AnimationMentor- Class 4

Sweet! My new mentor for class 4 (Adv. Acting) is Brett Coderre. An animator at Pixar since A Bugs Life. We had our first q & a session last week where we all introduced ourselves. Brett seems genuinely committed to helping students become better ( he's been doing AM for 2.5 years!) and I get along well with my classmates really well, theres a lot of positive energy going around.

Some expression thumbnails for my shot.

Brett definitely takes a less is more approach. And sure enough, tonight he really ripped into my lip-sync test! Which, I kid you not, felt kind of reinvigorating because I spent a week away from it during break. Even though we are focusing on facial animation , he had a real chip on his shoulder about simplifying the acting to be more natural. He felt like I was hitting too many beats than I needed too, especially with the arms, which made it lose a lot of the intensity.
I remember watching Brett's critiques on students' work earlier on when I was in class 1, and I distinctly remember that that was his major comment on most people's work. To simplify! To break down those several main key poses into 1 or 2, and work within those. Or to hit this pose and "work within it". I went in to this one thinking I was simplifying, but I need to work to boil ideas down even more. Ha, I dunno, most days I feel like I get it, other days I get knocked on my ass.

Brett going over some of my work during my first e-critique of class 4.