Thursday started off animating Gideon some more, followed by an afternoon of conquering a major hurdle with my film---a very huge breakthrough that took a lot of weight/stress off my mind. Not out of the woods quite yet, but seeing this lil piece of the puzzle finally coming together is a huge delight. That evening was then followed up with a visit from Disney. Disney has started sending people from various departments(story and animation so far) to directly help students---incredibly intimidating, but extraordinarily helpful and a very good learning experience. I signed up for the animation meeting---so on Thursday, I stood in front of 5 animators(3 from Pixar*they came last minute. Not planned.* and 2 from Disney) along with fellow classmates, etc. and shared some of my work with them(couple of Daffy tests, the broomstick test and the last dialogue with him, and then the WIP Gideon). Overall, it seemed to go pretty well. They focused on Gideon most of all and even in the WIP stage, it was well received. I'll post this test probably this week, just need to fix a couple of things with the mechanics of it.
On Friday night, Dan Holland returned to CalArts to present a guest lecture on character design. He had also come last year, but it was just as interesting a year later.This time, since Wall-E is now released he gave a very insightful glimpse into the early development of Wall-E's world. Very inspiring concept work. An example was all of the effort that went into the ship that initially drops Eve off(sadly can't find the scene on YouTube). He presented dozens of drawings demonstrating how they answered every, "how does this work?" you could imagine for ever part of that ship. Every thing on screen had to live up to the, "How does this work?" question. From building it, to how it fits in with the rest of the machine, etc. Super meticulous, but very cool.
The rest of my time has been spent on film work, fixing Gideon stuff, and oddly enough venturing off campus for a "night on the town." Saturday night was spent in Hollywood and Universal City Walk for many good laughs with some great friends. It was really nice to just get away, not stress about films, and enjoy the colorful LA scene(holy cow.....the characters!) Sunday night a small group of us headed over to the local theater and watched the very impressive, Coraline. I've been dying to see this film for years, so this was a real-treat. The team at Laika did a beautiful job---the visuals were literally eye-candy...especially loved the neighbors' designs. Stop-motion is a daunting task, but the film make it look effortless. It did get particularly creepy and dark at the end, certainly would have given me nightmares as a kid, but I wouldn't have created this film any other way. The characters were always entertaining and Ashland, Oregon was represented very well. Made me a tad home-sick, though brief, it was pretty cool to see a section of downtown Ashland on the big-screen. haha. So, fantastic job Laika! I hope this film gets all the attention it deserves.
Well, another week is about to start up. Aiming to make more headway on my film and get some more scenes wrapped up. Still a little thrown off that it's even February.
Meet the "Other Otis" who was drawn shortly after tonight's viewing. Very quickly done, but it's all in the name of fun.
1 comment:
Very nice words! Your work is very well done! You show good weight and balance in your animations. Love the "Other Otis"!
Keep up the awesome work
- Josh
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