4

History class was cool. We watched the beginning of "The Incredibles" and analyzed the use of colour and the way we sympathize depending of camera movement and editing. Really interesting.

In animation principles class, Andy gave us yet another challenge in the world of "Cubeman". We had to make an animation of two characters, and by using our knowledge of body language, making one of them dominant and the other submissive. Hard excercise, but interesting and useful for improving skills and remembering all the difficult principles of animation.
I was happy with mine, but once i started animating i realized i shouldnt have used so many props, in order to truly express body language. But i followed through and was very happy with it.


We continued in Maya making a full 3dCubeman jump from a ledge. In stepped keyframing. Very difficult to get the timing right, but once you've made all the right movements, the timing can be tweaked and changed around. Which i think is one of the main advantages of CG animation.

Week no.3

Three weeks into it, and im loving my course more and more.
In Animation principles class, we added another animation principle to the "Cubeman" Animation. Its called Overlap, and apparantly it is the motion which any character makes AFTER the main action. So i made my "Cubefellow" jump towards a ledge and then spinning his arms to balance himself back into position, as he almost tumbled head first to his death.
Then we animated a bouncing ball in Maya, using stepped keyframing. This was way more difficult than i had thought, but it was a good exercise to get used to timing and adjusting timing in Maya. The result was pretty good i thought, but i guess you could lways add more keyframes to those animations.
On Thursday we drew more naked guy. But this time he used more "animated" poses. as if in mid action. Good exercise, and depending on the pose, sometimes very difficult.

2nd week

In History class, we were given examples of stereotypical southern black people portrayed in animation. Interesting to learn abouth the parallels between Coonskin and Songs of the south(which is a disney movie).
In Animation Principles class, we animated a bouncing ball and a "cubeman" jumping down from a ledge. These were both tricky and challenging, but the techniques of the animations were very interesting. I comleted the task much more satosfactory than i would have thought. And that gave me a craving for making more in the same style of animation.
In Georg's Maya class we animated a bouncing ball, and tweaked the specifics of the movement to near perfection. I really enjoy everything new i learn about Maya (which is a LOT).

First week

My first week of school started with History and Theory class. Which was fun. And surprisingly interesting. We talked about symbolism and was shown one of the earliest animations ever called Gertie the Dinosaur.
In the principles class, we drew a circle animation of a circle that transformed into whatever. I panicced and made it explode. We also learned useful basics in the Maya software.
On wednesday, Oli Brown taught us how to illustrate notes instead of writing them. his theory proved useless to me, as i cant do anything while listening, musch less remember what the things are supposed to mean.

Welcome to my Blog

I thought i'd take this opportunity to briefly describe my transition from an ice-cold Norwegian viking, to a sub-tropical Cornish Englishman.
My girlfriend and I, left our hometown Harstad early morning Wednesday sept.17th.
All the traveling was, as always, very unpleasant. But finally we reached Falmouth and headed straight for our designated b&b, where we spent the next 3 1/2 weeks(!!!) looking for appartments.
School started, but the scholarship we were promised, was still nowhere to be seen.
With the help of some overpaid accomodation agency, we finally found our new home. Though we had to sleep on the floor the first coulpe og nights, i feel that from now on things will pick up, and we can relax and spend more time at school, the pubs, the beach etc...