Turkeys!

Exciting news! Turkeys, the film I'm currently animating on at Reel FX, was officially given the green light and announced to the world yesterday. I've really been having a great experience on this film so far, and I can't wait to see it finished (though we've still got a long road ahead of us).

click the image for announcement on Cartoon Brew

Say My Name

i love me some breaking bad - after watching the mid-season finale (why the hell do they have to go on break until next year?!) i felt compelled to do a quick illustration. this moment gave me goosebumps.. but so did many others this season :P such a great show!

"You're Heisenberg."

"You're God Damn Right!"

Lesson 07 - Story

our final assignment - bittersweet, i've really enjoyed this course a lot, but man is it hard to keep up and put in the proper amount of time - exhausting :P

this week was story - we had to take our model's poses and implement the ideas of these poses in to a story. so instead of just pushing a pose, we actually had to give them context - pretty fun! makes me want to start doing some sequential art, maybe a web comic finally..

the class definitely helped me pinpoint a few areas that i could really push and work on to improve my overall posing (helps with animation too! bonus!) glad we did it, glad i'm done :P and feels good to have my drawing motor revving up again.

and here's a few reference poses that i used for the following set of gestures (pulled from one of the nifty life-drawing sites, The Drawing Script:)

 

Lesson 06 - Extrapolation

this week, we had to take the poses from our model and extrapolate the idea being shown, in to an animal. this forces you to try and convey a similar feeling with completely different anatomical limitations. you see this a lot, especially in Disney films (Lion King, Lady and the Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, Jungle Book, etc. which i've included a few examples of as well) - this was very a tough one, switching to a completely different creature while still trying to push for a nice gesture. my hand definitely tightened back up, but i feel like i was getting better results by the end..

Lesson 05 - Exaggeration

this week we're focusing on the idea of our poses and exaggerating to get the "feeling" across, rather than sticking to what's anatomically correct. we also had to pick an animal to do some studies with, in preparation for the next session (conveying our poses with an animal mayabe?) unfortunately i'm a bit short in terms of output again this week.. fingers crossed for a better turn out next week.

Showreels!

i finally got around to bringing my animation page up to date (with professional work at least); adding the most recent projects that i've been lucky enough to work on, with showreels for most of my shots.

Ted
this was the latest one to be released. such a fun project to work on.. though my vulgarity definitely got worse because of it ;P my older work can be seen under the Animation page.

Lesson 04 - Space

This week's lesson was focusing on space - so while we're moving in to more defined gestures, we're also having to pay attention to the figure in 3d space. a lot of these poses with the model were very flat to camera and we had to alter the angle of our gestures to give a feeling of depth. we ALSO had to spend half the time drawing with our subordinate hands (so left hand for me). this was meant to make us focus even more on the spacial value and not rely on our developed strokes with our dominant hands (which i've noticed can actually work against you at times). i have terrible line quality and control with my left hand, but there's a strange appeal to the contour-type figures that came from it..

it's a lot tougher to keep all of the ideas from previous lessons in mind as we move to more and more detailed gestures.. definitely going to take some practice. it was also a pretty busy week, i wanted to get a LOT more drawing done for this assignment, but it just didn't happen :S - next week!

Lesson 03 - Silhouettes

this week's lesson in our gesture drawing class focused on silhouettes. so now we're attempting to take the force that we capture with a distilled line or shape and express that within a full pose. you also need to keep the idea clear and not let the extra shapes get all muddied-up. it's so easy to get caught up in what i SEE once i'm adding limbs and everything, i'm really trying to force myself to keep the simplicity in mind and go for a feeling rather than recreating what's there.. i've got a LOT of pushing to do.

we're also required to get some 'cafe sketching' in each week, here are a couple pages that i scribbled down at a coffee shop, and i've picked a small handful of them to push beyond what i was able to get on the spot. good exercise!

