AM02 - week 01 - AM has gone incredible...

Hi everyone,

I'm very, very sorry for NOT having written anything during the whole holiday season. I was busy like crazy doing an After Effects job for a company in Stuttgart and I also visited many friends in good ol' Hamburg. But for all those curious fellas out there I have tons of things to tell because soo much has happened. I don't know where to start and I will definitely tell it over the weeks.

First of all: AM has gone V2! What does that mean? It means that the best has become the perfect. They created a totally new website system in HTML taking 9 month of suggestions from mentors and students into account. What they created is the most incredible online school system I can think of. Chats, better video quality, orientation guides, direct buddy list, sort by mentor, integrated forum... it would and will take some time until I can write all that down into my blog.

Anyhow, AM02 has started and it also has been reworked completely. What does that mean? Well, students from higher semesters said that there was a big gap between AM01 and 02 and it was difficult for most people to follow. Now they changed the syllabus and it looks great. We are the lucky first ones to be part of the new syllabus. I will start with a Ballie and his heel kicking a ball... you will see a lot about this the coming days and weeks here.

Now for the big news: I have a new mentor and he is called: DOUG DOOLEY! This guy is freaking awesome. He worked on Ice Age (Blue Sky) and went over to Pixar for Monster's Inc., Finding Nemo, Incredibles and Cars... I guess right now he works on Ratatouille... but I'm not sure. This awesome animator is not only MR.BODYMECHANICS himself (he is mainly assigned to heavy body mechanic shots at Pixar) but also an incredible teacher. He loves teaching and thinks a lot before he goes online.

He is said to be a tough grader which is good for us. Being patted on the back all the time doesn't help me at all - though I sometimes NEED that. His grades are A for extra-terrestrial work that just kicks butt, B for production quality, C for work on it, D for you need more time and E for no way.... don't want to talk about F...

The Q&A with Doug tonight at 5am (German time) was incredible and he told us many important things already.

One last thing: I was accepted as one of five first XSVs for the Siggraph ever. XSV stands for ex student volunteer and you have to apply for it as well as being promoted by others (thanks Mk, Sacha and Mr. Keppler). Now things are coming along. I had to find 5 tertiary reviewers to help me with the review process and I'm honoured with an incredible team:

Michelle Meeker (Pixar, PDI, Weta, EA), Shawn Kelly (ILM), Tony Longson (CalState LA), Jürgen Richter (Amblimation, Munich Animation, animoto) and Anthony Wong (Disney, Pixar).

If everything works out I'm going to visit some of them this coming February in San Francisco. This heavily depends on how much work we will have to do each week for the 'secret' job I am currently working on. I hope they let me go for one week though I love every minute working here =)

Anyhow, so much for now. Animoto, AM, Siggraph and the trip to San Francisco... there is a lot to talk and blog about and I hope to see you here often. I try to update as much as I can. Spread the word and lure some people here. I hope that I can transfer the excitement of AM to this blog and answer many unasked questions that are out there.

God bless you all,

- Alex