GIF Invasion!

I used a draft of a cg creature I made a while ago and to create a gif animation. Pretty sweet, going to try to make more of them!

(might take a while to load since it's a rather big file)

Kicking off 2013: San Francisco and Short Film Pre Production

It still feels kind of unreal: We're actually moving to San Francisco!

There, I said it.

2013 is going to be a roller coaster! Right now I'm spending my days on the beaches of Koh Lanta in Thailand, trying to get rid of a cold that stuck with me for weeks.. I'll visit Australia and Hawaii in the coming month and in late march me and wife will land in San Francisco. I've never been a big traveller or took long holidays, so the coming two months are a welcome and fresh breeze and help me recharge before we hit the US.
Phew, and once we're there we'll see what'll happen. If my best case scenario plays out (as they always do, don't they?) I'll be able to get to work on a few freelancing gigs and tackle some ideas of my own. I've got lots of projects lined up, but they might have to wait in line until our new life is set up here. And that might as well take up the whole year.. And there was something about a healthier lifestyle... well, let's look into that later. Let's talk about short films first!

After playing around with a few ideas for animated shorts, I settled for one that I thought was worth pursuing. It's about three minutes long, stars one character, three simple locations and all in all sounds pretty doable.
I aim to finish the storyboards and animatics during my holidays and I'm halfway through at this point.
Got an iPad? Get an iPad!
For the longest time I thought of it as just another toy, but eventually I decided to get a mini for my travels to check e-mails and whatnot. Meanwhile I've got a neat workflow going with Paper 53 and iMovie to work on storyboards. Paper lets me quickly scribble down some thumbnails (get a pen though, like the Bamboo Stylus) and the interface let's me see them in quick succession. This way I can quickly check if my camera layouts work and look for mistakes and fix them quickly.

flip left or right and see if your camera work, errmm... works!

Once I'm happy with my drafts I'll import the drawings into iMovie, where I can already rough in the timing of the shots. It even allows you to import music from iTunes, which might help to set the tone.

Import the drawings to iMovie and rough in the timing of the shots. Add some music and  your animatic is finished.

So, once I'm done I already have a precise idea of what I'm going for, right down to the last shot. I might even make a shot and asset list with numbers, so I can dive right in once I've got my computer set up in San Francisco.

Come to think of it, I love pre-production, you can play around with ideas, cut or add things, and once you're done, it gives you the (deceiving) feeling of being in control. The voyage to the completion of your film is clearly laid out in front of you and everything's in order.
And along comes production, things get flipped upside down, new ideas need to make it in the film, things don't work out as expected, and so on..
Which is just as exciting!

Well that's it for now, now back to enjoying the sunny weather..

take care
c

animation is not a genre, it's a technique for telling a story

Just a quick post about Rango, one of my all time favorites. I love it for being bold in a lot of ways, be it the looks and designs, the (somewhat weird named) emotion capture or it's refreshing ways to tell the story.

While watching a short making of I came across this quote by Director Gore Verbinski: "animation is not a genre, it's a technique for telling a story". This really resonated with me and I think it's something that gets lost in a lot big budget productions a tad too often. I really hope for more future animated features to approach their stories with this mindset.

Take care
C

Updates

After almost three years of working at Feinheit I quit my job to concentrate on my animation work. I have learned so much, worked on cool projects, and in the later stages was able to put my character animation skills to use on several projects.
I met some very fine folks there and many of them have become close friends over time. So that's the sad part about leaving the company.
On the other hand I'm really excited about taking the challenge to find my way into the animation industry and I'm looking forward to what the future may bring.

Right now I'm freelancing as a Character Animator, so my plans worked out quite nicely so far.
After years of working mostly on one man projects it's great to finally work within a team of 3D Artists and it's super rewarding to see your animated shots making their way through the production pipeline and come out a little shinier with each step.

I use my spare time to work on my reel, adding new shots and polishing the existing ones. For that purpose I'm taking an online workshop with ILM Animator JD Haas over at Spungella, and he has been great in giving me advice and pointing me in the right direction to improve my reel. I hope I'll be able to post an update in the near future.

And if I'm not animating, I'm working on a couple script ideas for potential animated shorts. Nothing fancy, but I am learning a lot about story structure, character arcs and all that stuff. It helps a lot in terms of animation and getting behind the motivations of my characters. You know subtext and all these fancy words. And who knows, maybe I'll get a Kickstarter going one day;)

Guess that's it for now

Take care
C

Making it

Here's an article on animation addicts well worth reading for any aspiring animator out there:
http://www.animation-addicts.com/2012/09/17/making-it/

"Long ago, when I went to school for traditional animation, it was expected you could/would spend 3 to 5 years either in the clean-up department, then work up to the breakdown inbetweener ranks, before become a fully fledged feature animator."

Take the time you need and stay determined!
Also, might be worth thinking about the equivalent of clean up and inbetweener in a 3D industry. How about aiming for a tv show as a starter?
Lots of work, working with the same characters throughout a show, high output rate... Sounds good to me.
Might not necessarily be all demoreel quality animation you'll be doing, but after a while you'll surely know how to animate quickly with a solid quality and have a bag full of tricks, plugins, are used to a studio environment and whatnot. I think this might be a possible way for a student or recent alumni for easing into the industry.

Or you could always just go all in:

hihi;)


take care
c

Knights Of A Bold Republic

A little something I felt like sharing. After playing a lot of Sword & Sworcery lately, I thought it would be interesting to play around with minimalistic 3D Designs.
I find the results pretty interesting, and I'll make sure to play around with that style some more in the future.

Take care
C

Light your shot

I recently took part in the Light Your Shot Workshop at Animation Mentor. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate as much as I wanted, so it took me a while to catch up and get the vader scene to shine. I still think I learned a lot during the workshop and I can't wait to get to work on the lighting of the rest of the reel. 

Et voilà:

Take care

C