A Long Time

Its been a very long time. Since my last post Ive recieve my grade for my 2 animations The Sneak and The Sidestep. Im very happy with my result, to only have 5 or less weeks of training and to muster up a C is to me anyway amazing. I'm very proud of myself. We started our new module, 3Dmax,Flash,Afer Affects and Design. The computer stuff is somewhat of a hellish ordeal for me. Its just not my brain. It doesnt function like that. I'm obviously going to try my very very best to try not loose myself and let it defeat me. Its going to be a long hard battle. 3Dmax is going ok. Our brief is to animate a Santa of our own design. I remember it somewhat from last year. Im good at making it move now that I've coped it and its registering but its still a little iffy. Our teacher Dave is hands down one of the fastest talkers I've ever heard in my life. He goes a mile a minute. He's really good though, maybe its just me but with computers i find when things are explained slower it makes more sense. I grasp it. The projects nearly over and Im set alright. After Affects is another story. I just dont get it. It gives me the biggest headache. Our teacher Andy is really gifted and a great talent and I know he does his best i just cant wrap my head around it. Flash is better. I enjoy it. Mainly because I just love Damien haha. When he talks i learn and I just relate flash to real drawing I dunno. We started off by drawing Noodle from the Gorillaz. It was good. Then we got a Christmas ecard competition to do. The whole class is competing against each other by doing a short Flash ecard that the winners gets sent to all IADT's email contacts which is in the 1000's apparently. So its a good prize. My idea is simple involving a Granny and a boy at dinner fighting somewhat to the death about a christmas cracker with some fun bits thrown in. Wheater I have a chance in hell of completing it i dunno but Ill try my best as always. We got to see everyones storyboards and discuss them. I sent my half assed animatic in also. Half assed because Im not framiliar with Flash but it is as Neel says "a learning curve". He's the best of the best. He helps me out so much. I owe him a million blocks of sculpey. Design started also. This is with our corse co-ordinator Thelma and our lovely life drawing teacher Laura. We have this really interesting tree project at the minute that I handed up today. Its made me temporarily obsessed with them. I really loved researching them and drawing different shapes and sizes and "branching" out, hahaha. Sorry. We also did some stuff on Focal Points. Really good stuff. Did a power point presentation for it. Its just so different. The amount of things I've learned in the past 2 months is crazy. I love it. This week we've been biblically blessed. We have a visiting lecturer for our course especially, oscar winning Mr John Canemaker. We've had 3 lectures so far and the amount of gold that man knows. He's something special. Our first lecture was about alot of things. Some being, Winsor McCay, personality in characters, Felix the Cat and Otto Mesmur, Cirle shaped characters, Atonement with Venessa Redgrave, Norman Ferguson, Playful Pluto, Fantasia and the Broom scenes, Riley Thomson, Disneys 9 old men, Eric Larson, Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, German Expressionism, Elemental Magic, Pete Docter, Observation and Walt Disneys memos. It was AMAZING. Our second lecture was this morning, it was based around fine art and Giotto. It mainly went through Giotto, Helbert Hurter - inspirational sketch artist for Disney, Fine Art and Life, Frank Thomas, Snow White and Elaine Stritch. It was very informative also the day before in our first lecture he set us some homework if we could do it of things to animate and we went through some of the people who had free time to do it. Tonight at half 5 we had our 3rd lecture. This was based on the genius of Winsor McCay. We went through is life his inspiration and we watched some of his movies and went through his very successful career. I love John Canemaker. I imagine i could sit for weeks listening to the stories he has. :). I cant wait for the rest of the 2 weeks we have with him. Hopefully work doesnt conflict with it. I already have to miss thursdays leture due to training for Lush. Anyway Il write next week. <3 Canemaker

John and Chuck Jones <3