Amanda Wagner

Turkey Day!

2011-12-18T18:16:00.000-08:00

Popper's Reel

2011-12-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

Some of the shots that I worked on for the movie "Mr.Popper's Penguins". Responsible for all animation unless otherwise specified. I hope you guys like it!

Snow White Trailer!

2011-11-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

A trailer for Snow White and the Huntsman was just released!

The CamoRalph Channel

2011-11-06T21:26:00.000-08:00

The CamoRalph Channel is a youtube channel that my talented friend Cam Ralph recently created that is going to feature a whole bunch of his new shorts and ideas. So far he's made 2 funny little animations using a program called toon boom and has another one in the works. But his latest one is going to be more of a horror story. Here is a link to the teaser!

I can't wait to see more and I hope all of you guys enjoy the channel as well!

Alvin 3 + Snow White and the Huntsman

2011-11-04T19:44:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone! It's been a super long time since the last time I've updated. I havent had the chance to work on a lot of personal projects but I'm hoping to start getting back into it and updating this blog a little more often.

After Mr. Popper's Penguins I was moved onto Alvin 3: Chipwrecked. It's being directed by Mike Mitchell ,who also directed Shrek Forever After.Here is the latest trailer for A3

A3 was a pretty great production. Everything went smoothly down the pipeline and there was a lot of fun exploration in acting choices for the film. I think people will be pleasantly surprised with it and will have a good laugh along the way. At least.. I hope so.

I also got to work on some promotional stuff for A3. One will be coming out soon and the other unfortunately won't ever be coming out. But as soon as the first one does I'll make sure to put it up and share with you guys.

But now Alvin is over and I'm going to be going onto my next show: Snow White and the Huntsman. It's a dark twist on the classic Snow White story. It stars Chris Hemsworth (as the huntsman), Kristen Stewart (Snow White) and Charlize Theron (the Queen). I believe its suppose to be released in June. I can't share much more info about it but I'm really excited to get started and I think it's going to be a really fun show to work on. What I really like about this feature is that it's going to push me as an animator. There's going to be things that i've never animated before and I'm going to have to look at shots in different ways then I would have on shows like Alvin. I'm hoping I can share more with you guys in the future!

Mr.Popper's Penguins

2011-04-21T17:48:00.000-07:00

The movie that I am currently working on :)

Hop Tralier!!!

2011-02-11T11:42:00.000-08:00

Its finally out and I'm really excited about it. Everyone has been doing an awesome job and i cant wait for it to come out in April!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKL3eoCVOqc&feature=player_embedded

Thanksgiving Cupcakes

2010-12-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I decided to make cupcakes and try and make everything from scratch (minus the frosting, i used pillsbury frosting and made it into what i wanted)

For the cupcakes I went with a vanilla cupcakes with peanut butter and chocolate chips. and I couldn't just make regular cupcakes so i made marzipan and sculpted it into little pumpkins for the tops of each of the cupcakes.
They actually came out pretty tasty and they were fun to make even though it took one full day just to make the marzipan. I dont have a food processor, so it took me a lot longer to make everything than it should have.

Hop teaser trailer

2010-12-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

Hop recently released a teaser trailer!

http://blog.moviefone.com/2010/11/23/hop-trailer/

Go watch it. Its cute!

Hop!!

2010-11-21T19:19:00.001-08:00

Hop! Here is the first poster for the movie that I'm working on over at Rhythm and Hues. I'm really excited to share this with you guys. The movie is going to be super cute.

"From the creators of Despicable Me comes Hop, the comic tale of Fred (James Marsden), an out-of-work slacker who accidentally injures the Easter Bunny (voiced by Russell Brand) and must take him in as he recovers. In theaters April 1, 2011!"

http://www.facebook.com/#!/hop
www.iwantcandy.com

Rhythm and Hues!!!

2010-06-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

I am super excited to be joining the Rhythm and Hues team for the Summer Animation Apprenticeship . I got the call this afternoon and I'm still blow away by the news. This is an incredibly awesome opportunity and not only that but there are at least 8 other AMer's who got the apprenticeship as well. It's going to rock! Can't wait to get there and start learning and meeting everyone!

