Was up very early to get to Orientation on time across town. Upon signing in we where given a welcome pack, pens, a drinking bottle and a rucksack! We sat down and watched the intro presentation showcasing some of the work that has been created at VFS so far.
Shuttle Bus!
Then using our trendy key cards we made our way up to the Visual Effects and Animation floor. The first thing you notice is how proud the school is of its alumni and the things they have worked on. Immediately as you walk in there is a District 9 poster signed by Niel Bloomkamp and some of the Visual Effects team. As we where toured round each of the rooms we where greeted happily by the people in them before they explained what they did there. More posters, this time for Toy Story 3, 9 and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs to name a few. Lining the corridors are framed artworks from previous graduates, with a level of detail and precision and variation that someone could only dream of achieving. Before we had even sat down you where loaded with inspiration.
Todays lessons where firstly Introduction to classical animation, where we learned to bring personality and life into a sack of flour jumping off a table. And after lunch there was Character Design, lead by one of the most charismatic and happy guys I have ever had teach me.
Character Design had to be my favourite of the day. Taught by Mike West. Winding down in the afternoon watching some old Tex Avery cartoons, while being taught quick fire techniques to building some great characters, teaching us all the basics of how people relate to characters, along with which appeal to different age groups. The beginning of the session we where given a stack of paper and just told to keep drawing throughout the afternoon, each hour he gave us something new to try out. Here are some of the drawings I came up with today:
Once 4 o'clock came along we where free to wander the building as we wished, if we wanted to cary on animating from the morning we could just go back in and help ourselves. A few of us sat and chatted with Mike for a while about some of his work. Check out his blog for some examples.
Fully inspired I took to a few coffee shops at the end of the day to do some people watching and some drawing. Nice end to the first day, can't wait till tomorrow!
-Jonny
2 comments:
Fantastic Jonny sounds amazing, can't wait for day 2 Blog.
how many in the class where are they from ?
class has around 17 people in it, some are from North America, but one is from Australia! So a varied group of people! :D
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