December 2005 - Animation Mentor Report

Quote of the Month:
"At the beginning [of Animation Mentor] I really hated critiques, for my first couple of weeks of AM I was dreading checking my workspace. Now I freaking refresh to see new comments and TOTALLY welcome crits. I guess I used to see it as an attack in some ways, now I see it as the only way to push my work to higher levels. Not only have I learned how to accept criticism, I believe I can give quality crits also. Once again, thanks AM."

Rick Blankenship
AnimationMentor.com Student

Coverage is the term we use in the film business to describe the choices we make in the positioning of the camera: choices we make in each setup.

These choices include basic framing, composition, lens choice, camera height, shot size, screen direction, matching of shots between two people, continuity, camera movement and all the other elements which go into choosing "where we are" for the shot, and WHY.

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I think it was a combination of many things that led me to animation. When I was in Russia (my birth country) I saw plenty of transformer type animations. I doodled Robotech and Star Wars figures all the time. About twelve years ago I came to the US and saw Spiderman and X-Men comic books. They just blew my mind and became my new inspiration for doodling.

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My first job as an animator was at Pixar. I came into animation in sort of a round about way, with a background in performance/dance. I always loved animation, but never realized how much sense it made to me until I started to work at Pixar as a production assistant. So many aspects of animation shared commonalities with theatre and dance that I felt like I had studied it my whole life, just in a different context.

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Think of the face NOT as a collection of "facial shapes" or a bunch of "joints." Study your reference, find the simplest way of recreating (and hopefully plussing) the emotions and movements you see in your reference, and then as you're animating those gajillion controls, be sure to remember, every step of the way that the face needs to read as one unit.

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What began as a side project amongst a small circle of friends has grown into a continuing series of books, providing some of today's best storytellers with a forum to have their voices heard.

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Did you know that Aardman Animation's movie, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was filmed on 33 miniature sets? It was filmed on the floor of Aardman's feature studio in the "Aztec West" industrial park in Bristol where Aardman Animations made Chicken Run.

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The Animation Mentor Report is your inside guide to US movie releases and the visual effect companies who made movie magic.

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We've added a new section to the newsletter to feature photos of our students, mentors and staff. We here at AnimationMentor try to find a balance between animation and socializing with real, non-animated people.

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