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