As I’ve gone MIA the last several months, I thought I’d holler out to blog land as we’re about to head to Siggraph in Los Angeles! Do you want to know what I’ve been busy working on? (Believe me, you definitely do…) Come to the Animation Mentor Birds of a Feather event this Tuesday at Siggraph! You may or may not see something awesome. =)
Tuesday, July 27th @ 2:30 pm in Room 301A. Be there!
Check this out: A great short film, entitled Helium, done by Animation Mentor alumni Daniele Zannone. Awesome work! Love the simplicity and zippiness of it!
Happy New Year folks! Let the elusive debate of whether it’s twenty-ten or two thousand and ten begin!
This last year was one heck of a year! Starting the year in New York working at Blue Sky Studios, moving to Utah to work at Lumenas Animation Studios, and finding myself at the end of the year prepping for a move to California. The year didn’t go in any way I planned or ever imagined but it was one heck of a ride.
So we’re a month into 2010. I made the drive out to California the first of January, packing away my Raving Rabbids and Magic Bullet. I’m working for a bit out at….drumroll…
Animation Mentor! It’s a truly incredible environment to be in and I consider myself lucky to be here. I’m getting to work with the students, still get to animate, and work on some pretty cool projects. If you’re an AMer, you understand how amazing the school is. If you’re not, check out the video they have talking about the company and the work environment over here.
Cool, eh? Like I said, lucky.
If last year taught me anything it was to expect the unexpected. I’m curious to see where I’m at the end of this year and all of the adventures I’ve had. I’m sure it’s going to be a blast.
So there are stories to be told, but I’ll let those out bit by bit. For now, greetings from sunny California!
Hey bloggers! It’s been a while! I’m still alive and kicking for sure. And it’s about dang time for an update.
I’m still at Lumenas Animation Studios and loving it. I’ve been keeping busy and having a blast with the incredible people I work with there. Last week we had a Halloween party and everyone dressed up! It was pretty amazing. A friend and I at work had been working to pass Super Mario Bros. 3 for the month before, so my Halloween costume idea was obvious: the Piranha Plant from the Mario games. I spent a few days on it and was pretty happy with how it came out. We even found spikey plastic balls that lit up when I threw them to act as the fireballs. I lost quite a few of them as it was quite hard to see, but it was well worth it. Everywhere I went, the game’s theme song was inevitably sung by party goers. As a side note, I’ve entered Wired’s Halloween Costume Contest that you can vote for on their facebook site. (hint hint)
In other news, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs came out on DVD/Bluray this last week as well! The film has done amazingly well worldwide. I’ve put together a show reel of the shots I worked on in the film. I’ve placed them in the order I worked on them, starting with the first production shot I’ve ever worked on from the Hunt sequence. For now, here’s the show reel. Soon I’ll write more about it as I want to tell you all about my experiences going from shot to shot and living through crunch!
And with that, a new demo reel! Not looking for a new job, but wanted to throw one together for kicks and giggles — to see my reel with some of my IA3 stuff. 
I haven’t put rendered shots in yet, so the shots included are in their playblast form.
And as one last thing, I went back and looked at my course work from Animation Mentor a few nights ago. I’ve been wanting to put together a show reel with all of my AM work, from the very first bouncing ball I ever did, all the way to seeing my short film thru. I started at AM three years ago this January, knowing nothing about animation, and feeling quite scared the first time I opened Maya. I’ll be one of the first to tell you that the program there is setup beautifully if you want to study to become a character animator. It’s fun to look back and be able to see progress bit by bit. For me, this is one thing that helps when you’re just not getting it while working on a shot — stepping back to see how far you’ve come, and thereby pushing yourself to go farther.
I thought the ending song would be appropriate as I completed my short film in June 2008 and within a couple of weeks moved out to New York to work at Blue Sky Studios on Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. New York, New Yooooork!
Aside from all that, I’m an alumni tutor at Animation Mentor this term. Loving being involved a bit again and seeing students’ work progress. Their excitement and passion amazes and inspires me.
So I’ll leave it there for now. I have some things coming up that I can’t wait to talk about and things to integrate into this site to breathe some life into it and share resources I’ve collected over the last few years. I’ll holler when I’m ready. For now, keep pursuing that joy and start getting ready for the holidays!
Alright, let’s see if I can do this. I’ve slowly been composing my thoughts/feelings/everything about all of last week! It was an incredible experience and has been dubbed the best week ever by me.
(Warning: It is impossible to sum up this much awesomeness. What follows is only a smidgin of a look into what has happened over the last week and a half!)
So I flew out after work on a Friday with another AMer/Blue Sky-er, headed off to San Francisco for graduation. After a crazy delayed flight, we made it into SF and met up with a bunch of friends downtown! Despite being totally exhausted, we stayed up late and I went on 25 hours without sleep the first night!!
