Animation with a moustache

The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!

Tagged: iAnimate

Ken Fountain “Attitudes and Acting Beats” 2

Acting / Education / Friends

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Ken Fountain “Attitudes and Acting Beats”

Ken Fountain just released “Attitudes and Acting Beats”, a new video tutorial at the incredible price of $10.99.

Judging by the official blurb and teaser, that one is probably more about acting and motion analysis so it should appeal to everyone from beginners to professionals.

If you want to become a good animator, do no hesitate to buy that tutorial. At $10.99, don’t come up with silly ideas and tell me you can’t afford it! Ken Fountain worked on many movies at Dreamworks, graduated from Animation Mentor and is a current teacher at Ianimate so you are getting way more than a 90 minutes video.

I haven’t seen the tutorial yet but seeing all the effort he put into the last one, that one is a must buy.

Here are the official blurb and teaser:

The new video is officially released! Whew. My intent was to be able to focus on some of the specific areas of my process that people had asked me to elaborate on, and hopefully introduce some new ideas as well. So, in that light, this 90-minutes of lecture/demo is devoted entirely to the planning, video analysis and blocking processes, and the tools and concepts I use to execute these phases with consistency, clarity, and hopefully emotional appeal.

This video is heavy on analysis. I get very specific regarding the structures I use to breakdown a performance and turn it in to pose-able emotional moments; like text, context and subtext, a structure I use to really understand my character and their circumstance; and the pillars of my workflow – attitudes, beats and textures – to create the right body language and interesting rhythms I need to engage my audience. I also take the opportunity to go deeper in to the concept of character centers and how that can greatly effect you character’s movement as well as the graphic quality of your shot’s staging. And, as usual, you can watch my approach to staging and posing for a specific shot; one that I will carry through to the next two videos.

Thanks again for all of your input. I hope to be able to address it all over this 3-part series. And keep them relatively affordable (only $10.99!).

Buy it on the JRAwebinar website http://jrawebinar.com/index.php/store.html
and follow Ken Fountain Splatfrog studio on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/splatfrog
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/34578067[/vimeo]

Ianimate 2011 showreel 1

Animation / Education

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Ianimate 2011 showreel

I know I am very late with this but hey, I was really busy for the past few month you know and I still haven’t posted any pictures from CTN 2011! 😉

Ianimate just released their first showreel. Some really nice work is being done there but what else would you expect from a school taught exclusively by Dreamworks animators! If I had to restart my animation schooling I wouldn’t know where to go between all the great schools available those days!

Big up to my AM fellow graduates Joost, Dave and Roberto for making it into the showreel. I recognized a lot of other familiar names!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32697046[/vimeo]

Mike Walling walkthrough 14

Animation / Education

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Mike Walling walkthrough

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/17074941[/vimeo]

Jason Ryan just announced a very cool body mechanics walkthrough by Dreamworks/ex Blue Sky animator/Animation Mentor animator Mike Walling.

Even if I have enough experience with body mechanics, at $29.99, I couldn’t resist and bought it immediately. I just wanted to hear Mike’s approach to that kind of shot and confront it with my own workflow.


The video is also featuring Victor Vinyals and Oli Josman latest rig “Skyscraper” a very good looking heroic rig I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on, it is so appealing! I might actually join Ianimate next term and eventually get that rig.

Here are the links to Jason Ryan website and the direct link to the store
http://www.jrawebinar.com

Reading Victor’s blog I realised that he might give away his old Businessman rig very soon!

Related posts:
Mike Walling … avec une moustache!
So you want to be a rigger huh?
Who is Jason Ryan
Jason Ryan “Speaking of Animation” interview

iAnimate, Jason Ryan interview 4

Animation

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iAnimate, Jason Ryan interview

A school were all the teachers are full time animators working at Dreamworks. Live instructor critique. Sounds pretty exciting doesn’t it?

Speaking of Animation just posted an interview with iAnimate creator Jason Ryan.

http://www.speakingofanimation.com/2010/08/podcast-jason-ryan/

If I were to study animation nowadays, I wouldn’t know where to go! It will take a long time before iAnimate’s community reaches Animation Mentor’s size but the facts that all the mentors come from one of the top feature animation studio and are all still employed is definitely a big plus. Also, people with experience can already start in the advance classes without having to start from the very basics.

Rig wise, I am not keen on the Boris rig at all but I have heard that a top rigger would provide iAnimate with a much more interesting one and it is also possible to use a rig like Norman.

Related posts:
Stretchy rig or broken bishop
The downfall of traditional animation
Who is Jason Ryan?

Is Animation Mentor expensive? 5

Animation Mentor / Education

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Is Animation Mentor expensive?

[update May 2013]

This post seems to have attracted some attention lately so I feel I need to to make an update.

I graduated from Animation Mentor in 2008 and haven’t had much contact with the school or the current AM community for a very long time so take this article with a pinch of salt. I haven’t caught up with the recent changes at AM, well I have but I just couldn’t understand the new syllabus (actually it is not that hard http://www.animationmentor.com/animation-program/animation-basics/ they just made things appear more complicated when they announced the AMP pipeline).

Back in my days, AM was a great foundation course from which a lot of people went on to get feature animation jobs and build an incredible network of professional animators friends. This probably still applies in 2013.

If you already have plenty of animation experience though, I might direct you to other online or on-site animation schools like Animation Collaborative, AnimSquad, Ianimate and AnimSchool since those are only taught by senior feature animators and even supervising animators from top studios.

The way things are going, if you don’t go to one of those recent “polishing schools”, I don’t thing you will be able to break into feature animation nowadays.

AM logo

People around me know that AM has been for me a love and hate relationship all along and unlike some other students I didn’t get caught in the “everything is awesome” bubble that wraps most people as soon as they join AM.

I did my fair bit of bashing in the past and nearly gave up in the middle of Class 5 but like fine wine, the school is gradually getting better and better and that’s amazing for a school who has been in business for only few years. Today I wanted to share a comment I posted on the Splinedoctors blog since I have more audience here than they will ever have. Just kidding.

Is Animation Mentor expensive?.

Well that s an interesting question that deserves to be answered.

I would be tempted to say yes but looking around, how many cheaper options do you get if you are not french, already ultra talented and selected by Les Gobelins animation school?

What else do you get for those $15,000 and ultimately, how long would it take you to pay back that money if you got this animation dream job?

Personally that money was my savings to pay the deposit for a mortgage but since I was working while doing AM I could have quickly recovered the cost of AM with my new animation job. Now I live in UK, I have no clue if this applies to other countries, the dollar is at it lowest level since 1982 I am told.

After 18 month at AM and without any animation experience previously, the students who reached the upper classes, apply for jobs where we are in competition with people who had been through 4 to 5 years of university!

Foundation course: 1 year
BA: 3 years

Some guys who applied for the same job I was applying for even had Masters or Post graduate diplomas!

Does one realise how much it cost to spend 4 years at university? Think about the tuition, the housing…. Let alone the fact that most people can’t move city and have to do AM on top of a full time job.

Now don’t get over excited 😉 This doesn’t mean that you just need to pay your $15,000 AM tuition to get a job. Your mentors won’t animate the shots for you and you will still have to work realllllly hard to polish this Showreel that will get you where you always wanted to be!

Animation is hard, no matter how much you paid or what school you went to but AM gives you access to a crazy community of people who love and live for animation and if you make the most of it, you will definitely reap the rewards of it.

Animation Mentor might seem expensive at first glance, but it is not.

[update] at the moment, the Short film has been removed from the program. I am completely against the idea and I just hope they bring it back very quickly.