MASON TO ANIMATION

Hi everybody and welcome to Courtney Mason Illustration!

Illustration

My goal is to translate written and verbal ideas into visual imagery that is colorful, compelling, and clearly communicate the objectives of the client. I pride myself on my versatility and am confident in my abilities to tackle any challenge both effectively and efficiently. I am open to creative opportunities in a variety of markets such as but not limited to Graphic Design, Advertising, Editorial, Book Publishing, and especially Post Production for Entertainment.

Animation

My "dream job" is to someday have a career within the animation industry. The holy trio or trifecta of skills will be in character design, storyboarding, and character animation. I have experience in experimental animation, stop motion, claymation, 2D and 3D animation using Autodesk Maya, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro. In 2011, I received a grant from the Women's Education and Leadership Fund to conduct a study of animation through research and practical application. I learned the fundamentals and foundations of 3D animation through the Ianimate Advanced Character Animation Program and I am continuing my education through Animation Mentor School for Character Animation online starting this upcoming fall 2012.

Innovation

I am very much a team player, but also a self starter and driven towards success. Since I was a child, I was an entrepreneur, a quality I believe I enherited from my father. This sense of leadership and drive has always helped me optimize every opportunity and has given me confidence in the value of my ideas. While I am very dedicated to clients needs before my own needs, I always feel like I have something to learn and something to give.



Tuesday, May 31, 2011

the ianimate experience: week #5-6

Still struggling but starting to get the hang of space v.s timing.  Though Bill is an excellent teacher, some things are better reinforced in the written form of black and white.  Truthfully, I am a bit behind on my assignments.  There are a few I haven't gotten to, because I believe the same problems I have with a ball bouncing in place will only become more challenging when it travels.  But I hope to catch up soon enough.  I find circles to be a little lacking as far as creativity goes.  I know I need to do it, but its difficult to re arrange circles and learn software when its beautiful outside and all I have are ideas swarming around my head.  

On the bright side, I bought myself some supplies and books in order to better motivate myself that this is worth the frustration.  

Things I would like to remember that I read in Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams

"the only limitation in animation is the person doing it.  Otherwise there is no limit to what you can do.  And why shouldn't you do it?  - Emery Hawkins

"If you can't draw - forget it.  You're an actor without arms and legs." -Art Babbit

"I don't think its possible to be a top notch animator without being an excellent draftsman." - Milt Kahl

"At times you will have to animate stuff where you can't just be cute and coy.  Those are the times when you'll have to know something about drawing.  Whether its called form or force or vitality, you must get it into your work, for that will be what you feel, and drawing is your means of expressing it." Bill Tytla


Things I need to do:
  • draw from life
  • understand form
  • construct forms inside out
  • story board 
  • figure out the timing of the shot 
  • plan out amount of frames
  • put in key frames
  • put in extremes put in passing positions
  • test it out







Tuesday, May 17, 2011

things I learned today


when doing a ball bounce:
-Reduce the same percentage of height each time
-The transfer of energy travels between the ball and the surface it hits
-All balls dropped
-Time up = Time down
-Consider material – more squash and stretch = more rubbery ball
                                   the harder the substance, the more it retains its form
                                   air resistance can alter gravity


Saturday, May 7, 2011

the ianimate experience: week #1-2

This week has been both hectic and exciting at the same time.  My ianimate journey is getting off to a bumpy start with finals week chaos and the summer approaching quickly. 
FUN FACTS: 
My teacher's name is Bill tessier and he works at Dreamworks.  You can look him up on google, and the bio will literally knock your socks off.  I am the only girl in my class *shocker* and the youngest by far, which also as you can imagine means I am the least experienced.  But it motivates me to learn and to prove myself.
Ianimate is set up much like facebook, youtube, skype, blackboard, and any forum for animation.  its awesome that we are all able to see eachother and have the work critiqued by our instruction live even though all of the students (professor included) are international.  There is one student that goes to Gnomon in my class who is a CG generalist.  He says he loves it there, that the course work is intense, but that the results are worth it.  I believe it. 

............................................................................................................................................................
NOT-SO-FUN-FACTS:


Technical difficulties are...(insert explicit word here #$%*)


1.   Registered under the wrong username (Jennifer. Sanborn)  resulting in the confusion of  my teacher and my classmates, and Jenn herself, who thought most of the messages from ianimate on the upcoming course to be SPAM


2.  Being unable to  connect using adobe acrobat connect…because I thought I was having some major technical difficulty, but it turns out that that I logged in at the wrong time.  (9:30 pm Pacific time) soooo here I was thinking that clearly Mac Pro was at fault, when it was my poor reading.


3.  Maya/digicel sketch book are not the easiest to learn.  And the file formatting isn’t either


anyways, I ought to be finishing my finals.  But I was very excited that I actually got my technology to work...FINALLY!