Long time no blog...

So, besides my last post, I haven't updated my blog in over a year... so sad. I decided to write a few updates on what I've been up to since I started school at the beginning of the year. I started at AAU in January. My first semester I took 3 classes: Character Animation 2, Maya 2 and History of Character Animation. I really enjoyed the History of Character Animation class. It was taught by the director of the graduate animation program, Tom Bertino. Tom is really cool and he sure does know his stuff. I learned a lot about the history of animation that I hadn't learned before. It was really informative, a lot of fun, and I got to watch animation every week!

In my Maya 2 class, I worked on a 3D self portrait for the first half of the class. It turned out alright, but certainly nothing to brag about. For the last half of class we did a bunch of different dynamics simulations with Fur, Hair, nCloth, & nParticles. I learned quite a few cool tricks and workarounds, which might come in useful in the future. For the final project, it was pretty open ended, and we had to pitch an idea. I decided to take one of my animations from Character Animation 2 class and finalize it, build the set, texture, light and render. It was only a 100 frame animation, but it was quite challenging to finish none the less. This is how it turned out:



The last class was Character Animation 2. I had it with Jeff Cooper, a senior animator at Sega. Jeff is a great teacher, he gave me a lot of good feed back on my work. I only wish that he spent less time on critique and more time lecturing. We did quite a few projects in the class. We started off with a bouncing ball and a simple pendulum exercise. We then had a choice of doing a 2 or 4 legged walk cycle. I had never done a Quadruped walk in 3D, so i decided to give it a go. This is how it turned out:



After the walk cycle, we were given an assignment to animate someone answering the phone. The catch was that we had a 100 frame limit and only one week to finish. This is the same assignment I decided to complete for my Maya 2 class. After the 100 frame exercise, we moved on to a gear-change/ emotional shift exercise. I decided to do a snobby wine-o at a wine tasting. I got way too ambitious with this assignment and it ended up being almost 11 seconds, so I didn't finish it. I hope to go back and polish it up in the future. After that assignment, we moved on to a dialogue piece. I found a good clip of Madeline Kahn from Young Frankenstein. I decided to go outside my boundaries again and try to animate a woman character. I feel like I did pretty well. I haven't quite finished it yet, but I will post it up when I do. The last assignment was another 100 frame exercise. This time, the theme was lifting a heavy object. Again, I tried to push the assignment by trying to do a super hero lifting and throwing a car, which ended up being way to complicated to finish in a week. I got some good feed back and I have to go back to blocking with it, so yet another piece on the back-burner.

That is all for now. I'm going to do another post soon with a recap of the summer semester and how fall is going so far.

Opening Day at the Walt Disney Family Museum

Today I had the pleasure of attending the Opening Day at the Walt Disney Family Museum, which is located in the Presidio (San Francisco). It was an awesome experience and was I was totally geeking out the entire time I was there. At first glance the building itself blends into military style buildings that surround it. The only distinguishing elements are a small sign on the front lawn of the building and a few large cutout pictures of Walt on the "porch." Upon entering, there is a ticketing counter to the right and the cafe and museum store on the left. I purchased my ticket and printed it out in advance, so I bypassed the ticketing and proceeded into the waiting area until my scheduled time. The waiting area was lined with glass cases filled with many of the awards and honors Walt had received over the years. Among the awards was the Academy Award Walt received for Snow White, which is one large Oscar accompanied by seven smaller one for the dwarves.


When 10:30 rolled around, I entered the first gallery, which recounted the years between Walt's birth and when he worked for Laugh-o-gram. There were many photos of Walt's relatives and entertaining motion graphics which played over Walt's recounting of his earlier years. In the same gallery, there was a wall full of drawings and comics that Walt had done in his teens as well as full size ambulance from WWI, which was the same type that Walt drove while he was a volunteer in the war. I then proceeded up stairs in the elevator to view the rest of the museum.


The majority of the second floor was dedicated to Walt's animation career. The following galleries featured concept artwork, animation drawings, layouts, backgrounds, photos, and memorabilia from the Alice comedies, Oswald the Rabbit and the black and white Mickey Mouse cartoons, the Silly Symphonies, Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy and then the Golden Era films, Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, Dumbo and Fantasia.  There was so much amazing artwork. I was in awe with the amount of animation roughs from all the films. I felt like I was in heaven. Probably one of my favorite attractions in the entire museum was a "Movieola" that you could scrub pencil tests on from Snow White. The following section of the museum went into the rougher times at the studio during the strike and WWII, when the studio transformed into a war propaganda machine. Up until that point, the galleries had been very colorful, warm and lighthearted. To better represent the somberness and struggle of that era, the space was very bleak and white.


The next gallery was dedicated to the Post-War rebuilding of the studio. This gallery was very cool. It has four interactive media centers with touch screen interfaces, where you can browse through a wide variety of media relating to any aspect of the animation process and Disney's films. The interface allows you to shuffle through the media randomly or you can search by categories in a list. I looked up all the content relating to the "animator" tag and found a bunch of videos of the Nine Old Men talking about the challenges and struggles of animating different characters in the films. One video I found was particularly funny. It was Frank Thomas feeding a plate of spaghetti to his two dogs and trying to get them to reenact the Lady and the Tramp scene. I could have spent hours just at that station, but I felt bad for hogging it and let some other guests have some fun. That gallery also had a lot of beautiful Mary Blair artwork as well as animation drawings and concepts from a wide range of films from Song of the South to Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland.


