My Animations - Animation Mentor Class 01: Basic Foundations

And here I have it! After three months, those amazing 12 weeks, in my first Class in the incredible online animation school, Animation Mentor, I have my first "progress reel"!
What is a progress reel? Is a little movie where I put (from the newer to the older) all the animations I did in this first term.

This term I had as a teacher the one and only amazing animator and teacher Anthony Wong, and boy, am I happy that I chose him! He has worked through out the industry in everything there is to work in animation, games, commercials, TV shows (the Simpsons) and feature films (he worked in Walt Disney studios in films such as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and is now working at Pixar, and has worked on Ratatouille, Cars2 and some more and is now working on Monsters University).
I don't know exactly how are the other mentors at Animation Mentor, but Anthony Wong has certainly put a high standard of quality in the teaching. Never in my life was I part of such a learning environment, it was great, it was perfect. But I'm quite confident about my next mentor as well! He is great and I hand picked him for the next term. His name is Marlon Nowe and he is currently working at Walt Disney Studio (worked in Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph and the short Paperman, as far as I know).


I'll just explain, in order of appearance the animations I have here.

• The first one is the last I did, I actually completed it last week, and the objective of it was to refine and finish a walk with personality with that little character.
• The week before, the next shot that look fairly the same, was just a "blocking" stage, where we create some poses with that 3D character, and come up with a timing and show it to our mentor.
• The two after that, I had to go through a blocking stage again, but now for a normal walk, what they call a vanilla walk, which is the character just walking, with no personality, so the two are blocking stage and refine stage after that.
• The one next was Tailor, this little character that resembles a squirrel. That character is there so we could learn more about animating that tail, overlap actions it is.
• After tailor I have a pendulum like thingy, which was the introduction to overlapping actions, that pendulum like arm, lifeless, as opposite to Tailor's tail.
• The little ball going all around was an obstacle course ball, for us to learn the principle of squash and stretch.
• The two different balls, as you can imagine, are different weights balls, so we can learn more about the difference animating something heavy and something very light.
• And the first one was really a normal ball (football or basketball) jumping, the animation every animator had to do at least once in his life!

The truth is, this last three months went by in a rush! Animation Mentor is truly super intensive! And in this last week of the Basic Foundations Class, this is what I ended up with.





Probably in the future I will update this video, with better renderings of the animations, and better to look at, but for now I'll leave it like this.
I can't wait for the next term to start, but for the next two weeks I'll be able to take a little rest and enjoy family and Christmas!

So I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sharing Animation - Franz Kafka's Country Doctor (Koji Yamamura, 2007)

And here I come again with another animation to share with everyone! This week I chose a somewhat dark environment, but it is a very well done and very well conceptualized animation.

The director nowadays is like a guru of animation and a very well know artist. Besides the godlike animator and director Hayao Miyazaki he was the only Japanese animator to receive a Oscar nomination (this honor with the short called Mt. Head).

But this week's animation short I'm here to share is called Franz Kafka's Country Doctor (Kafka Inaka Isha), by the japanese independente animator, Koji Yamamura.

Apart from the downer mood, it really is a very recomended watching!

HERE you can find Yamamura's website.


Here it is, Kafka's Country Doctor, by Koji Yamamura. (It's divided in three parts because it was in better quality)

Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!

See you soon with another great sharing (next time more happy themed)

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.