Tuesday, June 23, 2009

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!!!!!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

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?

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

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!

Friday, June 5, 2009

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.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

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!!!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

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...

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

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.