Thesis Color Script

I just returned from NYC and the Pixar exhibit at MOMA. If you have a chance to see it, I highly recommend it. There was SO much art to see including maquettes, texture designs, animation studies, color scripts, etc...so inspiring to see! They were also showing Pixar's new short, One Man Band, the day I went...but unfortunately we missed seeing it by an hour or so. It was so packed in the MOMA...the line for tickets stretched out the door and down almost a whole block! (Thankfully it moved pretty fast.) Anyway, I came back in the mood to create some visual development type art, so here is a full color script for my thesis, Love at First Roach. The colors you see here are general ideas for lighting and texturing, but will likely look a bit different when fully realized in 3D...feedback welcome as always.



By the way, if you can't get to the exhibit, I highly recommend the book they've released which can be purchased for just $30 at MOMA's website. While there you can also listen to the audio tour with some of the work from the show.

Illustration Friday: Surprise

Thought you were gonna play in the big game, HUH? Well, surprise. You're not. HA!

Thesis Update

Here's a new render of my characters after I tweaked the textures a bit.

Thesis: Textured Models

Here are Suzette and Pierre all textured up! Had to do the UV's on these guys twice, but now they're okay. Settled on just a fur-ish texture for Suzette, which in the long run will save me a lot of headaches. Rigs should be ready soon and that means animation time! WOOO!

Illustration Friday: Free

Though I don't necessarily agree with the message I was asked to convey in this illustration (for the Reporter mag) I thought it fit well with this week's Illustration Friday topic. The article this illy goes along with is about the seperation of church and state, specifically about the lack of God in the classroom. (Can you tell that's the capital building?)

Dance of the Seasons

I recently worked on a very interesting project titled Dance of the Seasons. It is a 2 minute animated film that was (mostly) made in just 24 hours. Two fellow RIT animators, Joe Daniels and Jed Mitchell, have put together two similar 24 hour challenges in the past, but both were done in CG. Dance of the Seasons is unique because it is entirely hand drawn (over 1,000 frames from 5 animators in 24 hours.) Dave Suroviec was an animator on the piece and kindly lent us the basement of his apartment to go crazy in. We began the 24 hour period with no idea of what we were doing, but we did have the music handed to us by Joe and Jed. (Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Hours.) We began at 10 AM on a Saturday and spent a few hours brainstorming and sketching until we came up with some sort of coherent idea. This led to storyboarding and listening to Dance of the Hours on repeat for the entire day and night. Brittney Lee did the character design for "Petey" our main squirrel (I suggested the name we gave to the squirrel inside our apt cieling) and she cranked out some nice model sheets. While the animators began their work I sat down with Joe and the storyboards and figured out all the layouts we were going to need. (Thirteen total.) They went surprisingly smoothly, but somewhere around 2 AM I began working with Photoshop to color them. And apparently Photoshop loves me so much that it decided to crash on almost every background I worked on, often multiple times. I was drinking coffee (which I don't often do) and feeling jittery and crazy, but it was fun! We had a video camera on and off throughout the night...I'm interested to see some of that footage. And it should also be said here that all of the people who worked on this film are students of Nancy Beiman, who inspired us to create a hand-drawn collaborative film. (I don't know what she thinks of it yet, but hopefully good things.) Anyway, I've posted a few of my favorite layouts from Dance of the Seasons here:










Now! Go watch the entire film (Large or Small, Quicktime 7, H.264 codec) which Joe has kindly posted for everyone to see. And visit his blog to see the other two 24-hour films that have been made at RIT.

And here are some pictures from the making of Dance of the Seaons!

Jed and Joe survey story ideas. And yes, Joe wore the Goofy hat for the full 24 hours.

Brittney at the boards!

We're messy.

Brittney animates!

Nathaniel works diligently.

Our pencil testing station.

This is where I worked all night. (I had a comfy chair too.)

RJ and Dave passed out around 9 AM.

Check out the blogs/sites of the other folks that worked on the film:

Brittney Lee
Dave Suroviec
Jed Mitchell
Joe Daniels
Nathaniel Hubbell

And that's it! Hope you enjoy the film.

Thesis Color Keys

Here are some color keys for my thesis...they need some work

Illustration Friday: Broken

I'll be honest, this was another illustration for the Reporter. (The cover, woo.) BUT it is about evolution and the direction that we could be headed in- a break in the evolutionary process through technology. (I didn't stretch that too far, did I? I really miss Illustration Friday. ;)

Halloween '05

What was my costume this year you ask? Something horrfiying. Something so scary you can hardly bear to look. That's right: I went as Tom Cruise and Meg (my roommate) went as pregnant Katie Holmes. ::cue high pitched horror movie shriek::




We walked around saying things like:

Meg: "He's the most AMAZING guy!"

"Have you heard about scientology? I'm having a silent birth!"

Me: "If it's a boy we're gonna name it Tom, and if its a girl we're gonna name it Tom."

Then I'd jump on the couch and give lots of thumbs up's.

Reporter Illy's: Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

Here are a couple illustrations for the Reporter this week. The first is about Intelligent Design and Evolution, the second is about artificial intelligence and cyborg theory. Fun topics!

Ottawa Animation Festival '05

I recently returned from another foray into that crazy bilingual animation nation of Canada. The Ottawa International Animation Festival is an amazing collection of (mostly) independent short animations, peppered with a variety of lectures, panels, workshops and parties. I had a blast last year and was looking forward to the fest all year. This year was a great time as well, but I didnt find quite as many amazingly inspiring pieces. There were a few though!


Friday, September 23

I made the 5 hour drive with four of my animator friends from RIT here in Rochester, NY. We arrived just in time to catch a showing of the winning feature, "The District." This is a Hungarian film with English subtitles done in a 3D cut-out style. There was a combination of awful "animation" and sloppy motion capture. The film was obnoxious, offensive, ugly, and poorly animated.

Here's the awesome National Arts Center auditorium!

After that we caught Short Competition 3. The highlight of this set was JJ Villard's "Chestnuts Icelolly". I enjoyed this piece immensely more than "Son of Satan" which was Villard's film that showed last year at Ottawa. Oh those crazy CalArts kids! Also, Tomek Baginski's "Fallen Art" was screened, which I had already seen at The Animation Show, but enjoyed again. Amazing modeling and texturing and concept. This was also the block that featured "Even Odd Even"...an experimental film from Austria that consisted of flashing black and white blobs. I wanted to rip my eyes out after seven minutes of that. After some food we checked out a fancy party where I met some lady from Cartoon Network and the guy who publishes Animation World Network! Good times.

Brittney is excited (and blurry) over the goodies in her festival bag.

Saturday, September 24

After getting about 3 hours of sleep on Friday night we all woke up for a class on "Kids, Cartoons, and Hero Culture" which was unfortunately full. We instead listened to a rather boring and uninformative talk on Production Pipelines. Next we checked out "DIY: Pioneers of Independent Canadian Animation"...which I thought would be a treasure trove of great NFB shorts that I love. But NO. It was a collection of mostly experimental shorts that put me to sleep. So we left that block early and got some food, then we went to the Pink Panther shorts collection. These were a lot of fun after watching an hour of experimental shorts. (Then again, eating rusty nails is more fun than that as well.) While my friends went for a nap I stayed at the NAC for Short Competition 4. This is where they showed "The Old Crocodile." This short was awesome! It featured a crotchety old crocodile who falls in love with an octopus and can't help but eat her. Also screened was "Dying of Love" about two parrots reminiscing in their cage. Interesting piece with some fun animation. After some dinner I attended the Pee Wee Herman's Playhouse animation collection. What a fun batch of stuff...and the memories! They all came flooding back. The dinosaurs in the wall and the food in the fridge...I need to get those DVD's.

Makin' our way to the National Gallery.

Unfortunately I had to miss Jerry Beck's "Worst Cartoons Ever" while I was at PeeWee...I hear they were hilarious. (I did catch a small bit of some of it...wild stuff.) Last on Saturday night was Short Competition 5...I loved the Honda Grrr spot. I hated Tick-Tack. (Is it just me or was there waaaay too much creepy sexual stuff at this fest?) The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello was fantastic. Absolutely beautiful cut-out style mixing CG and stop motion. (26 minutes tho...hardly a short!) Die Toten Hosen (that whale one) was really neat. And last of all was Don Hertzfeldt's meaning of life. Ward sums it up pretty well in his post about Ottawa. I am a huge Hertzfeldt fan but this film is ridiculously pretentious and not nearly as funny as his other work. Sigh.

The party on Saturday night was a blast. (Even though the guy in front of me got the LAST free drink ticket...) A really cool bar and a giant throng of animators dancing and watching cartoons! I had no idea animators could be so fun.

Blurry pic of the animator party! (Makes it look WILD!)

Sunday, September 25

After getting another 3 hours of sleep, Brittney and I woke up for the masterclass with Michael Dudok de Wit. And I am so happy we did! Dudok de Wit is a fantastic animator...he made "The Monk and the Fish" as well as "Father and Daughter." He is an Oscar winner and former employee of Disney. His work is so soft and subtle and funny and beautiful. European with a strong Eastern overtone. Very happy I got to see him in person and hear his thoughts on creativity and the way he works. Probably the best part of the entire trip.

Holy Crap! There was a giant spider (see the tiny people?) outside the National Gallery. AWESOME.

I had lunch with Lorelei Pepi, one of my old professors and a winner at Ottawa a few years back. It was great to see her. Next we checked out the Kids Competition...where I had heard that Henry Sellick was going to be introducing his CG short, Moongirl. But NO. He couldn't make it I guess. There was a slew of people they introduced as being there and then weren't - rather dissapointing. I enjoyed the short from "My Life as a Teenage Robot" as well as the insane episode of "Kids Next Door" which was a take on one of the shorts from the Animatrix. The last thing we saw was the Canadian Showcase, which started off great with "I Like Pandas," by Jessica Borutski. The rest of these shorts were mediocre, and culminated in the scary crap that is "Can You Love Me." What was this film doing in an animation festival? There was about 2 seconds of crappy scratch on film. Otherwise it was a twisted wierd documentary type story that I really didn't need to hear. Not a great way to end the fest.

Overall, I enjoyed the festival. I have a feeling I missed out on some of the better events, but its hard to know what's going to be worth seeing. Here's some random pictures to enjoy!

The RIT gang at the National Gallery. (From L to R - Brittney Lee, Dave Suroviec, Joe Daniels, Bill Robinson (me!) and Jed Mitchell)


Ottawa is pretty!

Here are Pana, Sean, and Mikey! I met up with them while we were there. Mikey works in games and Sean is an animator!

Reporter Illys: International Students

Here's a couple illustrations for Reporter that were for articles about international students at RIT. Also, I just got back from Ottawa so I will have to post my thoughts on that a little later...

Thesis Tone and Color

Assignment for Nancy Beiman's class on Layout and Storyboarding.

Reporter Illy: Katrina Relief

Reporter will be running an article on colleges that are providing relief and housing for misplaced and affected students after Katrina. Illy was done in Maya.

Reporter Illy: Sports

And now for something completely different from my last post...

Illustration Friday: Dreams

So she's not dead, in case you were wondering. And this isnt a dream I've had either.