want to leave. So, I had to find a ride. I wound up hitching a ride with a guy from EA Games, and wound up at the Hard Rock Cafe' with about 20 animators, some students, a couple guys from Blue Sky who worked on Horton Hears a Who, and Carlos, a Pixar animator who also co-founded the school. I had some pleasant conversations, and then hitched another ride to a bar where about 30 more people from school were hanging out, where I talked Cameras and video equipment with Carlos for about an hour, before adjourning back to the hotel.
Needless to say, it was a good day.
The next day we drove back, with a brief stopover at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose (which was not nearly as weird as we had hoped.) And that was about it.
And now, I have started Class 5 - Short Film Pre-production. Yes, kids, the tough stuff begins now. My new mentor for this class is Kenny Roy, who was one of the animators on the dinosaur stampede in Peter Jackson's King Kong. He's also regarded as one of the toughest mentors at the school, which honestly, I couldn't be happier. This will give us first-hand experience at the "tough love" we can expect when we all get jobs.
The excitement builds....
The reason for the lack-of-posting is simply - time. Between work and school, I was getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a night for 8 weeks solid. Needless to say, it's been a bit rough.
First, here's where the last assignment for Class 4 stands - it still needs some little refinements, but it's very close to final at this point. (Gee... You guys haven't seen this since it was in Blocking. It's changed a bit since then!)
Two weeks ago I spent the weekend in San Francisco with Kim & Fox, primarily to attend the Animation Mentor BBQ. I went up last year for the BBQ as well, but this year we took an extra day, and stayed at a hotel right in the city, three blocks from the bay, and about a mile-and-a-half walk to Fisherman's Wharf (and no, the bum who said "Why lie, it's for the beer" was no longer there.)
On the drive up, we had breakfast in Santa Barabara and walked the pier. I was sure to make Kim and Fox stop at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo so they could see that frighteningly garish dining room and the waterfall/urinal in the basement.
Friday we found a coffee shop in the Mission district that had imported coffees from Rwanda (I never knew they grew coffee there), and we swung by the first Amoeba Records store in Haight Ashbury (bought 4 DVDs and a CD for $30), and we found a weird little greasy-spoon restaurant under the Bay bridge with chaep food and booze.
Friday night, we went to an opening night screening of Wall-E in Emeryville with about a hundred students and staff from the school. In fact, the entire audience was comprised of professional and student animators (a bunch of folks from Pixar walked over for the screening, since the theatre was only two blocks away from the studio.)
The next day was the BBQ, which was quite amazing. I met about a zillion people, and got stranded there, which was probably the best thing to happen that night...
Fox and Kim had left early to go find coffee shops and bars, and I was to call them when I needed to be picked up (Kim had the only car.) So, around 6pm, when things were dying down, I called them up - and they were in the Mission district, about a 20-minute drive from the Presidio (where I was,) and they really didn't want to leave. So, I had to find a ride. I wound up hitching a ride with a guy from EA Games, and wound up at the Hard Rock Cafe' with about 20 animators, some students, a couple guys from Blue Sky who worked on Horton Hears a Who, and Carlos, a Pixar animator who also co-founded the school. I had some pleasant conversations, and then hitched another ride to a bar where about 30 more people from school were hanging out, where I talked Cameras and video equipment with Carlos for about an hour, before adjourning back to the hotel.
Needless to say, it was a good day.
The next day we drove back, with a brief stopover at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose (which was not nearly as weird as we had hoped.) And that was about it.
And now, I have started Class 5 - Short Film Pre-production. Yes, kids, the tough stuff begins now. My new mentor for this class is Kenny Roy, who was one of the animators on the dinosaur stampede in Peter Jackson's King Kong. He's also regarded as one of the toughest mentors at the school, which honestly, I couldn't be happier. This will give us first-hand experience at the "tough love" we can expect when we all get jobs.
The excitement builds....
posted by Rich at
6:52 PM
4 Comments:
Hey I'm a new student to the AM program and had a quick question. I figured who better to ask than a current student. If I only know maya basics such as how to create key frames, how to pose characters, and a little about the graph editor do I know enough to enroll in the fall 2008 session. I was accepted to this session but have the option to enroll in the maya springboard workshop. Thanks and keep up the good work!
If you know that much, you already know more than I did when I started AM! The only Maya training I had was the tutorials that came with the Personal Learning Edition, plus a little work with Lightwave in the past, so I was very much a Maya Newbie.
The Maya Springboard workshop might be a good idea if you're worried about it - I'm not sure what they'll be teaching in that class, but it'll probably cover the basics plus the Graph editor.
If you find once you start AM that you need more Maya help, there's a also a supplemental Maya training program for students - it costs a bit extra, but well worth it if you're having trouble.
Hope that helps!
rich ferrando
Thanks so much! I absolutely love your work and can't wait to begin with my own AM program. Do you really think it's worth the money? Is the learning/teaching comparable to that of a traditional classroom atmosphere? Thanks!
Thanks!
Do I think it's worth the money? In my opinion, Classes 1 and 2 ALONE are worth the entire cost of tuition for the whole program. I learned more in the first two lectures than I did in 8 years of trying to learn animation on my own. In Class 1 alone, I took 114 pages of notes in 12 weeks - that's how much information you get.
As to how it compares to a traditional classroom, it's similar in some ways and vastly different in others. Personally, I hated traditional classrooms (I'm a proud college dropout :-) The AM class environment suits me much better. The Q&A's I suppose are similar to a classroom, but smaller and much more personal and interactive. The video lectures can be watched whenever you want, and watched multiple times if you didn't get something (as opposed to the once-only-plus-bullet-notes lectures of traditional schools.) And the big difference I suppose is the community. AM functions less like a college, and more like an animation studio / artist's colony. Students are encouraged to post works-in-progress of their assignments for classmates to comment on before the shot goes before your mentor, which is an invaluable tool and really exemplifies the spirit of openness and collaboration that is the animation industry. And the e-critiques from the mentors are simply an amazing way to learn. Here you have a seasoned professional showing you, frame-by-frame, what you are doing right and wrong, and how to fix it.
In short, attending AM has been the single greatest decision of my life. If you are truly, truly serious about learning character animation, in my opinion, this is the absolute best way to do it.
Hope that helps!
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