Moving right along...

Well, I'm halfway through my final class at AnimationMentor.com, and I can't believe it. How fast it went, how much I learned, how much I don't know about animation, how many great students and Mentors I've been lucky enough to come across. One chapter is closing and another opening I guess. It's still sad to think it's coming to an end so quick. Yet, I don't remember a time I wasn't in school. It's been a rough year and a half, learning/studying animation, learning how to be a dad..... needless to say, I'm completely exhausted.

As far as my short film goes, it's coming along nicely. I'm on pace to finish it up in the next month, being 38 days out I confident that I can finish it. Then the reel work begins... literally, my goal is to have my demo reel, resume, short film and website completed by December so I can start the job hunt come 2010!! Exciting I know. I did find out that a friend of mine here in Denver knows John Hughes (not the late great director/writer from the 80's). The president of Rhythm and Hues Studios.... So what a great contact that is, once I get my reel completed, he's definitely getting one.

I just finished blocking out the entire short film, 3 passes roughly and it's ready to moving on to splining. I've gotten some great feedback/ideas from my Mentor and other students. Very helpful and it's good to know that if I ever get into an Animation Studio that I'll get the same feedback from my director, supervisor and other animators each day. There are so many things that are overlooked when it's your scene, it's so nice to get other eyes on it. It's about a minute long now, with animation, that doesn't include credits. I'm still not sure how much I'm going to do for the intro credits.

I'll post my progress as soon as I can upload it to youTube. Till next time.

Some new movies...

That are getting me inspired and excited. I went and saw Up and Ice Age 3. Up was truly amazing, I can't wait to see it again! The story, animation, effects, environments, everything was mind numbing! IA3 was their best yet and the fact that 51 students, Mentors and alumni worked on it says a lot for Animation Mentor. Enjoy.

Here are a couple trailers for movies coming out that I can't wait to go and see:
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs:



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Toy Story 3:



Despicable Me:

Slacking on my Blog...

Okay, so I'm already in week 5 and haven't posted any updates. It's moving right along and I graduate in under 60 days! Wow, I honestly can't believe how fast the time is flying by! I'm sort of sad that I'm not going to be a student at Animation Mentor no longer, but it sounds like you still get access to the site as an Alumni. So that's pretty cool. But, it will be nice to get my life back in order, spending more time with my awesome family and friends.

My mentor is awesome. Sean Sexton is his name and he's been animating at Dreamworks for some time now. He's worked on all the big-time movies they've produced over the past decade: Shrek I, II, and III, Bee Movie, Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda (by far their best movie yet), Sharks Tale, and Monster's vs. Aliens. He showed us some shots that he worked on in Over the Hedge and Monsters vs. Aliens. What an amazing animator. I couldn't imagine working at a company like Dreamworks or Pixar and animating these amazing shots everyday, all day!! That would be awesome.

My short film is coming along, I made some great progress and was ahead of the game coming into class 6, so I'm still confident that I'll finish up by week 12. There is still so much to go, but baby steps is the key. I converted it from blocking to linear this past week, trying a method that I've picked up since attending AM. Sean said that I should have more breakdowns before I convert the keyframes to linear. So I'm going to go back this week and go back to blocking, add some more breakdowns, then hopefully next week it will be ready to go to linear and I can start polishing the sucker! Then the plan is to start putting together my demo reel, art work,resume and website by December and start looking for work in 2010. Now that I'm in class 6 and graduation is right around the corner people are asking 'what next?'. I've thought about it and yes, I'd love to work at Pixar, Dreamworks or Blue Sky (any big time studio) but realistically I don't think that I'm ready... I know that I just want to animate, whether it be video games or movies. Spending a couple years in the video game industry would be great to learn more about physics and body mechanics. The thing about that is you don't get much experience in acting shots, and if you want to get into the big studios you have to be a strong actor (well, at least your characters do). So I'll have to keep up on that with the 11 Second Club contest each month. Still trying not to think about the future too much, focusing on the present. Finish up my short film to the best of my abilities, polish up my previous shots for my demo reel, and then I can worry about where I'm going.

It's a long journey, stressful at times, but a fun one none-the-less. I plan on posting my progress for my short film soon.....

Till next time.

On to Short Film Production!! Wooohoo.

Well, I made it through class 5 doing very well. My Mentor was great and I was glad to have gotten him. His name is Cal Brunker and he's an animator up in Toronto Canada at a studio called Red Rover. They mainly do commercials for TV. He had a lot of great ideas to make my short what it is today! I learned a lot in the class, but I feel like I haven't animated anything in a really long time. I do feel a bit rusty, but hopefully it's still fresh and I'll be fine. I was pleased with my grades this class, and based on those I feel like I really succeeded. I'm really excited to start blocking out my shots. Total of 16 shots, right around 1000 frames, so it's not too bad. The tricky part in actually finishing the animation by graduation in 3 months is the amount of animation that is done. When you're animating full characters in a scene it's going to take more time than if you're just animating the upper body, or just the face, etc. In my shot there's some full body acting/animating, but I'd say 65 percent is just portions of the body. So I think planning it out like that makes it more feasible to actually finish it in the time allotted, but also making it quality animation so that I can submit it to festivals if I want and have some strong pieces for my demo reel.

Here is my layout. I still have some minor changes to make based on my final critique from Cal.... and sound FX are still rough too.

It's been a crazy month...

