The Learning Curb

Demo Demo

2009-11-05T16:28:00.000-08:00

Wow. Have I been lax on updating this thing or what? Well, just a quick little post - I've been animating for the past three months on a spec pilot for an animated/live action series, so I haven't had much time for blogging. I can't post any of the work I've been doing yet (hopefully in the beginning of December), but for now, here's my latest Demo Reel (almost 6 months old now) which has the final version of the "Took the Bike" shots.

I promise to post new stuff as soon as I'm allowed!

Rich Ferrando - Animation Demo Reel - Summer 2009 from Richard Ferrando on Vimeo.

They Took The Bike

2009-05-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

Hey all! Sorry for the near-non-existent posts for the past few months, but I've been fairly busy. What with work, applying for jobs, and more shots top work on, I've had very little time to post updates except for the occasional movie recommendation.

Well, here's a peek at some new shots I'm working on. They're still far from done - the first shot still needs a few timing tweaks and knee pop fixes, I have yet to fix some arcs and timing in Shot 2 (and Murdock - the tall guy - is still linear at this point), and shot 3 is still in Blocking. But anyway, it gives you an idea of what I've been up to, and hopefully proves that I haven't been sitting on my butt. Well... I guess I HAVE been sitting on my butt, but I can't animate standing all the time! ;-)

Anywho, here's the new shots. I'm hoping to finish them up pretty quickly over the next couple weeks 'cuz I may have a freelance job coming up! Some of you may be upset that it isn't more shots from the short film. Well, after 24 weeks of insanity working on the short for AM, I decided I needed a little break from it. As soon as these shots are done, I'm getting right back to the short. I've already blocked out the last 10 shots, so I'm already ready to roll!

Oh - and the sound clip in the new sequence is from the film Max Dugan Returns.

Movie Recommendation: The Haunting (1963)

2009-05-10T13:52:00.000-07:00

Title: The Haunting (1963 Original)
Starring: Julie Harris, Russ Tamblyn.
Director: Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music, Star Trek: The Motion Picture)
Story: Five people spend a terrifying weekend inside a haunted house. Unlike the remake, the original film relies entirely on sound and the mystery of the camera to create terror. Still considered one of the most frightening films ever made.
Feels Like: The Others.

Movie Recommendation: Paris Je Taime

2009-04-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Title: Paris Je T'aime
Starring: All-star cast includes Natalie Portman, Elijah Wood, Willem Dafoe, Bob Hoskins, and Steve Buscemi.
Director: 18 directors, including Alexander Payne (Sideways), The Coen Brothers (No Country for Old Men), Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), and Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men)
Story: 18 short films about love in 18 boroughs of Paris.
Feels Like: New York Stories meets Eros.

Movie Recommendation: Brainstorm (1983)

2009-04-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

Title: Brainstorm
Starring: Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher.
Director: Douglas Trumbull (VFX Pioneer on 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
Story: Scientists develop a device that can record and play back brainwaves, simulating that person's experience to another person, but when a person dies while recording, "something else" is recorded. Natalie Wood's last film.
Feels Like: Honestly, this film is pretty unique. One of my favorites.

Movie Recommendation - 10 Items or Less

2009-03-22T19:35:00.000-07:00

Now that I have graduated from AM (more details on that adventure soon,) I need to start using this blog for any number of other ramblings. I'm still working on new shots, and will be taking another swing at my short film once I complete a new dialogue shot I'm working on (which I shall post once it gets into a better place visually.) But I figured I can use this blog as a place to recommend obscure movies, much like some of my AM friends do.

Most of the movies I will be recommending are pretty obscure and may not be available in all countries, but they're still worth seeking out.

This week:

Title: 10 Items or Less
Starring: Morgan Freeman, Paz Vega.
Directed by Brad Silberling (City of Angels, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events)
Story: A formerly famous actor researching a role is left stranded at a grocery store, and enlists the help of a quirky cashier who's preparing for a big job interview.
Feels Like: The Station Agent

And this one is last week's, which I posted to my Facebook:

Title: Gray's Anatomy
Starring: Spalding Gray
Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Oceans Eleven)
Story: Storyteller Spalding Gray tells the elaborate tale of his struggle with an eye disease.
Feels Like: Swimming to Cambodia

Mac & Me

2008-12-19T10:30:00.000-08:00

Dost thou hear the tolling of the bells? It is the death knell. The harbinger of doom. The audible sound of hideous doom.

