Back to New Zealand!

Going back to New Zealand in a couple of weeks to work at Oktobor Animation Studios in Auckland.

They have some really cool shows currently in production and I can't wait to get started.

"How to Break into Animation" - Talk by Steve Hickner

How to Break Into Animation Steve Hickner Dreamworks Director from Creative Talent Network on Vimeo.

Interview with Jason Schleifer

Interesting interview with Jason Schleifer - Head of Character Animation at Dreamworks Animation.

Peter Jackson may direct the Hobbit after all!

I was excited about Guillermo del Toro directing the Hobbit films and was a bit disappointed when he had to step down a few months ago.

Learning that Peter Jackson may step in and direct the movies after all is really good news!

Read more about the news here

Interview with Mark Henn and Mike Surrey

Here's a roundtable interview that Disney animators Mark Henn and Mike Surrey did with the press in Dallas shortly prior to the release of the Princess and the Frog.

Click here to listen to the interview.




Here's another interview with Mark Henn

Pres-Aid - A fund-raising art auction

This got to my attention today and I wanted to make a post about it to get people to head over to Pres-Aid.

From the website:
"Animator Pres Romanillos has suffered a relapse of leukemia, and is in the hospital awaiting a repeat bone marrow transplant. His friends are putting together a charity art auction for his benefit.

The Talbert Family Foundation has set up a charitable fund for Pres. 100% of these donations will go to Pres and Jeannine, to pay medical and day-to-day expenses. These donations are tax deductible. Thank you!"

Pres Romanillos worked on such awesome movies as Mulan, Spirit, Pocahontas, Aladdin, Shrek 2, Madagascar, and many other films. Click here to read more about him.

The auction has some amazing pieces of art for you to bid on - head over to Pres-Aid and check it out.

The Theater's Best Kept Secret

I'm currently reading "Sanford Meisner - On Acting" and found a really cool documentary online - "Sanford Meisner - The Theater's Best Kept Secrets".

It's old and probably been posted tons of times before, but for those that haven't seen it, check it out!

I also recommend to grab his book "Sanford Meisner - On Acting", it's a great way to get introduced to method acting by one of the greatest acting teachers ever.

The Frogumentary

The Frogumentary - a videoblog in four parts on the making of the Princess and the Frog.

Jeffrey Katzenberg on Charlie Rose

Half hour interview with Jeffrey Katzenberg on Charlie Rose where he talks about his journey, the movie business today, 3-D and animation. Interesting stuff.

Click here to watch the show.

Enjoy!

Inspiration from the great Milt Kahl

Richard Williams on Milt Kahl


Brad Bird on Milt Kahl:


Milt Kahl Pencil Tests from Robin Hood:


More Milt Kahl Pencil Tests from Pencil Test Depot

Milt Kahl Disney Family Album Part 1:


Milt Kahl Disney Family Album Part 2:


Milt Kahl Disney Family Album Part 3:

Waking Sleeping Beauty

I just love these documentaries and can't wait for this one to become available.



Click here to get some clips form the actual film.

Interview with Don Hahn and Peter Schneider:


Here's a podcast by Speaking of Animation with Don Hahn and Peter Schneider about the making of the movie.

Brad Bird Interview

An old interview from 2004 shot prior to the release of The Incredibles, but still pretty cool

Chris Sanders on How to Train Your Dragon

The co-director of How to Train Your Dragon talks about the movie.



Watch a lot more behind the scenes stuff on How to Train Your Dragon at Trailer Addict

Tangled Teaser

The Beauty and the Beast Documentary

Documentary from 1991 about the making of one of my favorite Disney movies.

Part 1:

Part 2:

New Animation Test - The Jedi Guard

Here's a test I did just for fun. Hope you like it :)

John Musker and Ron Clements Interview

Here's a really nice interview from Animated News about the Princess and the Frog with Ron Clements and John Musker.

The best news is that the whole movie is available in rough pencil test on the Blu-Ray edition. Awesome.

Read the interview here.

Guide to Art Schools Recognize my Blog

The website Guide to Art Schools has recognized my blog as one of The 50 Most Awesome Cartooning and Animation Blogs on the Web - which is just an incredible honor.

I try to find stuff to put on my blog that inspires me as an animator and to learn that the stuff I put up inspires others as well is crazy cool. Thank you so much for the recognition.

Make sure to check out the other blogs on the list, there's a lot of really cool stuff to read about and to get inspiration from.

