Holy Poop!

That is all.

Reel life

It's time for me to put together a show reel. Another contract over, my 2nd year at Firehorse and my 3rd year working after graduation, and I think I finally have enough work to put together into a reel. This year I was fortunate to be working under Luis Limaco who reintroduced me to the principles of animation after I fell into a "just get it done" mentality through 2007. His patient guidance and mentoring really helped me improve my craft.

As I mentioned earlier, another contract is over and it's time to put together a showreel. As I don't think there'll be another season of work at Firehorse, and what seemed a general shortage of 2D work this year, I'm considering looking for a regular retail job and continuing with animation as a hobby or part-time thing. Let's see how work is like after the Summer Break ends and studios start new projects.

Hamburg in Auckland

Huzzah! I have been invited to an event celebrating the Auckland entrants of the Hamburg Animation Awards. Sponsored by the Auckland City Council, it's an opportunity to show my student film, and network with representatives from local studios. There will also be a couple of prizes, of which I doubt I'll win any but it'll be interesting to see what they are. Nibbles provided, and a cash bar.

Remodel

New look. Combination new header I made a few weeks ago + new layout. Old one was poo-bum. Inspired to change by Podgypanda's redesigned blog.

The cat was sick on a pile of drawings and blank animation paper I hadn't put on the shelf :(

Pigeon Problems completed!

Well, it's done! 2 weeks ago I rendered out the final version of Pigeon Problems, a short animated film I had produced in 2005 as my graduation project at Freelance Animation School and now soon to be seen at the Hamburg Animation Awards in Hamburg, Germany. I'll post some screenshots later when I get around to hooking up my external HD.

At some point I'll also go work a way to lower the file size so I can put it online in the future.

I really should do more...

Well, I started this blog for sketches, but I just don't seem to really do much outside of silly things based on whatever it is I am working on at the time. Registered years ago on deviantart so I could display my work, only it isn't exactly an inspiring place. The other day I registered with a forum where just knowing I could "talk shop" is inspiration in itself, so maybe we'll see some actual work on here now, huh?

I pulled my old student film out of storage a couple of months ago, intent on finishing it off for an event later this year. I've also started working on my own short film thingy that should be fun. I love working in a "flat" style, but this will be something much looser, and hopefully have a much more "natural" feel to it. I've written the script, and have done a couple of pages of storyboards, made a near-final modelsheet and have pages of concepts for the background content. Once I move forward I'll see about putting something up (without giving too much away) ;)

Of course, I should be starting a new contract soon, so all this will be around earning an income. As I often like to work long hours in studio, I have a feeling it'll be another 6-8 months of forgetting I made a blog.

Batman - The Dark Knight

Really looking foward to this movie. This trailer looks amazing.

Books.

I found a copy of John Grant's "Masters of Animation" at the library. It's full of good biographical information about animation masters. I had no idea that Tex Avery was so self-critical, and while I knew (anecdotally) that Ralph Bakshi was difficult to work with it was insightful to see how often it was related to the frustration of dealing with producers who would butcher his work. Still 80% of the book left to read, should be enlightening.

Last week I bought an anatomy book. At times my grasp on the shapes in a human body is shocking, so I need to start studying form and function again. It's surprisingly hard to find an anatomy book that is actually informative and helpful. In any case, I'll be looking to attend some life-drawing classes later this year.

In retrospect, I should have bought the Muybridge "Human Motion" book I saw in Borders. The animal one would be more helpful though.

Sebastien

Neat. Goeblins does it again. 'Sebastien' features a neat little guy perfecting the art of the paper plane. Simple and sweet with Goeblins' usual level of excellence.

Staines Down Drains clip

Here's the opening sequence to the show "Staines Down Drains", a program that I worked on in 2006. Enjoy!

Kappa Mikey? What the hell?

In what appears to be the beginning of a tradition of posting things about bad animation, here is something I happened to catch on TV today: Kappa Mikey. It was terrible, and I may actually be generous in that evaluation.

Premise and Humour: The premise of the show is that an American boy has won a competition to be a character in a Japanese show, and plays the character Kappa Mikey in the fictional show LilyMu. Any attempted humour is derived from parody and satire of Japaneses culture vs American culture, something that HiHi Puffy AmiYumi succeeded at but this show... miserably failed or failed miserably.

Animation: There is no animation. No more than an animatic. The whole thing is nothing but a series of short loops and key poses with "swish" sound effects everytime a character switches to a new pose. The designs are poor- "anime" characters look like poor fanart while "american" toons have no personality.


Really, I felt I was watching a terrible terrible fan-made web cartoon. I know this is probably more a case of a low, low budget but this just wasn't the quality I would expect to see on TV.