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#721

Count me in on this group!!

dmoranda@redshift.com

Cheers,
Dustin

#722

PM me guys please, I’d like to praticipate, but I don’t have MSN and have no idea what is it? I’d be very glad if someone can explain it it me.

#723

Hey guys, why not start a Yahoo group or something? I have MSN, but with a Yahoo group people who don’t could join in too.

#724

Jozvex, How does this YahooGroup work? I’m gonna look into it myself after I posted this, but it might be a good idea to have something like that. If it’s truly a YahooGroup it might be more effecient than MSN. What do you guys think?

Keith, thanks for the info. The thing with 100.000 drawings is nice :smiley: AM, can give you experience and put you on the right track in a fast way, but its up to you whether you follow that track and practise enough to become a true animator.

EDIT:

I just checked out Yahoo.com and the only info I found about “group” was this

It might be a good idea, if it would mean we could also talk together as a group and not as individuals. We coul make some assigments every week or something, than critueqe them, study etc.

What do you guys think?
Would like your opinion, before opening a new group :smiley:

#725

I like a lot this goup idea, but i was thinking, we have an exelent forum here so why not use it?? we can talk with some moderator to fix a topic like AM Group of study in the animation sectionor some like that.
We can start from the begining with basic bouncing balls and pushing it hard as we evolve, we can organize it like one exercise per week, we post our tests get crits and make it better. With this we gave opportunity to everyone participate even the guys that are in a higher level can start from the beginig and fix some basic problems or just comment and wait for more advanced exercises. I´m not agaisnt this sessions here anyway, i like the idea of this sessions a lot, i was going to participate in this session 8 but when i started i saw that i need to try the basics first.
So, The idea is to start with a topic with basic ideas and chalenge and train our skills to a higher level until AM January.

Post ur ideas to we discuss another options too.

Hey Keith, tnxs for the post.

#726

It might be an idea to do that sort of thing in the forums here. Maybe we could fix a sub forums in the Animation forum, speciallyufor basic practises. And make threads every week.

I don’t think we’d neceserely need a special sub-forum, but it would be a little bit more organized that way.

How are we gonna deside which exercise to do and when? We could do a vote, like week one, we make a walkcycle, in the weekend we put up a vote what’s gonna be next and on monday we’ll do the results.

We could also put something in it like a 10 sec club exercise. We just pick a sound file and use that as practise.

We could study a scene from monsters inc and try to fake it. Not rotoscope, just watch, analyze and make notes, sketches, thumbs, charts, find breakdowns, keys, extremes, inbetweens etc and then try to make the animation yourself.

This is a great idea :smiley:

#727

I am new to the thread so i hope i am not repeating an information.

Was the announcment of AM recorded so i can view it on yahoo or something?

thanks

ash

#728

Yes, this is the idea. I think we can decide an exercise and post the WIP during the week, and in the weekend we post our final work and get the comments about it. We can start basically with a ball going up and down with stretch and squash then alter just the timing, spacing or both to see what we can get. Make this ball interact with something like a wall or other ball. Try to take some emotion from a Juicebox then normal walks… and keep evolving. It sounds like the animation sessions that we already have here but starting from the begining, because try to act without having a solid foundation on the basics is sometimes frustating, i know it. And everyone can participate and give ideas too.

The idea of fix a topic is to get it more organized. The vote could be a good idea too but i think that the best is to get lot of reply from your test and see the others tests too. Just like AM is going to be and the forums are made for, but with an organization to learn step by step from the begining. Just keep swim…

It´ll be good the see others ideas too.:thumbsup:

#729

Are you talking about something like the animation sessions that already are put on in the animation section? If i’m not mistaken…you can pair up and work on those…never had anything in the rules that said you couldn’t. Just curious…but the AM GROUP sounds like a good idea to me…i’m in:)

#730

Totally awesome ideas guys, I met a bunch of you at the show too. One thing I’ll add to prepping (or like however many I think of:)
[ul]
[li]ACT!!! IMPROV!!! Go out there and feel your character[/li][li]Read, Understand characters[/li][li]ACT SOME MORE :)![/li][li]Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…[/li][/ul]And one of the coolest things @ Siggraph was when the Jim Henson guy (sorry I JUST got off the plane, suffering some Let jag… :confused: ) pulled out his Gonzo character and acted him out. Beautiful work. Absolutely beautiful. So I encourage you guys to try and find that spark that makes characters come alive, wether it be a pen you see you can act with or something… or just watch lots of cartoons :smiley: either way, its the illusion of life ;)!

#731

This group thing is a great idea. As for exercices, I think the best idea would be to look on the net for some things that are interesting. For example that link to “larry’s toon institute”. Or we could ask artists that are attending art school what exercices they get. For example, on www.landisfields.com, landis tells what assignement he got to practice basic animation, and shows his result. Eg. the first ones were really interesting: create a canonball, plastic ball and balloon with nothing but the circle. This gives so many great possibilities, while keeping it basic and letting you think about how things should act/react and what extra character you can give to things by certain movements.

  • Bentagon
#732

I think it’s different from the session already present. Those sessions don’t really work on techniques or timing. Of course they do, but they don’t.

