Thanksgiving

Hello. So today is Thanksgiving! This will be the first time I am away from home on Thanksgiving Day. Im also in a different country, so we dont celebrate it here. In fact, today we get an extra class! I have school from 9:oo am until 4:00 pm, and one at 7:00-10:00! How great! There are only about 6 or so American students in my class, but I think this saturday the class would like to get together and celebrate. We are going to have a dinner or something, so it should be fun. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Sculpture

Hey there. I said that I would post some pictures of my sculpture (work in progress) so here they are.




He's modeled after a drawing I made of a man on the cover of a National Geographic. It was just going to be a random sculpture for practice, but I think I might end up trying to incorporate him into my final animation.

Food fight!

I thought this comic was pretty hilarious.
It comes from a web-comic called The Perry Bible Fellowship. I suggest taking a look. Most of the comics are horrible (ethically and morally) yet amazingly funny!

Party and VFX

I figured I would put this post in a separate post from the classes. Otherwise it would be too much to read. A friend had a party last night. We try to get as many people from our program to hang out as much as possible. They are one of the best learning tools we have. So, my roommate Andrej and I all arrived there at about 10. We were surprised to see my 3D modeling teacher there. He's only a few years older than me and was a student at the school a few years ago. It was actually really cool. We asked him all sorts of questions about school, working, and animation stuff. I'm starting to realize how huge this industry for 3D animation and Visual Effects is. I could potentially end up anywhere in the world. Depending on what field I get into, I might have to move around a lot too. I'm not sure what to expect, but I am pretty excited.

While at the party, I was talking to a few people from the 3D program that are in their fifth term (there are six terms per year for 3D, and each term a new group of students starts). These students are almost complete, so it was interesting to hear their stories. They are all so busy with school it seems.

Today, about 10 students (me included) from my program went to Granville Island hotel for a VES (Visual Effects Society) event. Well, the hotel hosted a reception but the event took place at a nearby art school. We heard from speakers from various studios in Vancouver and California. The visual effects industry is really interesting. There are obvious examples like the Matrix or Harry Potter movies; however, there was an example of when visual effects are used in a way that you don't even notice them. The example was the movie Changeling, with Angelina Jolie. The movie is set in San Francisco in the 1920's I believe. The effects were used to create things like extensions to the scene. There are buildings there were added digitally. There are also digital "extras" to add a bit of variety. During the credits, there is a 2 minute shot of a road with foot and car traffic. There were real extras and real cars for the first 30 seconds or so, but the rest of the time the cars and people are all digital. It is completely seamless.

So, basically, this event was a good taste at what VFX has to offer. By my fourth term, I have to select a path. I can choose modeling, animation, or VFX. The more I learn about each, the easier I think it will be for me to make a decision. I still cant decide if I want to work with movies, commercials (which seems kind of lame, but I can make a lot of money and the studios are all over) or with video games. In February, my school will be hosting a video game event. I will hopefully have a better idea of how the gaming industry works with animation.

School update

I have been fairly busy these past weeks so I have not been able to update regularly. School is still going well. We are already going on to week five; the time seems to be flying already. I am getting used to my classes and my classmates. I am starting to understand who is good at what and how we can all work together. I'll update you on my classes and give my class schedule!

Classical Animation: This class meets on Mondays and Thursdays for three hours each. We have learned the basics of animation and are applying them in simple exercises. Due on Monday is a "whip" assignment in which a simple (very simple) character cracks a whip. Its interesting to draw everything and so rewarding when you see the little guy moving!

Sculpture: This one meets on Monday nights, from 6:00-9:00. Its a very relaxed class where we build a bust of a human (or human like) character out of Super Sculpey. Its great so far. I have my model basically complete. On Monday I will smooth out some texture, add a hat, and continue adding more texture and details. Its really been an interesting class.

Character Design: This class is on Tuesdays from 9:00-12:00. Its exactly what it sounds like. For Tuesday's homework assignment, I had to create a "character line-up". I was just supposed to create characters with with no detail. The teacher wanted each to represent a different archetype. The character lineup is used all the time in pre-production for film and video games. Its helps create a size relationship between the characters. In addition to this assignment, I had to create 5 faces as different as possible. After that, I had to pick one face and draw it with 5 emotions. It was a good exercise.

Life Drawing: This class is on Tuesdays from 1:00-4:00. I feel like I am getting more loose with my drawings. I am taking what I have learned from previous classes and applying it naturally when I draw. I am very pleased with the progress.

