Class 302 UPDATE!

Major development happened this week. I switched places with another student and my mentor now is Kevin Koch. A 13 year animation veteran who gave up neuroscience and doctoring to become an animator. There is something about Kevin' no nonsense approach of critiquing that attracts me. He dissects his students' work with the precision and detail of a brain surgeon. I am old school and his approach suits me fine. I learn more from a drill seargent style than I would from 'explore your options' type. I feel that I should only explore my options AFTER mastering the foundations and principles of acting and animation.

Kevin worked on all the hand-drawn films ("Prince of Egypt" to "Sinbad"), clawing his way from the clean-up department to the animation department on "Spirit." Transitioned to CG for "Shrek 2" and then "Madagascar" and "Over the Hedge".

Class 3

The Christmas and New Year holidays went by uneventful, which happens as one grows into middle age, I'm fine with. I actually took the time to do some illustration art that I put in a new blog. The start of Class 3 was tonight and the level of talent of my classmates went considerably up, which is exactly the kind of stimulating challenge that I need to improve my animation. Mike Stern is the mentor who is also one of the first graduates of Animation Mentor, which puts him in a unique position of knowing what the students go through. Mike is currently an animator at DreamWorks. Under his belt is an impressive collection of blockbuster hits such as Bee Movie, Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs. Aliens. He is currently working on How to Train Your Dragon due in 2010.

Class 3 is an introduction to acting and this is where we get into the meat and potato of why I want to become an animator. Looking forward to learning a lot about acting in this class and how it is applied in animation. I already know what my idea will be for the first assignment. Stay tuned for the next post.