MUD

Ok, here's another dialog. This one's a bit more finished than the one in the previous post. Hopefully I'll bring you a finished version of that one soon!

ANIMATE IN A DAY!!!

So Andy, from work, and I decided to go in yesterday and try to animate a dialog piece in a day! We had Brandon pick out a dialog clip and put it in a network folder and neither of us heard it until we got in. Maybe it would have been better if I arrived earlier than 11 and started animating before 4? So here's the result:





Maybe I shouldn't have spent so much time on the stupid costume and set. I might have gotten a little more animation done. So go check out Andy's clip!! It's funny stuff!


Oh btw, I found out that Blogger and youtube was cutting my video's short because the audio track was shorter than the video so it was stopping where the audio ended. So I'll have MUD up shortly!!!!

MUD

Well, I wanted to post my new dialog test but apparently youtube/blogger video doesn't want that to happen. It seems to play through part of it then cut off the last second or so even after I added an extra second of time to the video. It stops at the same frame, not showing the full anim. So once I figure that out or buy a domain and some bandwidth I'll be back!

Box Jump

It's not as polished as I'd like it to be but I had some fun putting it together. I'm working on a few dialog pieces also, so hopefully I'll be able to post one of them soon!

Basics

Since I haven't posted in a while I guess I'll show a basic animation I did not too long ago to have some fun. I was going to go with a different ending but a friend suggested I go this route- you know who you are! lol Anyways, I had some fun with this thinking more about how to keep the timing interesting. Crits are always welcome!

New Job!

I have recently been offered and accepted a staff position at Avalanche Studios! They're pretty famous for their Tak game titles but were purchased by Disney in 2005. So now they handle the Disney feature animation game titles, recently finishing "Meet the Robinsons". It has been an interesting process and taken some time to go through, and is still ongoing. I sent my reel about mid-April and heard back from them the next day. I then had a phone interview the following week, which was followed by an in-person interview the week after that. Then both Avalanche and I waited another week for Disney to go through all the paperwork so they could make me an offer. Don't get me wrong though, I didn't mind all this waiting or how long it took, all of it actually feeling quite fast, because it allowed me to ease into the whole issue of moving.

My start date is June 11th and I am excited to see what I will be starting on. They clued me in on the projects they were working on during the interview but I'm not sure what they're going to start me off with. From the animations that I've seen come out of their, they seem to have some great talent there. They even have some strong traditional artists. You can check out some of their digital paintings at avalanchesoftware.blogspot.com. Some of the animators post some personal tests on avamation.blogspot.com.

I am excited to be working along side another AM alumni, Brandon Beckstead! I've watched his work for quite some time now and it's always been inspiring. He's been offered positions at Dreamworks, Blue Sky, and Sony Pictures Animation! He's got some great work so you should check his stuff out sometime if you have a chance(brandonbeckstead.com).

The animation director said that the animators do personal tests and get together each week to critique each other. This alone tells me SO much about the company and really makes me feel good that I am going to be working there. It sounds like they all want to constantly improve and learn new things, so it really seems like it will be a great place to grow as an animator, and hopefully through talking to the other traditional artists, as more of a well-rounded artist too!

I would like to take the time to congratulate all the other AMer's that are landing jobs at some great studios as well! Some of the studios alumni are recently getting into include Dreamworks, Blue Sky and Rhythm and Hues! Congrats everyone and keep up the hard work!!

I've been working

As the title states, I've been working as a character animator in Kansas. Yes, I said Kansas! I've been working on a children's dvd at DXD studios. It's been an interesting job and I've learned quite a bit from it. It's a place that requires a fast turn-over rate so I've been able to produce a LOT of animation in a short amount of time. I started working there on February 12th, one month after attending the Animation Mentor graduation. Within two and a half months, one other animator and I had produced between 12-15 minutes of animation on 9 characters which included talking cars, people, a fire extinguisher and fire alarm. It has gotten better recently since the company has finished working on some of the other major projects, which was preventing more people from being able to animate on this one. Now instead of having to animate every character each scene I touch, they've divided them up between the animators so we can go in and focus on one, which means less work on a single shot.

I'm happy to say that there are a lot of great people working there making it a fun environment to be in. It's also cool to be working with guys coming out of different animation schools: AAU, Ringling, VFS, Art Institute, Full Sail, and of course myself being from Animation Mentor. That means some interesting conversations about animation!

My entry for AM's weekly sketch

Well, this week's topic is "superheroes" so I thought I'd throw something together for it. Here's what I ended up with, the body is fairly rough as you can see but oh well. I hope to enter into this weekly sketch more often.

