AnimatjonS's Xanga

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:56:34 GMT

Update.

If life is a game of cards....I have just been dealt with the "Big Two" (Tai Ti), or the winning hand in Black Jack. I'm feeling lucky.

I also have some new work up. I replaced the old clip so you might have to delete your cookies or clear your cache to view...

I'm Done!!!

Hopefully this will make a bit more sense out of my last post. God has been good to me the past 18 months or more. He has kept me on my feet during the hectic schedule of late sleepless nights and overloaded weeks (weekends included). I am so thankful for good health, and more importantly, timely doses of inspiration that come out of the blue, just when I don't feel like keeping going. What's next for me, will surely be interesting to find out. But I will trust in the Lord who has brought me thus far, and will be faithful despite of me.

Here are some of my work so far in animationmentor.com. Click to play. Still not 100 percent, and could use some tweaking and fancy lighting. My final short film project is still in the works. Post production, and alot of fine tuning before it is fit to be premiered. There is a hidden clip somewhere...=). Hope you enjoy it.

p.s. Like the new layout?

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Tue, 27 Feb 2007 15:16:38 GMT

Half Way There...

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Sat, 25 Nov 2006 19:06:38 GMT

Short film Class...

New Characters!!!

From left Murdock, Otto, Pawn, Bishop, Rook, and Ace.

These are the new rigs so generously provided by animation mentor for our short films. I won't be using them all though.

So this is what I have been extremely busy with. Producing and directing my own short film. I can't say much about it at the moment and hopefully there won't be a leak on the internet. But the official news is there will be a dog character, played by Pawn, and it will be slightly over a minute long.

Pawn

You won't hear from me in awhile as I will be in a cave somewhere animating my most challenging project yet. I thought I'd say something before I leave civilization. Well goodbye for now. And here's another sketch I did for kicks.

Griffin

Friday, August 18, 2006

Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:53:44 GMT

BIG NEWS!

Something incredible has happened! My work has been included in the Student's reel on the animationmentor.com main site. See if you can spot my fleeting moment. I know most of you die hard fans have already seen it right. <-- Man! I just used a smiley....I must be happy. But do check it out....your jaw will drop when you see the OTHER works that are on there. Mine definitely did. It is the showcase reel that should automatically start loading once in the site. They showed this at Comic Con and Siggraph and the response was unbelievable. They even have to take the reel off the site during peak hours due to heavy site traffic so that it won't affect us students. So don't miss it!!

Ok the site doesn't seem to work. Click on the image above to start the download. Or click here YES! I mean Praise the Lord.I just made a calculation and it was 1 in 26 out of 597. God is good. With that I leave you with this distubing image. Captain Wolf. He stands for Truth, Justice, and the Canine way.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:32:55 GMT

Official Rumour was inaccurate....
New update: Unknown sources indicate a high possibility that it will materialize in a weeks time. This just in, I am not a teenager anymore!!! For all those Blog stalkers out there, make yourselves known. You know who you are.

My latest term has ended, only to make way for a new one. Had a nice one week break, but the many things supposed to be done during were neglected. So this will be an incomplete post. Check back in 4 days. At least that is the official rumour.

My last mentor was Dovi Anderson. Played his part in The Matrix Revolutions, Hellboy, Cats and Dogs, Charlotte's Web, to name a few. More on him later.

Term 3: Introduction to Acting

Introduction to animating dialogue. This assignment was my second assignment for the term. The first was a pantomime shot which I'm still working on to be blog worthy.

click

I really had fun with dialogue.(10 points for anyone who can guess where this line is from. Excluding you Jeanette.) The wonder of watching an inanimate object slowly start to breath, think, talk, and come to life is one of the things that make the long tiring hours of animation seem worthwhile. I say seem because I am still undecided. My acting instincts are horrible though. Body Mechanics and physical stuff are more my thing. For this term, as I am currently working on, facial expressions and proper lipsync are to be layered on. The new facial rig is amazing, with puffable cheeks, puckerable lips, squintable eyelids and brows, and the sort. Check in soon( between now and the next decade) for the facial performance.

If unable to view the movie, click here.

More current news. Carlos Baena is coming to Singapore!!!!! I will be attending the CG Overdrive conference next week, July 14-16, and I can't wait. That will mean cramming more hours of work to finish early to leave for the weekend.

Carlos is one of the 3 co-founders of animationmentor.com. He is frequently featured in the video lectures that I watch every week, especially during term 1. If you ever come across a fingerboarder video on the web.....that's him. Oh yea,......he is also a rockstar animator who happens to work at Pixar.

That's it so far. New mentor? Mike Gasaway. One of the Directors for the Jimmy Neutron Dvds.

Signing off.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:30:11 GMT

There is an update coming. I can just feel it. But I've been wrong before.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 15:59:24 GMT

Term 2
Animationmentor.com

Warning: dull documentary of my life as it is at the moment. Worse than Malay football commentaries. I'm just too tired to write with 'happy thoughts'....."and next time thru let's say it more ENTHUSIASTICALLY!!!" ugh....character first flashback. You have been warned.

I guess I should update before I get caught up in the new term. Term 2 - Body Mechanics. Regarded by most upper-class students as the toughest term in the program. Because it is the stage where they stop spoon feeding you and you find your own work methods on how to approach a shot. Despite the other students foreboding, for me.......it was no different. I struggled just as much as everyone else. My method is still raw and I have yet to find something that really works for me. But I am getting there.

