Month 3: 3d Foundations/Art History

For the last time until month 6 my transfer credits get me out of a painful schedule. This was the first really exciting month because it was course specific, and I had tons of free time to excel. This class is composed of only two degree programs, CA and GA or computer animation/ game art. We will be paired together for the first year then we go our separate ways. The classes were also structured in a way that they will be for the rest of the curriculum. Every day there is a 4 hour lecture from the course director, with a 4 hour lab on the other side of the campus where we work on our projects under lab instructor supervision. The lecture consists of about 80 students while the lab groups are broke into thirds. Mine, fortunately followed the lecture, others had to attend their lab class at 9pm, or 1am.

This class focused on all aspects of the animation pipeline at a VERY basic level. The entire month you are working on your final project which is a six second animation. The pipeline goes as follows...Storyboarding-->modeling-->texturing-->rigging-->animating-->lighting-->Rendering. You are gave a list of about 30 basic movement animations to pick from and that's your project. The course director critiqued mine in front of the class and praised it for its fluid animation and great use of lighting.
Here is some of the work from that month

Storyboard

Character for Scene

Texturing project (not related to scene)

Panoramic Shot of Lab

6 Sec final project with a bonus Follow cam i messed with in spare time.

Most of my spare time this month I spent working on projects. I also started a little movie I called submarine adventures

Many struggled with this class, and with maya, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and 100%ed it. 

Month 2: Overview of Media Design & Tech Industries/ EnglishComposition 1

Again transfer credits got me out of English comp, so again the month was not so bad. This class also was not degree specific, however it was school specific. Meaning it was specific to the ARTS portion of Full Sail. If that sounds confusing go to the school's website and check out the programs.  In this class we did a LOT of discussions. Usually the first hour of class was just a student lead discussion about a topic we were giving at the end of the previous class. We did a lot of projects involving researching things about our industries, and presenting our findings to the class. The final project was a 5 person group presentation that lasted about 20 minutes. Our group discussed failures in the industry.


With my free time this month I cracked into an Intro to Maya 2013 book. If you dont know what maya is -----> http://www.autodesk.com/products/autodesk-maya/overview

I went through several tutorials culminating with this awesomeness.

Later I would find out how incorrectly I modeled this, and how it is complete crap.  I also got back into drawing after not touching a sketchbook for like 10 years.

Full Sail also did their yearly Hall of Fame event.  This was a massive week long even where they have all kinds of guest speakers. I attended a ceremony where they inducted 5 or 6 previous students into their hall of fame. The one on the right (Jeremy Vickers, i think his name was) works for Pixar now.

On a side note, I learned how to make awesome chicken dumplings in my crock pot this month.

Month 1: Digital Literacy/Behavioral Science

This was a very easy month. My transfer credits from Florida State College excused me from having to attend Behavioral Science. This course was not degree specific, and was mixed with all degree programs. While this course may have been helpful to some, I found it mostly fluff. We learned about pod casting, networking, pioneers of our individual industries, our school issued MacBook Pros. We also got some experience with garage band, imovie, keynote, and some other software. Even though the class was easy, there was still a lot of homework/projects involving the subjects I listed.

My free time was mostly spent acclimating myself to Winter Park. The pictures attached are of my 80s styled apartment, as well as the open house from orientation week at Full Sail.

Blogs intentions/School schedule

So I am just finishing up my 4th month at Full Sail University (Winter Park, Fl). I am enrolled in a 21 month computer animation program that is very fast paced. I go to school 6 days a week, 9 hours a day, around the clock. The purpose of this blog is mostly to keep track of my progress through the program, as well as to keep family/friends updated if they wish to follow.

Here is a pic of the month by month breakdown, follow the link for specifics on the classes
http://www.fullsail.edu/degrees/campus/computer-animation-bachelors/courses

My next post will be a month by month breakdown of what I have gone through so far. I will try to update this blog at the end of each month (as that is usually the only free time I get.)

1st Post Test

So I am Rusty and this is my blog.