Devils Angels and Dating Animatic v54

2010-06-02T02:24:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,
The latest version of Devils Angels and Dating has been posted and I wanted to share it with everyone. I think we are about 25 % done with the animation already! I'm working on my second series of shots for it right now (only blocking but soon I'll hopefully have the blocking plus update in there.It's coming along well and everyones having a blast on it. I hope you all enjoy the progress so far :) If you want to follow along on the progress or join in on the team head on over to http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/

Cupid Wink

2010-05-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone! Lately I've had a lot of work to do so I haven't had much time to post anything. About 2 weeks ago, i got my first professional 3d shot that I got to work on and I'm pretty excited about it. Can't wait to be able to share it with you guys. I've also been working, very slowly, on my new shot from Devils Angels and Dating. This is 3 shots in one.

sh0330_CPD_wink from amanda wagner on Vimeo.

This is rough blocking of the shot so far, just to lay the ideas down. I'm hoping to get more into the shot soon.

Demo Reel

2010-04-07T10:01:00.000-07:00

New demo Reel. I hope you all enjoy it :)

1: "museum" Animated character in Maya.
2: "Puppy vs. Robot" Animated character in Maya.
3: "Kitchen Conflict" Animated character in Maya.
4: "See em fly" Animated character in Maya.
5: "Devils Angels and Dating" collaberative animation; animated character and props in Maya(except for the back of the chair).

Updates!

2010-03-30T02:43:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!
I feel like it's been forever since I've updated this thing, so I thought I would let everyone know what I've been up to.
Recently, I've been slowly updating my website. It's going to be completely different and hopefully awesome and fun. One of the things that inspired me to remake my website was when i put myself on a schedule to do more art work and decided to create a little flash loading screen. I'm trying to get it to work in the new website (moving from as2 to as3. ahhhhhh) but I thought I would share a little sneak peek of the site by sharing my loader with you guys. I hope you enjoy it.

I've also been a part of a short film collaboration called Devils Angels and Dating .(Directed by Michael Cawood) Its been a bunch of fun. I just completed my first 3 shots and I'm moving on to 4-6. My shot is overly funny because of what it is and I'ld also like to share that with you guys too. So here is a peek at my shots from D.A.D (these are 3 shots animated as one)

Hopefully soon I'll actually have my new website ready to go and I should be coming out with a new demo reel very soon. Have an awesome week everyone!

Calla Lilies

2010-03-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

I was playing around in Illustrator today and decided to make some calla lilies. I used the mesh tool to make these guys :) This is my first time using the tool, but i hope to make some more awesome stuff in the future. I love working in Illustrator. Its amazing what you can make. Check out Yukio Miyamoto. He definitely pushes this tool to the limit and has amazing works of art.
http://www.khulsey.com/masters_yukio_miyamoto.html

The Sea Dragon : Line Art

2010-02-28T03:12:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! Lately I've been putting a new schedule together to try and do more art pieces and to more animations. This new piece is called The Sea Dragon and it was inspired by an amazing artist named Bobby Chiu, coral and the leafy sea dragon (actual creature). I thought about it and decided to take elements from the leafy sea dragon, an iguana and 2 pieces or coral to create my line drawing. I plan on digital painting this guy in a style that is a little different from the norm that I do. Its going to be ,hopefully, more on the fantasy realistic side (so still sort of stylized. not 100% realistic) than the children art look. Fingers crossed. Any comments or crits on the line art would be great before i take this little guy into the photoshop. Thanks everyone :)

Chompie

2010-01-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone! Here is the picture i promised for the weekly theme Baby sea creatures. I just finished it. I hope you like it.

Weekly Theme: Futurist Jungle Tribe

2010-01-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone! It's be awhile. This weeks theme was Futuristic Jungle Tribe and here is my quick sketch. The weapon is suppose to be sort of held together with energy. ( hard to tell with the sketch:) ) Last weeks theme was Baby Sea Creature and i did it but im coloring it so im hoping to have that one post soon as well.

Dance Blocking

2009-12-14T02:42:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone! Here is a new animation that I've been working on. This is the blocking stage. I haven't touched the face yet, but only plan to do a little with it. The song is from Janet Jackson. Comments and suggestions are very much appreciated. Thanks :)

Weekly Theme: The Feast

2009-12-02T03:42:00.000-08:00

Weekly Theme: Narnia

2009-11-19T02:37:00.000-08:00

This weeks theme was all about Narnia. Here is my quick sketch of Aslan and Lucy :)

IF: Unbalanced

2009-11-18T02:20:00.001-08:00

Demo Reel

2009-11-16T19:59:00.001-08:00

my new demo reel :) all the rigs were provide by Animation Mentor or highend3d. I hope you all enjoy it .

