Monday, May 28, 2007

Session 608

Every week in our q&a's, Bret run dailies (showing your work to the director/supervisor as well as everybody working on the film, for feedback and comments) as they do at Pixar and this week it was my turn. I got some really great notes from her on my refinement pass of the 3rd third of my film. In addition to address those notes on my 3rd third, I've mainly worked on my 2nd third this week, which is the hardest part I think. It's getting tougher and tougher to stay objective, but the finish line is in sight. 3 weeks to go!

Added a new blog to my list of daily readings. Check out Mark Mayerson. He's posting his Master Thesis - "Six authors in search for a Character". Very interesting reading!

Surf's Up are premiering in June and it's looking pretty cool. My previous mentor, Pepe Valencia has worked on it too :). Came across some clips and featurettes. Here's also an article from AWN.

Here's my 1st pass of polish on the 2nd third:

Monday, May 21, 2007

Session 607

It's been a hard week. Really start to feel the exhaustion from dealing with this short for about 5 months now. Don't get me wrong, it's still fun, but I'm really looking forward to get this piece done, fully lit, rendered and ready for my showreel and Siggraph :)

Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are creating three TinTin films back-to-back...together! Pretty awesome, except that they will use performance capture technology, but still kinda coool. Check out this article at AWN.


Another of Clay Kaytis Animation Podcasts is up...finally :) The third part of his awesome interview with Disney veteran Burny Mattinson. Enjoy! Also came across a cool video from ReelzChannel about Animation Mentor. It's a bit old now, but still worth a look.

I realized that I've been a bit sloppy on uploading my progress this term, so I went thru and added all the assignment-videos for each session. It's nice to have them up there and look back at it later :)

1st pass of polish on the 1st third:

Monday, May 14, 2007

Session 606

More Ratatouille-stuff. They do a great job of keeping the expectations up, thats for sure :)

It was a huge loss when the "10-second club"-site went down last year, but now the AnimWatch are starting up a similar competition, which is really awesome!

I was able to get through a refinement-pass of the whole film this week, as well as starting to polishing the first third that's due next week.

The refining pass of the 3rd third:



And here's the refinement-pass of the whole short "Forever Young". Any comments are totally welcome :)

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Session 605

Not too much news on my short really. Kept working away on refining it. Cleaning up splines and trying to get some snappiness from the stepped blocking back into it. Got a great crit from Bret on the first refining pass last week, which was really encouraging, because at this point, tunnel vision is really getting in the way and everything feels kinda blurry.

Great news! Seems like Lasseter really are going to make some big changes at Disney. It was awesome when they announced the comeback of hand drawn features, but Goofy shorts (among others) too. How about that! Check out this interview with Andreas Deja and Mark Henn at Animated Views.

A great way to improve animation-skills is to study clips from other animators frame-by-frame. I came across a really nice post over at Justin Barretts blog about a way to approach this kind of study. "Thoughts on studying animation" by Justin Barrett. Really interesting reading.

It's been out for a week now, but still, this is ....simply awesomes. Ratatouille 9 min clip. Sit back and enjoy! Here's a French site with some alternate resolutions.

The refining pass of the 2nd third: