How To Seduce A Woman

So my one of my other Howcast videos went live today. Check it out!

How To Seduce a Woman on Howcast

I also FINALLY moved to NYC and am generally having a rather lovely time. I got a job working for http://www.agatharuizdelaprada.com/eng/products . I'm totally in love with everything at the store.

NBC caricatures at the Rockefeller Plaza X-mas party

Much has happened in the last few weeks. I've moved to Brooklyn! WOOOOO!!!

And I just did a caricature job for NBC's Rockefeller x-mas tree lighting party. Here are my two favorite caricatures from the night, along with a lovely photo of the tree. It was a great event.





I also updated my website so be sure to take a look http://www.vanessaappleby.com/
I'm still making minor revisions to the site, so let me know if you have any sort of suggestions.

The lady who hired me at NBC was awesome and said she'd forward my resume to the motion graphics department. Hopefully something comes of that because I could really use the steady work! Wish me luck!

Howcast!

Life has been CRAZY. I'm working 7 days a week, 5 in NYC and two at home. I haven't had much time to update as a result. My first Howcast video went live yesterday. Go check it out!

How To Date a Millionaire on Howcast

wooooooo! I made that sheeeiiit in like 2 or 3 days. This job is awesome.

I'm currently working on another documentary at the moment. This one's about sex education. It's pretty fun all things considered.

Endless Pastabilities?

I've been in Brooklyn again working on some animation for a documentary. So far it's pretty fun. Still no studio job in sight, but I'm keeping busy working on caricature and illustration projects. Here's the most recent one for a Hawaiian Luau party invitation-


I was also just potentially offered a music video project. It won't pay much, but I think it could be a fun project to work on. It'd be nice to be the director for a change. We'll see how that pans out.

Oh, and Dorney Park has left my life. I felt kinda sad about it, then I saw some stupid ad in the subway that simply said "do your best and don't look back". I suddenly felt relieved and thought, "good riddance".

Hopefully onto bigger and better things.

apple BEE

As promised, here is a clip of the after effects puppet animation I've been slaving away on. Hopefully it looks nice. One down, 7 to go....

Again, Barf on Yourself Cuteness

I just made a new dvd cover for my reel. I have an interview tomorrow at Asteriks. God I hope that goes well!!!!!!! I'm super nervous! Hopefully this is the big break I've been waiting for. Flickerlab was a good start, but I'd like to get to do some real animating this time! I'm hoping to wow them, but of course, being the incesant worrier I am, I have my doubts. Wish me luck!

Germany in 6 days!!!! WOOOO!!!!!

Don't Say I Didn't Warn You....

I've been experimenting in AE like I said. I decided to go ahead and create a puppeted animation to brush up on my skillz and learn more about character rigging and effects. So far I've only had time to create some of the backgrounds and rig the characters. I am ALMOST about to start animating. I can't wait!!!

Here's the most precious still of all time.... get ready for it.... brace yourself you might puke....




OK OK JUST KIDDING!!!!

Here's the real thing-

Comments with thoughts and possible improvements would be very much appreciated! Does anyone think I need more stuff in the background or perhaps a textured sky?

An apology to Billy Joel and company

I deleted my last post.

As it turns out posting those shots I worked on was a BAAAAD idea. Being relatively new to the industry, I did not know I couldn't post my shots on my blog until the movie was released. Now I know for the future that I should always ask first.

I feel really horrible about this. Any damage I caused was totally unintentional, but I can't shake the guilt. I didn't mean to get the animation director in trouble, and I certainly didn't mean to upset anyone else. I would like to apologize to anyone involved, and Billy Joel, if you're out there, I'm sorry!

Hotdog experiment

Since I last wrote I worked on some hand drawn animation for a Billy Joel documentary. I think it's pretty nice looking. I'll post it when I have the final composited versions. I'm hoping that'll be later this week.

So I finally decided to bite the bullet and do some After Effects tutorials. I made this little clip for the beginning of my reel. It's a hell of a lot shorter than the last opening clip I made, and hopefully funnier. Tutorials are probably the best way to learn. Everyone was right. I was just lazy until now.




Next I'm going to work on doing a puppeted animation in AE with that adorable little bear from the iPod cases I posted below. I figure it'll be good to have some puppet stuff on my reel. Perhaps that'll help me get into Little Airplane. Who knows.

One of the people at the Billy Joel project referred me to Asteriks, but I still haven't heard back and it's been nearly 2 weeks. I'm nervous. I guess it's time to send another email, but I'm always paranoid I'm going to be annoying people by doing that. Uggggggggh.

In other news, I AM MOVING IN SEPTEMBER. I'm getting a sublet and getting the hell out of here even if it means I'm just working in a grocery store. It's time for me to go. Emmaus is a dead end.

Zitman's Wallet

I forgot to post these a while back, but I made my boss Zitman a wallet per request. I think it's pretty sweet.


The photo's a little blurry, but he wanted two dividing pockets, one for money, and one for receipts.

I bought a teflon presser foot for my sewing machine so I could sew vinyl more easily, however, much to my dismay, it doesn't fit on my machine! It was also a nonrefundable purchase... Gr. I guess I'm stuck ghetto sewing wallets together.

P.S. I just found out I have pneumonia! Hooray!!!