IF: Fast

2009-10-29T00:56:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my buddy Justin, I discovered a new weekly theme site, Illustration Friday.

Here is my quick sketch.

Puppy V Robot

2009-10-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

Here is a quadruped animation that i just started working on, in blocking so far.

Weekly Theme: Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo

2009-10-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone. Here is my quick sketch of the weekly theme. It's a turnip Mobile! First time ever using prisma's and i think it shows.lol

2 Dialog animations

2009-10-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

Here are two dialogs that i had been working on. I fixed them up a little bit and these are the final versions (before i render them out) The first one is See Em Fly. The second is kitchen conflict. This weekend, i plan on shoting reference for another dialog shot and a quadruped shot.

TrenchMaker's Stew

2009-10-14T01:57:00.000-07:00

Finally got it done. Here is my entry for the double evil contest. Don't let their cuteness fool you. they are pure evil.

The character in the cage is Kulla. She belongs to Trenchmaker.

Weekly Theme: Baby Mythical Gods

2009-10-13T21:28:00.001-07:00

Quick sketch of baby Apollo and his first guitar.

Kitchen Conflict

2009-09-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

Here is the animation that I have been working on. This is the first polishing pass on it. It's for the 11 second club. So I have a few more days left to work on it. At the end, the tomato is suppose to burst, so that is why she reacts the way she does. :)

Play!?

2009-09-25T03:36:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!
Lately I've been working on a few things. I just finished up a logo design for a company (but I'm not sure when I'll be able to share that), an animation ( that is going into its first polishing pass and should hopefully be done in a week or so) and this digital painting of my little giraffes from my Tubbles collection. I'm still debating on the background but here is the painting so far.

I have several more paintings planned out with different Tubble characters. and I'm trying to come up with an idea for a competition on Deviant art to win a children's book from one of my favorite artists. The theme is double evil. So I'm hoping to be posting a lot more in the next couple of weeks. :)

We've got Something! redo

2009-09-10T02:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a newer version on We've got something. I redid the first part to something a little more interesting. I still need to do a final polish pass on it and really get in there. but this is the progress so far :)

Moohinder Jones Colored

2009-09-04T01:19:00.001-07:00

Weekly Theme: Indiana Jones

2009-09-01T19:59:00.000-07:00

This weeks theme was Indian Jones, so i took my little bull, Moohinder and had him go on a grand adventure of finding the crystal skull. And that made him sleepy :)

We've Got Something!

2009-08-31T15:18:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone!
this last week. I've been working on this dialog clip for the 11second club. The premise is that Elves are working in the shop and stumble across something but cant figure out if its what they think it is. :)

Weekly Theme: Monsters!!!

2009-08-27T03:47:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone. This weeks theme is monsters and I did my interpretation of the mythical creature called Abassy, the demon with iron teeth, as a kid! So im not even sure if this counts as a monster.:)

Birthday Crash!

2009-08-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Meet Moohinder. He is a lovable little bull that really likes cake. He is a part of a collection of characters that I call Tubbles.

cute chocolate eating monster

2009-08-13T00:01:00.001-07:00

Hey Everyone. Here is a little digital painting I've been working on. The original line art was done by my friend Kymm Mckelvy. and can be seen here . She asked me to color one of her piece and I choose this one because of its over adorableness. I wanted to make it fluffy and almost childbook like. I was influenced by children's art for this one. Here is cute chocolate eating monster :) Done in photoshop, I couldnt even tell you how many hours. and I'm terrible with backgrounds, I never know what to do, so the background is pretty generic.

Yoga

2009-08-12T02:54:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been doing blocking for a new body mechanics test that I named Yoga. So far I have the first body pass blocked in. Im hoping with in the next week, I can start on the facial past and the next pass of the body. Here is my first rough pass :)

and I was also working on my latest diaolg piece, See Em Fly. Its almost there. Here is the piece so far :)

AnimationMentor Show Case 2009!

2009-08-03T14:22:00.000-07:00

So I was super excited to wake up this morning and find out that I (and a few of my friends) made it into the AM Student Reel! This is totally amazing and I am super thankful to be a part of it. My shot is like the second one in!

click on image to see reel

and im also super excited to find out that my animation was used as a wide banner ad on CGSociety! :) http://www.cgsociety.org/ and on bobby becks blog!

