FMX Diary Part 2

Wow, was that a week just passing by?!

Ok, so lets try to wrap this up:

1. Animation Mentor

Wow, finally: real animation mentor folks, and lots of them! And it was a real fine crowd too. When you arrived at the Festival site in the mornings, you could just walk over to the AM booth and have a chat with everybody. Then we would go to the panels together, have lunch, go see more panels or just kept hanging out. And then it was dinner and beer til late. It was great to see how the community stuck together during the festival.
Bobby Beck was there, and took the time to give extensive feedback on students' demoreels, which was really cool. I was looking forward to meet these folks and I couldn't be happier with how the whole week has turned out. Can't wait for next year!

2. Input Input Input!

As I said in Part 1, I attended Ed Hooks' Acting for Animators Masterclass. So much interesting stuff about the acting side of animation! Did you know that when two people talk to each other, the one talking will look into the opposites face about 40% of the time whereas the listener looks into the talkers face at about 80% of the time? No? That the person listening is most of the time busy to think of what to say after the other person is done talking? Guess you knew that one! But for animators it's specially important to know and be aware of. If you can make the listener display believably that he is in a thought process, you can add so much to your shot!
If you're an animator make sure you go get his book, it's filled with gold!
Then there was Bobby Beck's school presentation. I was expecting him to simply just introduce the school and what it's all about. but instead he gave a lesson in acting choices, where to draw inspiration and reference for your shots from and so on. Totally unexpected and really helpful as you can read in part three...

3. Inspiration

Last week's assignment was to come up with the layout for our dialogue shot exercise. I worked something out, but was never really happy with what I came up with. Well, after Bobby's talk and Ed Hook's class I was aware of what I've done wrong and went right back to my place to think my shot over. And I think the idea I came up with is really worth the trouble I'll be getting myself into now:) Since I was busy with the festival and brainstorming, planning and stuff, I now have two days left to create the new layout AND make a first blocking pass..
Well but it's totally worth the extra effort -I went home a day earlier than planned and even missed the closing party-.  The shot is going to be a lot more entertaining and believable and, well... just plain better. Once the superhurry of the next couple days is over, I'll try and write a post where I compare the two layouts and analyze why I made some of the changes. So look out for that one!

So, is that all there's to tell about last week? No, certainly not, but if I kept writing about all the good things that happended, I'd still be sitting here tomorrow and I really need to get going with my shot;)
I really had a blast at FMX and it was great to meet the Animation Mentor folks and staff, listening to great panels and enjoying the occasional 7 beers.. I'm all charged to tackle this last assignment at Animation Mentor and looking forward to see how it develops over the next weeks.
I'll keep you posted, thanks for tuning in!

Christoph