Coffee and my story

Been working at home on my animation for what? 8 weeks now. It ain’t getting to me staying at home with the 3 year old while my wife goes out and works. I thought I would miss going into work at the office, human interaction and all, but not really anymore. Had a pretty busy week. I matched all of my Tupperware to the lids. No renegade tops on MY watch, lemme tell you. I had to keep my eye on that woman across the street, too. She had her housekeeper push her moped out so she could ride it up and down the street one time, then she has her lil’ slave put it back for her! Man, get a life! And ya know silverware can never be clean enough. My secret. I presoak before the dishwasher. Just a little soap and bleach. Some say I’m compulsive. I say detail oriented. That’s how I know I’ll be a good animator one day.

Slash and Burn

Like Shermans march to the sea I hacked 60 seconds out of a 120 second animatic leaving all of the flavor and non of the fat. PRAISE GOD that Animation Mentor added a peer buddy program. Now the peer buddies (mostly AM Grads)offered some good suggestions, some that will be implimented, but mostly what I got was support in knowing that I could confidently take a chainsaw to it (as my mentor ,Cal Brunker, succinctly put it). I felt it was running long but I would have tentativley shaved seconds off of it, if left to my own devices. One suggestion that I'm resisting is to reduce the number of characters. I need to suggest a yoga class so having 2 characters would feel like cheating to me. I'de have to close in a a placecard in the scene saying 'private lessons' or some other excuse for the low turnout. I'm relying on the fact that in a classroom situation, everyone will be doing the same thing. Copying animation and adding in variation later is my saving grace. For my first layout I loaded a file with all of the characters in position and the cameras for my first 7 shot cameras. I used the lighting and camera controls from th class 5 toolbar and I must say it looks pretty sweet. Can't wait to dig in. Thank you peer buddies.

I'm Baaack!!

HEY HEY HEY!! Yes I've abandoned this blog for a while. But I'm now in AM class 5, preproduction for my short film. My mentors have included Sean Sexton and Cal Brunker. In the meantime I worked for EA as a portrait artist for the Lord Of the Rings: Middle Earth title, and I finished the Spiderman 3 Game for Treyarch/Activision as an Environmental Artist. Although I like to surf when I can, my life is all about Animation Mentor right now. I know that there are a butload of links that aren't working on this site and I'll tend to that later. But I have a walk cycle to do at the momment...watch this space.