printed schedule

Well, It's Tuesday. T to the U followed by ES n' da' Z-Day baybeee. I'm not allowed to talk to my rigger because he has too much to do right now. So, I'm going over my character rig a few more times, looking for anything else to comment on. Since there are a few meetings that I attend in the week, the production assistant comes around and hands out these nifty schedule sheets in the morning so I know just where to go and when. I take the time to carefully look through the entire sheet and circle the meeting I need to attend. See in the pic? I've circled two veeery important meetings, each 30 minutes long, in which I need to attend today. I must pat myself on the back and say "scuttlebutt, you are a good boy for preparing so well for the day!" People will discuss things like art design and maybe ask me a question like "hey, you... from the animation department. Can you animate around this pole and make it look good? Right on man, coo." And then there's the meeting where my character, the doc, will be rendered with fur and spinning around in a circle.

And as a new addition to these blogs, I'll be adding a list of DVD's I've watched while at work. As many of you already know, I watch a lot of movies at work. It helps me loosen the constrictions of concentration upon the tangible and intangible animatriculation within sequences re, shots per-se. I'm always inspired by other peoples work in the video and film medium. Although my girlfriend hates how I watch soooo many crappy movies, I find there are things to learn from in any film. Granted, sometimes they are small, stupid lessons that weren't really worth the 2 hours it took to watch the flic, but I'm only half watching them here at work anyway... I wonder if that means I'm only half learning then... or half crying... or half laughing... or half WORKING?...

Anyway, here's my first movie list:


Worlds Fastest Indian- Roger Donaldson-dir. It's the flic where SIR Anthony Hopkins plays the chipper dirty old man and moto enthusiast Burt Munro. Fairly straight forward journey-to-the-dream-of-a-lifetime flic with heart. Hopkins does a fine job and it made me want to pull the blue tarp off my 1977 Honda 400F and start cleaning out those well varnished carbs. ***

This Film is Not Yet Rated- A Documentary focusing on the strangely secret society called the MPAA. Have you ever wondered who rates film G PG PG+ R NC-17? Well, this film does some sleuthing around to find out. It gets a bit too Leftist preachy for me in that Michael Moore way, and the film making is only half decent. Watch it while you're animating. **

North Korea: A Day in the Life- Pieter Fleury takes a trip to North Korea and comes out with a Kim Jong Il approved 40 minute documentary of a "normal" day for a factory worker in North Korea. The whole doc plays like a well choreographed play with bad actors, but the truth is too strong and the thin veil is easy to see through showing a real world frighteningly similar to those portrayed in movies like 1984 and V for Vendetta. ****

The Notorious Bettie Page ***
Akeelah and the Bee ****
World Trade Center **
A Scanner Darkly **

constructive time management

Things are a tad slow today so I decided to build a pig. Thanks to C & A at Kaiju Studios, I received this wonderful cardboard pig set. It's kind of like those wood dinosaur bone kits that you used to make as a kid but a bit trickier.

Now, I know what you're all thinking. What is a P-I-G anyway? Well, according to my friend attending college down in Tuscaloosa, AL it is an animal. In fact, it is "any of several mammals of the family Suidae, having short legs, cloven hooves, bristly hair, and a cartilaginous snout used for digging." Hm! Well, I guess he could be right. But Dang if I've ever heard of one of these crazy creatures before. Perhaps it's some kind of long extinct animal from way back in earth's history. Or maybe it's some kind of mythological creature conjured up by some ancient but not too smart tribe of human like beings. Well, whatever it is, it's cool looking on the package and I'm determined to put this sucker together before I have to leave tonight.

• Step 1 - Take the four sheets of pre-cut cardboard out of it's plastic packaging and carefully lay them down on a clean surface. Each section is numbered and corresponds to a number in the steps neatly but disorganiz-edly arranged in the one page instruction sheet.

• Step 2 - Start following the one sheet of instructions and build the front and back of this beast. For some reason, the people who designed the packaging of this kit decided not to put any order to the building directions. No matter! I am a MASTER of spacial skills. My girlfriend told me so and so it must be true.
  

• Step 3 - Keep taking the little cardboard pieces out and put them together, following the instructions provided. Well, By the time I got to the legs, I said "f**ge these drawings, let's wing it millennium falcon style!" And so I carefully folded the one page manual and continued on unabated.
  

• Step 4 - Smell to insure the construction is coming along as realistically as possible. Even though I have never encountered one of these beasts before (or even know if it ever was a real creature!) I'm going on the information given to me by my college pal. It is always important to make sure every part of a realistic re-construction is accurate. So I sniffed the cardboard until musty wet hair, mud, and feces filled my cubicle and my neighboring animators cubicles. It took about 15 minutes.

And voila! You're done. I admit, now that it's constructed, this creature bears a striking resemblance to something from my memory... but what?... I dunno, working on films as I do, sometimes the fiction of fantasy has a tendency to creep in to my reality. It is possible that This glimmer of realization is nothing more than an overactive imagination. Nonetheless, Pig is a cute addition to my toys sitting on and around the computer. Thanks again, A & K.

cudos are required

I must give congratulations to our latest Oscar nod in the short animated film category. Clap Clap Clap. Yeah, sure we had the potential to have a feature in the nominations as well. Perhaps we deserve to be in the list of three this year (as many in the studio feel) but I really can't say as I've only seen cars. I guess it's finally time to take a couple hours and watch the screeners those studios send out. After all, I need to cast my all important ASIFA ballot and, heck. I'm in the industry, right?

close your eyes, give me your hand darlin'...

