Aloha! So this week we had an absolutely *amazing* lecture that was essentially an hour long interview with Pete Docter (the director behind Monsters Inc. and Up). So good!! It was particularly interesting since for a lot of the interview lecture he was talking about story. This is something that a lot of animation courses tend to brush over or simply ignore ("Here, we've taught you how to keyframe, now go make a film! And remember: story is key!!"). And it didn't hurt that before I got the animation bug, I was giving some very serious thought to being a writer, so I found it doubly fascinating. Ahh, this is why I joined AM...

Now, confession time: this week's blocking-plus didn't go as smoothly as I'd have liked. The taxi and Ballie were fairly straightforward, but Stu gave me real problems. I spent a whole day wrestling with Maya trying to get what I wanted out of it and generally failing. Just as I was about to tear my last remaining hair from my head, I remembered some advice I got a few weeks ago; "In 99% of cases where splining goes wrong, it's because the blocking wasn't finished properly" (thanks Jo!). So I jumped back to my block and did my changes there, and things went much better. It means I still have to spline it out, but since it's already on 2's and 3's it should be much easier. I've still got a long way to go, but it definitely feels stronger than last week: