First Week Done!

I'm speechless. What a week it's been. AnimationMentor is everything you expect it to be and a whole lot more! When the campus was finally opened to us new class 1 students, we were all pretty much amazed at how detailed it was. I am completely blown away by the campus and by the resources available.  It really is a school, only it's all on the internet. It feels like there's nothing they forgot, and the tech/student support is extremely efficient. The library and training videos sections are awesome! I feel so lucky to have access to these amazing interviews and videos by animation legends.

On monday, I watched the first lecture and I found myself smiling through the whole hour and a few minutes. Shawn Kelly was incredibly inspirational, can't wait to meet the guy! The lecture itself was like a big introduction to what we can expect, and it included all these industry animators talking about animation. At one point, Shawn warned us about building our basics and foundations before doing anything else by showing us something he animated early on as a student, skipping the basics. It was hilarious (sorry Shawn :P ).

On the importance of critiques and second opinions: I'm a huge fan of critiques and letting other people see my work. It was always for personal improvement, but now I see it as something completely different. During the lecture Shawn explained that critiques are so important because you're creating something for an audience! I thought that was such a great way to put it.

I'm so happy to be a part of this. All the students share my passion for character animation. I was surprised that most of the students were on the same boat as me: we went to film school and the school offered a training that was too broad and seemed to teach anything BUT character animation.  To me, animation is such a powerful art. We quite literally give life to things that aren't real! On top of that, its always different and exciting. The mentors talked a bit about how animation is a life-long learning process and that's such a wonderful aspect of our job.

"you can never learn everything there is to learn about animation. Thats one of the coolest thing about our art--you can't learn it all!!"      Shawn Kelly


The second part of the week to look forward to was the Q/A sessions, where we would meet our mentors. Mine was with Paul Allen, and we actually went passed the limit by 20-30 minutes. It was awesome. It really felt like a classroom. At first, you're nervous because you don't know what to expect, but the mentors are here to guide and help you.

My schedule was originally at 10-11PM Est.  I applied to swap into a morning class and got switched into Royce Wesley's q/a. He's an incredible animator, originally from Blue Sky, now working full time at, yes, Pixar!!

Check out his website / demo reel by clicking on his name in my "mentors" section

I'm psyched to start learning next week! BRING IT