GRADUATION!!!!

You read it right. I finally graduated from AnimationMentor.com! It was a great ceremony. I won't go on for too long on this post, but my wife and I flew out to beautiful San Francisco, California to attend. It was great to be able to make new AM friends and finally meet some of my classmates for the first time. I was part of AM's first class ever and because of work I had to take breaks between some of my quarters. Unfortunately for me, all of my old classmates (ex. David Sloss, Gordana Fersini, and Chris Caufield) have graduated a long time ago.

The ceremony was great. No really! I will just say this...Pete Doctor was our commencement speaker! For those of you who don't know him, he was THE director of "Monsters Inc" from Pixar. He also is responsible for some of the most creative animated short films I have ever had the pleasure of viewing (try to find them because they are damn good). One other great aspect of it all was the opportunity to actually meet some of the mentors in person. Rick O'Conner (ILM), Victor Navone (Pixar), and Jason Scheifler (Dreamworks) to name a few.

Overall it just felt great to wrap up school (my wife is the happiest of all) . From now on I will have to learn from experience (which is great). I have learned so much at AnimationMentor and there is still so much more to learn.

I definitely wouldn't have been able to juggle AM and full time work without my wife! She is truly a blessing :)

Circle of Art

If you have ever watched Disney's "Lion King", then you walked away learning the valuable lesson about the "circle of life". I have dedicated a large amount of time in the last few years trying to improve in the art form of animation while sneaking time in for drawing whenever possible. After the last quarter ended I felt like I needed to take some time (no exact amount) to step away from the short film so that I could come back to it with fresh eyes and address any issues with a clear mind. This decision to step away created a perfect opportunity for me to dedicate time to drawing and my goal for the upcoming year to finally conquer my fear of color (yes...color scares me).

My first step was to go and see the celebration of Dutch artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art here in NYC with my friend Alfredo. After checking out the beautiful work of masters like Vermeer and Rembrandt, Alfredo suggested we should take some time to do studies in the museum's Greek sculpture area. We drew for hours. It was great! What a change of pace. We were both rusty, but enjoyed every minute of it. I left inspired to get onto to inking and coloring the baseball kid from a previous blog post (update soon to come). The picture above is one of my sculpture studies (it was only a bust) from the Greek sculpture area in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

How does this all connect, right? What am I getting at? This isn't some new discovery of information but more a personal rediscovery of information. The drawings I have been doing are reminding me of the importance of working in different media and the relationship that it creates between different art forms. Each art forms informs another. For example, Animation is basically taking hundreds and hundreds of drawings and playing them at certain speed to create movement. When you boil it down to it's essence you are dealing with one drawing at time, so why not practice your drawing to improve your animation? Your posing will improve. Why not work on composition in drawing? Your staging will improve. Animation is also informing my drawing. One of the things that I took away from AnimationMentor is the importance of planning. You really need to know what you are trying to say or do with a shot. What's the point? Is it entertaining? Those type of questions are helping me draw better. Why bother doing a drawing? What do I want to say with a particular image? I now realize that I need to really know the purpose of a drawing or illustration. Again, I've read this idea of planning in tons of books, but sometimes you aren't ready for a particular lesson. I am now trying to learn color, because I know it's importance in a drawing and in long format like a movie. It's valuable in a single image or thousands of moving images.

The lesson here is to embrace the experience of experimenting in other art forms. You can only improve from it. Try stepping out of your comfort zones by experimenting. Who knows, you may learn a new approach or way of thinking in an area you thought you knew by heart. Keep in mind that each medium can inform the next or vice versa.

It's a truly a "circle of art".

"First Date" Blocking Plus

I decided to finally post my "blocking plus" from my short. This posting is not the final animation and it's not the final posting at AM. This is what I submitted to AM for blocking plus at during week 6, but this was before I addressed Ethan Hurd's notes. Just click on the image above and it will take you a quicktime of the short on my site. You may want to adjust your speakers to prep for the music (Miles Davis "Freddie Freeloader").

Side note: My friend Kelvin pointed out that he couldn't leave comments because he wasn't a Blogger or Google member so I changed some settings so that anyone can post comments (so please do!)

Thanks for stopping by.

"First Date" is almost done

I just wrapped up my last class at AnimationMentor.com and I'm almost finished animating my short film "First Date". The short needs about another week to two weeks for the completion of animation. I also need to do some skinning adjustments as well as facial blendshape adjustments. Then it will be onto lighting.

I am considering using point caching in Maya then exporting in the .fbx format to Max. This is so my buddy Vance Miller and I can have an easier time getting great stuff out of Vray. I'm just not a huge fan of the complicated process involved with Mental Ray. Don't get me wrong, I have seen amazing renders from Mental Ray...but it's not an easy task to get great results. I personally find that Vray gives me the exact results I'm looking for with a lot less work and confusion. To add to that, Caius Wong has done some really nice hair setups for Simon in Max. The hair is ready to go and I won't have to figure out how to achieve that in Maya. I'm also a much better texture artist in Max. Basically I can play generalist at a higher level in Max, but I haven't transferred all my knowledge over to Maya's interface yet. I usually only do modeling and animation in Maya. To add to this all, time is an issue. I have to wrap up production soon and get back to working and I need to get the best results in a short amount time. Learning how to get awesome renders in Maya in a like 2 weeks, just isn't going to happen. Vance has offered to help and that alone is a major incentive to go to Max.