Walt - The Man Behind the Myth

Wow - it's been a while since my last post.

Found a great documentary about Walt Disney on YouTube - the best I've seen so far. Here's the first out of a total of 13 parts I think (you'll find the next parts at the bottom at the end of each part).

Enjoy!

3 hours with Chuck Jones

Great inspiration!

Princess and the Frog - First 5 minutes

Superawesome!



More featurettes and cool stuff at Trailer Addict

More Quadruped Cycles

New Animation Tests

Disney Animation Interviews

Ohhh...its so cool.

It used to be stuff from the 90s that we had to search up on YouTube or watch on the bonus tracks on the dvd's but now it's back.

Interviews with Ron and John, Andreas Deja and Bruce Smith about Disney Animation in relation to the upcoming The Princess and the Frog. I'm sure there's gonna be more and I can't wait :)

Working Remotely

As I'm currently trying to make a living as a freelance character animator working remote, I found this article by Dana Boadway from the the April Animation Mentor Newsletter, very interesting.

I don't mind relocate to be able to do what I love. I really enjoy moving around and explore new places, but at the moment, I simply can't. So hopefully Dana is right and that more and more studios will consider remote workers.

VeggieTales

Wow...it's been a while since the last post.

Anyway, I just checked out Big Ideas site and they're currently selling the VeggieTales DVD "Abe and the amazing promise". I worked on that show at HuHu Studios.

They also have a trailer up and several of my shots are in the trailer which makes me proud :)

Check it out.

Wall-E - Best Animated Feature

Even tho it's a shame it wasn't nominated for Best Picture, it's great that it got the Best Animated Feature Oscar. Well deserved! Congratulation Pixar! Here's some behind the scenes-stuff:



More stuff here: MovieWeb - Wall-E

The Muppets - Behind the scenes

There's so much to learn from these brilliant artists.


Geniuses at work - Behind the scenes stuff:
Of Muppets and Men
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6

60 Minutes - Behind the scenes
Part 1 - Part 2

The World of Jim Henson
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8
(Part 4 and 9 is unfortunately missing)

Also check out the The Jim Henson Hour show.
There a bunch of episodes available on YouTube

The Cartoon Director

Watching behind the scenes stuff is a huge inspiration for me and I never get tired of it. Especially about animation. It's just so cool. This Walter Lantz video may be old stuff to some, but still...it's cool. Enjoy!

Hoffman and Streep

Awesome!


Read more about the movie Doubt here.

Merry Christmas

It's been an exciting 2008 and looks like 2009 is going to be even more exciting :)

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

All the best for 2009!

Urmel voll in Fahrt Shots

About a year ago I worked at Ambient Entertainment in Germany on the animated feature Urmel voll in Fahrt. Now the DVD is out and it's cool to see my shots in context and fully lit and rendered. This was my first job ever, straight out from school.

Looking back at my animation in the shots now they're kind of...well, they could have been a heck of a lot better :), but the job the guys in the FX department, the lighters and render-guys did, is stunning. Also, I couldn't have gotten a better entry into the animaton industry than working at Ambient.

Here's my Urmel voll in Fahrt animation reel:

2008 Roy E. Disney Award

Goes to Richard Williams. Well deserved!


Richard Williams has been a huge inspiration ever since I started animation a few years back. Just watching documentaries about him, listening to him talk or hear others talk about him makes me wanna animate.

Here's some inspirational Richard Williams stuff:
I Drew Roger Rabbitt
The Theif who never gave up
Richard Williams Spline Cast
The Creative Person: Richard Williams

Also, can't wait to be able to afford the Animation Survival Kit Animated DVD-set.

Tribute to John Williams

Awesomeness!

An Update

So...I'm back in Norway! I left New Zealand September 15th to return to Norway and work the rest of my contract with HuHus remotely. Currently working on the children show Veggie Tales which is kinda cool.

My time onsite at HuHu in New Zealand has been really great. Made some awesome friends and the studio is a very nice place to work. New Zealand is also a truly beatiful country with the nicest people on the planet :)

Haven't been too much time lately to work on my showreel, but there's a couple of tests I've been working on during the past months that I will try to put up soon.

Cartoony - Breakdowns

Sorry for lack of posting lately, but here's the blocking breakdown pass (keys, bd's and inbetweens) on my cartoony animation test.

Feedback are very welcome.

