Epiphany

I think I have finally found out why I do what I do, or at least where to take it from here. With the website almost done, and plenty of illustrations left to finish before I head back to school, I've been pretty busy this break. I finally decided to take a break and sit down with my new Pixar DVD. In the 2nd disc of Wall-e, special features, I found a wonderful film called "The Pixar Story." About halfway into it, something hit me, like running into a brick wall. I paused the film and sat up straight, uttering to myself. "What am I doing!?"

All this time I have been so concerned about learning new tricks and processes. I've been focused on the physics and the technical aspect of animation, and all this while I had forgotten why I was at art school, why I draw. It's because I love it! Animation isn't just about making things move, about how they move, it's about telling stories and getting emotion and empathy from your art. I feel great now. I know what I have to do, what I want to do, and what will make me happy.

I don't need to move the character perfectly if I can still get an emotion from it, to make the audience feel for the character. Learning tricks is for when I get into the industry, now is the time for me to focus on telling stories, on acting and getting emotion out of my artwork. This is why I have felt my art lacked that extra punch all this time, now I finally know!

Just wanted to share that with you. The website is going well. Tomorrow I will head out to my old elementary play ground and film myself climbing and acting out scenes for my film. Wish me luck.

The new Title for my film scheduled to release around April 2009. I'll probably finish production by May, but it's always nice to have some elbow room, just in case. The story will follow 4 year old Aiden as he scales a huge mountain into the stratosphere!

In other news, I have a website in production. Hurrah! I am honored to say that I have with me two very talented artists who I will be sharing the site, and the costs, with. Mel Miller, a friend of mine as well as an amazing Illustrator and Animator. Even with work as good as hers, her happy and professional attitude leave most surprised when they find out her age. Niles Bontrager (hope I spelled that right) is the other artist on board, who's art always holds some sort of back story to it. Sometimes his work really engages me, even in just doodles, that and he has an amazing ability to work out interesting timing. It takes all my effort to keep up with these two, and I am really eager to start a site with them both.

Previews and links to the website will be available in future posts once I nail everything down.

With finals out of the way, and my Animatic finished for 'Because it's There' I can now focus on prip and preening much of my artwork for presentation, as well as flesh out a few character scenes from my film.

Sorry for the slow posts everyone, I'll try and be more regular from now on.

Sketches, Animations, little Children, oh my!

Man oh man, it's been awhile eh? Well CCS has been keeping me busy. So, here's the lowdown.

I've been working on an independent film 'This Way up'. It's a short piece that stars a young eight year old boy and his adventure up and down an impossibly large slide. It's basically a story about loss of fear. Aiden, the protagonist, loses his fear of heights by overcoming this obstacle. I'm toying around with ways to accomplish this project, one of which includes making 3d backgrounds with transparent planes in maya and rendering them, then overlapping animation onto it. But anyhoo, I bet you guys are eager for pictures, so here's a nice one. Aiden, the little Irish boy who fears slides.

While that keeps me awefully busy, I also have projects from my Tech 2 class. 2D traditional tech is a class that basically gives you lots of simple animation projects and works on furthering your knowledge of simple physics in 2d to acting. I know that sounds rather officious, but you know, gotta be politically correct and all. Well ok, I don't, but I'm not that good with words, so...
Anyhoo! Because I want to make leaps and bounds in my animation I am tackling each project with ambition and the hardest work ethic I can muster. I lose lots of sleep, don't eat too much, and I am aquiring an odd funk, but my work is crammin out like I've never seen before. I recommend you check out my youtube section at the bottom of this blog and let me know what ya think.

Ok, onto the Sketchbook! Well, I could explain all the ideas behind these drawings, but I think it better that you just view and decide for yourself. Enjoy.










Some final tid-bits before I go. I got my new kilt! I am very excited, and I wear it often. I will upload pics of it eventually, until now you just gotta use your imagination.

Animation, Concepts, and Kilts! Oh my!

Well its seems this week is off to a good start. Not only do I have my financial stuff falling into place, but I have also been getting allot of work done animation and film wise. I finally think that my Concept is working well with my new film 'Slide' which will tell the story of peer pressure from both the people giving the pressure, and the one receiving it. It's very similar to my old film 'Art Bots' but with a slight twist.

My animation tech 2 class is going well, I have some general ideas of what I want to animate, and I'm glad it's so open. For this week we need to simply time our sheets out and get our shots laid out.

I've started an animation group that will be held every wedensday for students like myself to meet and help each other out on assignments and such, hope it goes through well. And of course, pizza will be served.

In other news, I just scored a free Utilikilt! How you ask? Well last year I worked by rump off making a large acrylic painting for the people at Utilikilts, I enjoy their products very much (don't know if you can tell) and so I went above and beyond to make a gift for them. Then someone put it into my mind that 'hey, maybe they would give me something back in return for this painting I had worked so hard on'. So I asked as nicely as I could, and they agreed to trade me a kilt up to the Survivalist Model. I agreed, and here is the model I am getting in the mail sometime soon.
This baby is made of a tough fabric with huuuuuge pockets. I mean huge, and many too! This sucker can hold up to twenty, count em twenty, bottles of beer! Oh man, I cannot wait to get that package in the mail.

So that's the weekly update, stay tuned for more!

Oh Ottawa

It's been quite a few days I must say!

This year my school decided not to put in funding for a bus transportation system to Ottawa, leaving the animation students and I on our own to scramble up some funding. I was able to acquire a few freshmen and sophomore students along with me, get a hotel room, ticket, all that goodness. We drove 10 hours there, and prepared for the festival over night.

Boy what a festival it was! Richard Williams, Eric Goldberg, Doug Sweetland, and many other animation guru's, film makers, company executives, and overall cool people were there. I heard Seth Green was there, sadly I never met him. Tho I did get to meet my all time idol Richard Williams! I even got to sketch him and have him sign my sketchbook.


I got to meet and greet Eric Goldberg for a short while. He is an extremely nice and funny man. He was also kind enough to let me draw him, then sign my sketchbook. I was unable to attend his 'Putting Character in your Characters' seminar, due to bad festival planning, but even still I had a great time.

Doug Sweetland, who you may remember as the creator of 'Presto' Pixar's short before the film 'Wall-e', was there and I was able to talk with him at the Parties and after the show. He had some really great advice and stories on his experience with trying to tell a good story, and the advice he got from the Pixar Dream Team. He was very polite and kind with me, and we got to have quite a few fun chats about pixar, and his work. In the end I colored him and promised to send him a copy of the Caricature he so kindly signed for me.

After all that, I visited a few showings on short films, international films, and the like. Almost all were well done and very inspirational with only a few exceptions. I even got a chance to sit down with Richard Williams family and friends while he signed books and look through old high school artwork and post cards he had sent while he was over in London. They were all very nice, and we shared quite a few laughs looking at some of the things he would send people. I never in my life expected to have an experience quite like this, I always thought he'd be dead by the time I got to meet him. I am practically speechless about it, and boy has it fueled my creativity.

My First Blog

Hey everybody, just started Blogging. Getting into the animation industry can be difficult, and paying for your own website, as well as making it, can take up allot of time I don't have. I strive to promote animation as well as my own talents, and those of my friends, so blogging seems like a great way to do that, as well as make some friends in the industry. Really I just love talking to other animators, there's always something new and interesting to be had. So here goes, more posts to come soon.