Bird Food Trailer.

City of Night Event: Silo City Grain Elevators

September 8, 2012

4pm - 2am

A celebration of all the things that make Buffalo great. 

Held at the Silo City grain elevators in the Old First Ward

FREE ADMISSION, ALL ARE WELCOME!

- Kickoff bike ride and bike valet with GO Bike Buffalo
- Fine art installations, art and cultural fair
- Live murals inside and outside the grain elevators
- Plein-air art making
- Historical displays and interpretive signage
- Performance art and sound installations
- Tours of the historic site
- Live music throughout
- Breakdance and modern dance performances
- Kayak tours in the Buffalo River with BFLO Harbor Kayak
- Beer and wine tent
- Local food trucks
- Artisan vendors
- Culminating audio-visual performance - projections on the grain elevators
- Made possible in part by a grant from the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation, administered through the Arts Services Initiative of WNY.

http://www.cityofnightbuffalo.com/

Avalanche Studios is Hiring!

These folks have some open positions:
http://www.avalanchestudios.com/eng/open-positions/

Ottawa Animation Festival

Hey Folks!!! Don't know if you can make it but this is happening.

http://www.animationfestival.ca/

boys in the trees

some goodies

BirdFood completed.

So...just got the word that a short film I did some animation work on for Brown Bag Studios in Dublin is complete and will premier at the Galway Film Festival this coming Saturday in Ireland.I will upload some pre-lit shots once the film is in the public domain and hopefully a video of the whole short will soon be available.Here is the poster:

Hair studies.

Fast 'n loose studies

Squared off

A slightly more square  head design here.

More faces of kid

On the Run

The beauty of drawing digitally is that I can redraw/restate my lines repeatedly until I get the sense of confidence, fluidity and speed I'm looking for.Take some of the more curved lines in the boy here.I had to undo and redo some of these lines several times until I managed to combine the proper sweep and angle with my under-drawing.
They more I draw though, the more natural and speedy these things become.Digital tools and layers make drawing this way a joy and a very creative and loose process.I much prefer this approach vs drawing on paper.Not to mention the fact that is so easy to re-work or re-use parts of the drawing later.

Facial Exploration

Exploration

Mostly working on the basic shapes here.Haven't settled on facial detail yet.Eye shape will be critical.

Basic Proportions? Facial features still in development

Tantrum

Baggy

Wearing Granpa's specs

Boy ideas and story point

So I met this kid this weekend named Max. He was a really cool kid, about the right age of our hero. The interesting thing is Max likes wearing his clothes huge. I am talking grown man large size and he is 7. So I thought what I'd our hero has big clothes. I played around with some designs and then I had a thought, what If he wears big clothes because underneath his clothes is a home made samurai armor. It goes along with the ninja theme. Anyway. Your thoughts

Progression of an Animated Shot

Animator Jamaal Bradley put this progress video together of a shot from Rapunzel for a class he taught.

Progression of an Animated Shot: Gothel & Rapunzel Disney's Tangled from Jamaal Bradley on Vimeo.

Nice student Reel

So..this morning I had an email from a former student of mine at a different school who wanted some feed-back on his 2d Reel.He is going into his senior year and wanted some pre-semester advice.Amongst other things I insisted he spend some time comparing his own work with that of other students out there and try and determine where he needs to improve and how much work he really has ahead of him to get where he needs to be in terms beating or at least matching the competition.
I found this student demo reel on you-tube which I forwarded on to him and thought it was worth sharing.
This person really can draw and has some good line control and a nice sense of Animation Timing.I find this stuff encouraging as well as being a useful barometer of where we are all are vs where we should be striving to be.Enjoy!

inspiration overload

i went to see brave with my family and just ughhh. it's so pretty. and i loved the short they played with it "la luna" i saw the teaser a couple months ago and it looked really good, and it is really good, i liked the style too.

two things i'd like to comment on though:
1. from the preview commercials they were playing for brave, i could totally guess where the story was going, which wasn't fun, i wish they would have left it more ambiguous.
2. at the end i noticed that the credited director was Brenda Chapman, and remember thinking that she must be the first woman to direct a Pixar film. when i got home and was looking at things about the movie i found out that she was fired from the project during production, which i found discouraging. because she came up with the idea, and she's a woman with great talent (directing Prince of Egypt is a big deal).

bleh.. just thought i would share my thoughts... now for some sleep, maybe.