:)

Drawing class, yay!

so Jess and i started a drawing class: gesture drawing w/ Alex Woo and Louis Gonzalez, through Schoolism. Alex and Louis are both story artists @ Pixar and the point of the class is to be able to create strong, story-telling poses. this is something i'm really excited about; being able to simplify or 'distill' a pose to it's true essence and not get caught up in all the unnecessary details. this should also help to strengthen our animation since good, clear poses are so crucial!

we just finished week 2, which focused on distilling poses in to abstract shapes. something i've found that i need to push myself on is really exaggerating the weight and direction of a pose, to get away from anything static or linear. i feel these are already pushed much further than the week 1 gestures, but there's still plenty of room for pushing.. *we also sketched quick gestures of the poses within our shapes to see how they help inform the drawing.

week 1 was the line of action - as mentioned above, these were really in need of some exaggeration, i was sticking too close to what i saw in the model and images and not pushing what we should FEEL in these gestures.

so far it's been fun, and i'm really looking forward to pushing myself through this course! yay for drawing!

Drawaholics - Raven

first illustration post since the big dallas-move - finally jumping on to the drawaholics wagon again, this week was 'favorite bird', pretty straight forward topic, didn't require much brain-power :P

it was either going to be a raven or an owl, and scribbling some lines on top of a black mass seemed appealing at the time. i tried to stay lose with the detailing and push for an interesting shape.

TED - Opening Weekend!

Ted finally opened this weekend! This is one of the last projects that Jess and I worked on back at Tippett, before leaving for Dallas. I really can't imagine that I'll work on another film quite like this one; an incredibly foul-mouthed child's toy, with Seth MacFarlane behind the comedic-wheel.. good stuff. This was honestly one of the funnest projects that I've ever worked on. The excitement for it at Tippett was tangible, the team was top-notch as usual, dailies sessions were hilarious, and Seth was a great director with the vocabulary to express what he wanted and incredibly appreciative of the work being done. Really, really fun experience.

If you're in to MacFarlane's brand of humor (Family Guy, etc) then you're sure to walk away from this one pleased. The story is straight forward, but with a lot of heart, and shit-load of laughs.

Changes

So it's been a good couple months since I've posted anything - a lot has happened since April, and Jess and I have been pretty overwhelmed to say the least.. But it's finally time to get things back to normal, and update the interwebs on recent developments!

Earlier this year, Jess and I both accepted positions at Reel FX in Dallas, TEXAS, to help the studio develop their first theatrical animated feature film - This was a very bittersweet decision, but we're incredibly excited about it. I personally had been living in San Francisco for nearly 9 years, it was the only home I knew after leaving Idaho (where I grew up). It's where I went to college, it's where I started my career, and it's where some of my most precious memories and friends were made. This decision of course meant that Jess and I also had to leave Tippett again. Tippett holds a very special spot for me - they were the first studio to give me the chance to jump in to film, and I feel like I learned more there than I ever did at school when it came to being an animator (and growing facial hair). It's also where Jess and I first met :) I will miss the team there very much, and I look forward to seeing the amazing work that they continue to put out.

Jess and I were both looking to try out the world of feature animation, versus visual effects, and the chance to come in early and help develop the studio's first feature film from the ground-level is such an exciting opportunity! Reel FX has a great energy about it, and the team is awesome! There are some super talented people here, and everyone is eager to put out a quality picture - we're very excited for the journey that lies ahead :)

(Reel FX is responsible for the recent CG Looney Tunes shorts, if you haven't seen any of them, check out the original, Coyote Falls, here)

The trip to Dallas itself was exhausting - we had movers to take the bulk of our stuff, and Jess and I set out with the bare necessities, and our dog and two cats, all crammed in to our car, for a nonstop 30 hour road trip from the Bay Area to Dallas. That just sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen, but it went amazingly smooth! No auto troubles, no stranded desert-walk-a-bouts, no getting lost, and the pets were complete troopers! WE MADE IT GIBBY, WE IS NOT DEAD! HAH! But of course after having gone through that, and only having one weekend to settle in and rest, we had to start work on the following Monday :P yeesh... BUT, our first week at work yielded a pretty awesome surprise for anyone in the animation world - Glen Keane was in town to be presented with the Tex Avery Animation Award, AND give a talk at the studio on his career and approach to animation, AND give a Q&A joined with an anniversary screening of Aladdin AAAAAANNND invited the Reel FX animation team to a small sit down lunch/conversation. That was pretty damn awesome, and inspiring as hell..

Jess and I with Glen Keane

Texas has been great to us so far, and a lot different than we were expecting - of course, Dallas is a bit more cosmopolitan than the rest of Texas (excluding Austin), so we haven't had our full 'Texas' experience just yet :P we were also lucky enough to get a place walking distance from Reel FX, in the heart of Deep Ellum, which is a great little music/arts district - always something going on!

