As some of you may know, I am kind of a Zombie fan... and Max Brooks "World War Z" is one of my all time favorite Zombie stories. Well it looks like it may have some competition in this teaser for a what appears to be a yet unmade CG film "A.D.". Looks like these guys are still trying to get it off the ground, but man this beautiful teaser just tickles me in all the right places.
Some of you might have noticed that I've updated my resume and linkedin indicating that yes, I am currently unemployed seeking new and exciting animation opportunities. Unfortunately this week my time at Red5 Studios has come to an end, as well for many other fantastic people at the Studio. Over the last few weeks Red5 has been going through some restructuring and unfortunately not all of us will be continuing with Red5. I just want to say what a great run the last year and a half was, and that the art staff was truly one of the best in the industry. Any studios looking for artists better jump on these guys quickly because they are going to get snapped up fast. Thank you to everyone that made me part of the Red5 tribe!
It's kind of amazing I haven't posted anything since May, and there really is no good excuse except it has been an incredibly busy and eventful last seven or eight months. For starters I've been married for over three months! Vicki and I had a wonderful August wedding in Gainesville, Florida with all of our family and friends present. I should of mentioned a little event like that a long time ago and written more about it, but at point I'll leave it at we had a terrific time, and if your interested you can check out our wedding photos here.
We had an Australian honeymoon where we traveled up the east coast from Brisbane and ending in Cairns. We'll have those photos up on smug mug shortly as well!
I've still been animating at Red5 all this time, and hopefully sometime soon I will finally be able to share with you what I have been up to. I have though managed to find time to work on a little personal project, a new dialog test. I'm fairly pleased. I think it's definitely an improvement over the last one, and I'm learning so much each time... but I have a long way to go still! I've posted it below for your viewing pleasure.
So yea I know this is a pitifully short post for such a long silence and such large events... but yea, lets just call it day and I'll try and get back on the wagon from now on!
Time for another addition of I survived the earthquake! Moments ago we had a 5.0 earthquake smack in the middle of LA. I'm a few miles south of LA, and while it wasn't a super violent one (nothing got knocked over), it certainly was the strongest I have felt to date... sure as hell got my attention. I miss hurricanes, at least you can get out of the way of a hurricane.
Hey Folks, take a swing on over to Josh Burton's website for a fantastic and adorable new rig he has very generously released for our enjoyment: "Squirrely". I've been playing with it for about thirty minutes, and it's a very easy to use and highly functional rig (rigged using The Setup Machine 2 if you are familiar with that set up already). It seriously is one of the more appealing free characters out there, something that does not usually go with "free rig". Go get it now before he comes to his senses and decides to keep it all for himself! I'll have an animation test of it in a few days (hopefully) ;-)
A buddy of mine sent me this wonderful 2D short film "The Pumpkin Of Nyefar" by Tod Polson and Maurice Noble. Maurice Noble has such legendary writing credits as "What's Opera Doc" and "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century", and this short certainly shows it. I haven't seen writing and animation like this in a very long time, it absolutely revels in its medium. There isn't a preachy lesson to be learned, or fart jokes, and it doesn't treat me like a 6 year old... just good old fashioned fun writing and animation. There's something very freeing about it that you don't see in most 2D work these days.
So I've decided to stop working on this test and render it. I'll make a confession here, this really was my first time doing a test of this nature. Ultimately it was and is intended as a learning experience rather than my "masterpiece". Yea, I know there are things I could do a lot better with it (like the lip sync), but I've learned a ton and I just want to take what I've learned and move on to the next one, rather than continuing to mess with a bad foundation.
At any rate I don't think it turned out too bad, I'm mostly pleased.
Raise your hand if you're like me and have started many of animation test only to get bored, distracted, laid off, injured, married... or any other number of reasons and never finish your personal animation. It's really hard to find the time and energy when you get home from your job... animating all day. Doubly so when you have a noisy cat that wants your attention after being gone all day.
Well I am pleased to say that after torturing such a dialog animation test since... longer than I want to admit, I'm just about done. I'd thought I post up the playblast and get any feedback ya'll might have. I'm not looking for any major re-works at this point, I've made my bed and now I have to sleep in it, plus I want to move on to the next animation to torture. But yea, any thoughts, comments, complaints (actually you can keep those to yourself), and suggestions to tighten up and improve it are welcome before I go off and render it.
First off just wanted to say that I have recently received a lot of support and e-mails from people who have been reading my blog and seeing my work. Frankly I really didn't think anyone actually read it besides my Mother (hi mom). But yea, thanks for the words of encouragement, you all have no idea how motivating it is.
I also want to give a shout out to Jean-Denis Haas. Not only has he linked me a couple of times in his blog, but more importantly he is an incredibly talented animator and a blogging machine! Seriously, the dude has like four sites, all of them tasty and useful. Check them out: Spungella , his portfoloio site, Animation Buffet, and Swench.
On to the title of this entry, how about some animation tips from Don Bluth? Not sure why it has taken me so long to come across his website, but he has an "Online Animation Academy". While calling it an "academy" may be a bit of a stretch, he does have several pages of good animation reading! Check it out. I found his tips on dialog particularly interesting.
I came across this video of director and animator Ralph Bakshi speaking at Comic Con. Someone in the audience asks him how he witnessed and survived the collapse of studio animation in the late 60s and 70s. While I don't %100 agree with him with on his angst towards the big studios, he certainly tosses a bucket of cold water on your face to get off your ass and create something... bad or good, anything! Just stop talking about what you are going to do and do it.
