I started class last Tuesday. Yeah, I’m still going to school, a full two years after I graduated. To keep my character animation skills fresh, I’ve decided to take the final leg of the Pixar animation classes at the Academy. When I went to school, I took Pixar 1 and 2 but stopped at 3. I stopped partly because at that time I needed to move on with a professional career, however that decision was aided by the content of the class.

Pixar 3 at that time was focused on film making by creating your own short. Now I love film-making and all that that entails but I’m not quite ready to make my own short film. I don’t feel like I’m at the point where I have a story to share with the world. Furthermore, I didn’t want to write a script, board it, pitch it, lay it out, model the characters, rig them, light it, etc. About the only aspect that seemed entertaining to me was the actual animation.

Fortunately, the semester before I returned to San Francisco, Pixar 3 changed its focus a bit. Though it’s still focused on film-making, they’ve changed the class so that everyone in the class works together on one short. Every student has taken on a different aspect of pre-production and production will be handled like a film with students being cast shots that play to their strengths, taking direction, hooking shots up, etc. This is something that excites me.

The first day of class we went over what this semester’s short is going to be about and it looks to be quite fun. Last semester they worked on a sequence from a movie, but this semester the teachers took quite a novel approach. Scott and Andrew recorded improv guys doing a bunch of bits and then chose the best one. After this, they edited it and tightened it up into a really fun story that still maintains the wonderful spontaneity captured during the original recording. So now it’s up to the students to turn it into a great little bit to watch.

I’ll keep you updated with what I can as the class progresses.