Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year to everyone!!! Let all your dreams come true!!!

Victor

Progress reel class 1-3

Here is my Progress reel fo classes 1-3

Classes 1-3 Progress reel from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Class 3 Anim Jam

OOO it has been a while since my last post...
Just didn't have time to do it
So here is my Class 3 Anim Jam - all three shots pu together...

Class 3 Anim Jam from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 306 assignment

Hello, hello!!

It's rather simple this week... Here is my blocking+ of my last shot...

Wall of bricks blocking+ from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 305 assignment

This week is a week of blocking my new shot. I continue the theme of "Stewie on construction site".

In my next shot he is going to build a wall of bricks. I decided to do this type of shot, because it requires a lot of body mechanics.

Here it is... 

Wall of bricks blocking from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Heavy bucket final... well almost final

Hello everyone this week is a final week for our first assignment in class 3.

Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to work on it. There are some things to fix there.

But here it is my almost final shot of bucket lift...

Heavy bucket final from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 303 assignment

This week we had to do the blocking plus of animation that we chose the week before.

Here is my blocking+ pass:

Heavy bucket blocking+ from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 302 assignment

Hey everyone class 3 started and I have a first assignment to do

First week as usual - week of blocking...

Ha I can't believe that this became usual for me... Just a couple of month ago I even didn't know this word... Animation Mentor is awesome...

As I said last week this shot is one of three that I'm gonna make this term and I plan to cut them together in a short movie.

Hope you like it!

Heavy bucket from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo

Class 3 started!!

Class 3 is finally started!! 

This term we have a totally different approach in assignments. 

We won't have a assignment to pick (for example, walk up the stairs or heavy lift etc..), like we had in previous terms In class 3 we can choose a theme for an assignment and make any shot on this theme. 

And also we can choose to use this theme for the whole class or we can pick new theme every 3 weeks.

For this class I chose a theme "Stewie on a construction site" and I decided to do 3 shots with the same theme, so that in the end I'll be able to cut them together and make something like a short film.

Class 2 progress reel

Hey!! Class 2 is over... I's been a lot of fun and hard work this term...

And here is my progress reel. I also included shots from class 1 there...

I hope you like it!

Class 2 progress reel from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Parkour final

Hey everyone... Here is my parkour final shot. I like it!!

Parkour final from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 210 assignment

This time we had one extra week to work on our assignment.

So this is "almost final" pass of my shot...

Parkour almost final from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 209 assignment

This week we had to do the blocking plus of animation that we chose on week seven.

Here is my blocking+ pass:

Parkour blocking+ from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

New week new shot

Hello everyone it's week 8 here at AnimationMentor and for that we have a new shot.

I decided to choose Parkour this time...
So here is my blocking pass for the shot

Parkour blocking from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

High dive final shot

Hey everyone!! Here is my final shot I've been working on for the past four weeks.
I hope you like it.

High dive final (music) from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 206 assignment

This week we had to do the blocking plus of animation that we chose on week four.

Here is my blocking+ pass

High dive blocking plus from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 205 assignment

This week we had to do the blocking pass of animation that we chose last week.

Last week I chose high dive animation. Here is mine

High dive blocking from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Walk up the stairs final shot

Hey everyone!! Here is my final shot I've been working on for the past four weeks.
I hope you like it.

Walk up the stairs final shot (music) from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 203 assignment

This week we had to do the blocking plus of animation that we chose on week one.

Blocking plus means that we take the animation we did last week and take it one step further. We should add some breakdowns, extremes, in-betweens... I've decided to take all my stepped keys into spline and apply a "Spline higiene technique" to it.

In this technique is you go through every curve and basically make it look good, you make sure that there is no overshoots, strange splines...

Here is my blocking+ pass

Walk up the stairs blocking plus from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 202 assignment

This week we had to do the blocking pass of animation that we chose last week. Here is mine

Walk up the stairs blocking. from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

New class started

New class just started!!...

I'm in class two now. It's called "Psychology of body mechanics" and in this class we're going to study body movements and how to do them in animation.
In this class we are not going to have the assignment each week. We will do one animation for a couple of weeks and we also can choose what to animate.

This is going to be fun, I can tell...

Last week!!!

Wow here it is... our last week of class 1!!

I can't believe it... It all happened so fast!!

Ok so this week we don't have any assignment except. We should only combine all of our work in one file and make it like a Class 1 Progress Reel.

Here is mine

Progress reel AnimationMentor class 1 from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 111 assignment

This week we had to finish the Personality walk and do the Stu pose of Balance

Balance pose

Personality walk

Personality walk from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 110 assignment

The pose of Exhausted Stu:

This week we have a two-week assignment so I'll upload a finished version next week

Week 109 assignment

This week we had to finish the Vanilla walk and do the Stu pose of Consern

Conserned

Vanilla walk

Vanilla walk from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 108 assignments

The pose of strength:

This week we have a two-week assignment so I'll upload a finished version next week

Week 107 assignment

Here is Tailor.

Tailor animation, week 107 from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 106 assignments

Here is my pendulum animation

Pendulum animation from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 105 assignments

Here is my week 4 assignments

• Stu pose of Devastation
• Obstacle course animation

Obstacle course animation from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 104 assignment

Here is my fourth assignment
This week we were supposed to do the animation of two balls with 2 different weights. Here is what I have:

Two balls animation from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Week 103 assignment revision

Here is my revision of third assignment

Week 102 assignment revision

Here is my revision of second assignment

Cool animation

I've found some really cool animations.

