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.