Stunt Animators

Monday at AM was our highly anticipated Star Wars Episode III Global Q&A. Close to 300 of us logged on to participate with ILM animators Delio Tramontozzi, Kevin Martel and Charles Alleneck (listed left to right as they appeared in the video chat window) and moderator Shawn Kelly. It's always great to interact directly with pro animators we admire, to get their insights and all. Delio and Charles are both mentors and though Kevin is not a mentor he appears on many of the class lecture videos we have from week to week.

Speaking of the lecture videos, this week's lecture, about advanced anticipation, featured a bunch of clips of Shawn and Kevin they'd shot of themselves for reference. Some of the shots were of them starting a run, or a jump and a few were of actions that looked like they might have been painful; Shawn fell over a low fence (intentionally, for art) and backwards off a swing (it was deliberate!), and Kevin leaped several times into some shrubbery. So I asked in the Q&A if they ever injured themselves filming reference. Delio, who was apparently the mocap stuntman for a lot of shots in Ep. 3 told us he hurt his neck while doing mocap of an all out run where he gets "shot" and falls to the ground. None of them said they had any stunt training. I had thought about injury during filming of reference from watching the lecture video and doing my own reference the other day. Sometimes the shot calls for an action you just can't safely act out for reference. For example, I would have liked to film myself tripping and falling, but I had no stunt mattress to fall on.

Last night I had a chance to animate for 3 hrs straight. It's been a long time since I've been able to spend that much time in one session. I was getting sorta what I wanted with this week's assignment and it felt good to be able to just sit and work on it without worrying about anything else. The shot still needs tons of work, but I made more progress than I've been able to make on any recent assignment. You can check it out with this link (AVI, about 1MB).

Walk On Grass

The party at Brian's was great. There was a great turnout and Brian and his wife Sue made some delicious eats, most notably four flavors of homemade ice cream! Woo! It was great to hang out with fellow Spring 05 mentees face to face again, and meet some who missed the last gathering at Pera in April, or who I didn't get to talk to last time. Again I felt myself wishing everyone from AM around the world could have made it! The weather turned out to be great, too. Too bad I forgot my camera...I was 30 minutes from home when I realized I didn't have it. Luckily Brian and Niem (I think) had cameras, Brian's already got some posted on his blog.

Glad I was able to make it to the party in Antioch, about 70 miles from Sacramento. My niece, Darcy had agreed to stop by to check on my parents sometime in the afternoon. Another family member also agreed, but never showed up. Luckily my mom and dad made it okay with no disasters.

Sunday I had to get up early to make some adjustments to my assignment and upload it. My mom had an appointment for a CT scan and mixing and scheduling the barium liquid she was required to drink for prep cut into my time. Is it really OK to drink barium? Guess so. Around the same time my brother showed up and I had to talk to him about our plans for our mother. My mom was having serious problems as well and I missed the noon assignment upload cutoff by just a minute or two. I posted it to my Public Review area instead of the Assignment slot, and also emailed it to my mentor. I hope he got it.

In between the two medical appointments my mom has today I had a chance to shoot some reference footage of myself for this week's assignment. My little dog Cisco followed me along the mow strip...he doesn't like to walk in the grass anymore for some dumb, doggie reason. Check out the crappy-rez picture my digital camera does for movie files! At least it's better than my web cam. Next I'll sit down and sketch and time it all out. I needed to see some actual reference since acting it out didn't give me the whole picture. Much of what I'd done for last week's assignment was based on guesswork. The reference should help out quite a bit.

Why doesn't my dog want to walk on the grass?

Gotta get away

We're almost through the first week of the class 2 at AM, "Body Mechanics". I was at least able to get a rough blocking done for my assignment, which is better than my last two weeks. Hopefully I can get it refined by Sunday's deadline.

My mom does not have Alzheimer's or dementia or anything the elderly get, but she's beginning to show symptoms of...something. Her doctors don't yet know what it is but she's scheduled for tests. She seems normal most of the time but gets upset easily and that often leads to some hyperactive, out-of-control behavior that is difficult to diagnose because it's unpredictable. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy to settle her down, and lately, efforts to calm her are futile.