3D modeling: I have this classes on Wednesdays and Fridays from 9:00-12:00. I am using software called XSI. It has recently been purchased by Autodesk. Autodesk is apparently trying to monopolize the entire 3D software market. In this class I just finished modeling a dog! Its really fun. We are working on rigging it now. Simply put, we are adding an animateable structure to the dog (bones really).I will post images of it later. After this assignment, I think we will model a toy car.

Texturing: This is a new class from 1:00-4:00 on Wednesdays. It will take us through the basics of applying textures and materials to models we create in our other classes.

History of Animation: 5:00-8:00 on Wednesdays. Basically, we go to a theater on campus and watch cartoons. Our teacher is very passionate about animation and has a lot of knowledge on the subject. It also sounds like a documentary whenever he talks. I found out we will have two assignments. The first will be a quiz, and the second is to draw our teacher. He showed us small collections of drawings that previous students created and they are hilarious. This is going to be such a fun assignment.

Composition: This class is thursdays from 1:00-4:00. Its a fairly boring class in which we draw compositions based off of small paragraphs from stories. The next assignment was a passage from this horribly written amateur action/horror story... Our guidelines are to draw a part of the story and use only two colors (not black and white).

Photoshop: Its a new class this week on Thursdays from 7:00-10:00pm. I dont know what to expect.

3D animation: This class is on Fridays from 1:00-4:00. Here we take the principles of animation we use in 2D, and apply them in 3D. My assignment for next week is to have a simple character (a pair of legs) jump off of a box. Its pretty neat.

So thats all of my classes.

More Animations

Here are a couple more animations I saw yesterday. The first one was created by Pixar. I believe it is a short that came out just before Wall e.


via videosift.com

The next was a winner at Siggraph 2008.


This one was also in the 2008 Siggraph show:


Enjoy!

Cultures and Connections

I came to Vancouver to learn animation. Well, that's what I thought at least. I am starting to realize that this is not the only thing I am gaining from being here.

Sure, in school I am learning all about animation, but my 3D modeling teacher made a very important point at the end of class yesterday. He said that one of the most important parts of being at VFS is our peers. Each student in my class is learning like I am, but each is also a good teacher. We can go to eachother for help when its needed.

One other thing I like about my classmates is how we are all from differnt backgrounds and cultures. We come form all over the world. There are three students who speak Spanish as their first language, but each comes from a different country. To me, a non-spanish speaker, it is really interesting to listen to them talk. I can hear the differences between Mexican spanish, Spanish from Barcelona, and Venezuelan Spanish. Its been great for me too, because I have been speaking Italian quite a bit. Two of the Spanish speakers speak Italian very well and the girl from Turkey also knows a bit. I have learned how international South Park is. I have learned three new English words (from non-native speakers), and I learned that Hungarian is probably one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn/speak (it is one of the few languages in Europe that is not indo-european).

Yesterday, some friends came over to the apartment. Justin, Caio, Andrej and I went to KFC. Yea, fancy. It was Caio's very first time eating KFC, so he was excited. We were supposed to go to another person's house after, but we were procrastinating. We decided to go to a liquor store and purchase some alcohol. Canada has a riducilous tax on alcohol which causes a regular sized bottle of Grey Goose Vodka to go from a normal USD price of about $30-50 to being $109.99. It was insane. So we managed to get semi-cheap alcohol, and headed back to my apartment. We played video games and watched animation things (yea, thats what animation students do in their free time) until Cecilia and Panya came over. We started to play some card games that Caio was teaching us. One was called Truco. It was quite interesting, but it was taking me too long to get the hang of it. He taught us like 50 other popular Brazilian card games after that too. It was fun.

So, here is one of the short animations we watched:

Watch falling art.divx in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Its quite disturbing, but the character design is amazing. I will look for more of the animations we watched and post links a little later.

Diwali

As I am sure many of you do not know, the Hindu festival Diwali (or Festival of Lights) has been going on for more than a week now. Vancouver is home to many south asians, mainly from the Punjabi speaking areas of India, thus; Diwali is celebrated here as well. Yesterday and today are the main events for Vancouver. I went to a community center yesterday to see what Diwali is all about. It was quite amazing. I arrived and entered a large room full of people, bright colors, delicious smells, and loud (but excellent) music. I bought some food and sat down to watch the performers. I have pictures, but I wasn't able to move around as freely as I wanted to, so there are some annoying angles and distracting microphones in some of the pictures. I also regret not bringing my zoom lens (I had room for only one).

This band below is called Sangha. They use traditional instruments from India, Iran, and Arab countries. Their compositions are original and really great. You can hear a sample here . I suggest taking a listen.
This artwork here is made entirely of lentils and other legumes.
I am going to try and find all sorts of interesting cultural events while I am here. It should be fun.