alexiss dawn

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!

I had the great opportunity to see Toy Story 3 a few weeks before it came out over at the studio, and then again on opening night with some of the great folks from AM and Pixar. I’m hoping by now all of you have seen it, but I’ll still keep it mainly spoiler free. =)

Pixar upped their game for this one. I would definitely say it’s one of the most intense film they’ve done so far. It had me almost rolling on the floor laughing at time, on the edge of my seat nervously biting my lip at others, and yes, tearing up at other parts. It’s the real deal. And I dare say it’s up there for best film of the year outside of the animation category.

It was a powerful situation to be in — the built up excitement for this film spans across ages: people my parents’ age who took their kids to see the first two films, young kids today who are excited for a new animated film, and of course, people my age who grew up with Andy and the toys.

When the first Toy Story came out I was 11 years old. So seeing this film tugged at my heartstrings in all sorts of ways, pulling me back to my childhood and the memories I have of those characters.

And the STORY. Oh man, the story is incredible. I love when you get pulled in and you’re not analyzing the animation, you’re not being distracted by side elements, but you’re feeling the emotions of the characters. Pixar is genius at storytelling and there’s no doubt they have a winner with this one.

And this is the kind of stuff that reminds us why we want to be animators — being a part of a team to create something that connects with people. To make people laugh, gasp, cry, and smile. You cannot walk out of this film without feeling good. I’ve been walking around my apartment today singing You’ve Got A Friend In Me.

As a side note, aside from the updates on facebook from fellow animators who love the film, I love seeing updates from non-animation friends and family who are going nuts over Toy Story 3. That’s gold.

I love that they kept the true characters with Bullseye’s crazy floppy run and the contrast of Buzz and Woody’s movement. And the addition of new characters was great — seeing how they developed character specific movements for each. A few new ones to watch out for that I loved:

Ken

Spanish mode Buzz

A certain version of Mr. Potato Head (cleverly drawn in one of the post its by Aaron Hartline…)

They’re amazingly well done and I love how each works well together but has their own completely unique style. They really put the effort into the character of the characters. That’s not often done on such of a large scale, and was great to see.

They stayed true to the original films but pushed the boundaries x1000. Well done Pixar. This is what it’s about.

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!

This last weekend I got the chance to see How to Train Your Dragon… As it hasn’t come out yet, I won’t post much as to avoid any spoilers for all of you, but let me just say this: I have never seen an animated film like this. It exceeded all of my expectations, bringing chills to my arms and tears to my eyes. And more amazing is how much the feelings the film brought have stuck with me into the week. It is an absolutely stunning and beautiful film.

The trailers and the media that have been released don’t even begin to let you know the big picture of what you’re in for. I absolutely love the film poster I have posted above as it shows what to me the movie is more about: the relationships between the characters. The animation is great, the visual fx are beautiful, the story is strong — all elements of this movie combine and build the ever-so-important relationships. It’s quite incredible.

It made me laugh, cry, cheer, and just get chills. The film takes turns I didn’t expect, develops amazingly deep relationships, and is such a visual delight for the entire film. It’s out in theaters this Friday and I’m telling you now: you definitely will not be disappointed. This film is definitely the best that DreamWorks has done so far, and it has the chops to fight for a slot among the best animated films. They nailed it on the head and raised the bar with this one. Bravo guys, bravo.

Just had a fellow AMer send me a link to an awesome documentary they made about Albuquerque. Now before you close this page and walk away, you really should watch it. They interview several people in this industry who made the jump and moved to Albuquerque to be at the still-pretty-new Sony studio down there. And it’s all shot around Albuquerque at some pretty cool spots. It’s really well done and it’s great to see a bit of the city from their view. Bravo guys!

From their site: In May of 2007, Sony Pictures Imageworks announced the opening of a satellite facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico that could take advantage of tax incentives offered by the state government.

Once in motion, employees of all tenure, and from many parts of the world, began moving to Albuquerque. Most knew absolutely nothing about the area. This is the story of the first forty employees who took the leap, and how they have come to experience the city of Albuquerque, and New Mexico.