I'm now faced with the difficult, emotional decision of placing my mom in custodial care. My mom realizes how hard it is for me to care for her, and hates herself for being a burden. She has asked repeatedly if she can go somewhere else to live and my older brother and I have tried to discourage her because we know that's a last resort. But her condition has worsened and when she stayed in the hospital a few weeks ago I was making arrangements along those lines. But when I told her what I was doing she became deeply saddened and wanted to come home instead. On the day she was discharged I had to call and notify her doctor and the discharge planner of our change of plans. By the next day my mom was crying to be placed somewhere again.

As you can imagine this is affecting my studies at AM. I've had to seriously consider dropping out, and that's still up in the air. I need to take a break from caregiving duties, but that just isn't possible. You would think, since most of our family lives in the area, someone could take over for a while. But they all have families of their own to attend to, my parents and I rarely see any of them. Besides, taking care of someone like my parents is not something anyone can just do. It might even be more difficult than babysitting a child because there are medicines that have to be given and older adults have needs that most people would never realize unless they have experience or special training.

The AM students from Northern California have a party planned at Brian Nicolucci's place tomorrow that shouldn't be missed. I have not been able to find someone to elder-sit and time is running out. It's a pretty long-day commitment for whoever stays with them because it takes so long just to get to and from the Bay Area from here. (When I went to the last AM meetup in SF my nephew Matt willingly stayed with my parents as long as he could but my mom freaked out before I got home.) My mom and dad could manage to get through the day on their own but there is a significant risk something could go wrong. It seems selfish and irresponsible for me to leave them without care, but at the same time I'm long overdue for a break. I'm still not sure if I should go, so I'm calling my status a "game time decision".

Attitude is everything, in life and in animation. So I'm just doing whatever I can to maintain a good attitude, reminding myself this is not a permanent thing. It's a challenge, and being enrolled at AM helps, knowing I'm proactively pursuing dreams and having the support of fellow mentee classmates who all have challenges of their own.

Time

They say time flies when you're having fun. The past 12 weeks of school at AnimationMentor.com have just zipped by and we're about to start the second class, sometimes referred to as second quarter and second semester. Whichever is correct, it starts next week and I'm ill prepared!

It's not so much I'm slow and lazy. That's true sometimes. The reality is my time is not my own. Caring for my disabled, geriatric parents is a full-time job with at least 20hrs of overtime per week--not that I actually get paid, that is (more on that in another post). Every day I am literally overwhelmed with tasks, tending to my parents' needs especially my mom who can barely walk sometimes. The last two weeks have been especially bad. I dare not go into it too much here lest this blog becomes all about the trials of being a caregiver rather than AM student as it's intended. Suffice it to say my mom has had to be taken to ER 3 times in the past 4 weeks and was in the hospital for 5 days last week. I'm currently faced with trying to get her placed in custodial care, a decision the rest of my family has left me to decide all on my own. It's not something I want to do but my mom's condition has long been beyond my ability to adequately care for her--she needs professional care. It's extremely stressful and time-consuming trying to manage it all without any help.

This leaves precious little time for myself, let alone for school. Last week (week 11, supposedly my lucky number) I wasn't even able to touch my homework. The week before I got my lowest grade so far at AM. I sent a message of explanation to my mentor and AM prez Bobby Beck, who responded with understanding and encouragement. I went ahead and paid tuition for Class 2 hoping that I will not have to cancel. Hopefully I'll be able to make it all work.

The Mentors Are Coming!

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.

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.

Back 2 School

It's been years since I've been in school of any kind and this week I started classes at AnimationMentor.com. It's a school run and taught by top industry animators and although financing my tuition is going to be tricky, there's no way I can pass up the chance to learn far more than I ever could on my own. I will also be juggling class and assignment time with caring for my parents, which is 24hrs a day. I think AM is going to be a great opportunity and an enormous amount of fun. At the end of this 18-month journey I should have a good start in the never ending process of learning the art of animation.