End of Class 4

Class 4 has been intense in its content as well as the amount of concentration and detail work it demanded. Nicole Herr has been phenomenal in her approach to the work critique and informative Q&A sessions. The class covered subjects like animating dialogue, facial expressions, storytelling through cuts, animating multi characters, advanced dialogue work through, principles of entertainment, subtext and subtlety, design applied to animation, and a walk through with Victor Navone from dialogue to finished animation which was quite encouraging to watch.

Here is the two person dialogue exercise that I worked on. I had to make sure that my dialogue choice not be too long lest I do not finish it in time.




The polishing phase is ongoing, but I think experience is what I now need to hone my polishing skills and train my eyes to see the workflow in advance. The next class will be about pre-production of a short film, a very short film (30 seconds). In the meantime I am going to enjoy the one week break.

Class 410

June 1st, one month since my last post. The two person dialogue is in refining stage (one step after blocking). Time is fast becoming a rare commodity and in a couple of weeks will be the end of the semester. Nicole's Q&A sessions is something I look forward to because she fills it with useful and informative lessons. The time I enjoy the most is the "torture time" as she refers to it. That is when she'd randomly cam a student and gives him/er a line describing the start of a scene then the student builds the story from there. She then would cam the next student who must keep the continuity of the story and so on. This is an invaluable practice to exercise the imagination and story telling techniques in preparation for the next class.

Other happenings; watched the Battle for Terra, a CG animated feature that my Class 3 mentor, Kevin Koch and AM student Harry Porudominsky worked on. The movie was good but by no means a blockbuster. It is, however, a major accomplishment for the independent film house Snoot (toons spelled backwards). I think the story lacked a way to relate to the alien characters. A humorous situation or some drama that could bring the alien world to terms that we can understand could have helped establish an emotional link with the characters. The animation, as good as it was, felt restrained (a director's choice), to the chagrin of the animators who were working on it I'm sure. I find it strange, in this golden age of CG animated features, that story (or great story for that matter) can still be overlooked by some producers. An entire section has been dedicated to story in the animation bible The Illusion of Life. So how could an animation producer miss this fundamental part of movie making? PIXAR built its foundation on story and they make no secret of it. They are enjoying the same success that Disney enjoyed in their hayday. Just watched UP last weekend in theater and it is proving to be yet another hit. "A good story cannot be ruined by poor animation, but neither can a poor story be saved by the very best animation"; (The Illusion of Life, chapter 14, p. 367) It is that simple premise that makes memorable animated features. I can only hope that future production houses keep that as the minimum standard to adhere to, especially in today's society of jaded movie goers and skyrocketting production costs.

The Ottoman

The Ottoman is a project of animator Mike Stamm. It is an 8-minute animated short with a visual design inspired by the works of Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Jake Parker, Pascal Blanché and many others. The production is being developed using Cinema4D and a team of artists from around the world.

Having heard about the project from friend and blogger Teresa Nord, I contacted Mike about the generic type set in this concept art

and that was the initial contact that started my involvement. I am now on board as a calligraphy consultant for this project. I am familiar with Mike's excellent animation work when we used to frequent the Animation:Master forum. I have done my share of learning Islamic calligraphy when I was in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, also as pupil of master Chinese calligrapher Haji Noor Deen Ming Guang Jiang, so this part feels like a natural extension for my artistic inclinations.

The first assignment that Mike gave me was to come up with a calligram for the word Al-Barzakh البرزخ in the shape of a scorpion that is to be the tattoo on one of the characters. Project designer, David Ward, did an impressive job for the final render of the tattoo and here is an interesting progression of the design as we exchanged thoughts and ideas;

The rider's machine is this awesome contraption

Final concept

I am very excited to be part of this worthwhile project and hope to see it finished and produced for all to enjoy.

Class 4 first assignment, done!

Here is the first assignment for class 4. This is a single character dialogue shot that I started in Kevin Koch's class 3. Facial animation, eye movements, lid shapes, mouth shapes and synchronization will pretty much be the study in this class, which is overwhelming. I had no idea facial animation can be so intricate and complex. Nicole Herr proved to be a fantastic mentor. She is very engaging and her Q&A's are great lessons to learn from. I am thrilled I'm in her class.




After I uploaded the video and published the post I thought "how lame, is that all?" Well, no, part of the weekly assignments was to use the Bishop rig (the character in the video) and pose his face according to pictures we pick from magazines or internet as an exercise in facial expressions. So, here goes;

Class 4 (Advanced Acting) Begins

Mentor Nicole Herr, a career animator who grew up in an artistic environment has an impressive amount of experience in the industry too long to mention. I watched Nicole's ecritiques in other classes at Animation Mentor and her approach is direct, short and to the point, but with just the right amount of humor thrown in to illustrate a point. I find her style of mentoring palatable and her extensive knowledge of the profession reassuring.

Among her many great accomplishments are these hits




Some of the students that I will share the class with again are Rachel Hanson, Dylan Hunter, and Peter Huh who was with me in the Maya Springboard class.The rest of the class has an impressive level of talent and imagination which is always great to help feed each other inspiration and trigger original ideas and discussions.

I am super excited to get started on the facial animation of my last shot from Kevin's class as well as to delve into the two person dialogue.

The journey continues.

End of Class 3

So, this is the last week of Class 3. It has been by far the most informative and challenging term. Kevin Koch is a special mentor. He gives the longest and most detailed ecritiques than any other mentor, by far. The immense knowledge that he shared with the class will be with me forever. No moment was wasted in any of the Q&As, that's because he always came prepared with notes or a topic he or the students wanted to discuss.

The weekly lectures were phenomenal in their content. They were given by leading industry animators. The subjects covered pantomime acting, body language and gestures, secondary actions, phrasing, dialogue, eye blinks, entertainment principles, hand gestures, and sincerity in acting. Some of the lectures were step by step walk through while others covered broad principles.

I am not going to post the dialogue shot that I worked on since it won't be finished until the first quarter of the next semester where we'll be working on facial expressions, so, stay tuned for that one.

On to Class 4

Class 3 Week 7

End of pantomime assignment. In this exercise we attempt to show thought and change of emotion via body poses. The absence of facial expressions forces us to express attitudes through body posture. I chose to parody The Matrix, since Stwie has no facial features except for the eyes, I thought it was appropriate to re-enact that scene from The Matrix when Neo freaks out as his mouth closes shut and disappears.




During this time I had a chance to visit with my mentor, Kevin Koch where he gave me a tour at his work at Snoot FX in Los Angeles. The level of talent there was intimidating to me, yet inspiring at the same time. Kevin showed me a shot he was animating, and even when the character was in proxy mode, it is amazing how good animation looks so pleasing even on an unfinished model (i.e. a model with no texture and with low poly). We had sushi for lunch at a pizzaria?! Harry Porudominsky, a fellow AM student and an animator at Snoot FX also joined us.
















I also had the pleasure of visiting Casey McDermott, my co student from Class 1, who landed a job at Rhythm & Hues. Casey gave me a tour and that place is insanely huge. Casey works next to Tim Granberg, 3 time winner of the 11 Second Club. Tim shared some insight on his workflow and was gracious enough to indulge me for an hour at his work station.















All in all it has been an exciting first half of the semester. Next we'll be working with the Bishop character, perhaps AM's most recognized cartoon character.