My Masterclass Experience

[arifnbd]

i am still confused who is Rodney in this picture...??..i though Will as a Rodney...as i know he came from Japan.....!!....Rodney.post your picture.....

great to see them all...some of them we knew and some of are new i think....

Regards,
Arif.

[lavallelee]

Originally Posted by SpiralEFX

Rodney is the tall one inbetween/behind Meredith and Seth

[NateHorsfall]

I posted this on facebook, but this is a better spot for it, right?

It's a monstrous recounting of the week. Enjoy!

ALSO! I will be uploading all my photos and videos to a hosting server I have. Would you guys like to use it? I can set up a folder for everyone. I can't imagine it would destroy my bandwith.. because I have soooooo much space.

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I need to write all this down while I'm on a high note. I'd like to capture the real joy I got out of that week in Arizona, before things get hectic again. This will be extremely long. And probably full of typos. Oh well!

So for people who don't know, , I've been gone since July 4th all the way to Arizona.. to learn animation form Don Bluth. It's so sad that 75% of the people I say his name to, go "who?" but.. he made: Secret of NIMH (favorite animated movie of all time. period), All Dogs Go to Heaven, Anastasia, American Tail, A Land Before Time, Titan AE, and a whole bunch of others. The guy is a legend, and pretty much what I aspire to be in terms of making my characters feel real. So it should come as no surprise that this was an amazing experience for me.

It was his first class trying this out, so he was actually leaning along with us. Learning how to teach, learning WHAT to teach and what we didn't know (Like the X sheet. haha..). Some people expressed frustrations abo9ut not understanding things, and LOTS of contradictory statements.. however, I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone who didn't learn a TON. I learned more in this week class, than I did in roughly 6 months of school teaching. It was intensely challenging, but so fun too. The only way I can break this down is day by day. so lets do that.

Sunday July 4:
Arrival! Me, Willie- a kid I was rooming with who I had never met before, Arrived at the airport and met up with this girl Alexandra (Lexi) who was taking the class too. Owen (Robert) was supposed to get there early.. but his flight was delayed due to "mechanical failure". Nice. But right away we start having an awesome week.. We have to wait around for 3 something hours.. but we're artists, right? so we all share sketchbooks and stories. Instantly hitting it off well, and those 3 hours were nothing. Alexandra took off sooner to meet up with her roomate, Meredith, who we would catch up with later. Then it's off to the hotel, which was very very awesome, and had MULTIPLE pools! We staked our claim in the big one, and had a blast there before settling in for what awaited tomorrow..

Monday July 5:
Game time. Class starts at 9, which means it's time to get up around 8. Despite how early that is (for me), I'm not even a little tired because I'm so excited about doing this. We ate breakfast at the Xona (Hotel) cafe and then it's off to class. IN class, there are light boxes set up everywhere. We sit down, and then in comes Don Bluth.. This guy is, as I said before, a legend. But when he comes in, when he speaks to you, he's just so mellow. There is absolutely no ego with this guy. Instead, he just really really cares about the craft and is highly encouraging about drawing. The most important thing he says for us to take from this class is: You can do this. It's hard, but you can do it.
Then we get into how things will go down. He talks about this thing called the "X-sheet" which I had seen before, but barely used. He talks about timing animation to a beat with a metronome, and how directly tired to music animation is. He talks about animating on "8's, and 12's, and 16's" and so on. Right away, these are all brand new things that I've never done before. Then we talk about pan moves, and get to pick an assignment of this bird Jake- which you guys have seen me practicing, animating across a scene. I picked one which was 4 jumps across lilypads and then falling into the water on the 5th jump. I did this because it seems to be one of the ones with the most amount of character. And then off we go! animating away.
During this time, I briefly meet the other students there. It's: Myself, Willie, Alexandra, Owen, Meredith, Rodney, Seth, Janice, Felice (pronounced Feli-che. It's italian, and he's a guy.), Lavalle, Les, Kieth, and AJ. But these are very brief meetings. we're all hard at work. When class ends, we are SUPPOSED to leave.. but Owen and Alexandra stayed behind, which I originally gave them crap for.. but it actually turned out to be a huge, huge benefit. While they broke the rules, a bunch of us instead went to go get groceries.. but we have no FRIDGE.. so we have to be selective. Anyway. We go back to the room, hang out, draw, then off to dinner. Buffalo wild wings. damn good stuff. Come back, hit the pool again.. and draw! stopped around maybe midnight.
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[NateHorsfall]