Practicing cartoony animation

Alrighty. So, for ages I've been wanting to do some wacky cartoony stuff, but all kinds of other things has gotten in the way. Now, I've found some time to do it. I know this isn't the greatest gag/story in the world, but I just wanted to do something cartoony for the sake of practicing it. Here's my blocking pass (main keys/extremes only) of my first attempt.

Celebrating ONE year as an animator!

Exactly 1 year ago today, I planted my feet on German soil and started my first day as an animator. Woohooo!

It's been totally crazy and I've learned so much during this first year and met tons of awesome people.

I'm currently working at HuHu Studios in New Zealand and we're moving to London in January for new adventures.

Exciting times ahead :)

WOW!

Animation Mentor Summer 2008 Showcase

The Red Truck

Congratulations to Team Grojf for winning the FJORG competition at Siggraph. Their winning test, The Red Truck, is a stunning piece of emotional storytelling and animation, created under extreme conditions in 32 hours. Awesome!

Watch "The Red Truck" here

Sir Ian McKellen - On Acting

This may be old stuff to some, but still hilariously cool :)

Philip Seymour Hoffman - The Savages

Philip Seymour Hoffman talks about his part and acting in The Savages.

On structure


On the directors


On the script


On his role


On his co-stars

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Really inspiring lecture from Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch about achieving your childhood dreams.



There's a couple of really good quotes from this lecture that really stood out to me. "Brick walls are there to let us prove how badly we want to achieve something" and "'Luck' is where preparation and opportunity meets". Pretty cool stuff to keep in mind.

The Princess and the Frog

Yay! 2d features are back at Disney.

Workflows

I always find it very inspiring and useful to read about other animators workflows. At AM they showed us a bunch of different workflows and my current workflow is a mix of those. I think there's always something that can be picked up from seeing how others do things. Here's some workflows that I found on the net. If you read this and know about links to others that have posted their workflow, please shoot me an email :)

Anatomy of a shot - Kevin Koch
Reference footage and planning - Michael Makarewicz - Splinedoctors
Mike Walling Workflow
Keith Lango Pose to Pose workflow
Shawn Kelly Workflow
Turok Animation Workflow
Jacob Gardner Workflow 11 sec club test - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
Making of Alien Song - Victor Navone
TJ Phan Animation Workflow
Glen Keane Animates a scene

Inside Pixar Animation Studios

This is an older short documentary about Pixar, but still cool :) I never get tired of behind the scene stuff like this. Super inspiring.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Disney Animation Special from 1981

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3


Part 4


Part 5

More quality online learning

It's awesome to see more quality online learning for animators is starting to pop up online.

David Weinstein's Digital Apprentice Workshop went online 4th of July and after a quick look at his site, it looks like a great addition to Jason Ryan's Tutorials and Keith Lango's Video Tutorial Service.

Animation is such a huge topic, so getting inputs and looking over the shoulder of different experienced animators are really valuable.

Check out the site. Looks pretty cool with (among other cool stuff) a video interview with the one and only Ray Harryhausen. Also, one of the animation tutorials are available free of charge :)

If you dream it - You can do it!

Awesome inspiring interview with Pixar animator Austin Madison.



Also, check out The Ending from CalArts 2006 Showcase (second film on the list) and Boy Meets Rex.

The Tale of Despereaux

I was so pleased when I saw the trailer for this movie. I've only heard great things about it, but watching the trailer made me think that maybe it's a good idea to stick around in Europe after all :) It looks awesome. It'll be Christmas for sure this year.

No charge for awesomeness

Well, I did pay $15 to see Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda yesterday, but it can be considered no charge for what we got in return. The movie will make you go blind from overexposure to pure awesomeness. Fantastic!

Jason Ryan Animation - The Basics

I've done all of the basics Jason Ryan tutorials and here's the Flipbook result of it :) Working in 2d is a lot of fun and it's amazing how much I feel that I've learned already from looking over his shoulder. I totally recommend it!

CG Excellence Award 2008

My short film, Forever Young is shortlisted for the CG Excellence Award at CG Overdrive in Singapore which takes place June 17th to 20th. It's such an honor to be picket together with fellow AM'ers Jure Prek with Crash and Anil Kapoor with Peppy, both awesome shorts!

