Well this week was all about animating animals and creatures. As always, Rick O'Conner put together an interesting lecture. For those of you non-AMers, Rick O'Conner likes making his lectures look like movies. He puts in camera angles, cuts, and special effects. They are usually cheesy, but definitely fun to watch. This week's lecture was a short one and the first 1/3 of it had nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I definitely got some good info out of it. The animal stuff was mostly a review for me because I had taken an animal drawing for animation class at DeAnza. There still was some new stuff and the info on insects and creatures was really interesting.

The first 1/3 of the lecture, while having nothing to do with animals or creatures, was enlightening. It basically was an animator taking about how you "establish yourself" at a studio or on a show (studio-speak for "film"). He said at first you will get a bunch of small, not so interesting parts of shots to work on. No matter how boring they may be, you should work your butt off to get those finished as fast and thoroughly as possible. After a while of doing this you will have demonstrated that you can get things done in a timely fashion. At that point if you feel comfortable enough you might ask for an interesting shot. Usually it would be one that you've had your sights on for a while and you know exactly what you want to do with it. If you get lucky and they agree, then you have to hit that shot out of the ballpark. You have to nail it or its back to square one. If you indeed nail it, then the director or supervising animator will be more likely to give you more interesting shots because they can trust you to do a good job. It makes sense. Very cool stuff.

Anyway, here is the new and improved version of my shot. I re-blocked some of the actions and shuffled some stuff around to make it more clear and interesting. I have only 2 more week to finish this shot......yikes!