Tuesday: July 6
At first this started out as a repeat from yesterday. Though Don is bewildered (in an amusing way) how we just don't understand the X-sheet at ALL. So there is yet another lecture on that. We ask lots of questions.. and he demonstrates a level of patience that is really quite admirable. If he gets frustrated, it's in a joking way. He doesn't hound us for never knowing it.. because he understands it's a lost art.
Then it's back to work. I talked to Don about the timing thing again, and after shooting my test, notice it needs to be on 16s, not 8s (in layman's terms, that means it needs to be twice as fast). This means a LOT more drawing for me. but hey, thats why i'm here, right?
During Lunch, Don proposes starting the class earlier.. 8am, to get an extra hour. I wince inside, but thats an extra HOUR with Don! obviously we all agree.
Class ends, and this time, me, Meredith, and Willie stay in the room with Owen and Alexandra.. since they proved we can actually do that, and AJ ends up staying too. This was the start of our increasing buildup of people there. More drawing! then dinner. I'm pretty sure on this day, we went to this buffet place.. with Alexandra, Willie, Owen, AJ, and Felice. It's already tuesday and this group is really so awesome. It's reminding me a whole lot of the "Fox cult" online gatherings with Laura and Ali and Kier, etc. Meredith actually reminds me a whole lot of Kenzi. Southern accent, ex-military (she flew helicopters!) and super nice. And I'm getting to know Felice and AJ more, which is cool because otherwise it was just the main 4 of us. Anyway.. great dinner, then pool time, playing Marco polo for like an hour.. And back to work! I stayed up animating til probably 2am.

Wednesday: July 7
Things are really heating up now. People are stressing out (gotta stop that, Willie!) getting discouraged, hating what they're doing or LOVING it, but with sooooooo much more to do. I'm pretty sure it's today that Meredith finished her animation. NEVER having animated before in her entire life, and beating everyone else! And it's not a race, or even a competition.. but she was pretty amazing.
As for the rest of us? Lots of changes, lots of stupid mistakes with the X-sheet and with the pan move and so on. For my part, I yet-again redraw the hop, which I've done twice now. I'm trying to make it look like he's sort of dancing across it, but it's just not working. I overcomplicated it, but I'm steadfast in trying to make it work anyway. Stupid! Ah well.
For dinner this time we were GOING to go to the same wings place as monday, but Lavelle suggests (more like corrals) us to a Vietnamese place as well. It was really good.. though my stomach disagreed with that assessment later. Fortunately though, this night we went with him, Kieth, Les, and Rodney I THINK.. I can't remember. But point being, we got to hang out with the rest of the class we didn't associate much with yet, which was great. Because they're all really cool people. I attempted to call Janice, but didn't get through. I did however, have a nice long conversation with Kieth about the game's animation business and whatnot. Really fun. Then back to the hotel.. pool.. and back to work! animation stop time? 3:30am

Thursday: July 8
Now it's intense. we only have one more day left. I'm actively preparing for an all nighter, but hoping I won't need it. It's pretty much nose to the grindstone from sun up til sun down. With a lunch break where Alexandra brought some Don Bluth stuff she got from her school (SCAD), which he donated there years ago! she brought the scans on her computer.. it it was really interesting to learn all the crazy tricks they did to make those movies. Huge thanks to Alexandra for that.
Then it's just endless work. We pretty much all stayed in that animation room until 3:30am. well, MOST of us. a few guys left. but it was a whole lot like college all over again. We ordered pizza, chatted, listened to music on my ipod.. The One Ups are a huge, HUGE hit with this crowd. Some are able to call out the games, but in general people just love the music. I will be pushing the one ups site their way..
This is an extremely fun night because, despite all the work left to do, we're all in it together (except Meredith, psh. Overachiever )so everyone can sort of relax with everyone else, and laugh, joke around, and just have fun. Joking about how much we hate Jake.. Felice talking about making schizophrenic frames where the bird is happy, then angry.. Willie randomly sketching out a demonic cat to kill the bird, playing "draw that character" games on the paper sheets.. it's really just a blast. I hung out about an hour after I needed to, just to help people shoot their scene, like Alexandra.. who has to do it twice! I stayed because I know it's so much easier to do that stuff if you have another person around to talk to

