Fall 2013... Epic!

In a nutshell, this was my Fall 2013 semester.

-Lead animator for the Dave Yee directed short film "Jimmy Loves Juice" which premieres this Wed, Dec 18 at University Theater, SJSU at 10am.

Jimmy Loves Juice Trailer:
https://vimeo.com/81298031

-Attended my first CTN expo and was amazed by the awesome talent that is out there.  Went to informative lectures and demos and finally met one of my favorite inspirations in person, Ryan Woodward.  He gave a great talk about how to stay motivated in this profession and the importance of personal work to one's creative potential.  I also had a chance to show my reel to various studios who were so tremendously kind in taking the time to not only take the time to go through my entire reel, but pick each shot apart and give me constructive feedback on them all.  Big thanks to the guys at Reel FX and Sony Animation especially!

My 2013 Demo Reel:

-In Raquel's advanced 3d animation class, we had the opportunity to do not one but TWO collaborative projects which I enjoyed immensely.  Dave Yee brought up the old adage and I echo his sentiment completely in that "the whole is almost always greater than the sum of its parts."  We had a group of three for our first collaboration and then a group of six for the final.

"Cheese, Please"
Animators: Michael Claus, Julio Diaz, Edric Yamamoto

"Jeffrey"
Narrator: Ryan Eways
Animators: Michael Claus, Melissa Palacios, Jessica Reilly, Daniel Sambrano, Casey Straka, Edric Yamamoto

-All in all, this would've been an epic semester all on its own.  But on the last day of class I received a call from Dreamworks Animation letting me know that my application had been selected to come in for an interview for an internship.  Today I got the call back from DW offering me the position for the upcoming spring semester!  Surfing on cloud 9 and so excited for the new year.  Gotta represent the Shrunkenheadman Club and do them proud!  Fire it up!

- And last but not least, I started up my speed animations again =)  Hoping to keep it up over the winter break.

Ball Bounce, Stewart - 3 hours (2 nights)

Speed Animation #3 - 51 Great Animation Exercises to Master

Winter break is here!! Semester was freakin' epic but I'll write a longer post this week regarding all that.

It's time to get back on the horse in terms of personal work.  Among the many things I want to accomplish are starting up the speed animations that I barely got into before the end of semester crunch got underway.  My friend Samia forwarded me this link about 51 great animation tests that one should try and master to really work the fundamentals, so together this break, we're going to see how many we can get through.

http://www.animatorisland.com/51-great-animation-exercises-to-master/

Our plan is to do a two night pass on the first couple.  First night is getting as far as we can get through it but minimally, have a nice blocking set up. Second night is polish.

The first one, a ball bounce, seemed rather simple so we decided to spice it up a bit.  I wanted to try out Animation Mentor's free rig, Stewart, as well so this was as good as time as any.

First pass is here. Took about and hour and a half to set up, mess with the controls and get some blocking in.  After looking at it, I really need to push the squash and stretch far more.  Tomorrow!