Spring Break! (which was at the end of April...)

So, what did I do!? First thing, I went to a cool lunch with people from the term below me. Mario and Paolo had an Italian costinata. It was great! I got to know the people in that class a little better and got to eat delicious Italian food.

Later in the week, I went up to Grouse Mountain for a hike. It was pretty difficult for me (since I haven't done cardio exercise in a long time) AND not all of the snow melted yet, so I could have died several times... (Dont worry mom, i didnt die). But I did take some great pictures.










We played frisbee several times at English Bay. It was a good time. We decided to go on a trip to Vancouver Island (10 of us) to stay at a place called Tofino for 3 days. Ill tell you about that in the next post.

...Continued from previous post

So, at my presentation, I presented the original story idea and animatic, since I put so much work into all of that. I did tell everyone after that I changed my idea. They seemed ok with it, so I was feeling good. After the presentation I talked to Sarah about what sort of guidelines I should follow for creating an exercise based demo reel, and she said she would tell me everything at the start of term 4. Great!

So, fast-forward one week, Cecilia had a party at her apartment for our last day of term 3. At about 12:00 am or so, all of the animators in the class recieved an email from Sarah saying that she is leaving VFS temporarily to work as a lead animator on some project. You can imagine how we all felt. This woman had seen all of our projects and was supposed to be our animation teacher for the next 3 terms. Wow! Dont forget, I have no idea what to do with my project........

Huh, so, I tried to enjoy my break. Luckily, I did.

What did I do during spring break!?!??!
(to be continued...)

Wow, im bad at this recently...

So the last post I made, which was in April but actually published today, was waaaay back in term 3. So much has changed regarding my presentation and stuff since that post.

Before, I wrote that in term 3, we create ideas for our final project and speak to our mentors to get help and suggestions. I wrote that I was nervous about the presentation I had in the next few days. Well, I was actually extremely stressed. I was struggling with my story idea and basically anything to do with my final project. I created a cool little character (which I will post here when I get to school tomorrow), but I still felt that I was getting nowhere with everything. I spoke to my mentor, Sarah, about my story and she gave me suggestions. Basically she was pulling ideas out of nowhere. SOoo, I quickly went to work overhauling my story, only to have another mentor tell me that what I had before this was better. I struggled some more and decided to make a decision and start creating a 3D animatic.

I spent about a week creating the animatic for a meeting with George, then another half of a week recreating/changing it. One stress-filled evening when I was feeling hopeless and angry, (two days before our final presentation and a week before the end of term) I frantically e-mailed Sarah (the animation mentor) to tell her I was going to ditch my idea. So imagine that, something I spent 2 months + creating and braingstorming for, tossed out...

Let me explain why I did this. Prior to my decision we had a animator guest speaker from Rythem & Hues (a vfx company) come to speak to us about work. We are all so focused on our demo reels here and he pointed out that for an animator, all they look for there is simple exercises that really showcase your skills as an animator, not a story teller. They dont give a shit about the story, sound, visual look, or anything like that. They just want to see straight up animation.

After this presentation, I started looking into other companies I wouldnt mind working for, and they are all basically requesting the same thing in a demo reel. So I looked at my "story" and animatic, and found I had barely any animation at all. There was lots of button pushing and lever pulling, which to me is not only boring, but doesn't display my skills as an animator. I finally decided that I would do a reel based solely on a variety of exercises. At that point, 2 days before the presentation, I felt like a huge weight was lifted, and I could finally relax.

I shall continue this in another post to keep it easier to read.