Thank you everyone for all your awesome support!! I really appreciate it.

Weekly Theme: The Zodiac

2009-07-28T15:09:00.000-07:00

This weeks theme is The Zodiac and I drew Aries. I'm a virgo but I thought it would be funner to draw a Ram :) This is just a really quick sketch.

Weekly Theme: Zombie Pet

2009-07-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. Here is my weekly theme drawing. Zombie pet!! I call him Zombiechilla. :)

Weekly Theme: The Dragon

2009-07-16T14:40:00.000-07:00

I've missed drawing a few of the themes this time around but decided this to give it a try. This weeks theme was The Dragon. I've never drawn a dragon before but here is my little guy. he's all sad. I'm not sure why. :)

An Animationmentor Weekend

2009-07-16T01:06:00.001-07:00

I just got back on monday from San Francisco where I did a whole bunch of AM events and had a blast. I got to meet a whole bunch of awesome people and got to hang out with them the whole weekend, exploring San Fran. We all got together for tours of the AM headquarters, then headed over to the job fair (which was awesome) and then passed out from all the exploring and walking around. :) The next 2 days we had graduation, the after party and the BBQ. and i have a nice little sunburn to remind me of the bbq :) Over all great experience and i cant wait for the next one!

me and corinne at AM headquaters

Bobby, Carlos and shawn at the graduation!

The 2 graduating classes at the BBQ!!

See em Fly

2009-07-09T02:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,
here is an animation that ive been working on. Im hoping to do the polishing stages, when i get back from my trip to San Francisco for the AM graduation. Here is "See em Fly" so far. Comments are appreciated. thanks everyone :)

1 Minute Gesture Drawings

2009-06-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Here are some quick one minute gesture drawings that i did. I really wanted to start gesture drawing again because i havent done it in forever.

AM Progress Reel

2009-06-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,
this is my last week at AM and i cant believe it. I'm totally excited and at the same time a little sad. I'm going to miss everyone, they were all incredible and supportive, it was like a big extended family. So a the end I finished probably about 60% of my short film. which isnt to bad, thats 10% more than I planned to have done so im super excited about that. Here is my progress reel for the time that I was at AM. My short film is at the end. Thanks everyone!!!!!

Forbes

2009-06-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

So this is super exciting. Bobby Beck did an interview for forbes.com that was all about animationmentor and there is a one second shot of my short being critiqued on it! mine is around 1:40. My buddy Jose Antonio De La Fuente Perez also has a clip on there (0:58).

http://video.forbes.com/fvn/entrepreneur/animator-turned-entrepreneur

polishing pass on first half of film

2009-06-09T01:18:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,
its been a few weeks but ive been working on trying to polish up some of the shots in the first half of my film. Still have some minor tweaks to go but overall I'm getting much happier with it and cant wait to be done. So heres the first half of the film with my video reference.

1st polish pass

2009-05-31T22:55:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone! last week I finished up the first polish pass of my short (well about half of it). 2 more weeks left to work on these few shots and then hopefully i'll be all done with 30 seconds of it.

here is the first polish pass.

I also saw UP today. It was awesome. If you havent seen it yet, what are you waiting for :) have an awesome week everyone!

ist third: first polish pass

2009-05-17T20:00:00.001-07:00

Finally moving onto spining some of the shots :) i worked on all but shot 030. but shot 020 was such a pain in my butt.lol. here is the 1st third of my short in my first polish pass. plus some reference

Weekly Theme: Comic Book Hero

2009-05-16T22:57:00.000-07:00

This week the theme was comic book hero, so i decided to take my panda character and pose him into iron man.

Iron Panda

the duckling

2009-05-15T17:59:00.000-07:00

Here is a painting i was working on a while ago of a duckling reading a book. It a work in progress :)

Done in photoshop

Ice in Blocking plus

2009-05-10T17:30:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

here is my short as of now. my main focus has been on shots 020,040,050,060,080,100,125 and 140 and have had a little amount of time to work on a couple of other shots. First polish pass here I come :)

The Stuffed Animal

2009-04-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

This is progress on a weekly theme. The theme was the stuffed animal. I decided to take a try and color it in photoshop. this is the first pass at it,from sketch to what it is now. and a close up of some of the detail.Im hoping to get more time to start the body and do a polishing pass on him. but i wanted to share the progress! Its a little more on the darker side. not usually the thing i do. :)

Ice Blocked!

