So another term is pretty much over. It officially ends on Friday but all my assignments are in, grades are received, last Q&A is over ... I'm done. Some people get bummed at the end of the term that it's over. Not me. I mean, I get that the journey is the destination and I'm having a blast on the journey. But the destination here is Disney World and I wanna ride the teacups dammit.
The class was fan-freaking-tastic. I had a blast working on my shots and getting the feedback from my mentor and peers. I liked Class 1 a lot, but I liked this class much more. Being able to actually spend time on shots and incorporate feedback into the final product was much more satisfying than in Class 1.
When coming up with ideas for shots, a clear and simple idea that is just beyond your skill level is the goal. And make a solid plan on how you're going to achieve that.
My first assignment was kinda fun, but the point of the whole thing was to do a 180 turn. The turn turned out to be the easiest part, with some of the other movements I put in being the hard ones that I pulled my hair out over. My second assignment was Parkour and this was incredibly fun. I think I had a pretty solid plan going into it so it went pretty well for me. I got some great feedback early on and it just went pretty smooth. The last assignment was the dance and that was a definite challenge. It was still really fun to animate, but man it was a challenge, which was great.
If anyone reading this (not likely) is wondering about having Rich Fournier as a mentor, all I can say is you're good to go. He's awesome. Great guy, great critiques, and really fun Q&A's. In our class he almost always knocked out critiques really early for us which is really a bonus. He's also really good about responding to email quickly and spending a few minutes with you after class if you have questions. So yeah, if you get Rich, consider yourself lucky.
Other than that, everything else was good. There were a lot of workflow lectures in Class 2. I think I would have preferred more mechanics lectures, but I'm sure there were plenty of people who appreciated the workflow ones as well. The site held up pretty good this class. Little bit of bandwidth issues trying to watch lectures, but nothing horrible. I still went to Alumni Q&A's several times a week, but I found myself leaving earlier on as it really became the same faces asking for feedback every Q&A. I'd like to see more animation related chitchat than straight up work review (keep that too, just not the whole time). The Tangled Q&A was probably the highlight Q&A for me (MegaMind was damn cool too).
On to Class 3!
No rest for the weary here at AM! The break between Winter & Spring terms was about 72 hours, and I probably animated most of it. Class 3 started yesterday and my mentor this term is Mark Pudleiner! Holy crap!
