Fate of the Dragon

This is my final demo reel, the culmination of three years of school work. I'll admit that I'm a little ashamed that I don't have more quality pieces, but I guess it's the artist's dilemma: for ever gem there are 10 pieces of coal. But be that as it may, I've learned a lot and I feel confident that my skills will be a benefit to any employer.  I'm particularly proud of the first clip, being it's the first complete 3D sequence I finished. It was a pain to do but I like it.

Fate of the Dragon

Back again. I managed to get some informational interviews done, but of the three I interviewed only one of them gave me hiring procedures. I think I've more or less settled on that one, though it remains to be seen if they'll hire me since I have no previous work experience in the field. I'm hoping they'll like my demo reel enough to still hire me.  Local market is very small, but hopefully it'll be the harbinger to bigger things in the future. I don't know if it's widely known or not, but at some point this month a remake of Thundercats will debut on Cartoon Network. So far it looks good, but I'm still cautiously optimistic. Anyone who grew up in the 80's knows the story of Thundercats, and if the producer get anything wrong, with the writing or casting, the art will not save it. I'm reserving judgement until I've seen an episode myself. This week I have a new portfolio piece that I recently finished. It's a basic gif animation, but it's a full sequence. The final piece of my portfolio is about 60% complete. I still have to finish the art for it.  Really hard making good art without a decent tablet.

Lair of the Dragon

 So I'm back. This was actually a recent piece since I didn't have a really good model showing facial expressions. Here I just kept the facial posing simple.   As of last week, my focus will be on doing 2D animations the rest of the way out.  I recently had the chance to see Tim Burton's rendition of Alive in Wonderland and while the story was a far cry from the one that I grew up with, the only gripe I really have about it, was the Stayne. There were a couple of instances where the CG elements broke away from the live character, and might have been better served just being completely 3D.  Not sure I approve of Alice being turned into a Warrior Maiden, since that wasn't the character I knew.  Without a doubt, Mad Hatter made the movie.  Depp played his character to a T, but he's got experience aplenty in playing eccentric characters.  No matter what innovations are developed, I'll always have a soft spot for old school animation. That was the harbinger of the industry as it stands today.  I'm currently surfing though local employers and production studios that might need animators but haven't settled on anyone yet until I've had the chance to do some informational interview to find out about 

job opportunities. I'll keep you posted. 

 

Day of the Dragon

Sup? Well freelancing has been very slow going, it's just not easy finding freelance jobs when the portfolio you have is still a work in progress. Thus far it's about two-thirds complete, but I'm still working on putting from 2D animations together.  I might have to do a couple of standard gif animations, if even to show that I can do animated icons.  In entertainment news, I recently had the chance to watched the first Family Guy parody of Star Wars Blue Harvest.  Being a big fan of both the movie and the series, it was really well done, but of the three Star Wars parodies, it was definitely the best.  While the humor pushes and frequently crosses the line of taste, Family Guy still remains one of my favorite shows one because it's not afraid of crude humor and it's one of the few animated shows that still largely done in traditional medium.  The flip side of that was that I had the chance to watch a trailer of the new Thundercats set to air at the end of this month. The only thing I'm really worried about is story. As Avatar shows, story can kill anything no matter how good it looks, so if they mess up the casting or the story, a lot of people who grew up in the 80's will be at the creator's throats fast.  I'm reserving judgement until I've seen an episode.  That's all from me. Later all!

Year of the Dragon

So a couple of interesting developments in the last few weeks. The HD on my primary laptop died and essentially made me have to re-do a large majority of my portfolio including most of my 3D pieces. Fortunately I can get most of it back and re-organized. The video is my most recent addition. It's a simulation of a waterfall. It was tough getting the waterfall to look natural.  Think all in all it works pretty well.  A lot of people probably don't know this about me, but I'm a big anime fan, and it might be seen in my style of drawing since it incorporate elements of anime. I'll admit that anime is an acquired taste, but it really is an entirely different animation concept since it frequently deals with serious situations rather than quirky humorous situations. My current favorite is Naruto, even though it's formula has been used before. It never fails to amaze me how good it looks and to know how much work went into producing it. Especially the crowds.  It's widely used technique used to fill in space, but it boggles my mind to think that animating a single character is tough enough, but to do several dozen characters is just amazing to me. On the flip-side, I had the opportunity to also watch American Dad season one, and compared to Family Guy, it really isn't as humorous or as well drawn. Anyway, been looking into some local studios for possible employment but so far accumulating the info has been really trying.  I'll keep yall posted.

