New Animation Test: Vanilla Jump

I wanted to do a short little test with a very light character just doing a normal every day hop. Nothing fancy or exaggerated, just an exercise in weight.

Check out the gallery on my site or click HERE to see it.

Animation Mentor Graduation!

Note: Because of the length, remember to click "Read More" at the bottom to see the entire article!

When I got home from my vacation in Massachusetts I had about 2 days to recover and get myself ready for the next leg of summer. Come Friday, Emily, Dan Edwards, Mike Bahurinsky, and myself all piled into Dan's Civic and began the trek to San Francisco for our Animation Mentor Graduation.

The drive was easy and uneventful, discussions of gaming, cars, music, etc. all took place in the usual fashion and we arrived in Oakland around 1am. A decent hotel room and about 6 later we got up, had some breakfast, dressed up nice and headed on our way to the Berkeley Art Museum where our Graduation was being held.

Last time we were here was for the Animation Mentor Annual Barbecue and the weather was less than awesome. Overcast, a bit chilly with what seemed like impending rain was what we had then, but this time we got lucky! 80 degrees and not a cloud in the sky! The scenery was beautiful, the weather was perfect, it was shaping up to be a really awesome day. As soon as we arrived we started seeing people we had spent 2 years in school with yet (in some cases) never met in person. Bill, Cedric, Jerzy, all these guys I talk to ALL the time yet had never met. Instantly cool for sure, but it kept getting better! We had a trial practice run for the ceremony, hung out a while, and were then seated for the ceremony to begin.

Shawn, Carlos, and Bobby are definitely a bunch of amazing dudes. The school that was once an idea being tossed around during lunch and gaming sessions was now alive and changing people's lives, mine most included. As well as great animators, the three of them have an air of charisma and inspiration about them that has definitely played more than a small part in the success of the school. Many thanks to them for everything and for Shawn's great speech.

Glen Mackintosh from ILM was the guest speaker and had some really cool things to say. We also heard from Rick O'Connor, Don Crum, and many others with a boatload of great info.

After the speakers spoke and awards were awarded, we all got in line for our diplomas, handshakes, and pictures. Awesome to the max! The reception following was a great time with many pictures to be taken, wine to be drank, and memories to be made. After it all ended we got a burger, took a deep breath, and headed on home.

Stay tuned for the next update...Siggraph and FJORG!

Back To Reality, Job Search!

I've returned from the East and have dug my heels back into reality. Sort of...

I've got one normal day to catch up on a few things, then tomorrow we leave for San Francisco for our Animation Mentor graduation, then it's right back here to LA for Siggraph and FJORG!.

The vacation was amazing. I got to spend a lot of time with Emily, my family and friends, do a lot of surfing, eat some great food, and overall just relax and have a really cool time. I'm totally refreshed and I'm looking forward to getting back into the game with some new animation work.

I'll update next week once FJORG! is finished with some hopefully really cool news. =)

Summer Trip, FJORG!, Siggraph!

Reporting in here from Cape Cod, Massachusetts right now! I've been here about a week visiting family and friends, soaking up the sun, and preparing mentally for FJORG and a hopefully busy month of August.

August 8-9th -|- AnimationMentor.com Graduation -|- San Francisco, CA
August 10-13th -|- FJORG! Animation Challenge @ Siggraph '08 -|- Los Angeles, CA
August 13-17th -|- Siggraph '08 -|- Los Angeles, CA

FJORG! is going to be freakin' amazing! My team is Bill Buckley, Ken Robkin, and myself. We'll be held up in a room full of animators where we'll have 32 hours to make the best short film we can. I've been working with Ken for almost two years and haven't had a chance to meet him yet (he lives in Florida) so it's going to be a good time for all no matter what happens I'm sure. More updates when I can.

Once I get back from Siggraph I'll be back to work full time on my short film until I find some work in the L.A. area. It's been a really neat summer so far with so much free time but it's about time to get back into some real work. =)

So far on the trip Emily and I have taken a couple hundred photos so it will be a good time going through them all. I'll definitely put them up once the time comes. Stay tuned!

Happy Independance Day!

Hope everyone had a good time. I raised a mug for Caleb today, I hope his day went well.

Home Again

After a pretty neat weekend, we got back from San Francisco last night around 2am. We left Thursday night and stayed at Sean's place in Antioch. His son Aiden is 17 months so it was cool to see him again. I don't have a beard anymore either so he wasn't afraid of me. =)

Friday morning we got up and headed to Emeryville to the Animation Mentor headquarters. Inside we were greeted by some cool staff people who showed us into the main offices where we got to meet job recruiters from about 8 different studios. It was cool to talk with them and meet people that I've been training with for the past 18 months. After the job fair the doors opened to the rest of the world for the Open House. We met Richard there and mingled with lots of folks and talked and drank and sang, etc. No we didn't sing. After the Open House we drove down to visit Pixar and take some photos.

Friday night brought us back to Antioch to visit Sean again where we went to see Wall-E. I won't give it away but as usual with any Pixar flick the movie is fantastic. I'm looking forward to the reviews, it's got some interesting points to it.

Saturday morning we headed off towards the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco where the Animation Mentor Annual Barbecue was being held. Great food, great people, overall a great time for sure. Just meeting so many awesome people and animators was such a rad time.

Life is back to normal at least for a few days until Richard gets back on the 3rd. Time for sleep. Yes...

San Francisco and Friends From Paris Part II

Man it's been a hell of a week! Richard arrived last Wednesday and we spent the week touring around Los Angeles visiting the sites and hitting the beaches. Venice Beach, Santa Monica Beach/Pier, Hermosa, Redondo, 3rd Street Promenade, Hollywood, Studio City, Death Valley, we did a lot of driving around and had a radical time.

Probably the most interesting thing we did was to leave the city around 11pm for a two day trip up north to Death Valley National Park. We were going to head out East to Joshua Tree but there was a massive heat wave coming through and thought it might be wise to head North into the mountains instead. So, we got some instructions to an old primitive campsite from a friend and headed out. It took about 3 hours to get there which put us in around 2am, and....man it was a crazy place. This "campsite" looked like it was straight out of a Friday the 13th movie. We were miles off the road, not another person or sign of life in sight. The place was barely a campsite, really just a small patch of space off of the dirt road. There was a river that came off the mountain that ran right through the site, which was neat, except for that it was deafeningly loud. We decided we didn't want to get murdered out in the middle of nowhere and decided to head home. On the way back the sun started to rise so we pulled over on the side of the deserted highway to watch the sun come up over the ridge. Some great photos were taken and we ended up having a really fun time despite the original plan going bust. On the way home we stopped off at a few more campgrounds to do some hiking and got back to the city around 10am. Traffic was fun.

Besides that we did a lot of walking through various parts of the city and Richard took some really cool photos. He is a great photographer and is going to be editing the photos before we see any of them with color correction, cropping, etc. so they are awesome +1.

To Read More, Click Below.

Now that Richard has flown up to San Francisco, I've got a couple days to get my stuff together than we're headed up there too for the Annual Animation Mentor Barbecue and Job Fair. Recruiters from 11 different studios are confirmed to be there for us to chat with on Friday. Afterwards we're all headed to see the opening of Wall-E (New pixar movie.) On Saturday is the Barbecue where I'll hopefully get to meet a lot of the people I went to school with online who I've not yet met in person, along with some of the mentors I have worked with in the past.

It's been a busy week and the weekend seems like it won't be any different. I'm looking forward to getting back to my routine on Sunday. And some sleep, yes.