Final!

Helllo Everyone.

Well, it's been a long semester and I haven't been able to put in nearly as many hours a week as I'd like to, but here's what I'm turning in.

It could still use a couple more polish passes, especially on the arms, but overall I'm content with how it's come out.

Hope you're all having a great week!

Starting the lipsynch

Nothing much to show this week. Got frustrated with animating so I decided to work on lip synch. Going pretty well. Final soon!

The next second

taking things a second at a time, should probably pick up the pace soon :)

Splining the Run

This week I've just focused on the first 45 seconds, trying to get the run working right. It's proving difficult

"Trustafarian" update

As some of you know, I've been working on a student film/senior project called "Trustafarian". It's really coming along and I'm pretty proud of how much I've learned about camera animation in the last year of working on this (it's way harder than I first would have guessed). So I wanted to show off a few of the shots I've been working on.

The turn-around time has been really fast for animation. Unfortunately we only meet 3 hours a week so that really limits the amount we can get done. A lot of this will be hidden once we get the cloth on the tent working. (honestly know basically nothing about that sort of stuff.

Overall I'm glad for the opportunity to work in such a tight schedule. It's helped teach me how to let go of things, even when I think I could spend another 10 hours polishing something.

Sing me a song

Blocking is finally finally finally final

Move into splining next week

How do you do? With every one repeatin' Pretty good sure as you're born.

Still sick, went to the doctor who say that I just have a virus that's been going around. It's stinks. so here's my very minimal progress for the week

Dropbox woes

Aside from getting sick this week (noooooooo) I have also stumbled upon a feature in dropbox where it doesn't save like, any of my work. So I've made the switch to google drive for saving my files remotely and hopefully it will make a difference. I have lost something like 6 hours of work in the last week, so I have very little new blocking to show.

Blocking blocky block blocking

Started blocking this week, and I got pretty far! Rigging and the short film I'm working on have ended up eating a lot of my time, but I'm content with where I am.

Happy Valentine's Day

I found the set of search terms to use! The answer is "Six-year-old (or whatever age you're looking for) meets". No quotes. So I found my reference! It took three weeks but I've started, so yay!

Here's my new little-girl reference:

Finding Refrence

And the work continues! This week I stagnated a bit, the reference I shot of my self didn't really feel like a little girl (which makes it a bit of a wasted reference injury). So, I set to the internet trying to find and excited little girl. The best I was able to come up with was this one:

Which I started blocking based on and it just felt flat. I have yet to figure out the right set of search terms to get what I'm looking for. Turns out most excited little kids on youtube are sitting. 

Si je t'exile te catapulte Vers d'autres galaxies

The shot I'm currently working on. 

For my portfolio class this semester I've decided to start working on a new two person dialogue shot. I set out to find a sound clip that was appealing and featured a kid (as I have never ever animated a child before)

I ended up settling on the following clip from Bridge to Terabithia:

I then spent some time thinking about the back-story for my characters (Which is where the wonderful Rex Grignon and Todd Waring taught me to always start a shot). The little girl, Jenny, is an extremely hyperactive child who no one can keep up with. She has worn out several babysitters with her large imagination and boundless energy. Her new babysitter is Sara. Sara is extremely disinterested in baby sitting and begins the shot texting a boy she is very interested in. As Jenny's explanation gets more big and bizarre Sara is slowly drawn away from texting and ends the shot fully paying attention to Jenny. 

I shot some reference, but as it is with any reference worth using it is far too embarrassing to share.

See you all next week! <3 p="">

(Title is a line from the song "Ex" by french artist Camille)   

Hello world

I have been away from this blog for quite awhile, and a lot has and has not changed since I was last here. I graduated Animation Mentor in 2010!

I'm returning to my blog to chronicle my final semester at CSU Chico. After graduating AM I decided to return to school to finish my BA in English Literature as well as to continue my education in Animation. I'm thrilled to say I will be graduating at the end of this semester with botha BA in English Literature and a BS in Applied Computer Graphics (which is basically the Chico academic name for animation and video game design).

I will be linking to my current demo reel at the end of this week, and hope to keep everyone updated as I progress through new animations during the upcoming semester.

J'aurai p'têtre moins envie de faire la fête.

Happy August everyone! Getting started on my short film (OMG I can't believe I'm already working on my short film! AAHHH!) And my mum requested I put my Animatic up on my blog, et voilà!

Animation Mentor is made of Pure Awesome.

In case you didn't know already though. So, this last weekend I got to participate in the filming of a lecture at the AM offices in Emeryville, taught by the truly fabulous Bret Parker, an animator at Pixar studios! The lecture was organized by the terrific Luci Napier, who I couldn't possibly thank enough for inviting me to be apart of such a cool experience!

Bobby Beck has more about the lecture on his blog, so I will leave a link to that, so I don't have to explain everything. (I'm afraid most of what I would say would be "and then it was cool, and awesome, and super cool!)

http://bobbyboom.blogspot.com/2009/07/animation-mentor-new-lecture-with-bret.html

Voila – le conversation dans le parc.

So, I was recently reminded that I have a blog so I thought I would do some updates! woo.

Well, I'm currently in class 4 at AM (holy moley time does fly!), I can't believe it's been over a year since I discovered Animation Mentor. My current mentor is Dana Boadway, who is super talented, knowledgeable and nice (as frankly all the mentors at AM seem to be). We're currently working on two-person dialogues and I'm having a lot of fun but I totally underestimated how much work it would be. And to be honest I was expecting quite a bit of work. I have a trip planned mid-June for my sister's birthday, and it happens to be the last week to work on this assignment, so I'm kind of worried about that. I'll just have to make sure I stay really on-schedule.

