Archive for the ‘Animation Mentor’ Category

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A New Update – My Polished Reel

Monday, February 25th, 2008

Well. Who knew it was so hard to keep a blog updated regularly! Certainly not me…

Anyhoo, I’ve been pretty dang busy – graduation, then a trip to Florida for a work thing, then working to polish up my demo reel, etc., etc., etc. The upshot of all that is…well…I’ve pretty much finished my demo reel – for now. I mean…it’s never REALLY done, is it? I know I can’t look at much of my older work without thinking of all the various ways I could have improved it in some small fashion, plus I feel like some of the oldest stuff on here is pretty stale and needs to be replaced with something new.

But, this will do for now. Sure, after a week or two of sending this out, I’ll start to get antsy about animating (awesome alliteration, eh?), and will start a new dialogue shot, but until that time comes around, this is my final, polished reel. That’s my story, anyway, and I’m stickin’ to it!

Posted in Animation, Animation Mentor, Job Search | 1 Comment »

Strange.

Monday, January 7th, 2008

AnimationMentor opened up for the new term, and I’m not a part of it and it feels strange.  Of course, I’m super-happy to have graduated – nothing could change that.  But there’s something to be missed in the ritual of an internet search to find out just who your mentor is and what he or she has worked on, finding out what date and time your Q&A session is each week, and posting hundreds of welcome messages to the incoming students (some people are more prolific than others…)

Posted in Animation Mentor | 3 Comments »

A Word of Thanks

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

Just wanted to post a quick “Thank You” to everyone at AnimationMentor – Bobby, Carlos, Shawn, Jay, Suzanne, Molly, Michael, Taylor, and a whole bunch of other people who work really, really hard to bring the best possible experience to all the students.

Also, a very big “Thank You” to my mentors in the program: Dave Breaux, Ryan Donoghue, Mike Walling, Sean Sexton, Jed Diffenderfer, and Greg Whittaker. You all contributed in major ways to my success at AM and I am very appreciative of the fact that I got to work with you in the program. Hope to meet you all at some point or another in the real world!

And last, but in no way least, a Thank You so big, writing it down doesn’t even do it justice. My wife, Heather, and 2 sons, Jack and Ronan, have had to bear the brunt of my time in AM. From weeknights where I came home from work, ate dinner, and maybe had an hour to play with Jack before starting on an assignment, to whole weekends where all I did was sit in front of the computer; their patience, understanding, and faith in me have kept me going to the very end. Now that I’ve finished, I’ll be re-aquainting myself with them (ok, that last bit was tongue-in-cheek…and yet, not).

One more Thanks – my mom, dad and brother. They also were a big source of support, and I greatly appreciate it.

Posted in Animation, Animation Mentor, Family | No Comments »

My Short Film

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008

So one of the benefits of being finished with AM is that I really plan to try to keep up with this blog a bit more. Since I’m only just starting out in animation, I expect to have a lot to share and this blog is a great way to do that. With that in mind, I thought I’d post the final short film that I turned in at AM. Keep in mind that it isn’t 100% finished. The animation needs work in a lot of areas – just general cleaning up that will help loosen things up in some areas. Plus it still needs better sound fx and possibly music.

But on the whole, I find that I’m far more pleased with how this turned out than I would have expected when I was about 5 weeks into the animating. The story came together as I continued to cut out some of non-essential bits (shoe leather as my Class 5 story mentor, Jed Diffenderfer, might have said) and the animation solidified into something that I find entertaining to watch.

Anyhoo. Without further ado, I present my short film – tentatively titled “5:00″.

Posted in Animation, Animation Mentor, Assignment | 2 Comments »

FINI

Tuesday, January 1st, 2008

Once again, I’ve been woefully lax in my posting to this blog.  I like to think I’ve had an excuse though – trying to finish my short film for AM.  And I’m very happy to announce that I was successful.  I’ve finished class 6 and graduated from the program.  I’ll be attending graduation ceremonies in San Francisco next week – should be a blast!

At any rate, now that it is officially 2008, my plans are to start working on my demo reel, and clean up a few of the shots from my short so that they are reel-quality as well.  I hope to have the reel pretty much settled within the next couple weeks – maybe by the end of January at the latest.  Then, it will be time to submit.  New career – here I come!

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My Current Demo Reel

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

Just posting up my current demo reel. It contains 3 of the shots I completed at AnimationMentor thus far. I will be adding more to it after I’m finished with my short film.

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Posted in Animation, Animation Mentor | 1 Comment »

Animation Mentor Fall Showcase!

Monday, October 8th, 2007

The 2007 Fall Showcase from Animation Mentor is out, and I made it into the reel! I can’t tell you how stoked I am – very exciting day for me today! Congratulations to everyone who had a shot accepted for the reel – I’m excited for each of you. The reel looks AMAZING!

Watch it after the jump.

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Posted in Animation, Animation Mentor, Assignment | No Comments »

argh!

Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

Yes, I’m terrible at maintaining a blog. I know that, if you actually READ this, you know that…

And it’s only going to get worse for the next 3 months.

Class 6 starts this week. The last 3 months of the Animation Mentor program for me. Kinda hard to believe! Also, kind of a relief. I’ve loved every minute of this, but I’m ready to be done. It just takes a lot out of a person to keep up the high level of involvement in work, AM, family, etc. It hasn’t been easy, but it will have been worth it.

Anywho, things are gonna get crazy. I’ll be animating my short film – still without a title, by the way – and I’m a Peer Buddy at AM, which comes with an extra set of responsibilities. It’s cool though – I enjoy helping other students.

Posted in Animation Mentor, Family | 1 Comment »

Graduation!

Friday, September 21st, 2007

Wow.  Talk about getting hit with a sledgehammer in the chest.  Figuratively speaking, of course.

Got my invitation to my AnimationMentor graduation ceremony yesterday.  Of course, I still need to pass class 6.  But still…

It’s REAL.

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Cooooool!

Friday, September 21st, 2007

So I don’t know what the usual standards are when discussing jobs in the industry and whatnot, but since I’m new at this animation thing, and since this is the first thing on the subject I’ve had to say, I figure I’ll take it upon myself to write a post while leaving names out. I can’t see how mentioning some of the names would be bad, but I wouldn’t want to overstep any bounds on my end just as I’m starting out.

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