Tomorrow marks the end of the term and this one in particular just flew by. Other than the facial on the 1 person dialogue, we spent all term doing a 2-person shot. My mentor Greg Kyle suggested I try this piece out and this was what I ended up with:
Even just being away from it a few days and rewatching it now, I notice some bits I can fix / tighten up and we'll be continuing work on these shots in the Polishing / Portfolio class, but boy this one was fun to work on. There were a lot of fun ideas being tossed around and even just trying them out was a hoot. I genuinely enjoyed animating this and felt that I learned a lot from it. Lots more to learn and I'm eager to do so!
On the book front, I picked up "Cult of the Mouse", which has a negative connotation in the title... but was a really great read. It talks about the stifling of creativity and how it's leading to a trend of unimaginative / boring films. But the author also cites examples of what's working and why it's working. This was written right when Pixar's contract with Disney was about to expire and having worked at Disney for a number of years he had first hand experience with this stuff. The message of the book though isn't "Suits Bad, Artist Good". It's about finding innovation within yourself and generating ideas. This spreads to someone making car models to an animator trying to create a fulfilling shot / story.
I put The Art Spirit on hold for that, but now that break is coming around I'm jumping back in.
And I leave you with this really cool article by Nick Bruno explaining how he studies an animated shot: How I Study Animation
