INSTRUCTOR POST - Welcome New Students

Welcome to the AAU Spring Semester of 2012

This is a persistent online site I use to allow students in my class to solicit and offer feedback on their animation. There are a few important notes;

1. Conduct yourself here as you would in the class. Play nice with others and be supportive and constructive with your comments. Limit the posting to information relevant to the class.

2. I use participation here as part of your class participation mark. Participation accounts for 20% of your total grade! If you're shy this is a great way to be involved in the classroom discussion. You get points for posting your work or for giving feedback on other people’s animation.

3. Title each post with your name, for example: “David Latour: Blocking Pass 1”. Your blogger ID may not be something I recognize.  You don't want to miss out on participation marks when you post here.

4. This blog is as helpful as you make it. Be active with comments, post your work regularly and take advantage of this venue. Monitor this site at least once a week. I will use this as a forum to make general announcements and answer common questions, so you don't want to miss out.

Even If you're new to blogging you'll find this a pretty painless and straightforward process. If you have something from class you'd like to show, use the following steps:

·         Playblast your work (approx resolution 720x480, convert to .mov, with H264 compression)

·         Post the movie file on any video streaming site (YouTube, Vimeo)

·          Copy the “embed HTML” from the streaming site

·         In blogger click "new post" on the upper right corner of the screen and click on the "edit HTML" tab on the top right of the new post and paste the code in the window.

5. Blogger works best with Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome. If you have technical issues: try switching your browser. Make sure you login with the Google ID that you were invited with or you won’t be able to post or comment.

Every time someone adds a new post or comments on an existing one, I get a direct email. I try to look in here regularly and offer critique and guidance as well. This blog will be available as space allows, so you will be able to continue posting here after the end of term. (You may even see former students offering feedback here.)

Welcome to the blog and have a great time.

*Your first assignment:  Post your name in the comments of this welcome message with a sentence or two about what you hope to learn in this class and the two assignments you plan to do.

Brode, Brittany - Final Thoughts and Submissions

Hi all!

I'm sorry for the lateness of this post. I have to say that this has been the most enjoyable animation class I've had yet at the Academy. I felt like I learned a lot, especially in terms of acting. Dave, your critique was always constructive and incredibly helpful. My posing is better and I feel more comfortable with creature animation. I like how the class was broken down into two big projects; it really gave us a lot of time to polish our animation. There were a lot of good projects and my classmates had many good points to bring up during dailies.

If I was to criticize any aspect of the class, I would only say that during the second half of the semester, there were certain lessons during which I had a hard time paying attention, especially if there was a question of a more technical nature. I'm still struggling to grasp some of the more technical aspects of Maya.

All that being said, here are the final versions of the two projects I chose to do. I'm especially happy with the horse cycles.

Best to everyone and I hope we meet again!

Lip-sync Final



Creature Final

Tan, Liesl - Final Submissions

Hi all, this is going to be a pretty video-intensive post, thanks to the game animation assignment. :) I'm also going to post my first assignment here. I haven't made any changes to it, but I don't believe I've ever posted the current version before. So here goes...

1st assignment: "3 Times Bigger" lip sync


-

Character description for 2nd assignment:
Stealthy, agile, deceptive.

Idle


Run


Idle to Run


Run to Idle


3 Strike Attack


Running Jump


Thanks everyone, for all the feedback during dailies. All the best for your finals, and happy holidays! :)

saw this on linked in

Here are his tips for staying productive:

1. Work backwards from goals to milestones to tasks. Writing “launch company website” at the top of your to-do list is a sure way to make sure you never get it done. Break down the work into smaller and smaller chunks until you have specific tasks that can be accomplished in a few hours or less: Sketch a wireframe, outline an introduction for the homepage video, etc. That’s how you set goals and actually succeed in crossing them off your list.
2. Stop multi-tasking. No, seriously—stop. Switching from task to task quickly does not work. In fact, changing tasks more than 10 times in a day makes you dumber than being stoned. When you’re stoned, your IQ drops by five points. When you multitask, it drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, five for women (yes, men are three times as bad at multitasking than women). 
3. Be militant about eliminating distractions. Lock your door, put a sign up, turn off your phone, texts, email, and instant messaging. In fact, if you know you may sneak a peek at your email, set it to offline mode, or even turn off your Internet connection. Go to a quiet area and focus on completing one task.
4. Schedule your email. Pick two or three times during the day when you’re going to use your email. Checking your email constantly throughout the day creates a ton of noise and kills your productivity.
5. Use the phone. Email isn’t meant for conversations. Don’t reply more than twice to an email. Pick up the phone instead. 
6. Work on your own agenda. Don’t let something else set your day. Most people go right to their emails and start freaking out. You will end up at inbox-zero, but accomplish nothing. After you wake up, drink water so you rehydrate, eat a good breakfast to replenish your glucose, then set prioritized goals for the rest of your day. 
7. Work in 60 to 90 minute intervals. Your brain uses up more glucose than any other bodily activity. Typically you will have spent most of it after 60-90 minutes. (That’s why you feel so burned out after super long meetings.) So take a break: Get up, go for a walk, have a snack, do something completely different to recharge. And yes, that means you need an extra hour for breaks, not including lunch, so if you’re required to get eight hours of work done each day, plan to be there for 9.5-10 hours.

Bachynski, Lana

It's the last day!
I'm so excited to see everyone's work.
I just 'finished' mine (Or as much as I'm going to do on it) but I'm not posting it so there's no spoilers before class.

See y'all in a few!

Finals booster-upper!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w40ushYAaYA&feature=related

So I'm going to say this is relevant because it might be awesome reference for some of you - But as an added bonus, it might be appreciated as a morale-booster.

Finals brings loads of stress and obstacles that seem inescapable. But it doesn't have to be a battle - you can't fight the rain, after all. So sing and dance like a goof-ball, and don't let those obstacles get you down. :) Anywho - this song sort of describes my mentality right now (has been stuck in my head since clear laast week!) and I'm posting it in the off-chance it might help you guys through at least this coming week - and because maybe it is useful reference for someone. << >> Be defiant! Enjoy where you are! And kick butt on your finals! :DD And thank David for being so awesome! ^.^

Tejano_Nicholis_Robo Battle

The ROBOTS are finally here