While this week was greeted with joy - the joy of completing my 18-month course at Animation Mentor - it was suddenly stricken with the grief of demise.

My Mac is Dead. That's right. After only 3 years, it's dead. Fried Logic Board (that's Apple's term for a Motherboard) and at least one blown processor. It is presently shipping to a Bay-area repair location for what I hope is an inexpensive fix. At least cheaper than what the Apple store wants ($1700.)

I guess that I just wore the thing out. 18 solid months of extremely resource-heavy 3D work. Thankfully the failure came 18-hours after I turned in my final assignment at AM, and about 12-hours after I backed up most of my short film files. Also thankfully, the hard drives were not affected by the issue. I bought an external firewire enclosure and popped both drives out of the Mac to transfer all of the vital files over to my still functioning, 9-year-old Dell.

So the good news is I haven't lost any of my AM work. The bad news is, without a machine fast enough to run Maya, I can't complete and render out full-res versions of my short film shots or work on my DVD demo reel until the machine is repaired or replaced. This, naturally, throws a huge wrench in the job-seeking process. Theoretically, if all goes well, I should have the machine back the week after Christmas, but if all doesn't go well, then the only answer is a new 'puter.

Then, of course, the question becomes - do I get another Mac, or move back to the PC? Honestly, the latter is what I'm considering. For the price of a lowest-end new Intel Mac, I could buy one helluva fast and awesome PC - something that, if the motherboard or processor failed - I could easily fix on my own for a few hundred dollars. That, and the fact that this same issue has been reported by scores of other G5 and iBook users (even my friend Fox's iBook died from this exact same problem a few months ago.) This leads me to believe that there is an issue in Mac hardware.Does this issue carry over into the new Intel's? I would hope not, but would I really want to stake $2500+ on a hunch that in 3 years my computer will still be working? In these troubled times, would you?

I'm not going to post my final assignment version until I've had time to address the last few notes from my mentor and also polish up the big money shots some more. Until then, I'll keep you posted on what's happening with Spalding (that's what I named the Mac - after the late storyteller and monologist Spalding Gray.)

Short Shorts

2008-11-27T01:09:00.000-08:00

OK - finally an update! Sorry, things have been super busy lately, but I now have the time to post my short film as it stands now, 3 weeks from the end of AM.

This still has a long way to go. A lot of it hasn't been smoothed out yet, there's timecode running throughout, the champagne liquid and bubbling effects aren't complete, there's no sound, and this is still just the first half of the film (the second half will be completed after I graduate), but this is what I have so far. Comments welcome!

Suppose To Propose - First Half - Polish / Blocking Plus Pass from Richard Ferrando on Vimeo.

Long Form of the Former

2008-11-04T22:29:00.001-08:00

I finally got around to posting my last live-action short, Sketches, to the interweb - 5 years later. :-) It's on Vimeo - higher quality than YouTube and allows stuff that's longer than 10 minutes.

So if yer curious - http://www.vimeo.com/birdlingbrains

21 Reasons to Smile

2008-10-08T14:07:00.000-07:00

So that Project 21 festival was over the weekend. All-in-all 30 films screened. And guess what... we didn't win the big prize, but we DID win the Best Animation award! Woo hoo!

I couldn't be happier! It was so amazing to work with so many of my fellow AM-ers on the project, all whose work I respect beyond words.

Simon, the director, posted it to YouTube, so here she is! My two shots come right in the middle - when the guy flops back onto the bed and pulls the pillow over his head, and the shot that follows where he's rolling around the bed restlessly as the camera pushes in.

Reel-ality

2008-08-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

In case you're wondering what exactly the reel looked like when Disney commented on it, here she is. I'm making refinements to it before I send it along to Imageworks.

Rich Ferrando - August 2008 Demo Reel from Richard Ferrando on Vimeo.

Vectors to the Initial 2: Revenge of the Siggraph

2008-08-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

OK - To clarify yesterday's odd post.

