Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Class 2 Thoughts

Class 2 is over! I'm super excited and a little bit sad too. It was an awesome class. My mentor Paul Allen was amazing. (He just left DNA and had a hand in Jimmy Nuetron and the up and coming Ant Bully. Check out his blog at http://paulallenanimation.blogspot.com.) Super cool guy, he really knew his stuff and he wasn't affraid to be honest with us. Our Q&A sessions were tons of fun. My classmates were great too, I had Corey Stisser (http://http://stisseranimation.blogspot.com/) and Alejandro Mendoza from my class 1 class and I met some talented new animators like Robert Barros and Derek Gladen.

I also got involved in the student run Dailies and Frame Grabbers Club. These are weekly video chat sessions where we talk about our own work (Dailies) and frame through professional work (Frame Grabbers Club). I learned a lot durring all these sessions but the high point would have to be the last Frame Grabbers where Clay Kaytis (of Disney and the animation podcast) talked about a sequence of shots he did on Chicken Little.

This class was on the mechanics of movement and there was so much to learn. Wayne Gilbert (formerly of ILM and EA) one of my former teachers at De Anza taught a class on force that was so full of complex info and yet was so simply put it was amazing. Pete Docter (director of Monsters Inc) blew me away as a guest speaker and some folks from Blue Sky who worked on Ice Age 2 hosted a Q&A that was inspiring.

I could keep on writing about all the cool things that happened but it's lunch time so I'll stop here. Class 2 was great and I'm looking forward to Class 3.

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