Finally AnimationMentor ALUMNI

For those who follow my blog, I'm Alive!!!

I have finished my journey at Animation Mentor... FINALLY ;D
& Super excited for the graduation this summer woohooo
I also moved to California mid of April, still looking for jobs though,
hoping preparation meets opportunity, can't wait to start my animation career :D

My personal website is up now, check it out www.ameermalkosh.com
at the moment I'm planning for new shots and will update you soon with my progress.

All I can say is that I'm so happy and proud of this achievement, It's just the foundations, a start of longer journey.

Special Thanks to my Mentors: Anthony Wong, Marlon Nowe, Nick Bruno, Jalil Sadool,
Jay Davis, Elliot Bour, Greg Whittaker, & Kevin Koch For all the knowledge and guidance, Many thanks to the AM Family, both students & staff for the continuous support and feedback, My parents for their help and encouragement, And finally THANKS to BOBBY BECK, SHAWN KELLY & CARLOS BAENA for creating such an AWESOME SCHOOL & COMMUNITY.

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 9

Oh My, few more weeks left to wrap this amazing learning experience, still too much to learn and experiment with, anyways here's my latest progress on the two dialogue shot followed by shots I may keep on my reel.

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 8

here's how the Valium shot have progressed this week

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 7

Here's what I did this week, still needs so much work



also posting the original scene from Death at a funeral. I had to cut some bits out to fit the assignment 15 second limit

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 6

Baby steps!

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 5

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 4

here's what I did for this week

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 3

I worked on pushing the exaggeration for the tennis shot, tweaked the spacing and the arcs, loosened up the animation a bit. While for the Valium shot, It's still muddy, but getting closer.

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio Week 2

So based on last week's critique, Kevin advised me to start this term by flushing out the mechanics of the tennis serve shot, and on top of that shot to re-stage the "Valium"shot, It's still floaty,choppy & mechanical but less distracting.

AM Animal & Creature Animation Class

Today Animation Mentor announced the launch of the long waited Animal & Creature Animation Master Class,

Trailers & info about the class here

This Animals & Creatures course is over two 12-week classes, students learn how to animate quadrupeds, flying animals, fantasy creatures and nonhuman characters. Students use three new advanced character rigs provided by Animation Mentor and learn how to integrate animation into live-action footage. Students will learn professional workflow techniques and receive face-to-face mentoring from top creature animation talent working in the industry today. Students also have access to a rich library of lectures where animators examine their shots from feature films and share tricks of the trade!

AM's PURE AWESOMENESS :D

AM Class 6+: Polishing & Portfolio / Kevin Koch

My mentor for this class will be Kevin Koch; with 14 years in the animation biz. He started out doing traditional, hand-drawn animation, first at Warner Bros. Feature Animation, then at DreamWorks. While at DreamWorks he transitioned to CG animation, and worked on 'Shrek 2,' 'Madagascar,' and 'Over the Hedge.' Most recently he animated on 'Rio' at Blue Sky Studios, and he's now at Rhythm &Hues on 'Hop.'


Just submitted the first assignment for this class, a compilation of almost all the shots I did at AM, the first 4 are my pick for what I think of as "Money Shots" ( of course when polished end of this class).

I'm extremely excited to start this class now that I have the graph editor on my side :D also having a chance to be a full-time student is a HUGE bless I'm very THANKFUL for my PARENTS support.

on the down side the internet is VERY SLOW here in JORDAN!!! I'll upload the reel tomorrow,

& The Preparation continues

15 days to start the polishing & portfolio class at AM and the preparation continues...

Here's the Happy go lucky almost done,


For the dialogue shot "Zero", I worked on the first part


Still Fixing the tennis serve

Preparation for Polishing & Portfolio Class

Here's an update on what I've been working on in preparation for Animation Mentor's Polishing & Portfolio class. Other than experimenting with walk cycles, I'm going back to my old shots and slowly cleaning up all the mess, also been learning how to create textures and how to render out my shots, not that fancy but something nicer, instead of the default naked bishop rig.
All in preparation to polish it under the supervision of another amazing AM mentor.

here's a teaser for my dialogue shots "Zero" & "Valium"














And here's an almost done walk cycle, Happy Go lucky attitude walk



And finally a "Before-After" wip of the Sticky Door Assignment

Animation "LOCK DOWN" II

I'd like to pass something about art work flow that I have learned from a very inspiring & a very passionate animation mentor student I met this summer at Siggraph,
DANIEL ASHER HARMAN.
Work on different projects at the same time, each project in a different stage of production, one in an early planning/search stage, another in its early stages of production, another is almost done, and one that is done but you still can add to it or polish more.

This approach to will keep you motivated, will increase your productivity, and will give you a chance to bounce back & forth between different projects without getting bored from working on the same on & on.

For example in animation, jotting down ideas for future shots, gathering reference, planning for those shots, shooting extra video reference, drawing thumbnails, shot in blocking stage, Shot coming out of blocking & a shot in Polishing stage. Might sound too much but If you really want to jump to that next level, this is a very successful approach.