The next day was graduation from Animation Mentor. It totally was one of those experiences that words just can’t do justice for. It was incredible to be a part of it. AM really knows how to make an event amazing. It was SO great to see my classmates from the last 18 months from all over the world! And then to get to hang out with them!! And no, I didn’t trip walking across the stage!
That night after we finally left grad (we all like to talk!) about 50 of us met up at Boudin for dinner (and convinced them to stay open late for us!!) and then headed to Medjools to party. It was an amazing night with amazing friends. The great Chris Derochie was hanging out with us (QUACK, QUACK!!) and noticed how people were dancing. So long story short, a group of us got a bunch of people doing the macarena randomly. SO COOL and hilarious!!
The next day I took off to LA with a friend of mine where we met up with a zillion more friends for Siggraph. We stayed at an amazing hotel (part of The Shining was filmed there!! FREAKY!) and had awesome company. Staying with good friends is a must!
The week is impossible to sum up. Spending the day talking and laughing with friends, with studios, with random people! And then at night partying! AM through an awesome party for students, alumni, mentors, industry people…it was great!! Blur also through one heck of a party I got to go to with a good friend. I have not laughed so hard in a LONG time!!
Top 10 Grad/Siggraph moments (In no particular order!):
(Man! There are so many more!!!)
I did not get the chance to participate in FJORG as I wasn’t sure if I would be able to make it out because of Blue Sky, and so I had chosen to drop out instead of keeping my team waiting. But they did some awesome work and it was a blast to get to know so many of the FJORGers and see what they turned out in 32 hours!!!
As a close to our week, we decided to take a bunch of us to Disneyland!! It was such an amazing way to end the week! It took forever to get there (shuttles! shuttles!) but it was hilarious all along the way. 12 of us went, rode plenty of rides, double bounce walked down Main Street to the Wall-E soundtrack, analyzed duck walks, ran around like a bunch of goons, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Disneyland is so much more enjoyable when surrounded by insane animators!
We also had the chance to watch the fireworks above the castle and to see the Fantasmic show. It was such a brilliant time. There’s nothing better than being with amazing people you care about, that you fit in with, and that are just as goofy as you are.
The song from the parade at Disneyland right now totally fits with us and AM right now. Cheesy or not, I love it and it makes me smile!! Play it, I’m sure it will for you. I know for us that went to Disneyland, it means a lot!! Our AM family, our close bonds, our dreams totally coming true!
Well, I’m realizing that this post doesn’t even begin to convey the week. It was honestly one of the most overwhelming experiences and the best week ever so far! It was so great to be surrounded by such genuine, loving, amazing people for 9 whole days! A huge thank you to everyone that made the week that incredible! It showed me just how lucky I am to be a part of Animation Mentor!
I’ve been waking up with a smile on my face every morning, especially since getting home to New York. Work is tough! I love it, but it’s tough! And so far this week as I start to struggle all I have to do is think of last week and I’m immediately laughing to myself like a geek! It means so much to me and I am SO grateful to have been there with everyone! For all the events not talked about, thank you! AM knows what they’re doing and it’s such an incredible place. Again, HUGE thank you to everyone that made last week what it was. Inside jokes to laugh at for a lifetime, eh? LOVE IT!!
Well folks, I think that’s the first time I didn’t update on a Monday in 18 months! It has been one heck of a last couple of weeks. I just got back from California tonight where I had an absolutely incredible time. I drove down with 5 other Utah AMers to San Francisco for the Animation Mentor BBQ, open house, and job fair. I also organized a Wall-E screening for 174 AMers — whoa!! I could banter on and on about everything that happened — it was so great to get to see everyone! And to get to meet so many people I hadn’t met face to face yet. It seriously is an amazing situation to be in — the passion that everyone has only amps up when we get together. I felt like a little kid at Christmas all weekend.
So the job fair was great — AM brought in several studios that we could talk with and drop off our reels. I have to admit I spent a good portion of the time getting distracted every time I saw another AM alumni walk in. We had the open house right after and then we all went to dinner before we headed off to see Wall-E. It was just a never ending night.
The BBQ was great as well — spent all day and night with AMers. I think we all forget to eat much — so many people to see, so many people to talk with, eating comes last.
So a great weekend. As for some news, well, I have some. I am headed to New York to work at Blue Sky Studios! Crazy! It was completely unexpected and caught me off guard to the point that I was speechless! I’ll be working on Ice Age 3 out there! I’m really excited for so many reasons — the experience is going to be great. It’ll be great to work with some of my mentors from Animation Mentor as well. It is definitely intimidating but that challenge is what makes it exciting!
A huge weekend — I didn’t want it to end. I love the people from AM. Our family there is incredible. A big, big thanks to everyone that made the weekend incredible. From going out at night, to meeting for lunches and dinners, thank you guys. You made the experience incredible!! THANK YOU!!!
And by final, I mean “final”. Still some tweaks to be done. But I was able to make a lot of changes and improvements this last week after a killer eCritique and comments.