Dawn of the Dragon

So I'm back again.  Did some job hunting over the last few days, and for my purposes the pickings have been incredibly slim.  Ohio isn't really know for having a lot of animation positions so I guess it's to be expected.  Nevertheless, I'll need a job almost immediately after I graduate. Freelancing has so far not turned up a single lead, which I guess isn't much of a surprise given that I'm still attending class and likely won't have a completely finished portfolio until then.  This time I'm giving my thoughts on a game and a movie. I recently saw the trailer for the much delayed Duke Nukem Forever, and I think I'm in the large majority who were disappointed, just from the sole reason that it took so long to develop. I knew from the onset when it was announced that it would be released soon, that if it was anything short of phenomenal, that game fans would tear it apart, and rightfully so because of how long it took to develop.   The most striking failure to me is that the graphics just weren't as impressive as they maybe should've been.  In terms of quality, it was really average, which I suppose can't be helped given how many advancements have been made in the gaming industry in the time it's been in development. I also had the chance to watch The Legend of the Guardians: the Owl of Ga'Hoole, and I was pleasantly surprised at how realistic the renderings were. I can't think of many CG features that were anywhere near as realistic. The textures alone had to have been time consuming.  A couple of times I couldn't tell the scenery was CGI. The camera had to be pretty close for me to tell. Only real folly was the scripting. It just didn't make sense to me.  Otherwise, it was a decent quality piece.  Here are a few pieces from my design portfolio. I'll probably add more later.  Still working on a few 2D pieces. TTFN!

Eye of the Dragon

Okay so I'm back. The problem of living in Ohio is that it has a really small design market, so finding worked even remotely related to my field has been next to impossible. Most of the more pertinent  job postings I've seen thus far are near the Great Lakes or Ohio rivers, more specifically Cleveland and Cincinnati.  While relocation for a job is almost a given for me, I don't fancy the idea of remaining in Ohio longer than I need to, just because the career opportunities I can find here really aren't what I had in mind.  Freelancing is more likely the only means I have of finding work, but even there the offerings are still slim. In other news, I reaffirmed my love for old fashion animation with the Nightmare before Christmas and I still firmly believe that to be among the best animated movies of all time, because I can appreciate the amount of worked needed to produce a full-length stop motion film.  I seem to remember a producer for Robot Chicken stating that is can take up to a week to produce ten seconds of footage, which is just mind-boggling to me. On opposite side of the coin, I had the opportunity to watch Alpha and Omega and the reviews were well-founded: it was bad.  Wolves given human names is bad enough, but I seriously doubt we'll ever see a wolf surfing on a log.  Aside from the bad script writing, the other thing I detested was how phony the fur textures looked. Really killed the realism for me.  That's it for now. Later!

Mark of the dragon

So this week I opted to begin freelance work.  Since it's unlikely I'll be able to get an internship before I graduate, I'm using this time to get professional work experience.  I'll be honest, it's a lot hard than I thought it would be, but a part of me steeled me to the trials of being a freelancer.  Design is a very hard line of work unless it's a salaried position. My plan is simply to weather the storm until I can gain enough experience to begin my real job search.  Speaking of,  I think I've settled on Nickelodeon for my future employer.  I think I would have a better fit there since my ultimate goal is to work in TV.  Seems my thoughts on DreamWorks was spot on. I recently watched Megamind and it's going in my list of "shouldn't have been done."  It just wasn't funny and I couldn't find much of anything good to point to.  Conversely, I'm actually looking forward to Cars 2. Pixar has a history of putting out quality movies. In fact, I don't think they've had a dud yet. Wall-E might be the possible exception, but that just my opinion. Later for now!

First Blog

Welcome to my blog. Here I will be discussing my career, obviously, and also comment on the state of the industry as well as provide reviews on movies I've seen recently.  First I guess I'll start with discussing my plans for the immediate future. Since I've been unemployed all year, my first thought is to start lining up prospective freelance jobs, so that I have a steady income flow and also to build up my experience.  Where I go from there is up in the air. Thought I hate to admit it, innovation in the industry has really gone down. With 3D now being the primary format, at least with feature films, there really hasn't been a lot of groundbreaking achievements.  Perhaps most notable, at least to me is Kung Fu panda. Aside from how successful the movie was, and still is, it's probably the first movie to feature a cast, that was entirely inhuman, so it presented the challenge of creating realistic fur textures as well as making clothes for the characters so that the fur responds to it's movements. If you haven't, it's worth it to watch the behind-the-scenes trailer. It really is remarkable to see how they achieved the textures. Speaking of Kung Fu panda, I saw the sequel opening night, and it was, in blunt words, EPIC.  It was apprehensive about seeing it, because of DreamWork's track record with sequels (Shrek anyone?) but I daresay that from a story standpoint, it was much more involved. Without giving anything away, I'll simply say that it's more of a character story this time around, not just showing the trials of learning Kung Fu.  Movie-goers won't be disappointed. On the flip-side of that, I also recently saw Tron Legacy, and I have to say I'm actually a little disappointed. The graphics looked really polished, but the story was really lacking, at least to mind. It shows you that story and kill a feature film or episodic show, no matter how good it looks.  That's all from me. Peace! \\// ^_^