• http://www.simonscat.com/films.html
• http://birdboxstudio.com/
  

Very funny, and very well made...

Week 103 assignment

Hey, I've just uploaded my third assignment.

It was rather big:

1. Planning of a bouncing ball
2. Bouncing ball
3. Sketches of excitement
4. STU pose of excitement

First animation at AM from Victor Ostapenkov on Vimeo.

Fighting with QuickTime

Hey to all. Today I've made my first steps into animation... I mean I've made my first animation assignment - it's just a bouncing ball.

It took me some time and I still have to polish it a bit, but in general it's almost done.

After finishing the assignment I was trying to do this Video Standartization procedure, which is a must for uploading assignments to AnimationMentor. This means, that I have to put some logo after the animaion and make it proper size, and this should be done in QuickTime Pro. But I'm on a Snow Leopard mac, and QT Pro should be installed there out of the box. But I've found that it was not... but it should...

So I was looking for some ways to install QT Pro, but I've found that I can't do that...

So after some time I've found a way out. Here it is...

QuickTime Pro should play QTVR videos (panoramas like in Google Street view) so I've downloaded some qtvr from the web and tried to open it... My mac said that to do that he needed an upgrade - I said OK - and after some time it downloaded, installed and run QT Pro...

WOW!! Great!! Now I have all I need!!

Second assignment Stu pose

Here is my Stu pose:

Second assignment

Here is my second assignment. In this assignment we should go to some public place and use a sketchbook to draw some poses of people.

And after that we should pose Stu in the pose, we like.

Here is what I did using sketchbook:

Experiments

Right now I've decided to get familiar with Stu.

Stu is the first rig we get at AnimationMentor. It's a human like character without face - just arms, legs, body, and head.

Well I'd say it's one of the best rigs I've ever used. All controls are working just fine - they do what the got to do... And there is nothing unnecessary in the rig. I really liked working with it.

Well I tried to do some pose... Don't judge me hard - I'm a beginner, and it's my first atempt...

Installing maya

I had some issues, while installinf maya...

AnimationMentor gives us a link to student version of maya - it's almost the same as the normal one - the only difference is that you have this mesage all the time, which says that it's a student version and you can't make profit using this version...

But when I installed it on my computer it showed Error 20. I don't know what it is..

I searched the internet for solution and found some but none of them helped. So I contacted maya student care... After some time they changed something in my profile on autodesk web site. But what they did ... didn't help eather.

After that I was talking in our Skype group with West and he gave me the solution!!

I've created new account on my computer, where I've changed the system language to English and, guess what it all worked... !!! Now I have a quiet place to work - a fresh account without any skype, Icq ....

And it's great, isn't it?

First assignment

My first assignment at AnimationMentor is rather easy:

• Introduce myself to the community - this means I should update my profile, set avatar...
  

My first q&a

Today was my first Q&A session with my mentor at AnimationMentor!! Wow

It very interesting, because today I met my first mentor for the first time. He is very funny and does some crazy stuff and some weird noises.

Today I've met my classmates. And when I say met I mean that today we were using web cams and introducing ourselves to the class. That was interesting and fun.

And also after the Q&A my mentor sent me some animation related materials and links, that can help us in our future education.

It all begun

Wow AnimationMentor is finally here. It all started yesterday (in my local time) and now I have full access to the website.
Right now I'm a bit confused, because there is sooo much information: there is new menu, there are a lot of videos, training materials etc.

Tomorrow...

Tomorrow is the day...

Not animation related but very interesting

This is totally awesome. The future is here!!

One week left

Well today is officially only one week left before AnimationMentor starts...

And I have some strange feelings inside. It's some sort of mix between excitement and fear.

On one hand I really want it all to start, on the other - I really don't want to fail.

Waiting

This waiting just kills!!
There is only couple of weeks left before AnimationMentor starts. And the only thing we can do is just waiting because there is no way to speed things up.. It reminds me South Park episode where Cartman way waiting for Nintendo Wii :))

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The last thing to do

There is only one thing to do before AnimationMentor start.

You should tell them when you can attend q&a.

You have some options to chose from: tuesday, wednesday or thursday.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Twitter feed

Hey everyone!!

I've just setup my Twitter to work with this blog.

It's pretty cool! Works fine through twitterfeed

Now you can follow my blog posts using Twitter.

Just Follow me, using the link on the right

Watching orientation videos

Hello everybody!

I've finally got the access to orientation videos!!

WOW! :)

AnimationMentor is one step closer now. I'm watching it right now. Basicly these videos walk you through the website, how to upload your assignments etc.

Coffe talks

Each Friday AnimationMentor students can participate in an online chat/video session hosted by Victoria from AM staff.

This is absolutely the best opportunity to ask questions about what to expect or how to get everything in order to be ready to start school.

Here during this chat session you can ask questions, meet other students and talk to everybody using a webcam, if Victoria pulls you out.

Getting acquainted

While waiting for AnimatonMentor to start, some students decided to make Skype group where we can get acquainted and talk to each other.

This super awesome idea. There are about 38 students there in the group now!!!

I've made a lot of friends.

Accepted

Hey to all!! My name is Victor and I've just been accepted to AnimationMentor.

This is one of the best animation schools in the World.

I'm very excited about that!!! :))

And here I'm going to post all, that concerns my studying at AM.