All this week I was at Siggraph, which, to those of you who don't know, it's an international conference of computer graphics, animation, and other nerd stuff (for instance, they had one presentation that was a Technical Paper on using "Differential Equations and Parallel Algorithms for Approximation of Distance Maps on Parametric Surfaces," whatever that means. :-) Where else in the world will 1,000 people show up to hear a speech by a robotics engineer working on a driverless car?

Anyway - I was there for the Exhibition, Career Fair, and classes on animation and getting jobs in the CG industry.

In an effort to save money (for students to attend the full conference is about $350), I became a Student Volunteer, which meant I could go to the conference for free in exchange for working, helping people find booths, passing out flyers, etc.

The Student Volunteer program was, indeed, a great experience. It is an essential part of the whole conference, the work was easy, and I had fun and met a lot of great people.

I did get quite a lot of insight into where I currently stand in the job market. On Tuesday I had my demo reel reviewed at the Disney Animation booth. And what I posted was, in essence, what the recruiter told me. She said that my work is good - I know how to animate, but I'm lacking in entertainment value. There's nothing special about my reel that makes it stand out from the crowd. I've got a good, basic reel. Unfortunately, they get hundreds of good, basic reels every month. If I want to get a job in this business, I need a way to make my work special, and most importantly, I need to emphasize Emotion over Motion.

Regardless, I still submitted my reel and resume to several studios that are getting ready to hire junior animators toward the end of the year. I doubt that I'll get in at any of them, but I figure it's good to get my work out there and just keep sending updates until they either hire me or send me Cease and Desist notices.

Part of the conference is this competition called FJORG (pronounced "Forge") which is an "iron animator" competition. Teams compete to create a 45-second animated short in only 32 hours. And this year there were 7 teams out of a total of 16 that were from Animation Mentor. 2 AM teams tied for second place, too. I don't know how they did it, but somehow all the teams competing managed to stay up 32 hours straight without going insane, AND finish an animated short in the process. Amazing stuff.

I also got some cool stuff. Like a deck of playing cards featuring storyboard and development art for Disney's upcoming Bolt, a Wall-E poster, and a free copy of the academic version of Softimage XSI (a 3D modeling and animation program.) And the opportunity to have my reel reviewed, even though it wasn't quite the response I hoped for, has a value that's beyond estimation.

And I got to attend the Computer Animation festival, which was extremely cool. One I must recommend for people, and which I hope will become available soon, and which I hope will win an Oscar, is called My Happy End. Click here to watch the trailer.

Eat My Shorts

And speaking of short films, remember a while back I mentioned that Project 21 thing? Well, we finished the short film last week. I hope to incorporate my shots into my reel at some point in the next few weeks, and I'll post it here when I do, but if you want to see the whole short you'll have to wait until after it premieres at the Project 21 festival in October. (The festival's in Philadelphia, so I won't be in attendance, but hopefully the director will post the short on his website after it screens at the festival.)

All-in-all I'm fairly happy with the way my shots turned out. For having to animate as much footage as we did on a two-week deadline (my shots amounted to a total of 12 seconds in two weeks, which is actually approximately how much I'll have to do when I get a real job), I think that all of us working on the film did some pretty great stuff.

A Little Bit Sketchy

My current mentor has also demanded that I draw something every day to try to get better at it. And I agree. I want to get better, so I'm gonna be doing a sketch every day (hopefully) and posting it on my Facebook space. If you have a Facebook account, look me up so you can laugh at my Nick, Jr. style. :-)

Vectors to the Initial

2008-08-14T21:52:00.000-07:00

Disney says I'm not Unique or Entertaining.

Two Months Later...

2008-07-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so it's been two months since the last post. So much for keeping things up-to-date, huh? :-)

The reason for the lack-of-posting is simply - time. Between work and school, I was getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a night for 8 weeks solid. Needless to say, it's been a bit rough.

First, here's where the last assignment for Class 4 stands - it still needs some little refinements, but it's very close to final at this point. (Gee... You guys haven't seen this since it was in Blocking. It's changed a bit since then!)

