@waylow Lots of useful training and techniques in this course, and thanks so much for being personally involved in critiquing our work. That was really great and helped push me to get better. :-)
My only critique (if I'm allowed one!) is I wish the Rivet sections had been full-length videos rather than timelapses. I personally find it extremely difficult to pick up new knowledge without first following along in real time, and this video contained way too many new and complex techniques to be thrown out there in timelapse. Also I felt the explanation video after, although good, wasn't really able to properly compensate for this since the "why" and the "how" was separated by two different videos and two different speeds.
As a real world example, I had an instructor in high school that was super smart and nice but always wanted us to "explore" new concepts rather than walking us through them. As a result, the majority of this teacher's class was un-prepared for the government exam, and if I hadn't done extra prep work online, I wouldn't have even gotten the 52% grade that I did (I usually got 90%+ grades on tests during the year). The concepts on the gov exam were SO much different from anything the teacher had us encounter, and most of the other students struggled severely and got similar grades to mine, even the brightest of them. Maybe this experience subconsciously helped fuel my general dislike of timelapses... or maybe I'm just a slow learner and prefer real-time. Anyway, hats off though to everyone who completed the Rivet exercise... that was some intense, grueling, work. :-)
And thank you again, Wayne, for sharing your excellent knowledge with us. I would be interested to read your journey as an animator to end up with your own business if you should ever care to write an article for the CGC blog. :-)
Thanks Adam.
The time lapse stuff is intentional, in the same way that there are no actual finished animation files you can download.
Why? I'm trying to force you to figure it out for yourself rather than copying what I do. As well as keeping the length of the videos and production time down.
Fortunately there are no government regulated exams for animation (I have my issues with this type of testing anyway which I will spare you from ranting about haha). You are just competing with yourself and trying to get better as you learn and experience more.
But truthfully, you just need to trust in yourself Adam. You know what you're doing, but you now have to tools to be able to figure it out when you don't ;)
In the next course you will find a lot of handy work flow stuff that puts method to all the madness that you have learned already.
Now why didn't I teach you this stuff first as that would have made things easier from the start?Well in this order, you will really understand the 'why' as you've already had some experience at how difficult it is when we we don't have a proper method to things. It will all fall into place Mr Miagi style. Wax on, wax off :)
But well done on all your hard work - I look forward to seeing your animation improve in the future,
@waylow Thanks so much, Wayne... I look forward to more of your courses. You certainly know what you're doing, and it's always an inspiration. My learning style may not be compatible with every style of training, but I understand what you mean, and I will need to adapt best I can. :-) Have a great weekend.
-Adam