Hey guys! Check out what a few Pixar interns had to say about their experience: http://www.pixar.com/companyinfo/jobs/uni_internships.html
The more I hear about it, the more excited I am about working there one day! I hope they still have all of the cool things Jamie mentioned when its time for me to get there. :D
Hey guys,
Here's my whole short in the blocking plus stage. I'm not proud of it at all. I lost way too many days of work over the last three weeks and haven't been able to get my short to the point I wanted it to be for this stage. I like shot 13 and 16, I feel like I finally remembered how to animate when I worked on those. I just wish I had enough time to make all of the other shots like that.
There isn't any sound this time. Some of the shots have gotten longer and require me to rearrange the sound effects and music again. I don't have hours to spend doing that for the third time, so I just skipped it. I'm going to leave the sound alone until the very end. I imagine you guys know what the sounds will be by now from watching my previous posts of my progress anyway. Sorry about that. It's just that I'd much rather spend my time getting shot 15 into the blocking plus stage instead of moving sound files around.
Scare Tactics-blocking plus
It seems like I will be doing the six month program that AM is offering for their short film students. My mentor says I don't really need it, but the extra time will only help. The only issue is that I will be back at SCAD for the final three months and will have to split my time between that and AM. I don't really look forward to doing that again, but if it will improve the quality of my short, then I'll do it. My mentor said the extra time will allow me to work more leisurely on the shots that I didn't focus on during the first three months. I agree completely there. I planned on finishing the "non-money shots" regardless, but having access to a mentor will really help me push my work further. I was worried about the fact that my short will make up the bulk of my summer internship reel and that it wont be finished in time for the May deadlines. I was told not to worry about that and as long as the work is solid there's nothing wrong with including a few w.i.p shots on the reel. Lol, he told me that one of his previous students put his w.i.p short on his reel and got hired at ILM. Hopefully I'll be just as lucky. :D
Hey guys. I just watched one of the most beautiful clips of 3d animation that I've ever seen.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktZ5JVdDL7Y
I originally didn't want to see Rapunzel Unbraided because I don't care too much for princesses, but that clip has completely changed my mind. The movie can be as girly as it wants to be as long as it has the same high quality animation that the clip does! Whoever animated that shot truly is a master animator. Rapunzel feels more alive in that shot than any other cg character I've seen thus far. I've watched that clip at least ten times trying to absorb as much information as I can from it. One thing I noticed early on is the fact that she actually breathes. From what I hear, a lot of animators forget/don't think to actually make their characters breathe even though it can take their work to a whole new level of life. I know I'm going to try to incorporate that into my short and as much of my future shots as possible.
This clip only emphasizes what one of the Pixar recruiters said when asked why it was so hard to find good animators. She said there are lots of animators who are good at mechanics but few who are really good at acting. Performance is key in feature animation and the performance in the Rapunzel shot is spot on. Everything she does is clear and very sincere. Right now I can only dream of creating animation of that caliber, but watching that clip has pushed me to work harder at creating better performances in my shots.
At times, it upsets me that my work isn't anywhere near as good as that clip or any other feature animation for that matter. I laugh at myself for thinking I can get an internship at Disney, Dreamworks or Pixar when I see shots like this. There's no way I'll be that good any time soon. Then again, I've only been animating seriously for about a year and four months so who knows where I'll be when I graduate from SCAD...
Last week was awful. I barely got anything done on my assignment. I wont bother to post what I have since most of it will have to be redone anyway. Sorry about that. I wish I could freeze time or something, as I'm quickly running out of it.
Hey everyone! It's time for an update on the progression of my short. Last week we started the blocking plus stage, so here's the blocking plus version of the first third of my short:
First 3rd Blocking Plus
First off, I apologize about the lack of ease in/out. I ran out of time and wasn't able to include that in this stage. It will definitely be there when I revisit this section of my short though! The second thing is there won't be any sound until I upload the whole short for critique again. This is because I don't have time to edit the sound each week as it takes too much time away from my animation. I already know that the sound effects for shot 3 will have to be edited since I've added two shy pauses between Twitch's scares.
Please feel free to point out anything that you feel is wrong or could be done better! All comments and critiques are greatly appreciated!
On a different note, I visited the AM site and saw another news item about sharing rigs. Appearantly someone is still sharing the AM characters despite the school's polite requests to stop. I think that's extremely disrespectful and very ungrateful of whoever is doing that. I hope the AM staff will catch the culprit quickly and expel him or her for breaching the AM contract. AM is such an excellent school, I really don't know why a student would want to hurt the people that are doing so much for him/her.