We also jumped in the deep end and joined a local cross-fit gym to help counter all the stupidly delicious food that somehow finds it's way in to our bellies.. there is a LOT of good food down here. Cross-fit though, is so, so, soo so so hard >< and I feel like I've fallen down a mountain every day :P BUT, it's also super fun and strangely addicting - it's a nice change from the monotony of going to a regular gym and doing the same thing day in and day out. And aside from  all the 'pain' I've also been feeling great afterwards. Now I'm just waiting for my body to get acclimated to the beatings..

One thing we're definitely not used to, that has slowly been creeping in, is the summer heat. Bay Area is usually a nice 75, almost year 'round. We've been hanging out in the mid 90s, and supposedly it's gonna be sitting above 110 come July. It's been years since either of us have dealt with anything above the 80s, I'm cringing at the thought of anything over 100, and trying to mentally prepare for a couple months of non stop meat-sweats.. *cry*

Anyways, we're finally all unpacked, and pretty damn close to being completely settled in - our new place is feeling like a home, the new job is moving in a good direction, and our new surroundings are starting to feel a little less foreign. It's been a long time since we've made a change this big, and we're both missing our old friends and home - but good things lie ahead, and we're both happy to be taking this adventure together :)

TED "safe" Trailer!

so this is the greenband trailer for TED - again, the latest movie we wrapped up @ Tippett - CAN'T WAAAAAIIITT!!
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* i've got a handful of shots in this trailer, if you care (mom)
bong-smoking @ 0:31
in the car @ 1:00
"hey thomas" @ 1:01
hooker-introductions @ 1:20
"chevron card" @ 1:27
quick can-smash @ 2:09

TED Trailer!

the first trailer for TED, the movie we most recently wrapped on @ Tippett, has finally been released. this is a restricted trailer, so you probably won't want to play it if you've got your kids in the room - it may have a teddy bear, but this movie is a major R.

i had such a blast working on this film, and i really can't wait for it to hit the theaters!
__________

*the shot of ted smoking his bong @ 1:11 is mine

TED - Interview w/ Seth Macfarlane & Mark Whalberg

IGN just posted a little video interview with Seth and Mark, giving a basic synopsis on TED, the movie we just finished up @ Tippett.

Sounds like the test screening last night went over incredibly well - It was such a fun project to work on, and I can't wait for it to finally come out!!

First Reveal of TED @ SXSW

seth macfarlane revealed the first footage and a teaser poster for TED at SXSW this week. this is the movie we're currently wrapping up on at Tippett, and i'm ssssoooooooo excited for this one to finally hit the screens.

check the article out here

*another sxsw interview with macfarlane here

Valentine for my Sweetums

this is my valentine card for jess - a play on the old mickey mouse title cards

Mini Turtle Power

i was trying to work on something else, and i couldn't get this damn little turtle out of my head - so now maybe i can concentrate on other things :P

i also wanted to give him a tail, but no matter what i did, it kept looking like a deformed little.. member - soooo, the turtle is tail-less.
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*updated to include colored version

Drive

Drive was probably one of my favorite movies of 2011 - a beautiful, slow boil with brutal payoff. we had some of the soundtrack playing earlier in the night, and it made me want to do something with the movie - this is the "driver" donning that creepy stunt-man mask.
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*updated - replaced the crowbar with hammer, altered the face a bit

Digital Media World talks about Tippett's Wolves

another article on Tippett's wolf-work for Breaking Dawn pt.1 - this time from Digital Media World. check it out here

Drawaholic - Pugulator

"RAWR, snort.."

had to mix a pug and an alligator this week

Mutant Land: Featured in fxguide

fxguide posted a great article about Mutant Land - there's an interview with Phil and an awesome look in to the process of the short, and how it came to be.

check it out here!

Breaking Dawn - Wolf Featurette

a little while back, i posted a link to a podcast with eric leven (cg supervisor) and hans brekke (lead animator) - this is a video clip from a portion of that interview, going over a bit of the process for the lumberyard sequence in breaking dawn pt1

TEST

testing..

Mutant Land

..no longer exclusively shown through AICN, Mutant Land is now streaming on the open web. if you haven't already checked it out, this is a short that we did at Tippett Studio a couple years back:


MutantLand from Tippett Studio on Vimeo.