Its finally here...Class 2 - Body Mechanics

Yuppie !!! After a much needed break for about 2 weeks my Class 2 - Body Mechanics begins today at AnimationMentor.com. AnimationMentor certainly fills a lot of my hours when i am not sleeping and trust me its not much, i mean the hours i sleep ! :-) Yes the break looked very inviting but then AnimationMentor tends to make you kinda addictive to its super cool community of super uber cool and very helpful people. So after a couple of days i was sort of missing visiting the students site. But now finally its back, the break seemed to be going on for eternity !!!

Class 1 - Basic Foundations was such a fantastic experience which i am surely gonna cherish for a long long time in my life. My mentor Chris Chua was a superb pillar of support in every possible way and i was lucky to have such an awesome class full of nice people who are definitely fun to hang out with. Just imagine many of them i may just end up working with some day !!!

Now coming to Class 2 - Body Mechanics, its undoubtedly one of the very important classes for any animator where finally the various dimensions of animation and its beauty begins to unfold. This class prepares you for that stage when you no longer have to worry about say "getting a particular movement right", because by then it will come naturally to you. And then you can truly focus for the real goal which we are striving to achieve, that is story telling, emotions, performances, interaction between characters and so on. So body mechanics is a lot of fun but also a lot of work, so i may not be able to post as often as i do it now, but im trying to improvise on my time management which will enable me to post on a very regular basis following my journey week after week.

Another reason for my excitement in starting Class 2 -Body Mechanics was to find out who my new mentor is. Here at AnimationMentor every class we have a new mentor and new class mates (though few overlap are inevitable). Its a terrific way of getting to know more and more people and learn about different approaches to animation as each mentor has his/her own style of animating. So a mentor is that person who is your biggest support, your biggest guide, your biggest motivator, your biggest critic and overall like a director for that particular class. So a mentor's influence is paramount and in a way it can redefine your life.

My mentor for this term is the very talented Dana Boadway !!! Dana has been working for nearly a decade in this industry and previously had a dozen or so years of acting training (including university-level, and professional film and television work), and 20 years of dance training (body mechanics all right !!) ! She is also a graduate of the very prestigious Sheridan College for Computer Animation. She was also honored to participate in the Computer Animation Festival for SIGGRAPH 2006, as Assistant Producer, and in creating the opening credits animation for its famed "Electronic Theater".

So looks like i'm gonna have a ball this term with Dana being my mentor. Cant wait to get the party started with Dana and my new class mates !

My first ever Q&A session of this class with my new mentor - Dana begins in sometime, so i will sign off here !!