Friday: July 9
Last day! I shot mine last night and definitely am not happy enough to call it done. But I also know there is NO WAY I can do any more. I got 2 hours of sleep this day. I'm mind blowingly tired. But wait.. Gary Goldman (also someone who worked on all of the Don Bluth Movies. a Partner, basically) showed up! and brought Dragon's Lair posters to sign, and Banjo (their first animated short ever) to sign.. and then just hung out, for like 3 hours, talking with everyone. one by one by one. I come to find out that this guy is just really great. Super nice, obviously very talented, VERY encouraging, and all around so fun to talk to. I'd absolutely love to spend more time with him. But, I did get to tell him that NIMH is my favorite animated movie of all time, and I love TITAN AE. I got him and Don to sign my NIMH disc, Titan, Banjo, and that dragon's lair poster which i bought from them. Pretty awesome. But where the hell can I put it?! I'll figure that out later.
Since everyone is so busy shooting, or drawing, Don is free at the table, so it's with intense nervousness that I bring my sketchbooks up there and start to talk to him about that. We actually talked about a lot of things. He recognized Red.. actually Red's mother, but knew the character because he'd seen me show it before, which was a little awing to me. It's silly, but when one of your heroes actually recognizes your own work, it's pretty amazing for me. Anyway, at the start of class on Monday he asked if anyone has heroes of animation they look up to. I didn't want to look like a suck up, so I didn't say anything, but he is, and I told him so. We talked about what it is I wanted to do. I WANT to do animation, but my style is very illustrative. I also have MANY things I do, as many people have seen by now I'm sure. So it's hard. I do 3d animation and I call myself an animator, but taking this class gave me that "my god, I know nothing!" feeling. And even with the other students, it seemed like talking about 3d at all was kind of a joke. I actually felt embarrassed a few times to even say it.
Don also told me a story- a real, behind the scenes story of why Fox Animation was actually shut down. And it's pretty interesting.. if not sickening! So I won't publicly post it. But lets just say.. it's a whoooooole lot more than just "2d animation doesn't make money".
And oh yeah! Rodney gave out little sketchbooks he got from Japan, and someone (I forget who) suggested we pass those around to the students one by one and have people draw and sign their name. Like a year book, but way cooler. Don WAS the reason we all came together.. so I couldn't NOT have him as part of it. During my long talk with him, he drew me Ms. Brisby. I'll keep that book forever.
Everyone packed up, said their goodbyes to Don, took photos, and basically ran rampant with our fanboy/girl desires that we'd all been holding back from the start.. But Don was always happy to do it. He was as cheerful as he'd been all week. only at the END did we find out his dog needed to be put down. And he clearly loves animals.. he has alot. So I can only imagine how heartbreaking that is for him. Had I known, I would have given condolences. But he masks all that very well.
But time to cheer up. We hit the pool.. AGAIN! this time in the day! I shredded my feet on the rocky bottom on it because.. yes. it's like rocks on the side and bottom! more like pebbles, but still. LOUSY POOL SURFACE! After a few hours of that, we all gathered up to go drive waaaaaaaaaaay the hell out to Dave's (Don's Assistant, who operated the machines) Bar! and man it was huge! and incredibly good food.. and hell, they had a ROCK BAND play too! Can you ask for a better way to end the class!?

[NateHorsfall]

Saturday July 10
Class was over, so this was vacation day. Starting with.. sleep for 10 hours. **** yeah. Much deserved.. we woke up around 11ish, grabbed breakfast- and I had the best french toast ever. Seriously.. it's like angel food cake. Then thankfully got to hang out with Janice! Because she was off work that day around 1, and drove us around Arizona! Since we rarely hung out all this time, I was really glad to spend time with her finally. Thus making it so the only one I never spoke to much was Seth. Shame with that.. but he was always gone! Anyway..
Owen suggested that we go take a trip to the zoo. This was really stupid. it was roughly 108-110 degrees outside. But hey, at least we got the full TRUE Arizona experience.. Thats some hot weather, man. I survived it, but Owen was dying. I got a few sketches which I'll post later, and a bunch of photos. But! since it was so damn hot out, we spent very little time at the zoo. Took the train ride tour.. which showed how HUGE the zoo is.. and man, it's freakin massive! I would have liked to see.. well, tons more! Alas though, incredibly hot.
Because it was so hot, we decided to get water and cooled down in some place.. like barnes and noble. Here I got a phone call that threatened to ruin my trip, in the same way that a similar phone call tried to ruin a baltimore trip 6 years ago. But I handled it quietly and tried to just move on for now.
Next stop was Old Town scottsdale.. this was a pretty surreal area. Th outside looked very old west style (hence the name) but the INSIDE of these buildings were very modern. One Sushi place we went into felt like I just teleported to LA or something.. pumping music, lights, bubble lights.. so weird. but SO GOOD food. After that, we went to get ice cream- with me taking a brief detour to take pictures of the incredibly awesome sunset.. then ice cream. which was also, very very good.
And theeeeen back to the hotel. Saying goodbyes to Janice, and off we all went to swim. Ah! but the big pool we normally go to had a huge movie playing.. and people watching the movie.. in the pool! like a drive in, without the car. Very cool- but we wanted to play noisy games, so we sought out another one. Here, we played lots of marco polo, some jousting game, holding breath game, gliding game, lots of games. Must have played for like 3 hours. it was really great fun! Though I smashed up my foot on that stupid pool over and over...>_<
Wrapping up the night, everyone gathered in myself and Willie's room. sketching stuff, hanging out..

