My intention today was to work on compositing. However, I needed to drop off a motion capture suit off at the Zemeckis Center first. When I got there my friend Eric was setting up a mocap session for his final project. I ended up helping him for about four or five hours. It was a lot of fun and I ended up learning a bit too. Eric is in production so it was good to be around someone who knew how to direct.

After I helped my classmate Jordan with auditions for his thesis. This was another area where I'm not good at so the practice was appreciated. It was wierd seeing grown woman doing voices of an eight year old girl though.

The Disney trip is tomorrow so I printed out color versions of my Slash and Burn. I hope to show it off to some Disney storyboard folks.

Here's some more life drawings:

Had a 14 hour day yesterday. That was pretty exhausting. I got in around 10am to work on prep for a Mocap assignment. It was all good until I read an article saying that Mars Needs Moms is going straight to DVD in Europe. That's not a good sign for Mocap artists. I messed around with storyboards as well. Disney Inspire Day is Thursday and I want to update my storyboard portfolio a bit. In Business of Animation class the mad who helped bring the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to America was our guest. I don't know how much he is worth but he helped out on a few multi-billion dollar deals. After class I spent several hours in the Mocap room. Matt, Allen and Laura helped me out on recreating a funny fight scene. It went fairly well despite some crashes of Blade. This morning I sat in on lecture from a mad auditioning to be the new animation professor. His name was Matt Wallin. He is a vfx guy. Some say we have too many of them already but I welcome anyone who can get me a job after graduation.

Career day went well this week. I was able to get some good information on internships for the summer. I spent the next couple days after following up on the contacts I've made there. There is a production internship at Nickelodeon that I'm going to pursue. My friend Matt took it last summer and had good things to say about it.

I've been working on new layouts for my storyboards. Using Maya I'm trying out a variety of new views. Its led to me realizing I have a few continuity errors. I think this is going to be a method I'll use from now on.

I'm going to Disney on Thursday for a tour. I went last year and had a lot of fun.

While making a storyboard portfolio I shot some of my lifedrawings here's a page from it:

I spent a whole week not thinking about thesis. It was great! The next couple weeks aren't going to be that fun though as I am aware that a huge chunk of the storyboards I've drawn out are going to have to be thrown away. After not seeing it for a week I'm noticing some slow parts in the story that need to be sped up and some funny parts that could be milked a little more. I don't think it will shorten the length of the film overall though.

Career day is tomorrow. I'm rushing to put together a good storyboard portfolio. One of my friends has a good one and she is going to help me out today.

I'm taking a break for a week on working on my animatic. After studio day I got some good pointers and have shown the revisions to some classmates and professors. Overall I've worked on it a few hours a day, every day for about a week. I'm tired of it now and want to step back and degest the story before touching it again. I have a feeling that there might be major changes when I get back to it.

Compositing going good. I'm surprising myself with how much of it I'm actually understanding.

Here's the latest version of the animatic. Quick note, the man in the hat and the man without the hat are the same person. I haven't finished redrawing all the panels.

After Studio Day I worked on some suggestions Illumination gave me yesterday. They seem to think that I could use the animatic as a portfolio piece so I'm recutting it to be showy. I'm introducing some better angles and layout. I've also cut it down about a two seconds today. Its not much compared to the five minutes I've already cut out but any amount of time is good.

Worked on Nuke for a few hours today as well. There are a few things that I don't really understand at the moment but I'm learning it fairly well.

Here's the last of the Slash faces for now. It's his face when he falls for the princess.

Studio day was today. It was fun and I enjoyed showing my work to some great studios. Out of all the studios Illumination was most interested in my work. They said I had the talent to be a good storyboard artist. That was very encouraging.

After showing off my demo reel I was able to show off my thesis animatic to some great artists. They gave me some advise on how to cut the film down. I spent a few hours working on it and have reduced my animatic by about ten seconds. This makes the pacing a little better and will reduce the work I have to do.

Here's slash in laughing faces:

I bought some clay today and started making small sculptures of Slash. Someone pointed out that he is looking a bit like Shrek. I'm torn between rethinking the character design and not caring. I'm also starting armor designs. I came up with some cool ones but I think I like the chain mail design the best.

For Seminar tonight we had Max Naparowski. He's one of our computer animation professors. I haven't had him as a teacher but he seemed cool. He was very technical but I was able to get a lot out of the class.

Here's sketches of Slash in angry faces:

Spent the morning doing character designs for thesis. My teacher suggests I start building models out of sculpy. When that is done I'm going to start looking for a cinematographer to help out with layout. Layout is my weakest area and I'd like to hire someone who is more experienced.

I figured out a new node on Nuke today. Multiply is simple and only seems to work for flickering candles but is a cool trick.

Here is my daily character image; Slash with a happy face: