Will Kistler’s AnimationMentor.com Experience

Allright, so now it’s time for quarter two. I’m already a week into it, so there a lot of things to catch up on.

First of all, I had a great time in the first quarter, but I felt like we were going over things that I already had learned, at least somewhat. So, it effectively drove home some points, but the thing I’m getting at is that pretty much ALL of my knowledge has been covered, so this term I will be stepping out into uncharted territory. Exciting.

To help me along on that journey is my new mentor: Gavin Moran

Gavin has been a character animator for 10 years. He was born in the Republic of Ireland where he attended college till he didn’t. He came to the United States in 1994 to pursue his dream of animating or at least finding some other way of not working for a living. He has worked in various different studios including Disney , Wildbrain, Sony Imageworks and Dreamworks on projects such as Dinosaur, Hubert’s Brain, Stuart Little 2, Spiderman 2 and Shark Tale. Currently he is working on Dreamworks and Aardman’s latest movie ‘Flushed Away’. He talks about himself in the third person and only owns 2 pairs of shoes.

That’s what the site had to say about him. That info is a little outdated, as he told us that now he is working on Open Season with Sony Imageworks. I’ve had a Q&A with him, so far, and gotten my first critique back from him. In general, he seems like an animation badass, and someone who’s not afraid to let you know when he spots a problem with what you’re doing. It’s tough love, but love none-the-less, and he really seems to enjoy what he’s doing.

That brings me to my first assignment. Another personality walk, this time with a torso and head. Of course sketches were required, so here’s some sketches, followed by a video of this walk.

Personality Walk with Torso and Head

So that’s all for this week, and it was a lot. I’ll be back next week with more.

This week I had to make the walk work in 3d, so I had to work with the x-axis as well as the z and y that I had done for the first walk. Luckily, I had a good idea of what I wanted and was able to quickly thumbnail out and get it going in 3d. Here’s the planning sketch, and the 3/4 view shot required for this week. I also threw up a version where you can see the orthographic views, just for help critiquing.

3/4 view walk

Orthographic view walk

And, of course, a pose. This week, the theme was balance. Here’s the planning sketches and final version of that.

Yo, and that’s it. This is the last week of the first quarter. One last revision aside, this may be it. Second quarter looks very worthwhile, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Wow…Quarter’s almost over. The week 10 assignment was for a walk with personality, which was lots of fun. I decided to do a walk that conveyed a feeling of tiredness and depressiong. Here’s the planning as well as the final animation.

The Depressed-Tired Walk

Once again we had to come up with a character pose. This week’s pose: Exhaustion. Here’s the sketches and the final image. I actually put a shadow in this one, so the character’s orientation to the ground plane could be clearly seen.

Finally, revisions from last week’s assignment, as per Scott’s suggestions. The feedback I’ve been getting from him is solid gold! Critiques have been getting longer and longer as the quarter goes on and the assignments get more complicated. He’s been getting really detailed with things that need correction and advice for improving what we already have. So thanks, Scott. Here’s the stuff.

Smooth Vanilla Walk, Revised

And the revised concerned pose:

And that’s it till next week.