Uhm explenation: I’ve looked over one and it was more like an assignment to do.
People do the assignment and get critiques: “wow, good job man :thumbsup:” others might say: “you might make that arm twist a little bit more back and there is a strange movement in the head around frame 58”
The way I understand this group will be is more of a study thing. You get the assignment like:“make a bouncing ball, the ball is plastic and it’s a happy, shiny red ball” Then as a group we go over the process of:“Hmm, what does a ball look like, when in the air, when hitting the ground, when jumping back up? Oh wait a sec, it’s plastic, hmm what does a plastic bal look like? How much should I squas or stretch, should I squash, stretch? It’s happy, how does a happy ball look like?” all that kind of things. Oposite to:" yes it looks good, great work" but more:" yes it looks good, now why did you do it that way?"

I think the point is not to work together and show eachother animations, but study together to stay motivated and show eachother the results of the study like:"Ok, I’ve tried to fake the Finding Nemo scene, where dori says:“relaaaax” I’ve found that she moves down, just a bit left, and then up. It’s a smooth motion, but the going down is faster than the going up. If you looks carefully you’ll see that Marly (or whatever his name is, I forgot:blush:) Flips on his back and back to normal. Then we take a look at, why is it like that, what’s the anticipation? broken joints? velocity change? popping? snapping? facial expresion? eye movements? WHY?

of course the finding nemo scene was an example, but I suppose you get the point.

#733

Oshiroii…that’s sounds great…I would just like to see the follow through on that…learning from example and breaking down shots…would the involvement be good? Maybe. Would it help overall? Of course. I personally would be all for it and would participate alot.

As for the sessions…it is more of critiquing atmosphere…I wouldn’t say fanboyish…but I do think it calls for more focused crits…which is what I think might happen in the AM Study Group too…maybe.

Whatever happens…i’m sure it’ll be a positive learning experience for those involved:)

#734

I think it will be a good experience indeed.
From the looks of it a lot of people would like such a thing. I think it’s time to do a get together on something like MSN, or a chat somewhere, maybe IRC and make some arrangements. Make it clear what the purpose is, where we’ll be doing this (on the forum, yahoo group whatever is the best) and pick a date for the first study. I hate to say this, but I’ll be on a vacation from sunday to saturday :blush: kind of inconvenient, BUT vacations are nice and cool ans sw33t and they r(_)l,l,3 819 71(/)3 :buttrock: :buttrock: :buttrock:

#735

A quick “BOOM!”

Thanks to Bullseye for the informative update! Haa haa, was cool to meet you, too!!

Just woke up… Uh… I mean, just got back from Siggraph. It was a blast to meet so many people that I’ve only emailed with or met on the forums. Finally being able to put the faces to the names was great.

We’re super happy about the response. It gave us the extra BOOST we needed to keep us truckin’ along. It’s hard to work on something for so long and not really know how people will take it. We’re just so happy to have the support that we’ve had so far, and not just from potential students but professionals in the industry as well.

I wish you could have all been there. We gave away a lot of mini posters, brochures, over 250 Tshirts and talked until I had no voice (haa haa, litterally. Ask Agreenster!).

The blur party ruled and it was fun dancing and just having a blast with some of the nutty folks from this list, SheepFactory, Agreenster, etc! was really a huge highlight for me.

The Animation Goup sounds like a good idea. SheepFactory’s post about the animation sessions that exist here seem like a good place to start, too? Or 10secondclub.org. The key to being a great animator is to study, practice, animate, feedback, refine, study, animate… and so on. Supporting each other and helping each other out is also one HUGE key ingredient.

We’ll keep you all updated on everything as new news comes in. Thanks again and just keep swimming! :wink:

-BOOM

#736

Could you posibly make me more feel like I missed something? :stuck_out_tongue:

#737

Wish I could’ve been there to Boom…sounds like it was a great time:)

#738

Haha Bobby. No doubt this was awesome. The fact you answered every question still amazes me :wink: I can hardly wait. God you guys were jumping all over the place too! Rock on, the group we had there was defintely awesome./me begin grogginess from waking up

#739

nice one bentagon, landis’s site is awesome!

wish i could of been at siggraph, great to see animation mentor develop like this bobby, keep it up

#740

:buttrock: I fixed us an account :buttrock:

together with alexandrecollaco I desided to go for the Yahoo groups.
Why? Becuase it’s a little bit more organized and I think it’s a little easier to arrange.

features:
[ul]
[li]we can post our own polls in a special poll section
[/li][li]we’ve got a nice little forum, where we can place exercise threads etc.
[/li][li]we’ve got a live chat! Which is really good! We could pick a date and time to meet and we could talk to eachother withouth MSN messenger. I already tested it with alaxander and it works fine
[/li][li]We have a calander option on which we can put dates of exercises, meetings, discusions or whatever
[/li][li]We can upload files. I’m still working on this 'cuase I’m not sure we can upload vids, anyway, we’ve got ourselfs a nice 20 MB. I think we’d need to put our vid files on a differant site (namely you own host, most internet providers connections come with a free host :D)
[/li][li]Anyone can join, since it’s not over MSN, and we can still chat!
[/li][li]We’ve got a photoalbum (not that it’s usfull, but if you like you can post some funny pic of yourself :D)
[/li][/ul]

You’re prolly dying to know the link, here it is:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/am_animation/

Hope you guys are intrested!
-shiroii