Skeleton Ninja and Grandson sketches

Ninja Skeleton - Early Roughs

Skeleton Concept Sketches

More Grandson sketches

More Gramps sketches.

started working on these over the weekend

Grandson Character Thumnails

60s

we're jammin'

Just working on some board ideas today and thought I'd share.

Starting boards

Hey these ideas are really great. An important story point to remember is that we are going to try to bridge the gags at the beginning of the film with the weapons the kid is creating so that his annoying behavior actually has a purpose.The weapon designs can drive the gags and vice verse.

I am with Kevin, I don't want to nail down a story just yet, the creative freedom will drive what is necessary. That being said I plan on starting boards this week and will post as they are developed. I highly encourage you to be very honest and critical, as the more feedback generates a better product.

Breakthrough

So I'm sitting here with a runny nose, sore throat, wrapped in a blanket. Pretty much miserable, but I decided to check my email and got a new email  from Chris Oatley's newsletter.

Long story short, I started reading his website 10 minutes ago miserable and now I'm here completely motivated, and ready to work.

You should all get on Chris Oatley's blog and actually read the posts. He is so amazing and GIVING out free advice and tips all the time. 

Seriously, I even took notes.

"What almost everyone outside of the animation industry doesn’t seem to realize is that ultimately, it’s great work that wins a break and it’s being great to work with that wins a career.?" Chris Oatley

Later days.

Kira

Some rough sketches of some of the household weaponry (including a soda/shaving cream gun fashioned out of Grandpa's cane complete with magnifying glass scope, a denture tablet shooter made out of tin cans and wood planks, a marble shooter made out of one of Grandpa's oxygen tanks, a blender gun, and a denture cream pistol) For more ideas I'd suggest checking out the weaponry from the Kids Next Door, which is where I got a lot of inspiration for these. Here also are some sketches of the Grandson. Do we have a certain age in mind for the boy?

Ernest et Célestine - Clip 2-French Animated Feature

Alexander Petrov - The Mermaid

Sketchy Ice Creams

Cool film out of China

An old man enters a subway car. Nobody offers him a seat. Violence ensues. Student Sean Soong created this film at Communication University of China, The Animation School.

Grandson Concept

We Should probably name the Grand father and grandson. Any ideas???

boy concept sketches

Grandson concept

Peter & the Space Between and Sheared

A couple of very nice and very different student films from recent graduates.

Peter and the Space Between by Sitji Chou, come from a recent graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, British Columbia.



Sheared by Nikolas Ilic, is a recent graduate of Canada’s Sheridan College.



You can find more information about these particular films at http://www.cartoonbrew.com/brewtvt 

Glen Keane Predicts the Future

Check out these drawings created by Glen Keane over 30 years ago….

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2012/04/these_drawings_date_from_1982.html

“Perpetual Motion” by Béla Vajda

Moto Perpetuo (Perpetual Motion) by Béla Vajda (1935-2011) is a Hungarian short that won the Palme d’Or at the 1981 Cannes Film Festival. It offers a terrific visual concept, sprightly animation, and funny gags throughout. The Hungarian website Daazo writes that the film “shows an absurd picture of our neverending changing culture and history. With its critical view of life, this film was probably a perfect mirror of a Central-European, Soviet country in 1982.” It also offers a terrifically inappropriate John Lennon gag, just a few months after he was murdered.

 from: http://www.cartoonbrew.com/

ANIMATION ALERT: This Friday @ Squeaky Wheel

 

 Strange Mutations, 2 films by Nancy Andrews  

Fri., Apr. 20th @ 7:00 pm       Location: Squeaky Wheel Microcinema 

Cost: $7 non-members / $5 members

Venture into the unknown with two animations by award-winning artist, Nancy Andrews, ON A PHANTOM LIMB (2009) and BEHIND THE EYES ARE THE EARS (2010).  Andrews' work fuses collaged, drawn and found imagery with solemn mythical creatures and autobiographical materials to unfold curious, otherworldly tales that reflect on aspects of the foreign and the familiar. Emotionally charged, these supernatural films maneuver from quizzical and wistful, to surreal and nostalgic. Among many honors, Andrews is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008), and her films are in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. She will be present via Skype for a Q&A following the screening. This event is funded in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts

For more information, visit Nancy Andrews' website HERE