Alex Zemke:
It was actually pretty dry to begin with.

Since we needed five story pitches, and there are five human characters in the library, I decided to come up with one story for each character. I started by coming up with occupations for each character based on their physical appearance. Ace became a superhero, Otto was a clown, Bishop a bellman, and Murdock became a mime.

After the first four classes, and seeing the difficulty I’d had in polishing my shots by the end of class, I figured my best chance to actually finish my film in three months was to keep my short really, really simple. So each story pitch featured that character, alone, with one prop (if any), in a single continuous shot that lasted thirty seconds or less. My mime was going to do the “pulling a fake rope” gag, then find it harder and harder to pull, until he lost his grip. We’d hear the sound of a rope flying through a pulley, then WHAM, piano on the head.

Done! Simple!

But my mentor, Ike Feldman, started asking questions. Why is he performing? Is there an audience? Aside from a difficult rope pull, what conflict is there for the character? Basically, where’s the story in this story? The answers involved adding more characters, more actions, and more time. I saw my simple short becoming much longer and more complex, and my hopes of finishing in time faded.

As we started the animatic, I really began to worry. I was still doing my short in a single continuous shot, so now that there were other characters occupying the frame throughout, the workload became unmanageable. So while riding on a long drive to visit family, I sat with my sketchbook and worked out a proper short. I remembered that the camera was supposed to put us in the perfect place at all parts of the story, so that we could see exactly what we needed to see, at any given time, to tell the story with the greatest impact. And I realized that, by using strategic camera placement, I could exclude parts of characters (or an entire character altogether), thus reducing the amount of animation at the same time. By the time we reached my grandfather’s house, I’d worked out a storyboard that was very similar to the short I have now. When I got back home, I made it into an animatic and re-pitched it to Ike that night. He liked it, and I was off to the races!

Alex Zemke:
The first thing I learned was what would be expected of me by a director. My first week of Class Six, I got dinged by my mentor, Ethan Hurd, for not including enough information in my rough blocking. That was huge, because at that time I really didn’t have any idea how much detail was expected, and from then on I made sure that the whole performance read in the blocking.

I also learned, through the course of eleven weeks, how to prioritize my work more effectively. I learned to spot the parts of my short that needed the most work, and which parts I could afford to give less attention to in favor of the more crucial shots.

On a side note, I learned just how little sleep I could get and still function.

Most importantly, though, I learned that it’s five pounds of work in a three-pound bag, and it’s worth every bit of it!

Alex Zemke:
Exactly as long as I was given. I wanted to finish by the class deadline, because that was my biggest regret from the previous classes: not having a finished piece by the end of class. So the planning took all twelve weeks of Class Five, and the animation took ten weeks and six days. In the final week of Class Six, I finished the soundtrack.

Alex Zemke:
There was tons of planning. Just tons. Most of it was in the animatic and layout stages. There were sketches and thumbnails, but I seem to have misplaced my sketchpad. All I have left are the thumbs I scanned as part of a Class Five assignment. Oops!

But yes, the planning made all the difference in the world. I’ve done assignments without full and proper planning, and they were disastrous. I learned from those mistakes just how important it is to figure out exactly what I’m doing before actually doing it. There were still alterations made in-production, but it’s a lot easier to make those little changes than it is to invent most of the performance on the fly!

Alex Zemke:

This is my final story pitch. This was the result of a lot of back-and-forth between me and Ike Feldman. Just be glad I'm not in my pajamas in this video!

This is my first animatic, based on that pitch. The change in art quality was Ike's suggestion. He felt I'd be more open to making changes if I'd invested less time and effort in the drawings. He was absolutely right.

And here is the vastly revised animatic, the result of that long drive. It's immediately apparent that the actions in this version will have more impact, while reducing the overall animation workload.

3-D time! While we've been working on the animatics, it's also been our task to prepare our assets. I've dressed my characters; built my set (changes will be made later); made and/or acquired props; and arranged my camera angles as they'll appear in the final shots. Rather than sliding my characters around in T-pose, I found it very helpful in this stage to give my characters rough, broad poses to help me figure out the composition and timing of my shots. Looking back, these poses are hideous! I just have to remember that they were done for time, not aesthetic.

It's no mistake that the music isn't in these planning videos. Initially, I intended to have no music at all, because I thought it would interfere with the audio cues that are so important to the story. I actually came across the music, by luck, three weeks into the blocking stage. I found it at FreePlayMusic.com, on the recommendation of Manfred Ragossnig. It not only matched the mood, but it also punctuated the action step-for-step! It made my short complete! Yay!

Alex Zemke:
My biggest obstacle throughout my time at Animation Mentor had always been going to spline. When it turned to mush, I always had a miserable time trying to sharpen it up. So during our “time off” from animation in Class Five, I had time to consider my problem. I’d seen some students break their actions down to as little as two or three frames between poses. I talked to Ike about the possibility of doing the same as I worked on my short, and he told me that many studios do that nowadays, standard.

And it worked! I was able to get my characters’ entire performances into the blocking by breaking it down thoroughly, and the splining was so much easier as a result. I’ve included both my first and second blocking passes to show how densely packed the blocking was. This method may not be for everyone, but it’s a godsend for me!

Alex Zemke:
Before I came to Animation Mentor, I had no real animation experience at all. I’d done some rudimentary stop-motion as a little kid, just moving clay balls around, but that’s it, and that was over half my lifetime ago. I’d never taken a class, or even opened a CG program, before Class One. Everything I know, I learned in Animation Mentor.

So how did Animation Mentor help? In every way imaginable!

From the basic principles of animation, to the guidelines for shot composition, to the exercises in physical acting and expression… everything! Learning to take direction and criticism, meeting deadlines, making my work readable to others in every stage of the animation process, these skills also played a major part, and I learned how to handle all that during my first year at Animation Mentor. The only lesson that didn’t come into play in my short was lip synch; everything else was vital to the production of my short.

Right up until the second week of Class Six, I worried whether I’d ever become a professional animator. But as that class progressed, and I saw myself meeting deadline every week, and watched the performances in my short develop, I knew it was no longer a question of if, but only of when and where, I’d get my first job and begin my career.

And it’s all thanks to Animation Mentor!