It’s been said many times that an animator is never done with a shot until it is pulled away from their hands. So I’ll be making some changes this week. One thing I’ve learned moreso this term is that polishing is going to come with time. With each eCrit I learned something new in ways to go about polishing this. I’ve been able to improve bit by bit each week but still have so, so much more to learn. But hey, that’s why I love this stuff — always more to dig into.
Also had to put together my final progress reel. We just included class 2-6 stuff so there are no bouncing balls or pendulums. It’s kinda cool to see the assignments altogether. To go from never having animated 18 months ago to finishing up my short film now is crazy.
More to come… 
Almost there… this last week I did another polish pass on my film. I broke it up a bit different and will do the “final” pass this next week.
A bit of a scare this week as my computer decided to kill over and die Saturday night. Not even a year old and after a few hours of troubleshooting, found out it needs a new motherboard and quite possibly a new hard drive. Haha, I tell you, the timing couldn’t be worse. But the good news is that I’ve had a shadow box setup so my files are safe and my laptop has Maya to finish up this last week if I can’t get my desktop up and running quick enough. I definitely have to put in a plug for Memeo AutoSync. It saved my life this week with it’s syncing powers.
Cannot believe it’s the final assignment this next week. Crazy! I’ve been working on getting used to the idea early of my life as an AM student coming to an end. I’ll always be an AMer, but for the last 18 months this is what I’ve done!! We had a career services Q&A this last week and man, AM really takes care of their own, even once we become alumni. The Q&A was great and a bit calming to know how involved they are with us. It’s still up to us to do the work, but the AM support system is incredible.
Kung Fu Panda finally came out in theaters this last weekend! It’s been the most anticipated film of the year for me so I was super excited to go see it. I got to go see it with some AMers (we also ate at Panda Express before - ha!) and man, the film was incredible. The teams over at Dreamworks did an incredible job all around — the animation was great, the sets and backgrounds were beautiful, and the story was solid. It was unlike any DW film I’ve seen and they have seriously stepped it up several levels. If you haven’t seen it, this is a must-see-in-theaters film. We saw it in an IMAX and if you can, do it that way, just make sure to nab the back row.
And to wind down an incredibly eventful week, we had another AM Framegrabbers session on Saturday night. Every couple of months one of our AM alum sets up a video meeting with an animator in the industry. This time around it was with Jason Ryan. We always come into the session with a film sequence that person worked on and get to hear their approach to it and ask all of our questions. It was informative, motivational, and a really nice break away from my film for a couple of hours.
As an added bonus, the new iphone is sounding pretty sweet…can’t wait for July 11th to roll around. But for now, back to my film!
Oy! Did I mention that time is speeding by? This last week I took the final third of my film into spline.
I also went through the first and second thirds working to incorporate my mentor’s notes, and to just work on polishing it up as a whole.
There’s a lot of work to be done still — polish is the secret word of the day, the week, the month! I have 2 more official weeks to finish this baby up. The final week at AM nothing is due and it’s just a final wind down week. Now that the big hurdle of transitioning to splines is over it’s time to get into the nitty gritty of it and work on making it shine. Like I said, lots to do! I’m still having a lot of fun with it though — it’s amazing how much you can learn each week and how much more there is to learn!
Just wanted to pass on a bit of good news! My team has been selected to compete in the second annual FJORG! Iron Animator Marathon at SIGGRAPH 2008! I’ll be partnering up with Jon Wondrusch and Ian Weyna, both AM alumni, for the event.
FJORG is a competition where 16 teams each work to create an animated sequence of at least 15 seconds in length to a maximum length of 45 seconds based on a theme to be provided at the main event, during 32 straight hours, using only those assets supplied at the event and their own talent and skills. 32 hours! Whoa!
And here’s some EVEN BETTER news: We’re not the only team made up of Animation Mentor students/alumni!! Out of 16 teams competing at FJORG, we have 4 AM teams!! How cool is that?! We’re all so incredibly excited to be there together and work to represent AM well! It’ll be a blast to just participate with so many AMers and the other no doubt talented animators!
Again, congrats to the other AM teams!
Crappy and Happy
Philip Rudolph
Remi Tjon Ajong
John Coomey
Studio TeAM
Chris Schloemp
Mark DeRidder
JJ Pastore
Digital Shamans
Natascha Evans
Sheldon Kruger
Francine Mangin
EDIT: With an email out I found out we have even more AMers participating — so a congrats to them as well!
Bill Buckley
Jay Grenier
Ken Robkin
Henry Sanchez
Brad Bradbury
Valerie Morrison
Hunter Brown
I'm Alexiss! I finished my short film at Animation Mentor in June 2008. I then headed to Blue Sky Studio to work on Ice Age 3 and then Lumenas Animation Studios on The Legend of Santa Claus. I'm now working at Animation Mentor, animating and working on awesome projects!
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