Um, I guess that's all I have to say. I am watching Alton Brown's "Good Eats" at the moment, so that's pretty awesome. I had a Maya crash at 6am Sunday (due day) which was super not awesome. It crashed when I hit save, how annoying is that? So, yeah, lost about an hour of work. By far not the worst crash I've had, but man alive was a tired when that happened. I sort of felt like crying, I was so ready to go to bed!

We're moving into splining now, which I am NOT a fan of, guh. I swear my animation was AWESOME in blocking! Why don't you believe me?

We have roaches in our apartment (by "our" I mean me and my roommates, not me, myself and I, haha). So, yeah, that's pretty disgusting. I just want the roaches to dies of starvation! Die, horrible horrible insects, die! I also think we may have termites, which is extra bleck to the nth degreee. Is my lease up yet? Did I mention I live right by the train track? Is it too late to re-negotiate my rent?

But, uh, yeah. I guess that's it for now. Thanks for listening to me ramble!

(title of this entry is from a Flight of the Conchords song, I'm seeing them in a week! woot!)

Je suis champion de clavecin

Bloggity blog blog.

Class four! Getting started on two person dialogue shots any say here, but in the mean-time here is the latest version of my one person dialogue (needs ever so much work still, so frustrating!)

Happy Graduation!!

No clever titles from me this time, because Graduation was last weekend! And it was super-dee-duper-dee fun! (Um, I'm not sure what that means exactly, I'm not exactly great with words.) So, yes graduation! Which I have absolutely no pictures of (though facebook is chalk full of ones that other people took). Sadly I am bad at time-management so I couldn't go to the Friday day/night events or the after-party Saturday night. (err, though I probably could have at least gotten dinner with people after graduation if I hadn't already bought tickets to an SF Sketchfest show that started at 8. I'm sorry! The funny was totally worth the accusations of ditching though!)

I volunteered at Graduation so I got to the location at 11am, and then the those of us who were sitting out in the theater watching the rehearsal got to "graduate" many times so they could practice reading through the names. This was fun, but weirdly tiring. Part of the reason for that could have been because after about the third time around we all started coming up with increasingly more ridiculous ways to get across the stage.

We then went backstage for lunch, which featured an AMAZING view of Alcatraz (seriously, I didn't know you could get so close to the ex-prison without being on a boat). For lunch I had a pile of Doritos, an apple, a banana and coffee (glorious coffee!) and I was told the sandwiches were quite good too. (I did not partake as I am allergic-ish to bread.) Then, eventually, Chris and I went to help open bottles of wine (in theory) and were generally not super helpful, as we both had wine-opening fail.

Then the graduates arrived! And there was a lovely graduation ceremony, full of wonderfulness. And after I spent time with wonderful people, many who I have only met on the website or through chat (and stickam!). It was awesome being able to talk to people without worrying about lag. (If we had cared to we could have even sang in sync!) I forget who, but someone brought Heidi beer which she drank warm. (Side note: the food at the buffet/reception/post-grad gathering whatever you want to call it was really quite good)

After that grad was all over! :( But I met up with my mum and we had an excellent Dinner (she and I had an excellent breakfast as well. There are aspects of the city that you have to love, good food being one.) and got to go see Totally Looped and The Lampshades, which combined featured the following actors: Laraine Newman, Maria Bamford, Oscar Nunez, Rick Overton, Joe Liss, Richard Kuhlman, Kate Flannery and Scot Robinson. And then I drove home and finished blocking pretty much half asleep.

So, yes, that was graduation!

Also, I realize I haven't updated since week one and I just want to say that Jay Jackson is an excellent mentor! (I had a 30min critique this last week, wow!) He really knows his acting and makes an effort to stop by our Workspaces and PRs to leave feedback during the week, which is seriously awesome. So, yes, I need to spend more time on my assignment (I'm so frustrated with my pantomime! I wish I knew why it feels like I'm fighting is every step of the way.) And I have officially abused both my parenthetical remark and exclamation mark privileges in this post so I think I'll be off now.

TTFN, ta ta for now

And my love he purloined away

Bloggity blog blog

I'm really bad at blogging. In case you can't tell. I've just started class 3 and am am super super super excited to get started on acting! I've decided that I'm going to take a new approach to blogging and not try to get in so much info. My new mentor is Jay Jackson, who I have yet to meet, but I've been asking around and I hear nothing but good things. His resume is certainly impressive! And, yes, I'm super excited.

And, here's my progress reel for anyone who cares to see it (i.e. My Mum!)



Um, yes, I believe that is all I have to say. I'm volunteering at AM graduation next weekend (the 17th) so I will probably have many pictures and stories to tell from that.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

I saw a commercial today which feature various celebrities reading from the following editorial . I believe it was supposed to make me shop at Macy's, or maybe it was supposed to remind me to go shopping on black Friday. What the commercial was for is irrelevant. I felt that the commercial had somehow cheapened the original spirit of the editorial. So I went digging up the original, in hopes of remembering how nice the message in this article is. Why, exactly, it is being used in a commercial over a hundred years after it first went to press. So, here's the editorial by Francis P. Church "Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus", first published in The New York Sun in 1897. Enjoy. :)

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.