Just a small disclosure, I have never attended an online school, so many things surprised my be trivial or routine for an experienced student, but still those represent the way I feel today about animation mentor school.
It is the middle of the 7th week already of anngri’s AM01 class, so I’ve collected quite a bit of experience with the school through anngri’s descriptions, looking at eCritiques from her mentor or reading comments of other animation mentor’s students.
1. That’s not simple.
Although it all starts with bouncing balls and pendulum, fundamentals of animation are not trivial. You have to think about, understand and experience via various experiments each one of them, so that you can apply them appropriately even to a simple object like a ball. Spacing, timing, anticipation, following through, overlapping and much more take time to grasp. And more you experience more nuances of each technique you start to notice and pay attention to.
2. Animation takes time.
Well, maybe I am stating the obvious, but yes, animating even a simple thing takes a lot of time if you want to make it look nice. Therefore, I would probably recommend every student to start working on their assignments as early as possible. For those who don’t know Animation Mentor’s schedule – each assignment is due by midday Sunday of each week, and oh, boy, we’ve had a few sessions until 2-2:30am to “get it right”.
3. Fundamentals are hard to get excited about.
It makes sense, that before one runs, it should learn to crawl and walk, but tweaking the bounces of the ball, over and over again can get tiring. When we look at the reels of others, most of them are fun and energizing, that the stuff my lovely Anngri is eager to create and it is hard to temper herself down and stick to and concentrate on the freaking balls 🙂
But she is doing great and I am trying to support her as much as I can.