Before you continue, please download the new Quicktime player Here. Very soon it will be essential for normal everyday browsing, so you might as well update it now. You won't regret it. I'm using the new H.264 codec for compression and it gives me smaller file size and better quality. It only plays on the new Quicktime 7 player so check out the video clips below to see if you have the latest version. If not you can still view all my assignments in the old low-res version here.

Just click on the big fat play button to start the downloads. It might take a moment.

Kick assignment. There were other options to do (run, turn) but isn't it obvious why I chose this one? Students were complaining of too much free time and how they were too pro for this simple assignment in 5 weeks. Come 6-8 weeks....the halls were empty, the forums were quiet, the chat windows were idle. Nope...no more free time...for the rest of your life. I am giving advice now to the new students to enjoy those 5 weeks.

Post to post assignment. My mentor was not a fan of this one. I have been labeled the 'Star Wars' kid for coming up with overcomplicated ideas. She was right though....it was way too much for me to handle and she ended up cutting the shot down to this. It has lost its spark and is uninspired. The thing I learnt? To stay inspired you need ONE idea and the simpler it is the more it will shine.

Heavy push assignment. It turned out better than I expected. I focused my ideas to just four variations of the push and still I was scrambling for time when it was due. I did end up using the free week before the new term started to finish cleaning and polishing it up. Yay, my mentor said this was my strongest work.

My mentor for this term.......

Michelle Meeker

After graduating from CalArts in 1993 and 1996, Michelle has worked on both U.S. coasts and abroad in New Zealand and China. Her animation credits include Shrek, Antz, Lord of the Rings and Geris Game. She started off working for Sesame Street Interactive amd then moved into studios such as Pixar, PDI, and Weta Digital. Mixed in with the bigger projects have been stints with E-greetings, Maxis (Sims), Stormfront, Vidlit, and Little Airplane. For the past 4 years, she has also enjoyed teaching animation at the Art Institute of California, San Francisco.

Q n A session. The site has been renovated. It is 10 times better with way cooler technology.(You can record video journals directly onto the site!!) I wish I could show you all the cool features but it's classified information. I guess this doesn't count......see the fancy new font at the top.....groovy eh.

My class....well most of them. Don't you just love the color spectrum of the webcams? Every color of the rainbow is in there.....totally unedited.

This is my profile pic for the term. Actual size....the way it is suppose to be viewed. Any bigger and you get anime Barbie eyes. I actually have a new one for the new term. Should I put it up? Nah I'll save it for later.

Still to come........Term 3

Scenes from our next episode. Mentor.....Dovi Anderson....Tippett Studio. New Profile pic. Acting. I thought it was really funny that Mr. Anderson worked on the Matrix. What's next? Peter was a fisherman?

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 19:59:18 GMT

A Sneak Preview of Things to Come

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 16:12:21 GMT

Until Further Notice.....

Saturday, September 24, 2005

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 21:29:56 GMT

Animation mentor is the coolest education system on earth!!! By the end of this post you will not disagree with me and wish you never learned to read in kindergarten(which by the way is vastly inferior as well). Let me just share how it works.

Each student is assigned a personal mentor who is a professional animator working in the industry with an impressive resume. They guide you with your assignments and further elaborate on the video lectures we get every week.At about 15 students to a mentor, you get pretty close attention. That's what everybody strives for right? A lil' attention.

INTRODUCING...................

My Mentor!!!

Michal Makarewicz

see if you can spot Ollie

Never heard of him you say......keep readin.

He worked on 'The Incredibles' !!!! He applied for an internship at Pixar and they liked his work so much that they hired him straight away, and he's been working there ever since. Yup, you heard me.....my Mentor works at Pixar. Below are some shots he worked on for the short film 'Jack-Jack Attack'

And here is the wheel of fortune person showing you a vowel.

Still think your school is better? There's more.....

The second part of it is the live Q&A sessions. I just attended my first one and it was mind-blowingly awesome. There's a chat window open in the center, and we can enter the room 1 hour before it starts and linger an hour after. When the mentor arrives, we receive the live video and audio feed off his webcam throughout the hour long session. The top column displays who is in the room, and when we send him questions(green button) our names are highlighted in blue. And at any time he can bring up whoever's webcam he chooses. The first session was introductions.....so he looks over at the list and goes...."let's see......we'll start with.....um.....John Sung!" "Gah!!....um, nime aim is jhon.....uh Hi, call me jon for short" Never sign in last....it puts you at the top of the list.

That's me having a little chat with my mentor. Actually he did most of the talking. I just studied together with everyone else my own blank stare.

Very International. These are my classmates...a couple didn't have webcams yet.

Meet Stu. He will attend to you today.

Yeap, this is Stu, and he's quite a character. My very first rig to do my assignments with. As we progress the rigs get more complex and the assignments more time consuming. I haven't actually done any assignments yet. The one for this week was to introduce yourself to your mentor and put up your profile pic. You know how that turned out. But every week our mentors will send us an e-critique of our work. That is a video recording of himself telling you where you went wrong. Starting from a bouncing ball, all the way to advance acting, and finally a short film.

my profile pic......EDIT* I just added a picture of myself to compare with since somebody has been saying my eyebrows are too dark, no way your hair is that thick, boy you have fat lips, and the like. I do think the eyes are too pretty to be mine, and I took the picture through my webcam after I drew the caricature, so its kinda wide-angled.

Conned-vinced yet? Nah......I'm sure all ya'lls(just for you Texans) schools are incredible. And that law-school you enrolled to is making you tingle with excitement. I'm not dissin anybody or trying to brag, but I really am ecstatic about the next 18 months. I am truly blessed and thank God for allowing me to stumble into this. I really discovered it by accident. I'm sure God has placed each one of you where He wants you to be too.