Oh wow... been a little while eh? Sorry y'all! Class 4 got super hectic with work and combined with the curriculum (as my wife can surely attest) i had very little free time.
Class 4 i had the pleasure of Mr Steve Cunningham of Dreamworks as my mentor and i learned a great deal from him. He had a magnificent way of pushing you as far as you could go and helping you come to your own creative solutions. I still check in with steve from time to time to make sure i'm not slipping! Class 4 is an introduction to acting class. The first half of the class is spent on a pantomime shot (no dialogue) and the second half you begin your one person dialogue shot (which you continue in class 5.) Steve really pushed me to choose a dialogue piece that was dynamic enough to develop a character and pushed me to be active in the scene (as opposed to just having a half body character sitting down and talking type shot.)
Class 5 is advanced acting and in it you spend a few weeks doing the facial animation on your one person dialogue and spend the bulk of the class working on your 2 person dialogue shot. I had the pleasure of Mr. Brett Coderre for this class and once again really learned a ton from him. He really drove home how to work with in a pose and keep things simple. I'm still getting a handle on it, but i can at least say i'm conscious of trying it. haha.
So here i am entering class 6. Polishing and Portfolio. The last step before graduating from the Advanced Character Animation program. Crazy. I can't believe how fast it's blown by and how much i still have to learn. That's the beauty of Animation. Every door you open just opens on to a whole other set of doors you didn't know existed. For this class i have Mark Oftedal whose famous for some pretty amazing shots in the Toy Story movies. My last mentor Brett spoke very highly of him and said he's the man for class 6 so i'm pretty stoked.
Here's my progress reel to date. Really excited to see how much further i can push these shots! in addition to all these shots i have 2-3 more 1 and 2 person dialogue shots i did in my off time at AM that i might include to try and clean up.
onward!
rock.
ryan