AnimationMentor opened up for the new term, and I’m not a part of it and it feels strange. Of course, I’m super-happy to have graduated – nothing could change that. But there’s something to be missed in the ritual of an internet search to find out just who your mentor is and what he or she has worked on, finding out what date and time your Q&A session is each week, and posting hundreds of welcome messages to the incoming students (some people are more prolific than others…)
Archive for January, 2008
Strange.
Monday, January 7th, 2008A Word of Thanks
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008Just wanted to post a quick “Thank You” to everyone at AnimationMentor – Bobby, Carlos, Shawn, Jay, Suzanne, Molly, Michael, Taylor, and a whole bunch of other people who work really, really hard to bring the best possible experience to all the students.
Also, a very big “Thank You” to my mentors in the program: Dave Breaux, Ryan Donoghue, Mike Walling, Sean Sexton, Jed Diffenderfer, and Greg Whittaker. You all contributed in major ways to my success at AM and I am very appreciative of the fact that I got to work with you in the program. Hope to meet you all at some point or another in the real world!
And last, but in no way least, a Thank You so big, writing it down doesn’t even do it justice. My wife, Heather, and 2 sons, Jack and Ronan, have had to bear the brunt of my time in AM. From weeknights where I came home from work, ate dinner, and maybe had an hour to play with Jack before starting on an assignment, to whole weekends where all I did was sit in front of the computer; their patience, understanding, and faith in me have kept me going to the very end. Now that I’ve finished, I’ll be re-aquainting myself with them (ok, that last bit was tongue-in-cheek…and yet, not).
One more Thanks – my mom, dad and brother. They also were a big source of support, and I greatly appreciate it.
My Short Film
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008So one of the benefits of being finished with AM is that I really plan to try to keep up with this blog a bit more. Since I’m only just starting out in animation, I expect to have a lot to share and this blog is a great way to do that. With that in mind, I thought I’d post the final short film that I turned in at AM. Keep in mind that it isn’t 100% finished. The animation needs work in a lot of areas – just general cleaning up that will help loosen things up in some areas. Plus it still needs better sound fx and possibly music.
But on the whole, I find that I’m far more pleased with how this turned out than I would have expected when I was about 5 weeks into the animating. The story came together as I continued to cut out some of non-essential bits (shoe leather as my Class 5 story mentor, Jed Diffenderfer, might have said) and the animation solidified into something that I find entertaining to watch.
Anyhoo. Without further ado, I present my short film – tentatively titled “5:00″.
FINI
Tuesday, January 1st, 2008Once again, I’ve been woefully lax in my posting to this blog. I like to think I’ve had an excuse though – trying to finish my short film for AM. And I’m very happy to announce that I was successful. I’ve finished class 6 and graduated from the program. I’ll be attending graduation ceremonies in San Francisco next week – should be a blast!
At any rate, now that it is officially 2008, my plans are to start working on my demo reel, and clean up a few of the shots from my short so that they are reel-quality as well. I hope to have the reel pretty much settled within the next couple weeks – maybe by the end of January at the latest. Then, it will be time to submit. New career – here I come!