Will Kistler’s AnimationMentor.com Experience

One more thing, this past week there was a live Q&A with some animators from the Disney, fresh from their work on Chicken Little. Jason Ryan, a super cool mentor who’s with the class ahead of me (sigh) was there, answering questions about the movie and his involvement in it. If I remember correctly he was a lead for animating Chicken Little himself, meaning he had a large role to play in define the acting choices for the character, as well as animating some choice scenes.

Joining him was Clay Kaytis who not only animated on the film (mostly Buck Cluck) but also produces the very cool Animation Podcast.

It was neat to hear them talk about the different way they approached animating a shot, the kind of tools and pipelines they have at the studio, quotas, and the future of Disney animation. Thanks AM, for hooking us up!

This week we had another cool video diary detailing of a student workflow, this time by Matthew Garward. He’s married, has two kids and a full time job and still manages to find the time to do some amazing work at AM. Having recently entered the workforce myself (unfortunately in a position that is not animation related), I found his tips very worthwhile. Mostly he stressed that it was important to get as much done early, and not to procrastinate. Not only does this help if you’re schedule is full, but it gives the other students and your mentor a chance to see your work mid-week. His other secret? Don’t sleep very much. I decided to try it out myself, more out of necessity than anything else, and found that it makes the work days seem long, but it’s tolerable, and you can still get a good bit of animation done in the evening. The key is to make sure you don’t stay up so late you get dimishing returns, and hours go by while staring at the computer screen without any real work getting done. If that happens, it’s time to go to bed! My hat is off to you, Mr. MattG! To do this with a wife and kids as well as a job, you are truly a time management master!

Speaking of animation, this week we were supposed to have our assignment switched to spline. The first and last bits of mine are switched, with varying degrees of success, but I ended up reblocking some things in the middle, so they’re still in stepped for this week. This is the final week for this assignment, and I would really love to have a good, polished, demo reel quality piece coming out of it, so crits and comments are welcome as always.

Puke Animation, half-polished.

Cheers.