Michael Caine acting videos

Hey everyone, I just wanted to point you all in the direction of the guy that uploaded the Caine videos to youtube. His name is Dan Caylor and he's an animation student also! He's currently attending AAU and you can check out his blog HERE! Thanks for the upload Dan, the videos are a great watch!

Michael Caine acting classes!!

Matt Kelly found these videos on youtube and they were such a great find that I decided to post them here. Waiting on the last video to be uploaded by the user so only 5 out of 6 are here for now.



Part 1:




Part 2:




Part 3:




Part 4:




Part 5:




Part 6:

PS3

I've underestimated the people's lack of patience.




Another one sold for $10,000 yesterday just before this one but now they seem to be averaging out to around $2,500, still a good profit.

Spiderman 3

Here's a video some might be interested in seeing. Has previs stuff in it and also reveals Venom at the end of it. Definitely waiting for this thing to come out!


EDIT: video's been pulled down

My animation disc and light box

Ok, so I'm getting closer to finishing this thing and figured I'd post some images with everything kind of pieced together. I decided to make it a box rather than a full desk because it will be easier to move if I ever have to. I went with Oak, which is a more expensive wood, so one can be made even cheaper than this one. A lot of cheaper furniture you might buy and possibly even the light boxes online are made out of MDF, medium density fiberboard, and then covered up with Formica, which is the slick covering on most counter tops. The sheet of oak plywood was $42 and I have enough left over to make another disc and desktop. I've stained and applied 2 coats of clear to both the box and disc. I left the back of the disc and the inside of the box unstained since it won't be seen. The inside of the box will probably have a layer of tinfoil to reflect the light. I did apply the two coats of clear to the bottom of the disc though, just as a basic sealer to the wood.

The glass was $8 and the Plexiglas was $6. I wanted to size it out so I could use 16 field paper if I wanted to, so it measures in at 12" by "18. The glass was cut to that exact size from a local glass company and my dad was able to get one of the scrap pieces of Plexiglas that we ended up cutting to size. The only problem with it is that it is 1/4" thick when we I was looking to get 1/8" so I could place it directly underneath the 1/8" piece of glass in the disc. So I'll end up screwing the plexi into the underside of the disc, and inset the glass to draw on into the top of the disc.

Because of this thickness difference in the Plexiglas I was kind of worried about how well the light would diffuse overall and didn't want to run into dark spots so I went with two florescent bulbs with a higher wattage to be safe, since the circular bulbs that most people go with are only around 32 watts. You can find the circular setups with the fixture at a Home Depot for $20. The way I'm going will also make it cheaper, but with more wattage there is more heat, so I'll soon find out if I get any issues from that. I don't think it will be that big of a deal, but we'll see if the paper I'm drawing on goes up in flames :) I should also note that we made the circle cuts with a router and an attachment that allowed use to set a pivot point in the center, so the router will cut it out nice and clean.

Here are some more pics:




Here's an image of just the disc with the router work for the glass and pegbars:


And the last few images are of the box and disc where you can see the edges have been routed so the disc will fit inside of it and sit level with the top of the surface. We did the same with the back of the disc, routing it halfway through the wood.






Once I finish it all up I'll take some more final pics and give a summary about how much everything cost.

Lecture about storytelling!

Anyone that wants to hear how important storytelling is should watch this video! I found this link on AM alumni, David Martinez's blog. It is 45 minutes long but I didn't find it difficult to sit through at all. Andy Goodman made some great points about what makes narrative so powerful, what makes a good story, and how you make a lasting storytelling culture. Check it out, it's definitely worth a watch!

Storytelling Lecture- Keynote Address: Storytelling as Best Practice



He seems to have some type of online classes and workshops too.
http://www.agoodmanonline.com/purple.html

Drawing time!

Well everyone I just got some of the stuff to get a 2d animation setup going and I'm pretty excited! I've never done 2d animation before so I'm probably going to be pretty disappointed after the first few(hundered) tests but I'm still ready to give it a try. I bought an acme pegbar, 12 field punched acme paper, a lightfoot pegbar so I can punch my own crappier paper for some quick tests and getting use to the whole process, and I'll be getting the glass and plexiglass cut tomorrow for the disc that my dad and I are going to be making! It won't be a professional setup of course but I figure I better not shell out $500 on the disc alone for soemthing that I'm trying for the first time. So far I think I'm going to be able to put together the desk/light table and full disc together for less than $200 but we'll see.