...do you feel my heart beating
do you understand
do you feel the same
or am i only dreaming
is this burning, an eternal flame

I just completed putting together the 'picker' for my character, the Doc. She's a sweetie, you know? All cute as a button underneath her frazzled scientific exterior. And I know I'll be spending a lot of late nights with her this next year, moving and caressing every one of her curves.

Picker is what most of us animators here at the studio use to organize the 400+ movers that are on each of the main characters. The complexity is a little overwhelming at first, but after a week or two you begin to get more comfortable with them all. Honestly, I'm still used to used to stop-motion work and having so many movers frack with my head a bit. It would be so much easier if I could just reach in to the screen and move the character physically. How cool would that be? combining the ease of posing stop-mo style with the repeatability of the computer? Heck man, we could get twice the amount of work done in half the time!

Oh yes, and one more thing...

sweetness comes in many flavors. this is not one of them

Awright y'all! Let's get crackin' with the work now shall we? After the long MLK weekend, all of us animators arrived in to the lower level floor ready to set up our cubes and start working. Unfortunately, the planners of this move didn't take in to account just how picky us animators can be when it comes to setting up our personal work spaces (and silly them, they told us we could adjust our mix-and-match cubes any way we wanted to) Well, HAH I say! Tuesday was spent standing around and twiddling my thumbs waiting for the movers to do their thing. Today was spent unpacking for the first 30 minutes and then twiddling my thumbs waiting for systems to get my new fancy monitor in and everything hooked up. The move was HUGE and it's no fault to the movers or systems. We just could have used more time and resources for it all. 4:00 now, and I think it's about time to start working... after this blog entry, that is. The computer is whirring a little. I think the movers knocked the fan out of whack a bit, but whatever. Check out this awesome view we've got now! They really know how to treat us well here! If I crank my head around the corner really far I can see a tree on the corner. And the loading trucks coming to deliver boxes to the mall next door all day long is a nice touch also. I think my buddy P-man summed it up best the other day when he said " if there were any other CG studios on the east coast, this would be grounds for quitting."

goodbye sun, hello 12 hour days

What better way to start the official beginning of animation on a film then with a big move! The animation department is getting too big for it's britches and with the freelancers we're going to hire to finish the next film on time, there's definitely not enough space on the 17th floor for all of us. so we're moving to the lower level of our building where it'll be easier to carve out new cubicles from the bedrock foundation. Get yer' pick axe and mining cap, we're goin' diggin fer' space!

Of course, there is a bit of grumbling from some of the animators. We're losing our sunlight and fanciness of being on the "main" floor. But my feeling is that you just need to take more of a glass-is-half-full approach to it all. Animation is going to be so busy working this year that we wouldn't have a chance to look out the windows even if we wanted to! And we're going to be so much closer to our cars that it'll cut at least 30 seconds off our commute times.

I've had it pretty good the past two years with a poshy window seat where if I squint REEEEeeeeealllly hard, I can make out parts of the Manhattan skyline off in the distance. But hey! I still have a window seat down on LL2 with a spectacular view of the parking building.

my old spectacular view of White Plains

QWER

The character I'm in charge of is about to have it's second major release in to the animation department from rigging. Phase 2 we call it. Phase 1 had most of the body movers working fairly well and some simple eye controls, but this is the big daddy phase. Up until now, I've been blocking in simple test shots. Getting the general walk cycles, body expressions, and the like down. But this new rig will have the ability to really K.O. those finer emotions. (or at least I hope it will!) This one is where we really hone in on the little details and make this puppy animateable. It's also the last chance to get all the bugs out before we dive in to production. But, while I'm waiting for the rig to be released, there's still a little more character testing that needs to be done. And so I go back to my keyboard and start working. Aaah. it makes me want to sing!

Oh, you sweet four keys!

W, how sweetly you make my every wish come true on the camera view. You nearly intuitively move in any direction. Up, down, left, right. Anywhere I please, you take me.

E, what makes you so sweet? As the curves of each mover bob and sway in the wind. What's that you say? Straighten that elbow joint? No problem!

R..... RRRRrrrrrrr....... Make it big, make it small. If only you were in my world R, storing all those Christmas decorations in the closet would be so much easier!

And of course, Q. Simple, elegant Q. Nothing ever seems to bother you. In a blink of an eye, all is back to unmoving normality.

O, beautiful QWER.

i can hear the whips snapping in the distance

First day back to the ol' grind started out with the usual sorting through the 600+ e-mails that have accrued over the last week. I was expecting to come back to a hustling and bustling animation department with all us minions clicking and dragging away at our computers through the day and on in to the night, but it appears that things are still a bit slow right now.

There's still a bit of lag from some of the other departments ahead of us, giving the animation department some more wait time before we can really start working. Being so involved with wrapping presents and single plankin' it down mogul runs the last two weeks, I don't really remember how to animate. Oh well, I'm sure it's just like riding a bike.

To be honest, I'm a little weary about this next year. We have a LOT of work to do to get the film out the door for a March '08 release, and little time to do it in. If the work doesn't start piling up in the next few weeks, I'm afraid we're in for a really busy summer... spring, and fall... and winter too.

the work goes on

I'm still snowboarding in Utah, but work at the ol' animation factory continues on. Despite a lack of snow here in little cottonwood canyon, me and my buddies are having a good time ripping up what little snow is still on the ground after a week of no snow. Apparently, my buddy Aaron isn't having quite as much fun in front of his computer at work. HAH!

Don't feel too bad for him folks, he's accrued 6 WEEKS of vacation time so apparently, as grumpy as he is, he still enjoys sitting in his Aeron chair at work more than sipping margaritas on the beach.