May has come on gone, now on to June. We had Maddon's first Birthday, then my Brother and Sister-in-law both graduated from college, a BBQ and trip to Vegas..... Now, the year is almost half over.... OH, and I forgot to mention creating my 30 second short in the midst of all that. The good news is that I'm back in the computer. Setting up cameras, texturing my models, blocking out my character. So that's a nice change (not that I don't love drawing, but I don't want to get rusty).

It was a stressful weekend. We traveled to Vegas and brought the baby, which was a lot of work (mostly for my wife). I worked from my laptop, not a good idea trying to keep files straight, texture maps loaded, sound effects, etc... So needless to say I got my assignment done, but now I have to start over. My Maya skills are very novice so I had some referencing issues and because I referenced in my character I was unable to use the GUI picker for him, and having that tool is irreplaceable. So I went back and set everything up right, and for the most part it's a lot better now than it was before. So I guess it was a lesson learned the hard way, and now I'm pretty much back on schedule.

I had to do the layout for the first third of my short last week, I did just over 10 seconds, and am planning on doing to about 22 seconds this week. One thing that I'm noticing is that once it's in the computer the timing has to slow down a bit so everything reads correctly. I am planning on posting my animatic here when I think of it.... and should be better about recording my progress. Stay tuned.....

11 Second goal met... wow!

I finished another 11 Second Club competition. It was a great and unique competition. If you're not familiar with the 11 Second Club you can check it out at www.11secondclub.com. Basically they host a monthly animation competition that anyone who has the desire to animate can enter in any medium they choose, be it 2D, 3D, stop motion, flash, etc. I mentioned that this month was unique, for a good reason. Typically they post up a movie dialogue shot, some serious, some funny, some with 3 people conversing, 2 people conversing or just one person talking. So each month is different and fun. Well in April they decided to mix it up again and just do sound effects. At first everyone suspected that it was an April's fools day joke.... turns out it wasn't. It was brilliant, there was an amazing turn out 160 entries. Definitely the most amount of great animation I've seen.

I decided that I would go for it and enter, besides it's great practice and I need all the practice I can get. With animation it's easiest to practice if there's a deadline, that way you'll finish it (at least to a point where you could potentially put it on a demo reel). My goal for the month was to finish in the top 50. Typically I finish somewhere around the halfway point, or lower half, so needless to say it was a pretty ambitious goal. After going through the voting I was pretty intimidated. I kept thinking 'if I even get near top 50 I'll be happy, like I said there was some great animation and some fierce competition! How it works is they post a new audio file on the first of the month and you have till the end of the month to turn in the animation. Everyone who's a member to the site is able to vote. They arrange it so you're able to go through each animation, watch, vote and leave a comment if you want. Then after the 5th they tally up the votes based on the average score and then they rate them.....

I ended up coming in (tied with 2 other animations) at 48.... I was relieved that I made it. Anyway, without further delay here's the animation.


Oh, and my short film is coming along. I'm working on the story boards now, and realizing how tricky and complicated it is to be a director.... camera angles are super tricky to pull off!! I'll post my animatic next week once it's completed!

Maddon's first birthday is on Saturday... I can't believe how fast the past year has whizzzed by me... to think a year ago I was animating a simple pendulum.... Maddon and I have grown a lot in the past year...

Till then.

'Fresh out the Box'....

Well, I received feedback from my three story ideas from my Mentor (Cal Brunker, what a cool name, I know).... I was going between the new computer idea and the bored bus driver idea. My Mentor thought that the computer idea was better, and I have to concur. Thinking about doing to bus driver story would be really funny and fun to do, but technically I wouldn't be able to handle it. So I thought I'd go with the more simple of the two and run with it. I still have some work do in the middle to set up the gag... but I'll do that this week.

Here's the pre-production structure I submitted:
‘Fresh out the Box’ Pre-Pitch Structure:
a. Setting: opening shot is exterior of house, all the rest of the shots are interior in the man’s office.
b. Time of day: afternoon
c. Characters: There’s only one character, a middle aged man

Pitch Structure:
a. We open with an exterior shot of a house, the sky is blue and the sun is shining.
b. Until the door opens and the main (and only character) pops his head out, looks around with curiosity, he looks down and sees the box. He gets a surprised then excited look on his face, steps out, bends down, picks up the box and brings it in the house.
c. And then now we’re in his office showing his empty desk all cleaned and ready to put his new computer on.
d. And then he starts assembling the computer components onto the computer desk (shown with quick 1-2 second cuts).
e. And then he’s ready to turn on the computer. He presses the power button
f. And then nothing happens, he looks surprised, shocked and confused, he presses it again. Still nothing. He looks angry now with some frustration.
g. And then it shows him trying different methods of troubleshooting, looking at the owner’s manual, maybe on the phone with tech support, studying the front of the computer, lifts up the mouse, etc (there are going to be 5 or 6 different things he does, again all shown in quick 1-2 second cuts). Man is getting more and more frustrated with each shot.
h. Until finally he gives up by banging his head and fists on the desk. Meanwhile the camera is trucking back to reveal that the power cord isn’t plugged in, cut to a close up shot so there’s no confusion what to look at.
i. The moral/point of the story is sometimes the simplest explanation to the problem is the most obvious one, there’s no need to get so upset by it.

Here's some reference I'm going to use in the planning (not for the animation, just some the timing of shots used are what I'm looking for with mine):