Unfold

Good Dialog

Well written dialog can add some nice spice to a film and sometimes make you think.




But bad dialog can really pull you out of the movie you're watching.







So try to appreciate well written dialog when you can.
Oh, and go buy Ratatouille because it is an AMAZING film!!!

(This post was created because of the superman clip-I had to share it)

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!