2009-04-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

Here is Ice in it entirety blocked out. I was playing around with different methods of achieving blocking. so some look more done than others but they are all about the same, blocking wise. :)

Weekly Theme: Can We Keep It!

2009-04-20T02:28:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. here is my little creature for the can we keep it weekly theme. I drew out a little creature while i was waiting for my blocking to export.

And here is just another picture I was drawing while waiting for an export. Its a platypus !!!

2/3 Blocking

2009-04-12T05:20:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,. here is the 2/3 blocked out. the gray is shots i havent touched and thats why the characters outfits and posing looks different. Hopefully ill be able to work on those parts soon :)

Weekly Theme: The Odd Creature in the Egg

2009-04-11T06:13:00.000-07:00

Not to odd. but here is my sketch for the creature in the egg :)

1/3 blocking

2009-04-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!! This week was focused on working on the first third of my short. Ive been working on putting the updated characters in and adding some more blocking :)

Final Layout

2009-03-22T17:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone,
Here is the final layout of Ice before I move into blocking. This has been fun and I'm really excited about animating it. but now its time for a little break :)

2/3 Layout

2009-03-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

2/3 of the layout for Ice in 3d.

Weekly Theme: The Witch

2009-03-05T02:38:00.000-08:00

I started to draw this for the witch and when I was done, i realized it was very Lilo looking :)

Weekly Theme: Bionic Creature

2009-03-01T05:35:00.001-08:00

Bionic Puppy

Weekly Theme: The 9-5 Sea Creature

2009-03-01T03:34:00.000-08:00

Octo_mart worker.

This was a really quick sketch I did in about 10 minutes. Not my best one.. :)

Weekly Theme: Cupid

2009-02-13T03:45:00.000-08:00

A sad Cupid

Weekly Theme: Were-What??

2009-02-05T22:27:00.001-08:00

The Were Kiwi

Ice!

2009-02-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple of weeks, weve had to come up with stories for our short films. The two that it came down to for me was one story about a father and son called ICE. and the other was a story of a little girl who creates an Origami world out of her imagination. I decided that for this short, I'm going to go with ICE. But Origami will be my next short. I feel that there is a lot to learn from the ICE story and I can take what I learn from it and apply it to future animations, like Origami.Here is the story of ICE.

A father and son are about to go onto the ice. The son is over excited and goes running onto the ice, even though the dad symbols to him to wait. The kid goes on the ice and bam.. Falls.. so he tries to get up but keeps stumbling over himself and falls. So he becomes so frustrated he throws himself down on to the ice and pouts. The dad skates over to him to try and pick him up and the kid refuses and just becomes dead weight. The dad is upset and doesn’t know what to do. But then he gets an idea. So he purposely looses his balance and falls on his butt. Makes pretend that he just got hurt (the kid chuckles for a second), then the dad gets up, brushes himself off and it like “ta da, I got back up” So he starts to do a little skating move and he actually does fall, right on his back. The dad is staring up at the sky and then we see the son waddling his way over to the dad. Now, the kid is helping the dad up. It ends with the two of them skating (well the kids more waddling and trying to keep balance).

Weekly Theme: Harry Potter

Weekly Theme: A Deadly Sin

2009-02-02T14:30:00.000-08:00

you never want to take a cupcake from a Panda!

Weekly Theme: Design a Sith

2009-01-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

Darth Hamo.. muhahaha

Hello Class 5

2009-01-13T14:32:00.000-08:00

Break time is all over and we are back! Pre Production is now in session. I am completely excited about starting pre production and coming up with a short film. So far I have 2 ideas so I have a few more to thing of to really get going. My first story is about an imagination of a little girl and how she lets it run wild in an origami paper world. The second idea is set on ice and has a lesson of patience and keep trying. So I'm hoping to narrow down a third idea and nail down the first two ideas.

I've started the weekly themed drawing again this term and our first weeks theme was baby mythical creatures. I chose a Angha (Persian). AN Angha is a hybrid of a lion, dog and a peacock.