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend in San Francisco with Kim & Fox, primarily to attend the Animation Mentor BBQ. I went up last year for the BBQ as well, but this year we took an extra day, and stayed at a hotel right in the city, three blocks from the bay, and about a mile-and-a-half walk to Fisherman's Wharf (and no, the bum who said "Why lie, it's for the beer" was no longer there.)

On the drive up, we had breakfast in Santa Barabara and walked the pier. I was sure to make Kim and Fox stop at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo so they could see that frighteningly garish dining room and the waterfall/urinal in the basement.

Friday we found a coffee shop in the Mission district that had imported coffees from Rwanda (I never knew they grew coffee there), and we swung by the first Amoeba Records store in Haight Ashbury (bought 4 DVDs and a CD for $30), and we found a weird little greasy-spoon restaurant under the Bay bridge with chaep food and booze.

Friday night, we went to an opening night screening of Wall-E in Emeryville with about a hundred students and staff from the school. In fact, the entire audience was comprised of professional and student animators (a bunch of folks from Pixar walked over for the screening, since the theatre was only two blocks away from the studio.)

The next day was the BBQ, which was quite amazing. I met about a zillion people, and got stranded there, which was probably the best thing to happen that night...

Fox and Kim had left early to go find coffee shops and bars, and I was to call them when I needed to be picked up (Kim had the only car.) So, around 6pm, when things were dying down, I called them up - and they were in the Mission district, about a 20-minute drive from the Presidio (where I was,) and they really didn't want to leave. So, I had to find a ride. I wound up hitching a ride with a guy from EA Games, and wound up at the Hard Rock Cafe' with about 20 animators, some students, a couple guys from Blue Sky who worked on Horton Hears a Who, and Carlos, a Pixar animator who also co-founded the school. I had some pleasant conversations, and then hitched another ride to a bar where about 30 more people from school were hanging out, where I talked Cameras and video equipment with Carlos for about an hour, before adjourning back to the hotel.

Needless to say, it was a good day.

The next day we drove back, with a brief stopover at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose (which was not nearly as weird as we had hoped.) And that was about it.

And now, I have started Class 5 - Short Film Pre-production. Yes, kids, the tough stuff begins now. My new mentor for this class is Kenny Roy, who was one of the animators on the dinosaur stampede in Peter Jackson's King Kong. He's also regarded as one of the toughest mentors at the school, which honestly, I couldn't be happier. This will give us first-hand experience at the "tough love" we can expect when we all get jobs.

The excitement builds....

Scream Real Loud

2008-05-11T14:51:00.000-07:00

So, this week we took our two-person dialogue sequences and blocked in the main key poses to define the movement and performance that we'll be animating. This lays the groundwork for everything that is to come. I went a bit further than normal with the blocking in the first and last shots, because this week we'll be taking one shot out of blocking and starting actual animation, and I wanted to make sure I had a firm foundation to start with. So, here she is: (Remember, we block in "stepped" mode, so all you will see are the actual poses without any inbetween frames.)

I'm so glad that I went with this scene. Sure, it's complex as hell, but it's exactly what I need at this point in my education, to see exactly what I can do and how well I can do it. Plus, this scene is about 50% physicality and 50% performance. Prior to the first dialogue assignment, everything I had done was concentrated on the physicality of movement, and the first dialogue assignment was concentrated on performance. So now, I have a chance to combine both worlds into something wild and crazy. And we all know how great wild ajnd crazy is, right? How many astro-sign medalions can you wear? (Try five of them.)

Other than this, life is... well, it's life, I suppose. Saw a bunch of people I haven't seen in ages last night at a big shindig at Fox Valade's pad, which was fun. (Hell, just getting out of the house is a reason to celebrate.) And at work this week I had the supreme displeasure of running a whole slew of awful Steven Segal and Sylvester Stallone films, including Above The Law, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, The Glimmer Man, Hard to Kill, plus Stallone's Assassins, and the ever-popular 'Taco Bell Version" of Demolition Man. (And yes, I kid you not, it's actually called the "Taco Bell" version.) Oi.