Sunday July 11:
Woke up late! scrambled to gather everything up and still made it to breakfast in a reasonable time. had that second awesome french toast, but couldn't eat as much as the previous day.. Then off to the airport to say goodbyes. Myself and Owen were in one terminal, and Alexandra and Willie in another. I was limping everywhere because of my damn smashed foot.. but sucked it up as we killed about 2 hours just walking around. Found a chuck jones art exhibit! It was amusing, interesting, and very eerie to hear him talk about the same stuff Don was talking about. Stuff I better work on! Also, Jones was apparently a very good painter.. and made tons of looney toons paintings. Awesome stuff.

Finally it was time to get on a plane and head off back to SF. I was so tired I passedout almost right away. Which is good, because there were these ladies next to me who would not. stop. talking. They reminded me of clucking hens.

This was one of the best trips I've taken in my entire life. I learned a great deal in so many areas, got to meet one of the best and nicest animators who have ever lived.. and met some of the best people I've come to know. Everyone was so dedicated, so driven.. it was really inspiring, pretty much all the time. I know this is long, but here are a few last notes:


Meredith- You're a monster. Doing homework AND that class AND finishing early? I just.. what the hell. Thank god you're such a great person, because it makes it impossible to hate you!

Willie- Boy, I had NO idea what to expect when I agreed to share rooms with a stranger, but I lucked out big time! you're very quiet, but great! a hell of an artist, and really nice! Sorry for keeping you up TWICE showing you my stuff. I just have too much

Alexandra- I can't get over how you're only 19. you're so talented and know SO MUCH about animation. You make me feel like a slacker! An absolute blast to hang around with too. It's impossible to be miserable or even stressed out when hanging around with someone enjoying themselves as much as you were.

Rodney- Thanks for the sketchbooks! that turned out to be the greatest idea ever. It was fun talking with you, I hope you keep at it!

Seth- What can I say? wish I talked to you more! Haha. maybe next time? Sorry man.

Owen- I owe you quite a bit. I owe you the entire introduction to this group, the forum, the class, and pulling me out of a rut on Sunday. I'll find a way to repay you for that some day. For now I'll say.. thanks for ending up as one of the best friends I have, and.. damn you for making me look bad.. because you're ridiculously talented

Janice- I'm so glad we got to hang out with you more, because you're awesome! Really talented and super nice to boot! Thank you IMMENSELY for the drive around on Saturday. It was fantastic. The best way to end things.

Felice- I need to introduce you to this other Italian director/friend of mine. You're so similar- well, he's more negative. haha. But it was a blast. when you become a famous animator, I'll frame by frame your stuff, so I can see all the "schizophrenic frames" you added on the last night, in a fit of rage.

Lavalle- Good to finally meet you! But luckily you don't need an apple to keep me away. I'm on the other side of the country, dick! =P
Good luck with everything. haha.

Les- You're incredibly good with effects, I really hope you make something out of it. I'll be watching! Thanks a ton for the water tutorial. It really, really helped.

Keith- I need to see more of your stuff. I heard inklings on things you may have worked on.. But it was good meeting you and chatting away at the restaurant. Thank god, another 3d animator, so I don't feel like an outcast!

AJ- Keep up the caricature stuff!I SUCK at that. It's something I should work on. You though, have it absolutely down. Great stuff.

Don and Dave- they will probably never read this, but thanks for the opportunity to meet all these wonderful people, learn so much, and just overall have such a great experience. Everyone kept saying "lets do this again next year!" well, I hope to. All that will stop me is money.

I'll be uploading pictures and stuff later. But for now, just had to get all that down. Whew. Have a good one everyone

[Seth]

Whoo! That's me in that photo! Yeah! Did I get put in the middle because I was most popular.......or because I was the shortest?

[Rodney]

Did I get put in the middle because I was most popular.......or because I was the shortest?

Rumor has it you were placed there as a new revenue generating scheme planned very carefully by marketing. Atari paid top dollar for that prime advertising space. Unfortunately it was about 20 years too late.

[SpiralEFX]

Classic Rodney...LOL

[Seth]

Ha ha! That's rich, Rodney!

[wilsaturn]

Originally Posted by arifnbd

i am still confused who is Rodney in this picture...??..i though Will as a Rodney...as i know he came from Japan.....!!....Rodney.post your picture.....

Hahaha...... AJ thought I was Rodney too on the first day of class.....

Anyway, I know Im a bit late and I guess there's nothing much I can say about how incredible the class is that hasn't already been said by everybody... but one thing I can add for me personally is how this whole experience has given me hope to continue pursuing traditional animation and also make me grow more confident in myself that I can do this.
I came in to the class the first day feeling a bit lost and uncertain, and came out the last day feeling really inspired and determined to work harder..... So a million thanks to Don, Dave and everybody in the class for this wonderful opportunity.....