alexiss dawn

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 can say it over and over, but man, time is flying by fast! Here’s the second third of my film with a first pass of polish/spline/all that jazz.

Word to the wise: make sure to take a moment to think if you should use arm align when blocking a shot. It’ll save you a lot of time down the road from having to change keys.

Things over at AM are going GREAT. So much is happening and I’m enjoying it all. There is some amazing work being done over there. Our lectures have taken a turn the last couple of weeks — they’ve recorded lectures with some of the recruiters from Pixar, Dreamworks, etc., talking about reels, connections, interviews, all that jazz. It’s really nice to get yet another insider view. Still have a lot of work to do before I even think about getting ready to apply, but talking about it is exciting. Seriously guys, AM preps you well. It’s great.

Three more weeks to finish this baby up! I’m still having so much fun with it and learning a ton from doing it. And man! It’s a blast! Seeing those little glimpses of that character spark are amazing. But as I said, a lot of work so back to work! Happy Memorial Day!

Things are speeding up and it’s getting busy! This last week we started polish on our films. That meant for me taking everything to spline. I blocked pretty tightly so it wasn’t too bad of a transition. Still rough patches but those will be cleaned up for the next, and final go around.

Last week was a great week. So much going on, I just can’t have any complaints. We had a Horton Hears a Who Q&A on Monday with some animators who worked on the film. And to my surprise, who were the two animators? None other than David Gallagher and Jason Martinsen, two of my past mentors from Blue Sky! It was awesome to see them in a Q&A again. I’ve had such great mentors throughout AM, it was just great to see them again.

A lot of cool things are happening in the animation world. It’s just one of those times when things are great and I’m enjoying it all.

Oh, and I woke up today to several awesome greetings from AMers for turning a year older today. Drawings, cakes, songs — I love AM.

It’s week 8!

Coming in a bit late on the blogging here but technically it’s still Monday for another 24 minutes. Things are getting busy. Between my film, all the stuff at AM, and just life in general, it’s busy. Having a blast, just busy. So this last week I made some final tweaks and did some reblocking to the final third of my film. Woot!

I also took some time to refine the first and second thirds…all in prep to get splining. So here’s the entire film in it’s blocking plus stage:

So this week I start to spline this baby. It’s been a while since I’ve been at the splining stage so it’s time to jump in. I had a few of those key moments in animation this last week — those instances when you see the character come to life. They were quick, but it was great to see. So I can’t wait to get this baby all splined out and polished and pretty and all that jazz. Gotta see the life in my character. Lots of work to do.

I cannot believe it’s week 7 already.

Just a heads up to everyone — Jason Ryan Animation launched today! The tutorials are now available! It’s been a long time coming and a lot of hard work has been put into it. With previews through the ramp up tutorials in the JRA newsletter, I can say right now with full confidence that these are a GREAT resource for any animator to keep learning and growing. I can’t wait to dive in.

A HUGE congrats to Jason on the site launch!

Just wanted to holler out a couple of huge congrats to some friends — to Jeff Weidner for getting a job as an animator at Technicolor Interactive! Started there this week — a huuuuuge accomplishment man and very well deserved. And another huge congrats to John Vielee for recently getting an animation internship at Framestore!! (See! I can spell your last name right!) I absolutely love hearing this stuff happen for you guys. It makes my life great! Congrats!

As if you couldn’t guess what this week’s Monday post would bring…here comes the 2/3 of my film in blocking plus. Woot.

Isn’t it funny how you see stuff to fix after the deadline? Sheesh. This week I’ll work on the 3/3 and then do all of the fixes I need on the 1/3 and 2/3 so that next week I’m ready to get splining. Well, that’s the goal. We had an absolutely amazing lecture this last week on polishing and that final 10% by Michal Makarewicz from Pixar. So much to push towards still. Awesome stuff.

Blog posts are lacking this term. I’m sorry about that. I have a lot to share other than my own work but lately it just doesn’t rank in the top priorities list. Give me another 6 weeks and we’ll get going. I’ve collected so many amazing documents and whatnot over the last 16 months that I’ve gotta share sometime.

Happy cinco de mayo everyone.

Busy, busy, busy. For the 1/3 of my film, the acting choices were pretty much set so the goal was to add in a few more breakdowns, and work on those little details and the little subtleties. Over the first three weeks of this term I pushed to exaggerate the character more — breaking the rig and getting back to those animation principles. So I’ve been having a lot of fun going back and layering in some exaggeration.

That snowflake in the beginning has been quite interesting to animate. Animating imperfections — wind gusts and rotations — has been a challenge. I hadn’t thought to use a motion path so that part is all done by moving keys around and whatnot.

Things are definitely busy around here but I’m having a blast with my film. I’m learning so, so much by working on it. The lectures this term have been great. Those along with crits, feedback, and all this animating is helping me grow a ton. Lots to do and plenty of room to grow, but that’s what makes animation great. I think as long as we keep pushing to learn more each week we’re on the right track.

Just a heads up — a new version of tradigiTOOLS has been released. The update is free for everyone that has already bought a license. Go check it out over on their forums. This new version has several updates including:

• Added support for Blend nodes
• Added support for Character Sets
• Parenting to the Camera is now supported for the shotmask
• WINDOWS ONLY: 64-bit support for Maya64 on XP64 & Vista64
• MAC ONLY: Maya 8.5 and Maya 2008 plug-ins are now Universal Binaries (UB)

I’ve been helping beta test these new versions and things are working very smoothly. And for all you guys that like character sets, well it works with those now. I know a lot of AMers were excited for this. It has some great features so get your update. And if you haven’t checked it out yet, well, what are you waiting for?

Final third is blocked! Woo! I had a BLAST working with this section. My goal this term as I’ve said is to push my timing and posing. This has meant some crazy posing and smashing of his head and body. I’ve broken the rig…but most of the time it works out. There have been some crazy instances though with the eyes popping out through the heads and eyelids all askew! It still needs work, but I still have 9 weeks.

How he ends up on the ground in the first shot I’m not sold on yet so that’ll be seeing a reblock. I’m really having a blast with this film — and man alive am I learning a ton. Now I start grinding into getting those details all set in and getting that blocking plussed!

Here’s the whole film in it’s first pass of blocking. I left all of the set on wireframe to focus on posing. It’ll magically reappear at the end of this term.