DInosaurs are Awesome !!!!

James Gurney, author and illustrator of Dinotopia, recently visited SJSU. He is an amazing artist and a super cool person. He gave a presentation about himself and his process. I love getting a glimpse into the mind of great people. Anyway seeing his passion for Dinosaurs made me remember what got me wanting to do animation. It was . . . bup bup baaaa bup bup baa bup bup baaaaaaaa . . . . DINOSAURS ! ! ! More specifically Jurassic Park. I was like 10 or 11 with more dinosaur books and paraphernalia than you could shake a stick at so seeing those things brought to life was freakin incredible. The Making of Jurassic Park was THE FIRST making of book I ever bought. I was so enthralled with how they made them so real. It was better than I could have imagined. I used to copy the pencil renderings out of the book, like this one, all the time.Then Toy Story came out and they brought toys to life and that really captured my imagination
and I started down that path toward character animation yad yad yad blah blah blah... Anyway Dinosaurs started it all and they are freakin AWESOME!!!

Animation Wisdom

I originally posted this as a response to this post on Stephen Gregory's blog. He was addressing the question of "what is the secret formula for good animation".
Click Here

I thought my response was insightful enough to re-post on my own blog. Lame, I know.
I changed some at the end to fit here.

I think that deep down every animator knows the answer to that question. But we all want a secret formula because we think that we are applying the principles and then we get scared because our animation still looks like crap. I think the "secret" lies in the deeper understanding of those principles and in being able to control them enough to support (not detract from) our acting choices. I guess you could call it Animation Wisdom. Like any sort of wisdom, Animation Wisdom probably comes from experience and more importantly, expert instruction. I say expert instruction is more important because then we can see the breadth, width and depth of the principles applied right in front of our eyes and that is essential in making rapid progress. Expert instruction can come from people such as Stephen Gregory and his tutoring program but there is also a wealth of info available to us through books and the Internet check out Kieth Lango's tutorial on polishing animation.
I think that key is to always be trying to gain more incite into how to apply the principles in more meaningful ways yet always supporting the acting.

James Lopez said I'm Done!!

Well he actually just said I should move on, but thats good enough for me!!