Why no email critique? I'm super busy...

Hey,

sorry for the slow posting and lack of online critiques. We are really really busy at work and it takes up most of my time during the week, so whatever time is left is spent with my family.

I will critique the shots I'm getting as soon as time permits, so if you've sent me something, you will get feedback.

If you're a current student of mine:

- I can look at the shots and give very broad comments (unfortunately there is no time for frame-by-frame critique). While you're waiting, start working on your next shot (planning, blocking, audio research, reference, etc.).
Ex-students and web-acquaintances:

- I hope you understand that my current students have priority, but I will get to your clips eventually. If you kept working on it, keep sending me update so I don't critique an outdated clip.

Thanks for your patience guys!

Cheers
Jean-Denis

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I am cursed.

I feel like Sam Neill from Jurassic Park...

So I got my new computer (little guy next to the old big tower), started to play around with it yesterday night and suddenly, this morning, the monitor goes black and into stand-by. The same problem I had with the old PC!! It would just randomly go into stand-by. Ugh... Like I said. I am cursed. I will never be able to animate at home...

But, I installed my Wacom driver yesterday and registered my quicktime copy today. So, I will get rid of the Wacom driver and use a normal mouse and get Carpal Tunnel syndrome until I get my marble mouse. Let's hope the tablet driver was the culprit. I just can't believe it would be Quicktime.

Needless to say, those things I mentioned in the "upcoming posts" ... post... that I wanted to do are on a back burner. "DAMN IT!" as Jack Bauer would say.

Anybody else have this problem? Help me internets, you are my only hope...

Midterm - Reminder

Don't forget to bring your latest and greatest to class today. The latest version of all your clips. I'll set up a separate folder and you can dump it in there.

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Class Update - Homework: have questions ready

Hey boys and girls,

first off, I forgot to mention something in class. For those who sent me work to look at on Wednesday, sorry for not writing back. Wednesday evening I have a meeting for the short film we're working on and it ran very late, so I couldn't get to it. We're also really busy at work, so looking at clips during the day can be difficult. But keep sending work! When I have time I'll reply of course. :)

I hope the critiques weren't too short last Thursday, but it was a lot of fun to just focus on a lecture for once.

About the homework, just a quick recap. Please head over to the "best-of" section. Take some time to read through all the posts that are listed. Yes, all of them. Hopefully you'll get inspired to do more research, read other posts, or ask questions about things that were unclear or that were not mentioned, etc. Feel free to send me emails with questions or tell me on Monday. Once the questions are trickling in I will make sure to address them in class or as a post on the site.

Nice collection of work btw., you guys are doing good! Keep going!

See you soon!
Cheers
Jean-Denis

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Upcoming posts

Guess what I did today? I ordered a new computer. No! YES! Finally I will be able to animate again at home! I'm really excited about this. Even though it's hard to come home after work, live life with your family and deal with non-work stuff and THEN animate again, I feel like it is a necessary thing for me to do in order to keep my animation muscles active (the ones I don't use as much at work).

What does this mean? Well, first of all I can catch up on my No Continues work, but I can also finally finish my workflow demo, which is really long overdue. It will be interesting to see how the final shot will differentiate from the original vision (I had plenty of time to think about the shot and I'm planning on changing a few little things). This post will still take some time (despite the new and faster pc), because I want to present it in a nice way, with lots of comparison and individual stage-of-completion movie clips.

Another post will be about polish and how I try to take assignments/shots to the next level. Basically it serves as a guide to my students in terms of how the progression from an F graded shot to an A graded shot looks like. Arrogantly assuming that my final product is an A of course...

The next one will require your help. I want to build up a post which lists common pitfalls (with example clips) animators face when they start their animation path. Basically dos and dont's for bouncing balls, cycles, etc. It's one thing when you hear me rant about it, it's another when you actually see it. Plus I can use it in class for demos since it's difficult time-wise to do full on demos from scratch plus critiques for 20 students.

Last but not least, demystifying the graph editor. I frequently see beginning students struggle with the graph editor and a lot of times it feels like they concentrate too much on fixing the curves in the graph as opposed to planning and thinking about their poses and timing of the characters in their shot in the first place. Yes, the graph editor is a great tool, but it's not the holy grail. Especially at the beginning when you are taking your first steps learning animation, you can do the assignments without touching the graph at all. So for this post I want to do different little clips, some without using the graph editor and others with graph work only. And this is where you come in. I will hold a contest where you will have to figure out which ones are using a with-graph and without-graph approach. The winner will receive the "Art-of Wall-E" or "Art-of Kung Fu Panda", their choice. :)

That's it for now!
Cheers
Jean-Denis

Which posts are the most helpful to you?

Someone suggested that there should be some sort of "best-of" section with the most helpful and important posts. That's a great idea, unfortunately I don't know which ones I should list. For that I need your feedback. Through some research I found out that blogger will soon add a "post rating" system, which will be very helpful. There is a widget for that already, but the template I'm using is not happy with that right now (working on a fix).

Ratul Sarna wrote up a great post with a list of his favorite AAU/Spungella posts (thanks!). I will start with that and if you feel that there are other posts that should be on this list, please leave a comment or email me.

I will add a link to this said list to the left hand navigation menu, called "Best-of Spungella" for direct access.

Cheers
Jean-Denis

How can I improve this site?

I had a similar post for the previous academyanimation blog and it helped me out a lot. So don't be shy, let me know what works and especially what doesn't work. Leave comments, send me emails, etc. in order to make this site as user friendly and as efficient as possible.

Thanks!!
Jean-Denis

Setting up Lables

Starting to set up all the necessary labels, links and posts for Spungella.