The Beginning

"I hear of tons of people say they want to get into animation, but in fairness there is nothing stopping anyone that wants it."

For some reason it took 9 years and this stupidly simple statement an Ubisoft animation director told me to get my arse into gear. Animation has always been in my periphery (ever since I was 14 and did a talk about it at school), but through the years I've dabbled in other interests, losing sight of what once was.

I'll be starting a year long fundamentals class @ Animation Mentor in the next couple of days. My mentor this term will be Ray Chase, an animator who's worked on Jimmy Neutron, Ninja Turtles and Ice Age to name only a few titles. 

This blog has been around for awhile, but it will be updated regularly from now on. I'll be updating it with projects and things I've learnt during my time at AM and beyond. The aim is to document my processes from planning, to blocking to final. Any other written pieces about games or other art tidbits will be making appearances too.

To start off this journey, below are a couple of very short, basic animations tests. A ball bounce and a one legged hop. (Even simple stuff like this takes a scary amount of time to complete).  It'll be interesting to see how these compare to the material i'll be producing over the next 12 weeks in my animation basics class.

OneLegHop from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

BallBounce from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

For now, adios.