Ramblings and more goodies

Wow. Time flies. Been quite busy the past month doing Jason Ryan tuts, 11 sec club and working away at HuHus, which by the way is still awesome. Learning tons on every shot and feel that I'm slowly moving forward. We're on our way into the winter here in New Zealand, but guess what, no snow! Woohoo. Can't really say I miss it. It's about 10-12 degrees celcius, which is kinda okayish for a winter :)

The big event lately has been the Jason Ryan site going live. And he's not letting us down. It's pure awesomeness. Doing the 2D Flipbook stuff really makes me feel like an animator and the most important thing that I get out of it at this stage, is that doing 2d forces me to think about the spacing at every frame. He's also big on opposite actions to get more entertainment into the animation. Great stuff! In addition to that, just peeking over his shoulder, getting into his mindset of how he animates, what he's thinking about and when, is invaluable.

Bobby Beck has posted a couple of really cool posts on his blog lately. Check out this squash and stretch video. Crazy stuff! He also shared some personal thoughts about your potential a few weeks back that I thought was spot on and super inspirational. He also have a follow up post, Positivity in the Workplace (scroll down a little) about how people found it hard to deal with his positive energy, which is just sad. Thank god he didn't manage to change. His energy is an inspiration which helped me a lot through Animation Mentor! To get a portion of the Boom-energy, check out the replay of the Webinar he did recently.

Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda is on its way. June 6! This movie looks awesome! There's a 2 min preview out and also a cool behind the scene clip just released. Tons of more Kung Fu Panda stuff here.

Carlos also keeps his blog going with lots of cool tips and thoughts. Check out his tips and tricks site! He also talked about 6 word stories a while back. "For Sale: Baby Shoes, never worn" (Hamingway). That's efficient storytelling and puts "less is more" in perspective. More 6 word stories here.

Kevin Koch has a very good post about the talk by James Baxter, Pete Docter, Andreas Deja and Eric Goldberg about mentor ship in animation. Interesting thoughts. He also got a post about the importance of physics and how it can throw the audience off without really knowing why, but just feel that something is wrong. Newton rocks!

Forever Young in the AM Newsletter!

My Animation Mentor short film, "Forever Young" is being featured in the May 08 issue of the AM Newsletter. Full article here.

Jason Ryan goes live!

Finally! Jason Ryan's tutorial site goes live Sunday May 11. This has been one of the big waits for me this year.

His Ramp Up tutorials has been awesome and with Flipbook purchased, I'm ready and set for getting an in-depth look at how he animate.

My current work flow is heavily based on one of his earlier lectures at Animation Mentor and I'm really looking forward to get more of his knowledge and to use it to hopefully take my own animation to a higher level.

Brad Bird on fostering innovation

Awesome article at Gigaom where Brad Bird talks about a few important things in our industry.

More Brad Bird stuff:
- Podcast by the Spline Doctors
- Pixar - A Human Story of Computer Animation
- Ratatouille Interview with Brad Bird
- Ratatouille Filmmaker Video

Get ready for Urmel!

If you're in Germany, get ready for the Urmel voll in Fahrt premiere on May 1st. It's a supercool movie and I'm very proud to say I've worked on it. I was invited to a pre-screening on April 20th, but unfortunately I couldn't make it to Hannover. I was at a screening back in December 2007 though and its a super funny and a very entertaining movie!

Hopefully it will get released internationally, probably under the name "Impy - Full Speed" or something (don't quote me on that, but the first movie was named "Impy's Island")

Anyway, if you get a chance - go see it!

Writing Cartoons at ASIFA

Director at ASIFA Hollywood Animation Archive, Stephen Worth, is currently publishing a series of articles about writing cartoons.

Part 1 - The Gag Session
Part 2 - A Continuity Emerges
Part 3 - Structure
Part 4 - The Rough Board

(More to come)

Enjoy!

Jack Lemmon Interview

Four part interview with the wonderful Jack Lemmon from 1998

Jack Lemmon Archive Interview:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

A thought from Ollie

Hans Perk posted this on You Tube. An important message to all character animators from one of the greatest.

Ollie Johnston 1912 - 2008

The sad news arrived yesterday that the last of the Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston, has passed away.

- A tribute to Ollie Johnston by John Canemaker.
- Brad Bird's thoughts about the passing of Ollie Johnston
- The Walt Disney Company on Ollie Johnston


- Disney Family Album: Ollie Johnston (documentary) Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Idea boosting

I was surfing the internet the other day and came across Litemind, a great site with tips about how to boost your creativity.

I went through the archive and found, in particular three posts that was very interesting.