There are some cool and nifty things happening, though. I will be participating with several other animators from school in the "Project 21" contest, where you are given 21 days to write, produce, and shoot (or, in our case, animate) a short film.I'm not doing any pre-production work on it - just animating - which will be a nice change from the old "lets wear every hat" nightmares. And I've been accepted as a student volunteer at this year's SIGGRAPH conference in August (an international conference of animation and computer graphics, which I've been dreaming of attending for a decade) so I'll have all sorts of incredible opportunities to meet people and pass around my reel

So now, we scrape the fish off the grill and sleep for the next eight days.

Sardines! I've forgotten the sardines!

2008-05-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

So this week at AM we did Layout and basic blocking for our two-person dialogue shots. After much debate, I decided to go with a chunk of dialogue from the film version of Noises Off (which, oddly enough, you can watch in its entirety on YouTube.) The scene features Carol Burnett and the late John Ritter. Of course, I don't want to re-make the scene from the film, but rather go off on my own tangent of what the dialogue might mean in a different context. So here's what I came up with:

It kinda draws upon what most people would list as one of their greatest fears, and exploits it. :-) I'm very excited about this shot because I haven't done anything this wild and crazy yet. So we'll have to see if I've bitten off more than I can chew.

FINAL

2008-04-20T14:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, ladies and germ warfare, we have reached the end of the line for our first AM dialogue assignment. Here's the final version:

So now, we move on to two person dialogue. And I've got all sorts of interesting plans for this one. :-)

You may have noticed that I didn't post last week. This was not due to my usual neglect, but rather because of another unscheduled flight back to Michigan, this time for my Grandma's funeral. I seem to be going to a lot of these lately. This is the third since I started AM. And there better not be any more. I'm not sure I could take it.

Mouth

2008-04-06T15:57:00.000-07:00

Just a really quick update so I can get to bed. We started Class 4 this week - Advanced Acting. My new mentor is Dave Burgess - currently Head of Character Animation on Dreamworks' upcoming Monsters vs. Aliens. He was Supervising Animator on the hyenas in The Lion King. Yes, this is extremely cool.

So now we finally have mouth shapes and eyebrows to play with. So here's my first stab at it:

Yup, it's got a-ways to go, but we've got two more weeks to refine this baby before we start Two-person dialogue. (Gasp and Drool!)

Insult to Injury, or: The Not-So-Great Michigan & Ohio Adventure

2008-03-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

So, this week was, quite frankly, hell on Earth. It began with bad news, and ended with this:
Yes, that's my parents' red van. Allow me to explain the whole sha-bang.

Monday: My Uncle Mike, my dad's little brother, passed away. Cue "Oh, Shit" number one. This was quite a shock to everyone. Here is the Obituary.

Tuesday: I found out about it and booked a flight for Wednesday morning and made arrangements with my sisters to drive to Ohio on Thursday. My mentor was kind enough to give me an early critique on my assignment so I could work on it Tuesday night before my flight.

Wednesday: I left my apartment at 6:30am to catch my 9:40am flight to Detroit. Normally, even in morning rush hour traffic, it only takes about an hour or so to get from Glendale to LAX. However, I didn't arrive at the airport until just after 9am. Why? There were three accidents and two stalled cars on the 101 and 405 freeways. As I approached the fourth incident, which was only two miles from the airport, I decided that since I know the side roads pretty well I'd just leave the freeway at the next exit. Right when I said that to myself, my brand new radiator cap (installed just a week ago) decided that it didn't want to work anymore, and so it gushed about a half pint of my car's coolant onto the hot engine causing plumes of smoke to billow out from under my hood. Cue "Oh Shit" number 2.

Thankfully it didn't last, and I made it off the freeway only to discover ANOTHER stalled vehicle blocking traffic on Sepulveda Blvd, followed by "unscheduled" construction. So I weaved about several residential neighborhoods until I got to work, which is just a half mile from LAX, and ran over to the Westin hotel to hop on their shuttle to the airport (since we do a lot of company gatherings at the Westin they allow us to use their shuttles without having to rent a room there.) But, naturally, the shuttle was delayed because of some slow-moving rich bitch. When I finally got to the airport, things seemed like they'd go pretty smooth. I got my boarding passes, there were very few people in line at security, and I tossed some change to the missionaries outside the airport, figuring I could use all the karma I could get at this point. But then, go figure, the lady at security needed to run my bags through the machine TWICE. I finally got to the gate just as my zone was being called to board.