Progress reel Class 4

Shots 2-4

2008-11-30T16:46:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone..Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. Its been about two weeks and in those two weeks i've been working on trying to push poses and push my shot into splined and work on the dialog. So far I'm pretty far with shots 2-4 and this week is going to be all about cleaning up those shots and finishing shot 1! Here is what i have so far...

We also had a few theme drawings. Here is my hybrid.. Its a kangabat, which is a hybrid of a kangaroo rat and a bat!

and here is mythical creatures in a mundane setting. Its yeti's making a turkey dinner.

Enjoy your week everyone and happy animating!

2 Character Dialog Shot

2008-11-10T00:50:00.000-08:00

The past two weeks have been pretty exciting because I've just started my 2 character dialog shot. The sound clip I ended up picking is from Bruce Almighty and it's a more serious piece which is something I havent done yet and thought would be a great challenge. I started off the piece by acting out my scene with another person and recording it for reference. From that I took the parts that I liked and made them into thumbnails on an x-sheet (I know old school.lol) Last week I was just focusing on the layout in 3d and this week was all about the first pass of blocking. Not looking at it for a full 24 hours, I was really able to see some things that I'm going to change and fix before I put in more keyframes, like when he takes off his hat. I'm going to make that more subtle and not have him slam it down. A huge thanks to everyone who made comments and suggestions. Here is my piece so far...

This last week we also had to do another facial pose here is mine.

and here is week 5s theme: The Pet of Horror. Its my character Rocko teh Red Panda and he's trying to eat Spike from AM.

Have a fantastic week everyone!!

Dialog shot Complete!!

2008-10-24T15:16:00.000-07:00

This week is fantastic because I have final finished my dialog shot. I've had a lot of fun with this shot from planning, to blocking to finally reaching the finish line. I've learned so much from doing this one shot. But now its a new week and we are starting to plan for the next animation, which is a 2 character dialog shot. I've narrowed it down to 3 possible choices, 2 being more on the serious side and one being super funny where if I pick it I get to do the robot. In the past couple of weeks, since my last blog, I've had to do more facial poses with Bishop and polishing off my shot. Here is my final shot...

here is one of the face pose sets that I did

and here are the 3 sketches that I did for the weekly themes.

Theme: the king

Theme: Animation Ninja

Theme: Little Red (I made her into a panda!!)

Have a great week!!

Class 4!!

2008-10-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. Class 4 has just begun and we wasted no time jumping into it and starting on the facial part of our animations. This week is all about getting into it and blocking out the main shapes of the mouth. This term my mentor is Nicole Herr from Sony Imageworks. It is going to be a fun term with a lot of work ahead. After shooting some facial reference, i got right into it and here is my shot from last term with its first pass at facial animation.

I also started a thread in the forums at AM for weekly themed drawings and week one theme was alien pets. Here is my quick sketch of my alien pet that totally looks like he belongs in the lilo and stitch universe.

Progress Reel

2008-09-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

Class 3 is finally at an end. My lip sync is on its way to being finished in the next class when we receive the full rig for Bishop. It was an exciting term with a lot of good friends and mentors. We learned an incredible amount about so many different things, from hand poses to eyes to weight. Here is my new progress reel for September 2008.

enjoy the break! See you in about a week.

Entertainment and Hands

2008-09-08T16:23:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks have been all about the entertainment and the hands. Finding more interesting hand poses and find different and new ways to entertain have been key in our past lectures.. I took the past two weeks to split my piece in twos. For the first week, I only took the first 110 frames out of stepped mode and began splining it, so i could give all of my concentration to that half. Then in the next week I proceeded to spline the second half and fix up minor things in the first half. We've also got into taking hand poses and just focusing on those to help our shot. We have one week left to go on finishing off our body moves before starting next quarter and working on the facial features (since this rig has very limited facial controls) Here is the animation as of now, with some spiffy new cloths..

and here are the hand poses that I came up with. The first one being angry, then relaxed and finally surprised..

Eyes

2008-08-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

This weeks lecture was all about eye blinks with the awesome Jason Ryan as our guest speaker. He showed us a tone of ways on how to do eye blinks and when to use them. We also learned how different blinks show different emotions. After watching the lecture I got a critique from my mentor and applied what he said to the next stage of my blocking. This blocking has a few more frames and basic mouth movements (we only have the rig without facial features this term). Here is the second blocking pass of Museum.

Dialogue

2008-08-17T04:03:00.000-07:00

Its been a couple of long crazy weeks since the last blog. I just got back from Siggraph in L.A and it was great. A big congrats to the winners of fjorg.. Awesome job.. Before I was of to Siggraph I finished up my pantomime piece, with the final cirtique on that. Here is the final rendered version..

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The follow weeks were the beginning of our dialogue piece. This piece had to be longer than 5 seconds but shorter than 10 seconds. The dialogue that I chose was from Night at the Museum. I started of by watching the weeks lecture by Delio Tramontozzi (ILM).He did a 2 part lecture on dialogue, that was awesome. After the lecture it was planning time. I took my sound clip and played it a billion times in order to remember it and then brought out the old digital camera for some reference footage.. From that footage I made an x sheet and some thumbnails. Here is what the first page of planning looks like.

Finally, its time for maya. At the end of this week this is what I have for the first pass of blocking..

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Now, its time to enjoy the rest of the night and start on my second blocking pass tomorrow.

Secondary Action

2008-07-28T16:24:00.000-07:00

Another great week with fantastic lectures and more time to work on our pantomime pieces. This week started out with a great lecture from Jason Schleifer, who currently works at Dreamworks and has work on some amazing movies.. He jumped around the screen and got dirty in the grass to show great examples of secondary action and where to use it.
What is secondary action you ask..Secondary action is any action that supports the main action of the shot but doesnt take away from the main action.A nice example of secondary action is scratching your arm while your talking.

The next day, after I watched the lecture I got my week 4 E critique. Some of the notes that I got from the critique was to add a bit more overlap in the head area and to play around with the timing of the hand hitting the bucket.. After I watched the critique I tackled those areas and turned the second half of my animation into linear mode from splined mode. And then concentrated on workig on that section. I received awesome feedback on my piece and at the end of the week this is what the piece looks like...

I have one more week to go, to polish it up and really make it look nice.. Have a great week!!!

Gestures and Body Language

2008-07-20T20:04:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone and welcome to week 3 ..This week was all about the gesture and with the new week comes a new guest speaker.. This time it was Andrew Gordon from Pixar Animation. And from watching the lecture you can see that Andrew was definitely a gesture kind of a guy, always using his hands while he talks. These are important things to look for when coming up with a personality for your character. He explains in the lecture, what a gesture is and how to look for them, which can be key for making a great animation rather than an ok one. And of course to stay away from cliche.

After watching this awesome lecture I got some feedback from my mentor about my shot.He gave me awesome pointers that would help sell my subtle animation a little better. So I took the critique from him and fellow AMers and put them into a second round of blocking. Then I took all my time for the week to concentrate on the first 125 frames of the animation rather than the whole thing. I wanted to polish the first part before moving onto the second half because I'll be easier for me to fix little things in sections rather than in a huge piece. This way works great for me, but there are so many ways to approach blocking, it all depends on the animator. I know several people who go through the whole thing and spline it rather than doing what I do and break it down into sections. And some people actually do a creative mix between the two where they have most of it in a blocking look and then do the transitions from one pose into the next in a spline form. Its very interesting and worth trying to see if it fits your personal style.

Here is the progress from the end of the week.. The first half is splined while the back half is still in blocking..

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A few little tips that I learned about animation is to go out there,, Have fun and observe. Do research. The more time you spend figuring out your shot in the beginning the better your shot will come out and you'll probably be spending a lot less time re-working everything out. Shoot lots of reference butdont be a slave to it. Reference is there to help and inspire you. And look for unique ways to do things. Have fun and happy animating!

Pantomime

2008-07-13T20:20:00.000-07:00

Week 2 at AM is all about the pantomime. What is pantomime? Basically, its expressing emotions without dialog. Like a mime. The assignment was to create an animation with one character, that did a personality change. This assignment was all about picking great poses and gestures in order to create a good story without any dialog to help push the performance. and of course try to not do anything cliche, which is one of the hardest things in animation to avoid. Naturally, your going to want to chose a pose that is familiar, making it cliche.
The week started with watching the lecture and then receiving my first e critique for the term. The idea was a go ahead with cation about the sand. Now, comes the fun stuff, blocking! At the end of the week, after many awesome suggestions and public reviews, I was finally able to turn in my assignment for the week. Here is the first blocking pass at Sand Castle.

