First week of AM !!!

So my first week of Animation Mentor is official, and I'm loving it !!!


We started off this week with an introduction video where most of the people representing AM and a lot of other animators from the industry talk about how it's like being an animator, and basically, why it is so awesome to have this as a profession. 

And because this was the first week, we didn't really have an assignment yet. We only had to fill out our profiles and make sure that we had a picture, and also introduce ourselves at the weekly Q&A. (which was a blast !)

So I met my mentor for this first term, Ray Chase, who is currently the directing animator on Free Birds at ReelFX and who is an awesome guy in general, and I also met my fellow classmates ^^ ! 

Allthough it was really early for me (5 am), it was a very interesting first meeting with all of them, and I really liked the atmosphere that was hanging in that virtual classroom. I'm really looking forward to get my first assignment and to continue my animation journey !


And also, from now on I'll try to post in this blog every week, probably around Sunday / Monday evening ;)

AnimationRigs Tutorials

The people over at AnimationRigs have made a couple of really great small tutorials which are a must-see for every animator ! These are nifty little tips and tricks (that you maybe didn't know yet) that can help you animate more efficiently ^^

I learned a lot from these specific clips, but if you go over to their vimeopage, there's even more !


Manipulators: In the second part they talk about aligning you manipulator to custom axes. This makes things easier when your character or object is totally unalligned in space and you can't rely on your world or local axes.



Camera Space Nudge: You can translate something with only a pixel (using Alt + arrowkeys) ! Ideal for fixing pops (walkcycles,...) and it's in your camspace so it doesn't matter if your axes are aligned or not !

Demoreel

I thought it would be a cool idea to post my current demoreel ( I say current but actually it's already a year old or so...), mainly to have an idea of where I came from and also to see how I have progressed after and during my time at AM.

So without further ado, I present to you my demoreel from 2012 ^^

(I'm also testing what the best way is to upload my videos, now it's through youtube so I hope it's OK. You might want to view it full screen.)

PS : I'd also like to thank Olivier De Groelard for creating my awesome banner, thanks a bunch mate !!!

A small introduction

Hello boys and girls,

My name is Sam Verschraegen, 23 years old, I live in Belgium and I'm a passionate 3D animator !

The reason why I decided to make a blog is because I have a lot of stuff coming up in the couple of months / years that I wanted to share with the rest of the world. And also because I'd like to document some things for myself and have some sort of place to drop my animation and progress.

Also I'd like to use this blog to spread some cool tutorials and other helpfull/interesting stuff I find or come across with on the internet or other media.

Before I continue, I have to tell you that I'm not a professional blogger and never will be, so if some posts seem weird or whatever, please keep that in mind ^^


So to come back to the 'I have a lot of stuff coming up' part.

•  First

I'M EMBARKING ON A CRAZY JOURNEY TO IMPROVE MY SKILLS FURTHER AT 

ANIMATION MENTOR !!! 

The thing that I've been naggin' about for several years has finally arrived ! I'm going to do AM ^^
Allthough I've already been animating for a couple of years and worked on several projects, I'm far from satisfied about my level of animation. I want to keep improving and keep pushing myself, and that's why I decided to join AM and improve my skillset further through the help of a lot of talented animators !

• Second 

I GOT A NEW JOB !!! 

I'm starting to work at the end of september at Dreamwall, as a figurant animator on a new animated feature called 'Asterix : The Land of the Gods'.
I'm very excited about this and really look forward to work on this amazing project !

 It will be heavy to combine both my job and AM but I'm really siked about both of them so I'm definitely going to make this work !



So I guess that's it for my first post. I think I made it clear why I wanted to make this blog and you can expect some more posts and interesting stuff soon !
 
Thank you for reading this,
Cheers !