Quick drawing - dog and his pet !

[ click pic for a larger view ]

Heres a drawing I did today in Photoshop. Maaan, I love this wacom tablet, lets me do whatever I want without all the messiness of colors :)

Class2 - "Body Mechanics" !

This was the first week of my class2 at AM. It was fun to return to school after a short week long break. AM just rolled out its version3 which looks quite the same as the v2.1 site but is so much better under the hood. Its now a lot faster with dynamic loading of page content, more powerful tool to playback video, upload assignments and a lot more!

This class, "Body Mechanics" as it is called, is supposed to be the most difficult one in the entire AM program, because they say that there is two classes worth of information in this single one and its jam packed. So, I am making myself ready to put in all I can and be a sponge for all the information thats in there.

My new mentor for the term is Joe Mandia. He has a lot of experience in the industry and has worked on movies like Chicken Little, Open Season and Surf's Up. He is now working with Sony Online Entertainment as an animator. Joe seems to be a really nice and fun person and at the same time very serious about animation quality. Our class got to know him and each other in the Q&A we had last week.

This week we had to submit our video reference for the first time for the assignment. I chose a "180 degree turn" with ballie to animate. I was happy that I had bought a Sony digital Handycam right in time before the term started. Its a 30 GB HDD Handycam with amazing zoom (40x optical) capability. Filming video reference is totally fun though its difficult to get loose in front of the camera. Another thing I learnt a little was how to edit a video in Adobe Premiere Elements. After a lot of tinkering with the camera and editing software I managed to get the output I desired. Doing thumbnails from the video reference was also an interesting thing to do as this was the first time I studied my own video in so much detail.

The digital video camera -An Animator's Friend ;)
(Pictured is my new Sony Hard-disk Handycam)

I am looking forward to all things to come in this term as its great to start shaping a workflow, which is a key to working and surviving in the animation industry.
Lets see whats in store in coming weeks. I am totally excited !