Wednesday, 24 January 2018

Getting back my Mojo at Anim Dojo

At the start of this year I decided that 2018's mission was to be a better animator. This August will be a milestone for me. It will be a decade since I became an animator. While I am relatively happy with my skills, I feel that it's easy to get comfy and I want to push myself to the next level. Another factor of pushing myself is that as an animation supervisor and lead in both 2d and CG I feel it's my job to help my junior animators and my team as much as possible. I want to be a good mentor to them. I feel I owe it to them to get my butt into gear. All of these reasons pushed me to join an online animation school called 'Anim Dojo'. Anim Dojo is a online animation site that is aiming to teach people who can already animate, how to animate better. 


When you've been an animator for many years , someone asking you to explain/ teach your process of working can sometimes feel like a golfer trying to explain their swing. They can use the tech speak but don't really know what they are technically doing to make it different from anyone else...they just do it and can't explain the nuisances, which is where Anim Dojo is coming in. 
We all know the tech speak of key poses and inbetweens but sometimes just saying 'work in a pose' can be daunting to Junior animators.  Animdojo is forcing me to breakdown (animation pun intended) my process. It's amazing to really feel like I'm working out the basics again and it's helping me deconstruct my work. 

Fingers crossed I can know all my bad habits out and build back up stronger. I've done it for two weeks and I already notice a HUGE difference. 

It's been stupidly fun so far and because I am paying for it each month it is pushing me to work in my own time. I have allocated three week nights to it so far but I'm so eager that I may do more. 

It is the cheapest online anim program I've found (which is a huge plus because I'm a horrid cheapskate) at only $30 (aud) a month. This is starting to sound like a paid advert and it definitely isn't. I just think it's something the animation industry has been missing and everyone should jump on it. It also helps that the company running it is called Blue Zoo where I use to work. I know they are an amazingly forward thinking company who are enthusiastic about their animators becoming better and not just worrying about their deadlines. 

To sum up...DO IT! 

I'll keep you up to date and post animations that I do from scratch. There are a lot of tasks that involve Maya scenes with your keys already given to you. This is to help practice timing (such a great idea) or scenes with the start and end keys in place so that you create your breakdowns (another genius idea). I won't post them because I don't want to show other peoples poses but I'll show you some work soon. 

p.s their rigs are to die for! 

Saturday, 13 January 2018

New Year - New Creative Challenges

Happy New Year everyone!

It was a crazy 2017.

I started drawing like a loon and posting my drawings daily to Instagram:

and excitingly I have started a podcast that I absolutely love recording with my oldest friend of 23 years (and boyfriend) about Science Fiction. The basic concept is we have some drinks and I propose a fundamental change to the world and then we build a new world around that rule. How would it influence science , population, art and culture?

It's just some silly fun but over 2000 people have listened so far (what?!).  It's exciting and I can't wait to carry on in 2018.

Other exciting adventures and missions are:

* Learn more Toonboom
* Paint more

What are your creative plans?