Today's Stuff

Two from today. 3 and a 5.

New Pixar Short...

Check out this still from the new Pixar short, Lifted. Can't wait to see it!

Plot: "The film apparently deals with a young alien student who tests the patience of his instructor as he attempts a first-time abduction." (According to Luxo)

[Update] According to AWN, Gary Rydstrom will be directing this short.

One more...

While I still can...

Also, as an addendum, make sure to check out some of the Sheridan production blogs that are forming - three so far. Their purpose? To track the progress of the group films being produced by the third year animation students at Sheridan. Here are the three so far (permalinked at right with their own shiny new section):

Fish and Chopsticks
The Line Production
Aisle-6

My group production blog will be up and running once a story idea and name for the film is chosen - hopefully within the week!

Anyways, watch out for it and keep checking those blogs!

Life..

Three 1 Minutes and a Five.

The last days of Ottawa...

I kicked off the Saturday by attending the Animators for Hire seminar - an interesting speed-dating-like service to talk to studios that were hiring. I think the process works moderately well and it was an interesting thing to be a part of.

Next up was the international showcase. Two of the best film I saw at Ottawa were at this: Disney's The Little Matchgirl and Matthew Walker's Astronauts - a hilarious performance driven 3D film, and Guide Dog, a hilarious Bill Plympton short. All in all I think the international showcase had the strongest films at the festival - which begs to question - why weren't they in competition?

The Bob Clampett Retrospective was next - it was definetly a hoot! Thanks to Chuck for sponsoring that!

After that I caught Short Competition 5 - which had an amazing high school film "Black Box", Stefan Mueller's amusing "Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker," a screening of "Le Building", and it went abstract from there on it. A good mix overall, but definetly not the best competition group I've seen at Ottawa.

After that was the Saturday night party - which was a blast! Barrymore's is quite the venue.

Onto Sunday!

Short Competition 4 was up first - the United Airlines spot "Dragon" was definetly notable - as was Marc Sylvain's short, "Fertilizer Soup". Also great was Blair Kitchen's UN Spot "Lion and Zebra" - Chuck did a great job on it and I gotta pat him on the back for it! Then it moved back into the sex and the abstract.

The last thing I was able to catch was some of Evan Spiridellis' talk about "The Rise of the Independant Creator" - you've definetly got to read about what JibJab's doing - it's pretty amazing stuff! Check out Mark Mayerson's post on this because it's said in a more eloquent manner than I would be able to on the subject.

As for the winners?

The Christies took the Feature Competition, Dreams and Desires took the best short, Mr. Schwartz, Mr. Hazen & Mr. Horlocker took best Student Animation, the Fedex: Stick commercial won for best commercial and Le Building won best Undergrad animation

Umbrella Boy took 2nd place at the Teletoon Continuing Ed Competition - great job Andrew and all the guys who worked on it! Also, Kent Hugo, Jay Edry, and Brad Kinley took home the Continuing Ed prizes - great job Sheridan!

Not so great however was the Sheridan Booth, I plan to talk to someone about that one.

Before signing off on this Ottawa post, I wanted to show off this music video that Trevor and Ben worked on - apparently they're embarrased by it but I don't think they have any reason to be:



See you next year, Ottawa!

Second Day of Ottawa...

Just came back from the Concept Art and Art Direction lecture with (in order) Cartoon Brew's Amid Amidi, Ambiguously Gay Duo's J.J. Sedelmaier, and Lucasfilm's Erik Tiemens (concept artist and painter on Episode 3). Make sure to check out Erik's new paint/sketchblog - Virtual Gouache Land. Erik also hinted on the fact that he's now working at Lucasfilm Animation, working on "Something that's 180 degress in the other direction of Star Wars" - and added that it was something like a fairytale.

Also, check out this ambuously gay Alex Ross cover:


By the way, last year's group film, The Terrible Error of the Replacement Mayor, is finally online. Check it!:



At the Picnic:

Amid Amidi (Again)



Dave Nethery



The Pumpkin Carving Winners announced.




Among others I met were Kevin Gamble from Studio B, Evan Spiridellis from JibJab, and Tom Knotts from Laika.

Animarket Opening:
Representatives from Disney, Blue Sky, Nelvana, Nerd Corps, Teletoon, Mainframe, and Cecropia were present (amongst other schools). Cecropia had a great 2D game to show off on the floor called "The Act" - definetely worth checking out Sorry, I didn't get any pictures - I'll post some eventually! I got a copy of Cartoon Modern from Amid Amidi and got it signed - make sure to check it out if you're at the festival!