It’s been a while since a short film has completely wow-ed me, and Out of a Forest defintiely did just that. It is an absolutely beautiful stop motion short! From Cartoon Brew: Tobias Gundorff Boesen’s Out of a Forest is a stop-motion effort out of Denmark’s The Animation Workshop. A lot of Out of the Forest was shot on location in forests around Viborg, Denmark, and the presence of prim and proper bunnies in this natural setting lends the film a magical flavor.

This weekend I had the chance to visit the Walt Disney family museum in San Francisco. The museum is located in the heart of the presidio area, and almost seems a bit hidden. (Make note that if you enter the address into a GPS, it will take you to somewhere downtown, and not the museum!)

The museum is full of stories, movies, quotes, pictures, props, and all sorts of knick knacks collected from Walt’s life. You start out learning a bit of his ancestry, then follow him throughout his life from his school days, to his many attempts in starting business, his successes and failures, and through his last days. The place is huge with eleven separate rooms and it takes several hours to get through if you want the full experience and the chance to read and watch everything that is posted, but it’s well worth it if you take the time.

You’re not allowed to use cameras or cell phones, so i scribbled notes of quotes on the back of my museum guide so that I could post them up here. So without much introduction, I just want to post up a few quotes that made me sit back and think while I was there. It may have been said over 70 years ago, but these still apply. So enjoy and be inspired!

“The point must be made clear to the men that our study of the actual is not so that we may be able to accomplish the actual, but so that we may have a basis upon which to go into the fantastic, the unreal, the imaginative - and yet to let it have a foundation of act, in order that it may more richy posess sincerity and contact with the public.

A good many of men misinterpret the idea of studying the actual motion. They think it is our purpose mereley to duplicate these things. This misconception should be cleared up for all. I definitely feel that we cannot do the fantastic things, based on the real, unless we first know the real.”

- Walt Disney to Don Graham, December 23, 1935

“Walt said, ‘That’s what I want to see in the pictures, I want the character to be somebody. I don’t want them just to be a drawing.”

-Friz Freleng, animator

“Walt encouraged his artists to study human and animal movement - not to duplicate reality, but to use it as a foundation for convincing reality.”

“You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.” - Walt Disney

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend an event at the San Francisco International Animation Festival: a showing of several of the Alice Comedies Disney did back in the 1920s! I met up with my friend and fellow animator Eleanor and we watched and listened as the director of the new Disney museum in San Francisco gave us inside details about the comedies.

The Alice Comedies were a series of shorts created in the 1920s. They featured Alice, a live action girl, and Julius, a cartoon cat. The first short, Alice’s Wonderland, was a silent black and white film that combined live action and animation. That’s right, animation and live action in the 1920s. Alice enters a cartoon world and interacts with the cartoon characters — a pretty amazing feat at the time.

Walt Disney didn’t have a production staff for the first six shorts, so he had animated them all himself, and his brother Roy operated the camera for all the live action shots. The director of the museum made an interesting note that these shorts provide an opportunity to see Walt’s own animated work — a rarity! Of course back then the principles of animation hadn’t quite been established and when you watch the shorts there are definitely things right off that stand out, but keep in mind that this was the 1920s and one of the major stepping stones leading Walt down his career path.

The Alice Comedies are not advertised by Disney, and aren’t even available to the public usually. The director noted that Walt even became embarrassed by the films! But looking back it’s great to see how ahead of its time these films were. They described the process of shooting against a white sheet and cutting sections out of mattes to combine the two — a VERY different way than we do things now!

There’s a lot to learn from these shorts. Whether its to remind us to always push to explore new ways of doing things, or to keep things simple and the story and comedy will come across. It’s an interesting look into the beginning of things for the animation world.

A lot of the Alice Comedies are available on youtube. The first film, Alice’s Wonderland, is up but be forewarned that it’s not the greatest quality. Check out the related videos as well to see more of the comedies!

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!

It’s finally that time boys and girls — Ice Age 3 is in theaters officially today! I had the chance to see it last week in New York with the Blue Sky crew and it turned out beautifully. You won’t be disappointed! So go check it out!