Animatic Revision

After several long chats, a wee bit of soul searching, and discovering the cure for cancer, I've retooled my animatic to hopefully make it funnier, more cohesive, and generally more awesome. Let's hope I reached those goals.





Thoughts? Does the ending work? I rather like it now, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement. I certainly think this ending is more clever than just a big ol' explosion. That seems too obvious.

I ran into a bunch of totally nonsensical technical difficulties when working on this animatic. For whatever the reason Flash has some serious video issues. I edited some of the original animatic in Flash and worked on top of it. When I exported it, none of the scenes from the embedded video file were correct. It automatically sets each segment to play from frame 1, despite what you may have programed in the properties pallette. Very annoying indeed. So I had to then edit it together in Premiere, which of course exports huge files even when compressed. I also realized there are some weird frame rate issuses between Flash and Premeire. I don't think Flash let's you export QT's at 23.97 fps. Quicktime Pro keeps messing up and won't let me compress and export QT's from Premiere so I can post them to my blog. Nothing seems to be working right... Ugh.

I've also had some Craigslist jobs offered to me, and to be honest I'm a little confused/overwhelmed as to which ones I should/can do at the moment. It's unfortunate that I've gotten so into my animatic that all I want to do is work on this! I know if I move away from it for a while it may be a long time until I return to it again. Such is life I'm afraid...

The Animatic You've All Been Waiting For...

The animatic I've been promising is finally here.... Keep in mind this is really rough, so if something isn't clear please ask. Also if something makes no sense or is totally NOT funny, please tell me before I waste hours of my life animating it. Thanks.




My dad totally didn't get the Heaven's Gate reference, so if you find it confusing as well, SHOUT OUT.

Colors?

I've still been sewing like a madman, but I decided to take a break today and return to my film. I've worked more on the animatic, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I'll post it shortly. In the mean time, I was working out an overall aesthetic for the film. Here's what I came up with. I couldn't quite decide which color variation I preferred, so opinions are encouraged.



I think I'm leaning towards the second one.

And yes, those trees are made out of bacon and gummy bears and the clouds are made of marshmallow fluff.

I have the sneaking suspicion that compositing the character and bg will be an enormous pain in the rear, but we shall see.

Gettin' Crafty

So in the midst of trying to find animation employment I've been left with a lot of free time. For a few weeks I sat around and scratched my head wondering what to do next. Then it occurred to me that I should probably do what my mom always told me to do- sell purses online. This has since expanded to other things such as iPod cases, hair accessories, and now wallets. I opened an Etsy store called VAppleB (so perhaps people would associate my caricature signature with my store). Check it out HERE

Or if you're too lazy to check that out here's some photos:

interior

I sold this one to my step grandma. Ha. I was really fond of it.

interior details
the following are all hair barrettes

I also made an amazing vinyl wallet as a gift for someone, but I'll refrain from posting pictures of that until it's been received.

So BUY BUY BUY! or feel free to commission me to make something custom. The options are endless.

Some Silly Faces and The Continuing Epic Quest for Employment

So it's been far too long. Apologies...

I actually had a job for a while! Hooray! I was working at Flickerlab doing clean up and a little animating here and there for Hooked on Phonics. It was AWESOMMMMEEEEEE. I made friends! Woohoo! Now that's over and I'm back to the same place I was only 2 months ago. I'm trying to resume an internship at Curious, but this time as a stop-motion intern (which is something they don't normally have). Hopefully that will pan out for me, or if I could be so lucky, perhaps I can get another real paying job in animation. Either way, it's a little disappointing but I knew this would happen eventually.

I've had a few caricature commissions here and there over the last 2 months. I just finished one today for a woman in New Jersey as a thank you gift to the groomsmen for her wedding. Check it out.


Some of the colors are oversaturated since I created it with a CMYK color profile, but you get the idea here. I spent way too long on this one, but I rather like it.

Soooooo if anyone has any potential ideas for how to go about getting another job or where I should be looking at the moment, don't hesitate to share!

The New Face of Polaroid

Being a long and loyal lover of traditional Polaroids, I have mixed feelings about this new advancement.

Polaroid Digital Printer Camera Doohickey

I suppose it's better than nothing, but it still isn't the same as watching that magic rectangle develop in front of your eyes. I also believe that not having the ability to pick and edit Polaroids is half of their beauty.

Brace yourselves, I'm about to rant about digital photography for a moment. Digital photography in my opinion, has greatly facilitated vanity in human beings. Think about all of the little teeny boppers on Myspace and Facebook who take hundreds of pictures of themselves looking sexy. You know they delete 8 out of 10 pictures they take because they didn't look perfect. With a Polaroid you can't do that. A picture is an investment, both monetarily and artistically. You grow to appreciate the candid nature of these shots in a way you never can with a digital image.

But now with the LCD screen and editing options you are no longer stuck with the unflattering pictures. With the click of a button they can be simply erased. There will be no more strange Polaroid finds on the side of the road. What will Found Magazine have to print? FOUND Polaroids

No one will print the awkward shots. There's something about that that doesn't sit well with me. I like the idea of not being able to erase a moment- no matter how unflattering or awkward it may have been.

A Polaroid is a piece of physical evidence of a moment, which is what makes it so awesome in the first place.

Like I said, it's better than nothing, but it's still not the same. That film won't be compatible with my SX70. :(

R.I.P. little guy.