Fri, March 25, 2011
Done!—2:00 PM
Today was my last day as a student at Animation Mentor. I can't believe it's been a year and a half already; I've had an amazing experience, and I don't think I've ever learned so much so fast in my life. (Although my mom makes a pretty good case for the steep learning curve from age 0 to 2.) I'm thrilled with the animation I've produced so far, and I have plenty of new stuff to work on next. It's a relief to be free of weekly deadlines (especially Sunday afternoons - not fun), but of course they're replaced by the anxiety of launching a job search for my first time in over a decade. (Luckily it's not a highly competitive field or anything.)
This week, with the animation nearly finalized on my assignments, I turned to the lighting and rendering stage of the process. Waiting for shots to render includes a lot of downtime (most studios devote a room full of computers to the task), so I coded a quick script which alerts me on my phone whenever renders are finished. I had to learn some Python to pull this off (the scripting language, not movie quotes), but now I don't constantly have to check the computer's progress. I can watch a TV show or even go out with friends, and just wait for the computer to call me. ("Gotta go; render's done!")
Once I have all the elements rendered (this ranges from one to five separate "passes" depending on the shot), it's time for compositing, color balancing, and editing. It's kind of nice to have these non-animation steps in the animation process, because it gives me a little breather from going through the same motions, but I'm still doing something creative and focusing on making these shots better. (It's amazing how much the right lighting adds to a scene.) I'm putting the finishing touches on these shots right now, and then I'll be able to debut my demo reel for all to see.
After that, of course, it's right back to the grindstone of improving it with new animation – I can't expect Pixar to hire me on the very first try.
AC — Sun, 3/27/11 1:25pm
Hooray!! Congrats on a great milestone!
Brandon — Mon, 3/28/11 10:41am
I'd like to see Baby Jameson do some animation work.
I'm sorry; that may have come off as sarcastic. I really would like to see it. Perhaps you can do a scene of Baby Jameson doing some animation work (preferably a scene of Adult Jameson doing some animation work).