Everyone else (Nick, Trev, Jeff, Sam, Olga, Rye, Dave, Halya, Steve, Toby, Robert, and quite a few other guys) arrived just in time for short competition 3.

There were three shorts in the high school competition, an interesting stream-of-consciousness film entitled "A Painful Glimpse into my writing Process (In less than 60 seconds), a few abstract films, a few narrative films that felt like abstract films, a few funny adverts (the one for Fedex and J.J. Sedelmeijer's are all pretty amusing). The best film of the night, in my opinion, was the short narrative film entitled, The Runt. The imagery in the film reminds me of a Michael Duduk De Wit film but is completely 180 degrees in the opposite direction in terms of tone. I would recommend seeing it if you get a chance.

The day closed out with the party at the Capital City Music Hall - even Michel and Tony where there. Died off quick though!

Anyways, onto day three!

First Day of Ottawa...

So I'm finishing up the first day at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

I missed out on a few things that I wanted to see today because of a splitting headache but otherwise it's been going pretty good.

Monuments









Some stuff at the National Gallery












I also caught the uninspiring "Book of the Dead" - an odd japanese puppet film.

Before I leave....

Hey!



Steve Hulett of the TAG blog has a cool post with an interview with the famed Ken Anderson of Disney. Check it!

You probably also missed the fact that it was international Talk Like A Pirate Day yesterday. Make up for it today by dressing up as a ninja.



Nothing like an Ingmar Bergman inspired episode of Animaniacs....

Also be sure to check out Michel Gondry's (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) next film The Science of Sleep - it looks like an incredible Gondry-fest.

Also check out this interview with Pixar artist Enrico Casarosa.

I'm heading down to Ottawa tomorrow for the Ottawa International Animation Festival bright and early. It was looking like there was only going to be a few people from my year going but now it looks like there'll be in excess of 30 people heading down for at least the weekend. It's great to hear and I'm definetly looking forward to it!

Some interesting concepts...

And Valve's next game, dubbed "Portal"



By the way, in case you're wondering, the story group I'm in consists of:
Eduardo Avenir, Nonna Medveyeva, Andre Suh, Jody Todoshuck, Gabe Lopez, Ian Roach, and Ji-Hye.

Life..

Back to routine...

The drawings that got away...

So I'm putting my portfolio together for Ottawa and cleaning up my room today, and started to do my every-so-often life drawing purge. I shot some snapshots of a few unfinished drawings before they got tossed - most of these, though, have some sort of problem. Hope you like!

Just a few today...

Hans Bacher has posted some more of his photographs which he dubs - 'some more history.' They're some neato (and very young-looking) photos of Glen Keane, Andreas Deja, and Don Hahn, amongst others.



Also Calarts student Steve Macleod has posted about the Baxton art auction at Calarts that was held recently. In attendance was John Musker, James Baxter, Dean Wellins, John Ripa, Mark Kennedy, and more. That's CalArts for ya!



Man - I really haven't been checking Jim Hill Media enough! They have a posting featuring the pre-production work that was shown at last year's Siggraph for American Dog!



They also have a story breakdown:

""American Dog" is the story of Henry, a dog who stars in a popular television series, where each week this Hollywood hound has all sorts of James Bond-like adventures ... But Henry always manages to come through unscathed. Thanks to his TV show's carefully written scripts as well as his dedicated stunt team.

But one night, during an on-location shoot, one stunt goes horribly wrong. Henry gets knocked out. And when he finally comes to, this diminutive dog finds himself on a moving train thousands of miles away from Tinseltown, in the middle of America.

After years of being treated like a celebrity, being waited on hand & foot, Henry doesn't quite know how to get along in the real world, how to interact with real people.

Mind you, not everyone that Henry encounters when he's stranded 'way out in middle America could be called normal. Take -- for example -- that over-sized radioactive rabbit ...or that one-eyed cat with the eye patch.

As it turns out, the rabbit and the cat have access to a classic old car, And Henry cons these two into driving him back out to Hollywood. Where this dog can resume his plush celebrity lifestyle.



Then there's some artwork for Rapunzel Unbraided - John Lasseter was reported to have said the first 20 minutes of Rapunzel was the strongest opening that he'd ever seen for a Disney animated feature.



Also, follow This link to see some stuff from Dreamwork's Kung Fu Panda, and Bee Movie.

A layout...

Busy work in Layout class.

A house, meant to look evil via composition and tone.

Could definetly be worked on some more - but I gotta get to the 'cute' version of the house. I'll update this one if I finish the other in a timely manner.