Animae Caribe

For the whole week I have been on UWI campus doing workshops to do with this festival. It's an animation and new media festival and this is the 4th year. I have only missed one, so this one I made sure not to miss. I am actually skipping a couple classes for it because this is way more important. It's first week - I have an excuse. I get to meet people in the industry and network a bit. Today I came away with a few contacts so I'm busy updating those. I hoard contacts.

I was learning Maya today. Hooray! It's hard and we didn't get that far as per picture. Got as far as a table and animating a bouncing ball. That's all really that can be possibly taught in such a short time. Modeling is pretty difficult - I can barely start to imagine what to do with this. I suppose you get it after a while, but I think I'd need a year of doing absolutely nothing else to get started in that field.

Still not sure which I prefer; hand-drawn traditional, experimental (I dig the raw stuff), or 3D fancy schmancy. Well I naturally like hand drawn stuff especially these days, but the 3D realm is a nice area. A mixture would be rather groovy. As I've seen so far this week it is possible and can actually turn out really well. There's so much more I can ramble on about but I'll save it for now.

Yesterday I had my first film class and it's going to be a lot of film screening and analysis. Fun! I think it's the only reason I agreed to go to school here and do this course. Imagine going to class to watch Shrek. Sweet? Yes.

We'll be making our own film for the final year project starting from next semester, so I actually should start thinking about that, especially if I want animation in there - which would rock. Time flies quickly - I don't want to be rushing that at all. There's stuff I actually want to be thinking about now since I have a little more time that the other full timers. I got lucky. Really lucky.

That's all for now - fed up seeing this window open.

By the way please come check out the short film and movie screening today and tomorrow. Workshops start at 10 and I believe there is screening before and during.