I had a layover in Phoenix. There was an older lady sitting next to me on the plane from LAX who was just coming back from her father's funeral, so I figured Id help her find her way to her connecting gate in Phoenix airport (since I know the airport pretty well now.) Again, for Karma's sake. And from there, things went pretty smoothly.

Thursday: The drive to Ohio was going fairly smoothly at first. We took my sister Anne's car, since her Jeep gets far better gas mileage than my sister Amy's Suburban. The Ohio Turnpike is always an interesting drive, simply because of the "Space Station" service plazas:
But after one particular pit stop, my sister decided as we were headed back onto the pike that we needed gas, and so she pulled a U-turn into the semi-truck parking area, complete with a semi headed straight for us. For the second time this week, cue "Oh Shit" number 3. Luckily, again, everything turned out fine.

When we got to my Aunt Judy's house in Canfield we found out that our Uncle Gene (my grandmother's brother) was hospitalized with a heart attack. Cue "Oh, Shit" number 4. More salt for the wounds. Later we went to the funeral home. The same place that hosted both grandparents' funerals (all of the immediate family on my dad's side lived in Canfield, and pretty much the entire family lives in and around Youngstown.) Since my uncle was in the fire department for so long there were guards posted at the casket the entire time. I had never before seen a full-fledged firefighter's ceremony before, other than my sister's graduation from the fire academy. It's heart wrenching, but it may also be one of the most beautiful things I've witnessed. There had to be at least 300 attendees, including the fire chiefs from almost every department within a ten mile radius.

Later, I had a really expensive prime rib that sucked.

Friday: The funeral. At my Grandma's funeral, my sisters, cousins and I determined that we "put the 'fun' back in the 'funeral.'" Not this time. Some woman kept taking pictures of the casket, which really pissed me off.

We always gather for food after funerals; a "wake" of sorts I suppose, during which my cousin's friends tried to figure out how to connect Orson Welles with Russell Crowe (use the animated "Transformers" movie as a starting point.) I didn't get a chance to suggest trying to tie Sydney Poitier with Sydney Pollack. (Hint: start with "Sneakers.")

My sisters drove home Friday night, into an oncoming snowstorm. Cue "Oh, Shit" number 5. I stayed with my parents, and we drove to the hospital to visit my Uncle Gene (who, I'm happy to report, is doing very well.)

Saturday: Luckily, everyone got home alright, and by the time my parents and I left most of the snow had melted, at least off the roads. Along the way we passed frolicking deer, a jacknifed semi in a ditch (probably from the snowstorm the night before), and the oh-so lovely nuclear plant outside Sandusky (at which I always have to proclaim "Everybody smile at the cooling tower!") Before heading to the airport we drove to Brighton to visit my aunt and grandmother (on my mom's side. 94 years old and still kickin'.) We figured with the hour drive to the airport we'd have enough time to drop by a restaurant and eat some delicious food. We thought about calling my sister to meet up for dinner (she lives in Ann Arbor,) but we decided to just head for the airport instead.

We should've had dinner in Ann Arbor, because literally two minutes after we passed my sister's exit on US-23, the guy next to us lost control of his car, swerving directly in front of my parents' minivan. Cue "Oh, Shit" number 6 - (Actually, I think all three of us - mom, dad, and me - said it in unison.) So, down we all went into the ditch, up an embankment, and back into the ditch. I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by the superior off-road handling of the Grand Caravan. When the car stopped, before either mom or I checked if we were OK, we, again in unison, asked dad if he was having a heart attack, which, thankfully, he wasn't. We were all perfectly fine - no bruises or whiplash (at least as-of this writing, which is less than 24hrs since the accident.)
Surveying the damage showed that even the car was pretty much OK, at least visually. The guy never hit us, so the only damage we could see was from a couple of saplings we mowed over. The other guy was OK as well, other than some soreness from the airbag (though his car was in bad shape. Part of his bumper can be seen in the upper right of the image near the sign in the background.

