To quote my History of Animation Professor

"It helps to think other than the ordinary"

and

"Animation is the art of impossible worlds.."




I'd like to get into the business of impossible worlds and thinking other than the ordinary.. Sounds like fun! (Also sounds like some stuff I've read about Jesus doing.)

PIXAR at SCAD

Before spring break, a group of people came down from PIXAR to look at some SCAD demo reels and give a talk to all the wannabe's.

Fellow Animators also taking a short rest from finals stress: Sarah Riser and Jyreme Mcmillion

This is Jason Johnston, an effects artist and effects sequence lead.

Becki Tower came back home! She was a SCAD Bee before she left to go to PIXAR.
Also: Notice how close we were sitting to them- my friends and I came an hour early to sit in the front row...Just in case they wanted to high-five us or something. We wanted to be ready and available in the event that anything of the awesome nature should happen.

Ellen Lee gave a presentation about graphic design in PIXAR's films. I never realized how much graphic design played a part in the design of Wall-e. Next time you watch it, take a closer look at all of the advertisements in the Axiom- pretty amazing.

some beauuuutiful notes

Danielle Feinberg- Director of Photography (Lighting) and Ellen Lee. They had cool stuff to say.

I'm working hard and keeping my fingers crossed.. One of these days I'm gonna have a kick butt demo reel. Hold me to that.

All Nighter in Montgomery

Rose and I had a lot of finals to finish up last quarter and somewhere in the night we got camera happy.

Life is a Bosch of Chocolates

These are some final renders of all of the models (1) and (2) from (this) sketch- that I created during the Winter 2009 quarter in Professor Valentine's Digital Form Space and Lighting class. I hope nobody notices that the bird who plays his nose is floating.

My Mom owes me an American Girl Doll

Alright guys- As I have been in Disney World for the past few days, and Finals at SCAD took over my life prior to that, I have a bit of updating to do.

Firstly, take a gander at this screenshot:


Some of you may know this, but Math (and several other classes) have never been my strongsuit. The last time I've ever had straight A's was in 4th grade. My mom told 9 year old version of me that I could get an American Girl Doll if I ever made straight A's again....... though it never happened again.

UNTIL THIS YEAR!!!!


How about I worked my little tooshie off so hard last quarter. Not much sleeping was happening in the last 3 weeks especially. Also, the models that I made in the first half of the quarter took around... say between 6-10 hours... Well, now, I'm a bit more effecient at modeling and could probably pull them off in under 3 or 2 hours. The newest batch of models were done in about a week, whereas with the first five I was just learning the basic controls of Maya and took me nearly 6 weeks to be happy with the way they were built.

All of this to say:
Dear Mom, I hope the American Girl offer still stands. I worked very hard last quarter. I might have almost gone crazy a few times. I want this one:

Miss Havisham's Dining Room

Finals just finished up today at SCAD and here are some stills of the room I created in Maya- I chose Miss Havisham's room from Great Expectations (thanks to all those who helped me work through making a decision!

Soon, I'm going to show you how I did it!

Fun With Maya in Digital Form, Space, and Lighting

Maybe I'm a worrier

My roomate says I worry about things too much, and that could be true,
BUT- every time I think about planning and making my senior film my stomach absolutely turns inside out. Basically, it jumps and folds inside itself until it is wrongside out and then turns to solid rock. I am excited to come up with ideas and plan and actually make the thing, but after I have a rough time with Maya, I start to panic and think that I'll never learn everything fast enough! Or I'll worry that I won't be able to find anyone to help me do it (so I'm not all by myself) because most people I know don't have ANY spare time to work on outside of class things!

I don't even have to start planning it for another year, but I feel like the pressure's on NOW to learn everything along the way so that when it comes time to use it, I will know it extra well. Plus, I am out of money and need scholarships to be able to stay at SCAD. Gotta get A's, baby!

Blah, blah blah, whine whine whine. Whatever.

finding a tutor was a very good idea!

This quarter at SCAD, along with trying to do at least one Maya tutorial a day, I finally took advantage of SCAD's free tutoring... capabilities? Don't get me wrong- I love class time and learning from professors who have worked in the industry, but I learn SO much when it's just one-on-one. The tutors that have been helping me know what they're talking about and if I get lost, I can ask a question right there (without having to decide if I want to interrupt in front of a class of 20 people) Plus, if I want to know why something works the way it does, or what 'specular' means what 'uv mapping' is for or why 'quads' are good and 'n-gons' are bad- they almost always can explain or show me on the spot the answer to my question.

The two guys who have been helping me learn this stuff are Matt and Dorien. They are nerds in the most complementary sense of the word. Meaning, I would bet all of my scholarships that they are going to get jobs when they graduate.

Did I tell yall I changed my room project? Yeah, I kept thinking about how much I loved Great Expectations and I remembered a picture of a rotting cake that I drew in... what, 8th grade? (Mom if you are reading this- have you seen that drawing anywhere? Where has it gone?!)
During the time that I was making all of the Hansel and Gretel concept development stuff, I caught my mind wandering more and more towards victorian furniture and spider webby creepily lit rooms. About a weeek (or two) ago, I just decided to go for it. I was obviously more excited about Miss Havisham's room and I was more confident that I could resolve it in time for finals.


Here are some curtain tests for the room :



Steady wind blowing a curtain



Now, there's an object in the way colliding with the curtain. Getting here was not easy, internet viewers.



Some tweaking and voila-Wind speed variations!



Here, I was just being obnoxious.


I am very excited to continue working on the room- I don't think it's as insurmountable as I thought it was prior to today.