- Tackle any issue with a list of 100
- 6 tips to generate outstanding ideas
- Boost your Brainstorm effectiveness with the WHY habit

James Baxter Goodies

Notes from James Baxter lecture at Dreamworks - Day One - Day Two - Day Three (to come)

James Baxter Interview - The Animation Podcast

James Baxter animated himself dancing

Rough Animation from Hunchback and The Lion King

Ever Ever After - Music Video

Enchanted - Baxters animation from Enchanted

James Baxter Interview about Enchanted

Making of Enchanted short documentary

Part of the Making of Beauty and the Beast

More Goodies

There's been posted some really cool goodies on the net during the last couple of weeks. It's probably well known to most, but anyway, here they are:

Shawn Kelly's Tips and Tricks E-book - An awesome collection of gold from one of the Animation Mentor founders. This one is not to be missed!

Jeff Gabors Comparison Reel from Horton Hears a Who - This is super inspiring stuff and shows how far one can actually go when shooting reference. Awesomes!

Kevin Koch's post about using video reference (triggered by Gabors comparison reel). Theres stuff to be aware of when shooting reference for animation and Kevin Koch has some really nice thoughts about that. He also have a follow up post about the topic. Very interesting stuff.

John Kahrs Splinecast. Andrew Gordon talks to his co-worker at Pixar about polishing your shots. Great Stuff!

Dave Burgess E-Critique for the February 11 Second Club winner, Phillip Hall. This is Animation Mentor all over again. Brings back some really nice memories from my time at the school :) Anyway, this E-Crit is awesome and a must-see for any animator.

And last, but not least....The Goonies. I'm a huge fan of that movie and Matt Williames seems to be one too. He went ahead and visited the locations where the movie was shot. Cool post and some nice pictures from that trip.

Tex Avery Documentary

Cool documentary about one of the greatest in animation.

Tex Avery Documentary:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Hand Drawn Nomad - Awesome!!

I've been visiting Matt Williames blog, Hand Drawn Nomad, before and I've been returning to it once in a while. But recently I went through his site and checked out his archive - that guy has some seriously awesome stuff in his post archive.

Here's a collection of the tutorials he've made, but I strongly recommend to visit his site and check out all the posts! It's pretty amazing stuff.

Spacing: Tricks of the Trade
More Notes on Spacing
Motion Analysis
Ball Bounce
Gestures: The Revenge of the Tutorials
Walk this way!
The Eyes have it!
Emotion dictates design

Step 1: Planning your Shot
Post 2: ROUGH IT OUT
Post 2 and a half: Breaking it down
Tie Down: Refining your acting, drawings, and the technical side
From 2's to 1's
Fin

Eye Darts and the Social Triangle
Are you an Actor, or a Technician?
Construction and Pitfalls

Starting your Shot: THINKING, FEELING, AND PLANNING

Enjoy!

More inspirational stuff

Transformation sequence Beauty and the Beats Rough Animation


Pinocchio Walk - Milt Kahl


Glen Keane about Ollie Johnston



Andreas Deja about Frank Thomas


Glen Keane speaks at CalArts 2006

Daphne's New Broom

A classmate of mine from Animation Mentor, Ales Mav, has just finished his short film. It's a fantastic film!

Check out Daphne's New Broom.

Ready for a new Showreel

My initial plan was to get my desktop shipped down here to New Zealand from Norway, but it's actually cheaper to buy a new one here. So I did, yesterday :)

I'm having a good time at work. HuHu is a great place and I've gotten used to the rigs and got my head around the pipeline. With a new desktop in place, I'm now ready to start working on a new showreel in my sparetime. I have a bunch of ideas of what I want in it and I'll give myself the rest of the year to make it as good as it can get at my current level.

It's gonna be fun!

Happy Birthday Iben

This little cutie is my niece and she's 3 years old today. Check her pyjamas, she's already started to get into animation.

Happy birthday, Iben. All the best! Greetings from New Zealand.

SynchroLux - awesome blog.

I got directed to Kevin Koch's blog by a coworker of mine today and its really cool reading for animators. A post that especially caught my eye was about how do you animate good animation really really fast, and the answer was kinda cool, coming from a guy that has been in the industry for a while....you can't! :)

There are things one can do though, to get good stuff done in a decent amount of time. Check out the post and bookmark Kevin Koch's blog SynchroLux.

Thanks for the link, Rob.