AM Class 3 Begins

2008-07-08T12:02:00.000-07:00

Week one began and is now over of class 3, intro to acting. Last term was all about the body mechanics and now we take all that we learned from that and apply to acting. Each step that we have taken has built us up slowly to this part of our education. and for me this is the most exciting part. I love trying to bring characters to life and through planning, research and reference I hope to do so.

Another term, another mentor. This term my mentor is Ryan Donoghue. He is an animator from Rhythm and Hues and also worked on futurama for 4 years. Our first lecture class with him was very laid back and fun. A part of the class was dedicated to showing clips from some of the movies that Ryan worked on. We even got to see some deleted scenes!!

For our first assignment we can do what ever we want!! With limitations of course. It has to show two beats of emotions. After hours of planning and throwing around ideas, i finally came up with an idea. A little kid at the beach. He is planning on building the best sand castle ever but things dont go according to plan and when his castle crumbles he changes from extremely happy to a childish temper, where he pouts and hits the bucket. There are so many challenges to address in this little 250 frame piece. Sand is possible the biggest challenge. I have to do research on how to make sand crumble. Another thing to look at is the age of the character. He is only around four and I am nowhere near that number. This is the great part of acting. I got to take a bucket and some friends and go play in the sand, with many people staring at me. It was very embarressing but so much fun to get into a character and play the part. Here is some of the reference footage that I shot.

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After I shot the reference, I then began to do my thumbnails. The first page was the concept page where I wrote out all of the main details of the piece. Like the setting, the age of the boy, what he was feeling, where he was before the main action took place, etc. Then after I established all of the background info I went through all of my reference for inspiration and took some of the best clips and translated it into thumbnail drawings. Here is the concept page and thumbnail page.

The animation for my first acting piece is going to be subtle but still challenging. This is going to be an exciting term with a lot of creative though. I cant thank everyone enough for how awesome they have been and all of the great help. Week 2 is all about the blocking and I'm looking forward to the first e critique and getting right into it. Have a fantastic week everyone.

Also, some exciting news, according to time.com there is some talk that Wall-e may be nominated for best picture at the Oscars! The only animation ever to have been nominated was "Beauty and the Beast" in 1991. It's not offical, and more than unlikely because they have a category that is dedicated to animated films, but it is being talked about as a possibility, which I felt was very awesome. Here is the link to the article. Enjoy! http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1820824,00.html?imw=Y

AM End of Term

2008-06-22T22:34:00.000-07:00

AM has finally came to an end for this semester and we learned a massive amount of great information. The last week was all about recap and it was awesome to have a final lecture that went over all of the important tips of the term. For our final assignment we had to post our new progress reel. I had a blast in class 2 and I cant wait for class 3 to begin in a week. Enjoy the week.

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Pumpkin

2008-06-08T22:08:00.000-07:00

It's week 11 at animation mentor and we are one week away from our final assignment being due and two weeks from the completion of our progress reels. Last week we had to polish our animations to almost completion, so that this week we can have one final go at it. Here is Stewie and the Pumpkin in plus blocking stage.

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Our lecture given for the week was all about advanced arcs and path of action and how we can see and apply them to almost all animation.

Stewie's Day at the Park

2008-06-07T19:10:00.000-07:00

Stewie's Day at the Park is an animation exercise that demonstrates post jumping. To help us get a more advanced look at the 12 principles we had amazing lectures that featured some of todays top animators such as Dave Mullins from Pixar Animation Studios. After all of the amazing comments from fellow students and my mentor here is the final piece.

Now lets take a few steps back and I'll show you how I got to this final, starting with shooting reference and then moving onto blocking.

Even though this is very embarrassing to show, it is an essential part. Before I even turn Maya on, I think of my idea and then film myself trying to do the action. Then I study the film and break it down to the best shots that I would want to use to help plan out my sketches. Here is the reference video.

After I've made my sketches I then open up Maya and begin. As you will be able to see from the video below, I originally had the camera in a different spot. But thanks to some great comments I got, I changes the angle to show the front rather than the back. Here is the original blocked animation.

Then, I received my weekly critiques from my mentor and created the final animation at the top of the blog. Thank you.

Ballie and the Chinchins

2008-05-18T04:49:00.000-07:00

Ballie and the Chinchins!!! This is the final version of an exercise that showed a 180 turn.

Animation Mentors Demo Reel Class 1

2008-05-18T04:31:00.000-07:00

Here is the demo reel from animation mentors class one.