I am finally back at Animation Mentor after a break of 3 month. What did I do during that time? I think I made the most of it.

I spent 8 weeks with Keith Lango and the APT program, I tried to learn Zbrush and Maya a bit better, I also spent a bit of time with XSI and met plenty of great people.

I caught up with my friend Richard Helliwell (which I first met during the Anatomy for digital artists at Escape), Young Min, who used to work for me and who introduced me to Seung Ho Henrik Holmberg. Check out his blog http://henrik.cgcommunity.com/ he is a very talented artist who at 26 years old already worked for ILM, Dreamworks and now MPC. Yep… just that. I also met plenty of other crazy people that I won’t mention or you wouldn’t believe me. Let’s say that Soho is a very small place.
New year, new resolutions. Sleeping less, working harder! I even applied for an IT job at MPC but haven’t heard from them yet. I am trying an mad schedule, bed at 2am, wake up at 6am. Like I keep repeating to people who question my sanity, “if DJ can do it, why can’t I do it????” Well, I only started yesterday night and I am already feeling very tired 😉
Keith’s APT was excellent, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who really wants to push his animation skills forward. I didn’t have too much time for it unfortunately but I feel that he helped me greatly. I am much more confident now to approach a new shot. I finally know where I am going and I don’t feel lost like before.

My new mentor at AM this term is ex CalArt student Morgan Kelly http://www.morgankelly.blogspot.com/ who currently works at Dreamworks. I loved Flushed Away and hopefully he worked on it. Tonight 5am GMT is our first Q&A. Not too sure how I am gonna wake up yet but I will.

My Class3 one character shot really sucked but we will see how it goes.

I am also finishing some work on www.monza-interiors.co.uk and hopefully the website will go live tonight. I mainly worked on the backend and Sergio provided the template. It is the first time I am relying entirely on CSS for the design and I even tried a bit of Ajax. It is hopefully the last time I get involved into such a project and from now on I intend to only stick to 3d work. Animation obviously and also Modeling if possible. Mudbox, Zbrush, Modo2 made modeling so approachable that it would be a shame not to give it a try.
Regarding drawing, I won’t go to life drawing classes anymore as the ones here are not suited to animators. I picked up a few books, watched several 2d shots from Jason Ryan and few Glen Villpu lectures, tried my hand at 2d animation and I feel that I am on the verge of discovering the graal. I will tell you more about it later.
Keep an eye on this blog. Things will be revealed to you very soon 😉