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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
My wife and I met Mario Pochat and his wife last year in San Diego. In fact we graduated together in the second graduation class ever at Animation Mentor :)
I was really happy to see his awesome short film featured on the front page of YouTube. This film is an incredible piece of animation!
Watch "Marcelino and Bartolomeo: Bye Bye!" on YouTube.
Go Mario!
Awesome documentary on one of the true pioneers in animation. Enjoy!Art Babbitt Documentary:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4
There's a trailer released from the movie I worked on at Ambient Entertainment in Germany:
Trailer "Urmel voll in Fahrt"
None of my shots are in there, but still pretty cool :)
Enjoy!
Wow...a week already. The flight to New Zealand went pretty much as expected, but being in the air 24 hours totally sucks. Not recommendable :) But it's amazing what one do to animate eh? And of course the guys at Auckland Customs had to pull me aside and go through all my luggage. But they were nice and professional and after tons of questions and a short hour, I could finally enter New Zealand around 1am in the morning. A shuttle guy waited for me at the airport and drove me to Snells Beach.
The next morning I woke up to amazing New Zealand. My oh my! The landscape and nature you see in Lord of the Rings is all here. It's awesome! (Pictures will come) Then I got introduced to all the people at HuHu Studios and got to know the guys I will be working with. A great gang. There will be tons of fun with those guys. After pretty much no sleep for 24 hours I was happy to hear that I could take it easy the first day, then it was weekend and Monday was a national holiday, so I got time to recover from the jet-lag (12 hour time difference from Norway), which was totally needed.
I'm pretty much settled with all the practical stuff. Got a bank account, cell phone, applied for tax-number etc, and rented a house I'm gonna share with some of my co-workers. Snells Beach is pretty small, nice and quiet. The nearest town is Warkworth (about 10 min. away) and Auckland (1.3 mill) is an hour away by car.
A perfect place to learn and gain experience as an animator :)
Tomorrow I'm leaving Norway again, after a few great weeks relaxing with my family, to start my new job as a character animator at HuHu Studios in Snells Beach, New Zealand.
I'm full of excitement about this opportunity and I'm really looking forward to start animating again after a short break. Staying away from the computer has been hard, but the re-charge feels good :)
I'm flying out from Sandefjord, Norway to Frankfurt, Germany and from there the flight to Auckland takes 24 hours, with a short 2-hour stop in Singapore. Crazy flight, but once there, it's gonna be totally awesome!
2007 has been one of the best years in my life. So many exciting things happened. I got married to the most wonderful girl in the world, graduated from Animation Mentor, visited the US, met some awesome people and got my fist job as a professional animator at Ambient Entertainment in Germany.
It's been superfun, but also kind of intense, so now it's good to relax and just do nothing back in Norway for a few weeks before I move on to my next job.
I wish you all a great 2008!
I was surfing the internet the other day and came across Litemind, a great site with tips about how to boost your creativity.
