First things first

So where is the animation? What kind of an animator I am? What is my style? You will get all your questions answered with this fancy bouncing ball animation. OK OK, not really but this animation is important for me because it was my first animation assignment. So here it comes! You will find the revised version on my upcoming progress reel.

(Hotel) Animator vs (Motel) Animator

OK, time to post! I mean we have reached week 10 but my last message is from week 5. The reason behind this is right now I am having hard time to even submit my assignments on time (also generally not happy with the results) so what to post? Last post become a lie then? Partially yes, partially no because you know it isn't totally my fault, work? (inner voice:excuses, excuses, excuses-hey, you again?). Anyway during writing my last sentence, a funny thought came into my mind, which I will now use it as my topic. I won't talk about it much and it is this: People sometimes ask about what I'm dealing with or what will I do in future when I say I want to be an animator nearly all of them understands animator as "tourism animators" working in hotels who try to cheer up people, run fun activities etc. It is kinda like when my father says he is metallurgy engineer it is understood as meteorology engineer and then comes some silly questions like how is the weather? This shows how a certain job type is underrated or unknown in a certain population, showing that animation sector in Turkey is like non-existent at all. I hope it will change in near future but nowadays I think there is no real reason for a good animator to stay in Turkey unless he is too idealist(runs his studio), does not have enough resources or no risk-taker. Hmm, I think I made my goal public:)
Anyway,back to work, here are some stu poses which did not qualify to be submitted as assigns. In order(left to right):Devastated, strength, excited, devas2. In stu pose assigns, I generally try to avoid cartoon cliches(that have strong sense of certain emotions) and both achieve orginality and strong feel but I know I am not quite there yet.

F=m*a

Well, week 5. Going through last 3 weeks of am, I’ve just realized that I’m not pushing myself enough, do the best I could in my assignments. For the last two weeks, I’ve left my assignment for the weekend, as it was my hobby or something; playing video games(why valve has to make such great games: TF2, HL2:EP2, Portal), net surfing, etc. and during this time dealing with my assignment on and off. In addition to this, I spent most of my time calculating the position and time of ball using physics laws (I can’t help it, it’s an engineering habit) and forgetting that animation is an art form. In fact, I should have had fun animating the scene instead of bothering with technicalities. Besides when you leave your assign to Sunday, surely you get the least possible comments/feedbacks from mentors and your classmates, which is a very bad thing. I guess our greatest/ruthless enemy is again ourselves. Inner voice:h=1/2gt^2(shut up!). From now on, I’ll try my best. Although the results may turn out to be crappy, I’ll know that I’ve pushed myself to some limit. Henceforth, R.Williams’ famous saying will be my first priority principle: “Animation is CONCENTRATION”.

Stumaniac

Upper two poses (based on some cartoon drawings) are communicating frightened.

Posing

OK, time to post another message. Here are rough versions of my sketches (with line of action drawn) for session 102. I selected 7th one for my stu pose but I am not putting it up here. Instead from now on I will only put my extra work and progress reels to my blog which will save me from doing a lot of uploads:) Anyway, I know pose 1 is not good and realistic enough because I did not want to deal with rope tensions and I did not have enough time to refine it (time to go to bed:). The other one, pose 4 can also get better with some minor modifications. I found that when the poses involve sense of weight (like bag in 4) or forces affecting the body shape(1), posing becomes much harder than doing even very fancy looking, eye pleasing poses without noteworthy forces. So I should better work on those more.

Whyanimation Inc.

In my humble opinion; an animator, at least a good one should have a very good eye for not only catching strong poses but also is able to capture movement (whether it is lively seen or is video reference) and do its analysis instantly in his mind. He must be creative, innovative, collaborative, flexible and most important of all dedicated to continuous improvement. In some people’s opinion in Turkey, these qualities are crap, animation or cartoons are nothing to be taken serious or a real business, it is childish, immature but we know these ignorant and “home of fixed idea” people, don’t we? and who cares about them? And for some people, to achieve these in a really all-time working environment and stay positive and healthy are very hard things to accomplish.

So, why one chooses animation? What is his/her driving force, motivation?

From the animator’s perspective of view, these qualities are not obstacles that need to be gained to reach the top; instead they see them as processes of their evolution, they gain them instinctually and as not duties or like but as parts of their lifestyle, enjoyment and enlightenment. And in the end, there is the biggest reward. Creating something from nothing, giving life, character, emotions to the dead material whether it is bits (0,1), lead on paper or bunch of photographs. For me, what equally attractive is telling stories right out of your imaginary world through animation. And animation is such a suitable medium for that. You don’t need fancy equipment, good actors asking for great deal of money or environment to be built. In most of the situations, a piece paper, a computer will be enough. You can have actors with limitless acting and movement capabilities and have environments only restricted by your imagination. So, may this force be with you my animator friends and be sure to use it for the da errr light side!

Meanwhile, my animationmentor experience is officially began and I tell you man:) though only 4 days have passed, it has been quite out of ordinary and fabulous. I met my mentor, James Chiang who looks like a friendly and skillful guy. I look forward to working with him. Other things like tools, videos, people and interactivity were great too. I looked my classmates’ previous work and wow! some of them have a skill level in modeling, animation or graphics such that they can be considered as second mentors to me.

Enough snack talking and let’s get to the business then. I have read class 1 syllabus and decided to draw poses and pose stu (an am rig) according to them, in order to show emotions that are not given in assignments. First emotion is FRIGHTENED. One advice though: do not ever use a ballpoint pen(like me) for sketching.

Tore Andre Flu

Well, am I the luckiest person on Earth or what? Prior to my am experience, I got sick on Friday, having a not much painful sore throat and nothing else. But on Saturday, I was on fire with exhaustion, very very painful throat ache and headache. It reminded me a Ren&Stimpy episode where Ren gets sick and Stimpy nurses him. Ren was looking normal from distant but when the camera zooms in he was looking disgusting with every kind of loathsome thingies on his face. I was a bit in a mood like that. Now I am feeling better with medicine support and great care.

Anyway, I logged into the animationmentor site at 3 am today and it was open! I browsed through the options but since I was very tired, I didn't chat with my classmates or explore in detail. Now I can't log into the site because of the ongoing maintenance I guess. Please don't keep us waiting, AM staff.
Meanwhile I think I am going to optimize and upload my site. Sorry for my crappy writing, eventually it will get better (I hope).