i hope you have been enjoying my updates of work anyway, at least there was something to look at and read :-)
so what have i been up to, well i guess the easy answer would be a lot but to break that down here it is, last week i went into University probably around about 3 times as i have been working my backside off on this 10 Second Character animation, if you are interested in seeing how that is going go check out the University section of my blog on the right hand side.
the times i did go in i had some really great classes and events, on Tuesday i had a presentation for my Creative Character Animation (the 10second peace i've been working on), all in all i think it went quite well, i guess i could have had more done to show but i thought (as did many other students) that we only had to have the blocking stage done for that presentation but as it was we had to have more then that so the night before i had spent as much time as i could trying to but the blocking into splines as best as i could, as soon as the presentation was over i went home and completely changed my idea in the sense of poses. but i feel that that has been for the best as now i am working with an idea that i like a lot more and one that works better. (this is the one with the man sitting in th corner of a room).
As well as the presentation we where luck enough to have Andy Staveley from Studio Aka in on Friday and i must say OMG that was amazing, just listening to him talk about the industry and how they work at Studio Aka. After the lecture was over me and a couple of the guys from the lecture (i.e. the guys who had organized it, thanks again) where lucky enough to have lunch with Andy where we discussed more about animation, show reels and the competition we have to beat to get a job. After lunch we he was kind enough to come back to the class and talk to the us all about our current work and give us some really great feedback and advice on how we can improve our work, and i must say that i learnt more in 10 minutes with him then i have in 2 year at University. And it got me thinkning even more to WHY THE HELL did i come here when im really not getting anything from it other then a degree but thats worth nothing if i don't know the stuff in the first place.
So if you have been keeping up with my blog you will be thinking how did the Drawing and Composition 3 work go, well i have been blowing it off as its not worth getting worked up about it yet when i have so much animation to catch up on, i mean after all at the end of the day im wanting to be an animator when i finish this course not a illustrator, so at the moment im not stressing about that and working on something that i care about.
Well other then that i've been busy also makes new friends, one of which is a guy doing Masters in Character Animation called James Tayor, he has been helping me so much with animation teaching all kinds of things like timing, posing, work flow, pushing poses and a LOAD more, he really has been a great help to me, the cool thing is as well as him helping me i've been helping him where i can with the interface and shortcuts as i learnt as many of them as i could over the summer so that it makes it easier to animate. He is helping the course in so many ways as he is trying to get the course into more of a Animation Mentor style of teaching, i have been watching him animate and its been such a great help seeing how he works through an animation with a mix of straight ahead and pose to pose animation style. Also thanks to him i have improved so much with this 10 second animation for CCA as he pointed out all the mistakes in it and all the little tricks to make it flow better.
this is his animation for his Final Year Project last year and i must say i love it.
As well as James i've started talking to another amazing guy called Ciarán Wright, he's a professional animator that worked on such titles as Hyperdrive, Reservoir Dogs, Bonkers and The Outsiders. He has been kind enough to look over my work and give me feedback which is great of him, he has also linked me to some great websites to help me out loads. Its been great to talk to a Professional animator for once to be honest as the university really hasn't stood up to its reputation as a place that teaches in a professional way, i mean they say that University is a place where they are there to help and its your job to go out and find out the stuff you don't know, the BIG problem with that (which i think i have said before) is that how can you find out the things you don't know if you don't know what you don't know, in other words if i had never heard of lets say overlapping how would i go out and find out about it as i wouldn't have any clue it excised to find out about it. But im getting off subject, Ciarán like i said is a great guy and he works for a company called Qurios Entertainment Ltd which i one day hope to work for at least once just to say that i can as i have followed there company for a while now as they are a local animation which was great to see and now i follow them for that and also because there work is awesome, there only a small company but a great company never the less, we are lucky enough this week on Thursday luck enough to have Niel Bushnell in from Qurios Entertainment Ltd to give a talk about the company and how he got into the industry, im also hoping that we might be able to get Ciarán in to give an animation lecture (just a small one) to learn something about animation and how to do it, as a lot of us are ok with the blocking stage its just smoothing out that we find difficult but time will tell is that is going to happen.
On Monday just gone i was able to talk to my awesome lecturer Chris Wyatt who looked over my animation and was able to give me some real good tips and tricks to make my animation better, which was great as now i can pass them on to other people (including James) and it makes me feel great as it feel great to help out people, but also because im getting one on one teaching which i find 1,000,000 times better then videos or text based tutorials. so if you are reading this Chris thanks a million you have no idea how helpful it is for me to get one on one instead of reading or watching videos as there is Q&A involved so thank you, and also i have a meeting with him on Thursday so i can hopefully learn even more which will be great. (so thanks again Chris)
Yesterday (Tuesday the 2nd) we had feedback on our presentations from the Tuesday the week before and it was all good, there is som written feedback that i need to collect today at some point, the thing is thatnow my idea has changed the feedback means almost nothing now but there might be something in there that i can relate to my new animation like posing or something, but to make sure i get some new feedback im taking my work into University today and Siobhan Fenton (my other lecturer for CCA) is going to look over it and give me some new feedback which will be great to get.
anyway i think im getting to a point now where im going start ranting about my course again so i'll stop here, but next weekly post will be on Sunday as usual again its just that i've been busy this week with everything so things should be back to normal this time.
so bye for now guys and sorry for the LONG post, just had a lot to say i guess.
What I'm Saying
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