The last part of the museum focused on Walt's other ventures. After the Rebuilding gallery, there is a small section in the back part of the building that has a beautiful view of the Presidio and the Golden Gate Bridge. Rightfully, that gallery is dedicated to Walt's nature films. The following section of the museum showcased Walt's love for trains, which in turn, inspired him to build Disneyland. There is a spiral walkway that leads down to a huge miniature of the Disneyland of Walt's imagination. It was not an exact replica of Disneyland, but it represented what Walt envisioned Disneyland to be. I found out that ILM had built the miniature and it had taken over a year to make. It was very impressive. That section of the museum also featured Walt's venture into television as well as Ub Iwerks Multi-head Optical Printer, which was used in films for compositing matte paintings with footage as well as combining animation with live action such as in Mary Poppins. 


The last gallery in the museum was definitely the most emotional section of the whole museum. It is almost completely white room with an old fashioned TV set that is playing recordings of news casts announcing Walt's death. The other wall in the room has cartoons from news papers that show artists reaction to his death. Finally, there is a hallway leading to the exit. On either side there are large screens with montages of images from Walt's legacy. 


The more I learn about Walt Disney, the more I am amazed at the sheer amount of accomplishments that one man made in his life time. Today's trip was one of the most inspirational experiences I have ever had because I got to witness in person and see with my own eyes the legacy of one of my biggest heros in life. I really have to commend Walt's family for the outstanding effort and attention to detail that went into the making of the museum. I spent 3 hours walking through the museum and I enjoyed every minute of it. I will definitely be going back because I did not stop and read much of the content in the galleries. There was just way too much to see in one day. I am looking forward to seeing what types of animation workshops they will be having in the future, as it is one of the coming events on the website. If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend visiting the museum. 

San Fran, here I come!

I received some much anticipated good news today. I was accepted into the Masters program at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. In January, if all goes as planned, I will be starting on my MFA in Character Animation. Rick Boucher, a Graduate Admissions Adviser from AAU, called me today and told me the good news. He also gave me the results of my portfolio review. He said it went very well. Based on the portfolio and demo reel I submitted, I am waived from taking 5 classes that would be under my current skill level. Needless to say, I am super excited and I can't wait to start on a new journey.

A few people have asked why I feel the need to go for my masters degree since I already took Animation Mentor. There is actually many different factors that led me to make this decision. AM was definitely a wonderful experience for me and I wouldn't give that back for anything. If it wasn't for AM I wouldn't have gotten the job that I have right now. I learned a wealth of knowledge that I would never have learned on my own. While I was taking AM, it was a really rough time in my life. Because of my situation, I could not dedicate nearly as much time as I needed to in order to really excel. I was working full-time for most of the time that I was in AM and that alone was a big mistake. When I finally decided to quit my job to focus more on school, another slew of events happened that really hindered my education. My mom was going through a rough divorce, I had to move cross-country to Missouri and back again and my grandfather passed away. Aside from all of those events, I came to realize that an online education was not conducive to my personal learning style. I found it really difficult to focus and get my work done. Although, an online school can be very convenient, it was much too convenient for my own good. Being able to shift my school schedule around my personal and work schedule rather than the other way around, was not the best, especially for a chronic procrastinator like myself. I think the best way for me to learn is to be submersed in a learning environment and surrounded by other students and teachers. Going to class online was too distant and disconnected for me and left way too much room for me to slack off. Don't get me wrong, AM is a one of a kind school and many students I had the same classes with have had much success and are working at big studios. As much as I loved going to AM, it just wasn't the best way for me to learn.

That being said, another reason I want to get my masters is because right now I feel like my animation is at a plateau. I have been working for Double Helix Games now for about 8 months. I have seen a little bit of improvement in that time, but I am nowhere near the level where I would like to be. I have considered taking time off to work on personal stuff, but again, I really don't believe that would be as beneficial as going back to school. For me, I need to be pushed to get work done and with guidance, I believe I will see much more improvement in a shorter amount of time.

The last reason I can think of right now is I would really like to get out of Southern California and going to school in San Fran is the perfect opportunity. Living in Missouri really showed me how fast paced it is out here. Plus, the people here are unbelievable. You never really notice it until you leave for a while and come back. Most people here are so non-personable and selfish and always in a hurry to get somewhere [or nowhere]. I am definitely not looking forward to leaving behind my friends and family that live down here, but I really feel that a change in lifestyle and scenery are really going to do me good. One things for sure, when I move up there, I am selling my car. Goodbye commute, goodbye traffic!!!

Going back to school is going to set me back another 60 grand or so, but at this point, I don't really care if I will be paying back student loans for the rest of my life. All I really want is to have a job that I love. Working at Pixar is my dream and ultimately what I have been working for since I decided to get into animation. If I get a job working in the film industry, period, this all would be worth it, but working at Pixar would mean I could die a very, very, very happy man.

New Blog!

Hello World!

Welcome to my brand spankin' new blog! I am going to be using this blog to post new work that I am working on along with any random & interesting things I find on the interwebs. Hopefully, I will have some new content coming soon.

Till I blog again,
Tim