Many of us Animation Mentor students in the San Francisco bay area and Sacramento just met in person for the first time at a cafe in SF over the weekend. It was all fun. Bobby Beck, one of the founders of the school and super ninja animator from PIXAR, stopped by and hung with us. We are all still buzzing from our get-together Saturday and now the school is already beginning to buzz again.
This time it's because our first ever Mentor ECritiques are starting to appear! These are video reviews of students' work by their individual mentors. The mentors make suggestions by actually marking on our assingment images that we upload for each week, while they describe their thoughts on how to improve. Since everyone is able to see all the other student's critiques, we all benefit from the critiques of all the mentors. I've viewed a few of some other students' critiques and this is way too cool! My mentor will be giving his critiques very soon, too, and I'm anxious to get his advice and see what he has to say about the other students in my group as well.
Of course, with a forum that already has more than 3,500 posts, lecture videos, assignments, Ecritiques, and many of us chatting and blogging, I don't know when I'm going to get any sleep. But it's fun, and the energy of the mentors and founder-mentors is contagious, as is the buzz of excitement we all seem to share about the level of learning we're getting from this school.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
Simple Decisions
I don't know about you, but sometimes I have a hard time making decisions. For example, I couldn't immediately decide on what to write today, so I chose my very lack of ability to decide as the opening topic.
A couple of weeks before school at AnimationMentor (AM), I had to decide whether to use the recommended 3D application (Maya), or figure out a way to use the one I've used for several years (3ds max). I like max, but using max for class assignments would mean building and rigging my own characters to animate, something I do not do exceedingly well (read: at all). Since budget is of great concern, I avoided buying Maya. In the end it seemed the best bet and by the time I actually ordered the program it was on backorder. When my order finally shipped the first week of school, apparently--according to UPS tracking information--a late train prevented it from being delivered today! That means the earliest it will arrive is Monday. Luckily, there's no assignment due this week, or I'd be in deep doo. I wonder if the driver of the UPS train decided to stop for a bite to eat on the way.
AnimationMentor is blowing away expectations of all the students. There have been serious glitches in the software, extreme enough to make most people get really ticked and demand a refund or something. The amazing thing is that none of us seem to mind to much. I mean, it's the first week of a system that is just now being tested In Real Life (IRL) with around 300 students. There are bound to be snafus. Maybe it's the realization that we're part of something really new and important, or the fact that we're interacting with so many talented animators and other students from around the world who are also very talented. The other amazing thing is the speed at which problems are addressed and fixed. I don't think the staff at AM sleeps.
There are other would be students who decided (or had no choice but) to wait until the Summer or Fall terms, who many of us interact with online. When they read posts from us Spring Mentees about how much stuff we're learning in just this first orientation week some of them claim to be jealous. But the later-term students are going to benefit greatly from us "guinea pigs", as many of the tech glitches will be resolved and improvements made by the time they start. Personally, I'm glad to be among the first ever, there's just something exciting about it that I knew I had to be a part of. Signing up now instead of waiting is a decision I made, without wishy-washyness or overthinking, that I hope to look back on as the right choice. It's early, but so far so good.
A couple of weeks before school at AnimationMentor (AM), I had to decide whether to use the recommended 3D application (Maya), or figure out a way to use the one I've used for several years (3ds max). I like max, but using max for class assignments would mean building and rigging my own characters to animate, something I do not do exceedingly well (read: at all). Since budget is of great concern, I avoided buying Maya. In the end it seemed the best bet and by the time I actually ordered the program it was on backorder. When my order finally shipped the first week of school, apparently--according to UPS tracking information--a late train prevented it from being delivered today! That means the earliest it will arrive is Monday. Luckily, there's no assignment due this week, or I'd be in deep doo. I wonder if the driver of the UPS train decided to stop for a bite to eat on the way.
AnimationMentor is blowing away expectations of all the students. There have been serious glitches in the software, extreme enough to make most people get really ticked and demand a refund or something. The amazing thing is that none of us seem to mind to much. I mean, it's the first week of a system that is just now being tested In Real Life (IRL) with around 300 students. There are bound to be snafus. Maybe it's the realization that we're part of something really new and important, or the fact that we're interacting with so many talented animators and other students from around the world who are also very talented. The other amazing thing is the speed at which problems are addressed and fixed. I don't think the staff at AM sleeps.
There are other would be students who decided (or had no choice but) to wait until the Summer or Fall terms, who many of us interact with online. When they read posts from us Spring Mentees about how much stuff we're learning in just this first orientation week some of them claim to be jealous. But the later-term students are going to benefit greatly from us "guinea pigs", as many of the tech glitches will be resolved and improvements made by the time they start. Personally, I'm glad to be among the first ever, there's just something exciting about it that I knew I had to be a part of. Signing up now instead of waiting is a decision I made, without wishy-washyness or overthinking, that I hope to look back on as the right choice. It's early, but so far so good.