Week Zero: August 20th-26st
Before classes got in gear, fellows got a peek at the online syllabus (this time on Smashcut), added the Zoom sessions to my Google calendar and signed up for the Slack communication channel to connect with others in this "cohort." Later we would be put in groups and assigned a mentor. My MPC coworker Ty Thomson was also chosen for this Fellowship, although we were in different mentor groups. My mentor ended up being Sir Wade Niestadt, which was a pleasant surprise because I had been aware of him for years due to his fun YouTube channel. I knew his background was in character animation, which was exactly what I was hoping for in a mentor.
Our schedule would be a mix of morning check-ins, mid-day classes, and guest lectures and happy hours once classes ended. We also had our first in a series of scrum Zoom sessions with my mentor group/"cohort" #team neistadt, named after our mentor Sir, who would oversee our progress in the Fellowship, along with his TA Daniel Langhjelm. Scrums were where our international group started getting to know each other and discussed. We were located mostly in the same cluster of time zones, in North and South America, and had backgrounds of all kinds, from rigging to previs, and animation to motion capture.
Before classes got in gear, fellows got a peek at the online syllabus (this time on Smashcut), added the Zoom sessions to my Google calendar and signed up for the Slack communication channel to connect with others in this "cohort." Later we would be put in groups and assigned a mentor. My MPC coworker Ty Thomson was also chosen for this Fellowship, although we were in different mentor groups. My mentor ended up being Sir Wade Niestadt, which was a pleasant surprise because I had been aware of him for years due to his fun YouTube channel. I knew his background was in character animation, which was exactly what I was hoping for in a mentor.
Our schedule would be a mix of morning check-ins, mid-day classes, and guest lectures and happy hours once classes ended. We also had our first in a series of scrum Zoom sessions with my mentor group/"cohort" #team neistadt, named after our mentor Sir, who would oversee our progress in the Fellowship, along with his TA Daniel Langhjelm. Scrums were where our international group started getting to know each other and discussed. We were located mostly in the same cluster of time zones, in North and South America, and had backgrounds of all kinds, from rigging to previs, and animation to motion capture.
Since I had not upgraded my graphics card since before the last fellowship, I realized that I would need a virtual machine this time around. I knew this would be a big disadvantage because it meant waiting for software to install, needing to transfer files to and from the machine, and having fairly low system specs overall.
We found out early on that this fellowship would have each team make an "exquisite corpse" sequence made up of one shot per artist. Each shot would need to flow into and out of the neighboring ones in our edit. I was really inspired to have a sci-fi theme for mine, and I loved the Greebles sci-fi asset pack that I saw online. I thought it would be cool to have it feel like one of the battleship deck flight preparation shots from Top Gun: Maverick, and I got to putting together a pitchdeck in PureRef. While in this "blue sky" brainstorming phase, I also got inspired to explore a timelapse stop motion idea and another concept about souls from a world floating away from their bodies on their way to heaven. I continued exploring this into Week One at home and started setting up my virtual machine.
We found out early on that this fellowship would have each team make an "exquisite corpse" sequence made up of one shot per artist. Each shot would need to flow into and out of the neighboring ones in our edit. I was really inspired to have a sci-fi theme for mine, and I loved the Greebles sci-fi asset pack that I saw online. I thought it would be cool to have it feel like one of the battleship deck flight preparation shots from Top Gun: Maverick, and I got to putting together a pitchdeck in PureRef. While in this "blue sky" brainstorming phase, I also got inspired to explore a timelapse stop motion idea and another concept about souls from a world floating away from their bodies on their way to heaven. I continued exploring this into Week One at home and started setting up my virtual machine.
