AM Class 5 - Week 1, QNA, Introductions

Another new term begins here at Animation Mentor(AM). This term is significant in a few ways.

Firstly its the term where we start our own independent short films right from story/script till the final render. So its no easy task by any chance, as here we need to combine all the stuff we have learnt so far, in addition to building a good story entertainment wise, learning layouts, cam angles and cuts, how the story flows, whats the entertainment value, how to keep the audience engrossed, in short we our, our own directors in a way for the next 6 months. Class 5 is the first 3 months which involves pre-production in the form of layouts and blocking and Class 6 is the last 3 months where we animate and build upon from whatever we did in Class 5.

Secondly this is the 2nd last term for me here at AM, sort of entering the twilight zone at AM. A journey of a dream which i decided to pursue in 2007, a pssion for animation and for learning it from the best in the business, for which i left my full time job, will be soon completed. Its been more than a year, but somehow it feels just yesterday when i had my first ever week here at AM. Some experiences lasts for a long long time in our life and this will surely be among one of them.

Yesterday had my first ever Class 5 QNA with my mentor and new class mates. My mentor for this term is Cal Brunker !



I must say, i didnt know much about Cal prior to this, but after interacting with him in the QNA, i think i couldnt have asked for a better mentor. Cal has a tremendous amount of experience in this field, has worked with studios like Disney, Blue Sky, to name a few and he being in the thick of things at Red Rover Studios(check out their work, its awesome!), you can imagine the amount of information we are lucky to share from him. Also as a person he is a joy to speak to and to listen to him share his very infectious enthusiasm for everything related to Animation. I am totally excited to see how this term goes and what it brings to me.

I am also lucky to have a wonderful set of class mates. During the introduction we all had to come on the cam and speak a bit about ourselves and it was so nice listening to all my classmates and now friends, as to what brings them to animation, their interests, etc. Also many of them(i guess all) have a lot of experience and are skilled in drawing as an artist, so it would be fun to learn from them about drawing which totally petrifies me a lot of time. :-)

Next week our stories brainstorming starts !

Keep a tab on this space for more !

Ciao!