Future animation leader asking for help

[BuddyB309]

Its your job as a mentor to become very knowegable in the subject that you teaching. If you think about it, the most respected professors or teachers you incounter are the ones that know alot about what they are teaching. Once your students see that in you, they tend to work harder.

As I said before in another thread, don't wait for the safety animation and AVA award to be the student's first project. Because, quite frankly, they are very very boring projects. Do something over the summer thats wacky and crazy like This animationI did. This style is very very fast to create. It only took me two weeks.

You have to make the students see the joy of having a very well done piece when they are finished. I think that is the biggest hook. Because otherwise it will seem like work to them. I also encounter this, If I'm working on my own project I will work night and day until it is finished, clocking in over 3,000 hours on it. But as soon as a client or professor says, "We need 15 models done in a week, that are fully textured, and the polycount needs to be under 75,000" The fun is instantly taken away. Make it fun, Tutorials, tend to not make it fun, unless you've run into an obstacle and you cant figure it out on your project. Thats when I dish out tutorials.

Also, you don't have to make a 3D animation, if you think about it. A 3D animation is a very complex operation. There are so many things involved, modeling, modeling for rigging, rigging, textures, morph targets, skin modifier, etc...etc.. You can use 3ds max like a 2D animation program by moving basic shapes around like This animation I did. Ok so its not really finished, I was just fooling around in the car as I headed down to IRI one year. but it only took me the car ride to produce 14 seconds. Thats half an animation entry.

I really don't know where I'm going with this post. I have a tendency to not know how to get my information out to other people. I guess I'll end it here.