Overall, I have learned a lot working on this short. One major thing that I learned is the importance of a solid facial animation setup. I took a HUGE risk by using my own character and while it paid it off in most ways, it was also a negative at times. The positive is that it helps to identify my short among the others and it's a great feeling to have complete control over the look and feel of my short film. The negative is that it's a lot of work to create your own character. If I am serious about continuing this journey of directing, then I need to get used to creating an entire world from my perspective. Luckily, my friend Caius modeled the base model and the clothed version as well. I had to tackle rigging, skinning and building the facial targets all in a 2 week time frame. Due to that short turnaround, the facial targets suffered and it affected the facial animation. I just don't have the amazing facial rig that is present on the AM characters. Again, it's a give and take where I am happy with my choice of using my own character, but I miss some of the advanced facial setup of the AM rig. As a result of this (now that weekly deadlines are over), I have to go back and fix some of the facial setup and reanimate some of it. I also need to do some touch ups to skinning as well as skin the clothing onto the rig. Right now Simon is still sporting his underwear throughout the whole short, which Andrew Weidenhammer pointed out is probably more true to life ;) .

Thats all for now, but stay tuned for a posting of my blocking plus...it's coming...no for real this time! Hopefully in the next few hours.

Clean desk = Clean mind

There is a lesson in this long post. I promise!

Let me set the backdrop. This is the last week to animate on my short for AnimationMentor.com. I was doing great (at least I think it was going great), I had 3 out of 7 shots polished and only 4 left (ha! "only 4" who am I kidding?). I've been in tough situations ALL the time working in commercials. For example, clients that have been looking at a commercial in progress for weeks, suddenly feel that they are not happy with 2 or 3 shots two days before delivery . Now instead of the two weeks you had to do those shots, they are now being demanded in 2 days. It happens on EVERY job I have done. You do what you have to and get it done. That being said, I knew that "crunch-time" was coming as of this past Saturday. A last week of every minute of animation being crucial. Just when I was ready to take on this beast of work...BAM! The man upstairs throws you a screwball! I got sick on Saturday night! Three months of working strong with only one week left and I get sick.

These moments only make you stronger, so I plowed through Sunday morning to post my work for Ethan. Unfortunately, that night after posting, it all got worse. For the next couple of days, I couldn't concentrate on frames, poses or even stare at the monitor for more than an hour or two. Sunday, Monday and Tuesday fly by as I try to recover. Wednesday strolls around and my "brother from another mother" Alfredo Gomez comes over to pick up something. We talk a lot about illustration/drawing (as usual) and I tell him to excuse me for the chaos that erupted on my desk. He responds something like "I like to keep my work area clean. I feel like it represents my mind state in some way." Alfredo drops some well needed advice! He leaves and my situation of finishing the shots on time isn't any better. I look at my desk and start cleaning at like 12:00AM Thursday. I sit down and start working on a shot...and what was unclear is now crystal clear! I'm big on the power of the subconscious mind and how we can put things in motion without realizing it. Could my cluttered desk been a sign of what was going on in my mind? Was my lack of confidence regarding how to finish these shots being represented in my surroundings? Or, was my desk simply a result of working so much the last week? Some food for thought.

Either way, I feel great after cleaning up and I am back in the game. My sickness is fading away and I will make the most of the remaining time. If things aren't flowing for you, try to change up your surroundings...you may be surprised with the results. Thanks Alfredo!

MTVu Woodie Award!

Hey everyone,

I just found out from my buddy and Lead Designer (Federico Saenz-Recio) over at Version2 that we won a "Woodie" award for our Madvillian "Monkey Suite" music video. The category was "The Left Field Woodie" award and can be found on the following page. I am shocked that it won because we made that video in an unheard of amount of time. The video was meant to be live action and some CG (computer graphics) stuff but ended up being all CG. It was basically like 2 1/2 weeks for 2 1/2 minutes of footage. For people who don't do animation...that is insane. Oh yeah and it was like a super small CG team (like 3 of us fulltime and 2 part time). I was CG Lead on the video and it was directed by Daniel Garcia. In the end, I was happy with the results considering the time constraints. If you haven't seen the video, just click the photo above (or the word "video") and it will send you to my website where you can view a small web version of it. I am a big fan of MF DOOM and Madlib...so basically the track is a great one.

Hope you enjoy.

"The Best of Mr. Bean"

Before starting on my short, I started to look for good reference for physical comedy. I did a search for Mr. Bean and came across a DVD title "The Best of Mr. Bean". It's a great collection of Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) clips from various the series. The DVD pretty much sat in my collection wrapped for months...until today! I wish I would have seen this before animating.

I think for any aspiring or successful animator this is a must own. Rowan's comedic sense is brilliant. Everything from timing, to expressions, to situations and writing. One of the things that I also noticed is that he really has a great sense of staging and his posing is awesome. I also love that you can clearly see what he is thinking through his anticipations and pauses. Great stuff to study from.