I'm currently working on 3 shots, polishing a walk cycle, and a Tennis serve shot and a cartoony run in blocking stage, along with planning for future shots.

Here's a teaser for what I'm working on

Cartoony Run Blocking (Jason Ryan tutorial)



Tennis serve Blocking (Haven't worked on the timing yet)


And still polishing the walk cycle

Animation "LOCK DOWN" I

Now that I have all the time in the world :)
I'm burying myself Home, digging into all the resources I can find to learn more about animation & Maya. I'm a bit late to go through a VERY IMPORTANT TUTORIAL about How Splines Work.

The Splinophilia Tutorials by the GREAT VICTOR NAVONE Helped me gain the Graph Editor as a friend. After I understood the difference between the types of tangents and how the curves in the Graph Editor works with Timing & Spacing, IT'S LIKE MAGIC!!!
It's like something clicked and I become in control, I'M SO HAPPY
THANK YOU VICTOR NAVONE...
Here's a walk cycle test I'm just about to send out to my AM peers for critiques,

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

here's some of the work I did for Classes 5&6 along with some bad news :(

The Animatic for my Short Film I did in class 5


The shots I ended up with end of class 6



I haven't posted in a while, and from the title of this post, something must've gone terribly wrong!!! well... not terribly wrong but definitely something's went in the wrong direction.

Transmitting this update for the first time overseas from JORDAN. Having to live the next 6 months here, back with my parents was the Desperate Measure I had to take about a month ago, when I got my final grade for my final class at Animation Mentor "Short Film Production"; Unfortunately NOT a passing grade.

Along the fact that I had to quit my job end of class 5, stayed unemployed for about 3 months only to dedicate all my time to finish my film. Failing the class was a MAJOR CRISIS I had to go through the five stages of DENIAL, ANGER, BARGAINING, DEPRESSION, and finally ACCEPTANCE. No need to illustrate more on each stage hehe but I went through a really hard time, until I realized what's the root of all the problems.

Trying to balance a full-time job & school is only slowing me down, Instead of advancing my skill set, I found myself learning by trial & error, only trying to make the deadlines, sometimes it worked but other times I was hitting the same barriers again and again, lost my passion at the end too, everything went wrong mainly when opening the Graph Editor, when moving out of blocking to splines.

I needed some time off to absorb the shock, I needed to go through my notes from previous classes, to go back to BASICS, the principles of animation, the bouncing ball exercise, a simple walk cycle, I needed to practice and experiment more, try out different work flows, different animation methods, reading the bunch of books I bought, Jason Ryan tutorials waiting for the play to click, mainly to apply what I have learned so far.

That's why I decided to take a break from Animation Mentor, go back to living with my parents in Jordan, then to retake class 6 on January Well prepared.

Class 4: Last Assignment

A very late update of my progress in the advanced acting class,
starting with the Audio lines for the multi-character dialogue shot,
the final multi-character dialogue shot "VALIUM", the final for the "ZERO"
and a couple of the facial expression assignments.

Audio Lines


Multi-Character dialogue shot "VALIUM"


"Zero" Final dialogue shot

Class 4: Advanced Acting / Jay Davis

My mentor for this class is JAY N. DAVIS, he was sequence supervisor for "HELL BOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY", before that a supervising animator for Disney's "Meet The Robinson's", he also worked as animator in "Kangaroo Jack", "Atlants: The Lost Empire", "Dinosaur", & "The Hunchback of Notre Dame".

Starting with a late post of the first 3 weeks of this term, "Zero" dialogue shot almost done, I'm looking up audio lines for the multi-character dialogue shot. I'm also posting the facial expression assignments where we have to look up images that communicates a clear emotion & recreating it using the Bishop rig.

Adiós 2009

Here's the last post for the year 2009, so excited to start 2010 (Year 3 for me in the united states) hopefully more achievements, adventures, & good times to remember...

Looking forward to start Class 4 (Advanced Acting ) this Monday, & like every class excited to know who's my mentor, classmates, & finally learn how to add the facial performance, & how to deal with multi-character dialogue shots...Awesome stuff
Also looking forward to move to California hopefully this coming spring, I'll be counting the days...
And hopefully make it to Siggraph, ComicCon, & AM annual BBQ its going to be a great summer.

I'll end up my post with the final shot I had at the end of the class, not satisfied with the result, I'm still weak in the polishing phase, but I feel I gained more confidence & skills after redoing the class.




HAPPY NEW YEAR :D
CHEERS

AM307+: Zero "Blocking"

Here's the first blocking pass for my dialogue shot "Zero"
hope the the staging is simple & clear for the purpose of this shot.
I still need to add more breakdowns for different parts of the shot specially the hands swing for the part where he says "wax off"
and the zero threatening gesture which is only the extremes now...

I just noticed that I'm moving the hips at the beginning maybe too much!

Hope its looking good for a start...