And, as luck would have it, the guy behind us who witnessed the whole thing was also an EMT. He stopped and checked on everybody, and stuck around for the police. This is the big difference between California and, pretty much, everywhere else. People actually... CARE. They see something happen, and they stop to help. While we were on the side of the road, both a regular physician who was driving by, and a nurse who was involved in a gawker accident a few minutes (and a few feet) from ours, stopped to help. That's something that you just don't see in LA. People out here don't care about anyone but themselves, and then they wonder, when they're in a jam, why no one stops to help THEM.

Since my sister lives just five minutes from the accident site, she came to pick us up and finish driving me to the airport. And no, we didn't get to eat.

Luckily as well, the flights back to LA went smoothly. I even lucked out and was able to do the $50 upgrade to First Class on the last leg of the flight.

Sunday: I got back to my car around 1:30am to discover that, yes, I still have a cooling system leak. I made it home in time to put some more work into the week's homework before it was due at Noon today, but at around 4am I fell asleep in front of the computer (which has never happened to me before.)

I did manage to get some work done and turn it in, but I'm definitely not finished with it yet. Here's the near-to-final version:

I still have more work to put into it this week.

So this winds up the end of a very long week, as you have seen. I'm not planning on leaving the house for a while. We certainly don't want "Oh, Shit" number 7.

I'm THAT Jerk

2008-03-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

I saw The Spiderwick Chronicles again today while my muffler was being fixed, and I made probably the silliest, dorkiest complaint to management possible.

I complained about a slight buzzing and overall weakness in the analog sound during the trailers before the feature, and suggested that "upping the LED voltage" was probably the solution. Allow me to explain:

The film was presented in DTS sound, which is the highest quality possible in theatres. However, since DTS equipment is expensive, theatres equipped with DTS systems probably do not have a backup Dolby Digital system (the OTHER common digital theatre sound system, other than SDDS, but that never works), and so, if the digital signal drops out, the sound system will automatically revert to the optical Analog soundtrack on the film (technology that's been relatively unchanged since 1987.)

Since DTS soundtracks are stored on CD-ROM synced to picture via a timecode track on the film print itself (unlike Dolby Digital and SDDS, DTS soundtracks are too big to be stored on the film itself), most trailers do not come with their own DTS soundtrack discs, and thus will be forced into analog playback (if you've ever noticed a big difference in sound quality and volume between trailers and the feature, this is probably why.)

This is great for us dorks, because we get to hear how well the theatre in question keeps up their old analog systems (which, in most modern theatres, is pretty bad.) One easy way to boost the level and crisp reception of the analog signal is to boost the voltage level of the LED reader that scans the optical soundtrack (until about five or so years ago, most theatres used white light to scan the optical soundtracks on films, which worked well since optical soundtracks were made of a thin layer of silver embedded in the film, and were the only part of modern mylar-based film stock that was not environmentally friendly. Now, film prints are starting to use a biodegradable cyan dye soundtracks, which will not work in white light systems. So now, they use red LED's to scan the film soundtracks.)

Now how many assholes in the world are gonna say THAT?

:-)

Drip

2008-03-03T08:32:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update with this week's assignment. I almost forgot last week to introduce you to the new character we're using - Bishop. Right now we have the "light" version (no facial controls other than a puppet mouth.) We'll get the full version next quarter.

So anyway - here's how we've progressed this week. Nowhere near done, but anywho....

Next we start smoothing things out.

I also got rather bored at work this week while encoding the first season of The Smurfs for the internet, so I did a quick ol' sketch:
Turns out Smurfs are remarkably easy to draw.

Well that's it for this week, kids. Now its off to watch this week's lecture, and then figure out why my car is leaking coolant. :-(

Bad Dates

2008-02-25T11:52:00.003-08:00

OK - so here's the blocking for my first dialogue assignment! Yes, gentle children, Timothy Dalton won. And so, here's the worst first date ever. Remember that in Blocking, we only lay out the essential "key poses" that will define the action, which will later be smoothed and inbetweened.

I also have a another revision of the Hitchhike - and there will be one more coming as well.

Also, I again participated in the AM Weekly Sketches. This week's topic was "Rock Star." So, I came up with this awful pun. As always, click for a larger view:
I figured, "Hey. A shooting star is a rock, right? Get it? Rock star?" I can hear you not laughing. Argh.....

I guess it's also kinda depressing, because he's so excited, yet he doesn't realize that he'll burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Poor fella. Yeah, I need help. ;-)

Talkie Walkie

2008-02-17T12:33:00.000-08:00

OK - so this week we start working with dialogue, which is a HUGE can o' worms, but one I'm very eager to open. So to start, we had to pick 3 lines of dialogue from movies that we'll animate for the rest of Class 3. I narrowed these down from 6 possibilities (lines from Spalding Gray's monologue Gray's Anatomy, the film version of Noises Off!, and the cult unknown Biggles: Adventures in Time were the three that didn't make the cut.)

I don't yet know which one I'll be animating - that'll be up to which one my mentor thinks will be the best choice. The first and last are from Hot Fuzz, and the one in the middle is from Catch-22.

And here are the thumbnail drawings I did to plan out the animation for each. Like I said, only one will be used - and I'm hoping it'll be Clip #3. I could really have fun with that one.

As always, click for a larger view.
I also have a final revision of the Pantomime assignment:

I also had simultaneous disappointment and joy this week. The disappointment: Quaker Oats has discontinued manufacturing their Cinnamon Sugar Chewy granola bars - the only ones on Earth that didn't contain something I'm allergic to. However, the joy is much better - I discovered this week that Entenmann's donuts do NOT give me a migraine! So even though I'll have to tough it out in a world without granola, I can now eat donuts again! I can put this up there with the soy American cheese that doesn't give me a headache either. Now all I need is a fake peanut butter (and some of my sister's homemade jam) and I may be able to start living like a normal person for once!

Knotts Landing

2008-02-10T13:16:00.000-08:00

So this week we finished up our Pantomime shots. This, of course, meant a full week of 4-hours of sleep per night for me. But, methinks it was all worth it.

I'm really happy with the way this turned out. There were a couple suggestions y mentor gave me for spicing it up a bit more, which I'll hopefully have time to try this week.

So now, we start scouring movies and TV. Why? Because our next assignment is... Dialogue! Holy hell! I'm rather leaning toward a couple lines from the film Hot Fuzz, but I'm gonna keep looking through the vast collection.

I also hung up some more art in my apartment this week. It's got to be the strangest Christmas gift I've ever received - right up there with those Ear Candles.

As always, click for a larger view. That's right, ladies and germs! It's The Incredible Mr. Limpet himself, Don Knotts! It even came with a Certificate of Authenticity (as if you could fake this.) It's by far the most ridiculous thing I own, so naturally it had to go up on my most prominent living room wall. Now if I could just find one of those Remains of the Day Lunchboxes I'd be set for life!

The Two Halves of Phone

2008-01-28T12:15:00.000-08:00

So here we are, another exciting week. The current assigned shot continues to evolve into something that borders on watchable. Needless to say, this still has a LONG way to go, but here's some of the changes. The beginning and ending have both been tossed out in favor of new stuff that works much better and makes the overall emotions clearer. I've also got the backpack in there, thanks to a fellow AM student who actually took time out of his own busy schedule to make it for me. My GOD I love this community! There's no selfishness, idiocy, back-stabbing or petty complaining in animation. Everybody helps everybody, and does so happily. It's a truly amazing group of artists who care enough about the medium and each other to advance everyone involved to the next level.

As I've said before, I am SO glad I decided to take this plunge!

I also have some sad news to report. My phone has died. The victim of a horribly disfiguring broken neck.
I'm actually not in the least bit upset about it. I hated that phone. I'm just glad I was eligible for an upgrade. Interestingly enough, this picture was taken with my NEW phone. After two miserable experiences with the crap products made by LG Electronics, I've gone back to Nokia. This new phone has a still/video camera in it (quality is crap, but hey, it's a phone), plus the ability for customized ringtones and graphics and such (the phone ring is back to the classic Rotary Phone ringing, but my alarm clock sound is the screeching Donald Sutherland from the remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers.") I even got a 2GB Micro-SD card for it, so it can double as a portable flash drive.

Is it sad when your telephone has a bigger hard drive than your first computer?