Yesterday I had my final business of animation class. I had to pitch my thesis to them in a mock pitch. I got some good notes and feel that I am better prepared for when I really pitch my thesis in two weeks. From that class I feel that I have a good website, resume and the skills to network better and write cover letters.

I still haven't heard from Nickelodeon for a while so I've been looking at other internship opportunities. By sheer luck I stumbled upon a company that I like called The Third Floor. On their site they stated that they had an internship program. I wrote a quick cover letter and sent it in and a few minutes later got a call. I have an interview tomorrow with them.

The DP at Total Fistbump Destruction emailed me about a few changes to the storyboard. I have a meeting tomorrow and need to get the final boards in by Friday night. They will have area scouting this weekend.

My friend Matt sent me his script for thesis for my opinion. Also tomorrow I'm meeting him about it. Tomorrow will be a really busy day.

I woke up this morning around 7am. I got up and ready like I usually do but then realized that I don't have to go to school today. After a few moments of internal debate I decided to spend today doing nothing. It was great. I hung out in my underwear, drank some cheap wine and played computer games.

At 6pm I left my apartment. Visions and Voices was happening at USC. It is a mixed media art show organized by some of the SCA faculty. It was really cool. I knew some people who had work in the show.

Also, I finally got my new glasses. I had ordered two pair from Zenni Optical for $30. I now have a titanium rim pair like my old broken one and a thick plastic one. I took an informal pole from some friends and strangers and people are overwhelmingly in favor of the plastic ones.

Had the final meeting for the video game project. Signed some secrecy papers. Until further notice I can only refer to it as USC Game Lab Untitled Project. The project totally has a name though, I'm just not allowed to mention it for some reason. It should be called Secret Project or Project X. That way it sound's a lot cooler than what it really is, video game animation.

Not much news for today. Spent a few hours chipping away at my projects. Got some good progress. I think my mocap project is going to look really good when it is finished.

Had another 10am meeting with the DP about TFD today. We went through the final three scenes. I have to say that I really want to see this movie now. The tipping point was when he looked at one of my panels and said "Ok have them high five each other and put a pile of dead bodies over there." This is a great industry. Where else do you hear such things?

After the meeting I spent the next five hours redrawing them. The approval meeting is tonight and I hope I don't need to redraw too many of them.

I've decided that I need an intern. I've thought about it and my life requires someone who will follow me around and do my busy work for resume fodder and school credit. I spent about two hours scanning and formatting storyboard images for the TFD today. There really should be someone taking care of this sort of stuff. I needed to be at school at 10am today to meet with the DP for TFD. We walked through four scenes this morning and I've been storyboarding them all day. Tomorrow morning we are going to do the final three and present them to the director. I really hope they are accepted. This project is getting a bit TOO intense for my tastes. My friend James asked me to play test his video game today. It still has a few bugs but it is a fun game. Its a lot about strategy and negotiations. Also, this was my first time playing with the IPad. I like it. I don't see myself owning one though. Here's one of the boards. The quality isn't what I'd like but the amount of boards I'm pumping out requires a faster sketch.

Slept in today. Southern California is getting how fast so I woke up sweaty around ten and made some coffee. Nothing in my apartment looked appetizing so I ended up just getting a chicken sandwich at the Wendy's down the street.

I got an email stating that the film students I'm working for need a rough draft of the storyboards Monday. So early tomorrow I'm going to rush through the final scene with the help of the DP. Today I finished up the second scene, scanned and sent them to the film students.

Apparently Robert Zemeckis is making a new Mocap movie. Who would have guessed?

Here's a shot that I think sums up the entire film. This army guy just smashed the masked guy in the face with the butt of his rifle. The masked guy just shakes it off and shoots him. The army guys reaction is less terrifying and more "Really? This is happening right now?"

I met with the DP of Total Fistbump Destruction today. He approved the first scene and we walked through the next one. I'll probably have it done by Saturday and get my next scene Monday. I'm starting to think that this project might get done sooner rather than later. My other projects were slowly worked away on. I ended up having some free time today. Not a lot but enough. I went to the campus bar and attended a lecture with Ralph Egglesten. He was the art director for Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Wall-E. Basically he desides what the over all look of the film is. If you study some great films you'll see that some scenes are different color depending on the mood or plot. An art director does that. Here's a couple storyboard pictures from TFD. Its such a violent film that the people in the Jason hockey masks are the good guys.

I've settled into a good routine for projects that I hope I can continue until the semester ends. I'm working on every project about an hour or so a day. Every time I switch focus on one project to another I have a big burst of enthusiasm that can carry me about an hour. After that I tend to lose focus. With my method I'm getting a lot done. With some luck I'll have some time off to vege at the end of the semester.

I finished off my revisions of the first scene of Total Fistbump Destruction. I'm meeting with the DP tomorrow to see if I should move on to the second scene. I'm actually learning a whole lot from this project. I don't have much camera experience so drawing out complicated camera angles is a good way to learn. Also, I'm getting really good at drawing guys with machine guns.

The Tokyo project seems to be on the verge of ending. They hated our original idea but our revised one seems to be working. It has a nice message of togetherness in it. My friend Matt is doing the storyboards on it. We should be able to send it out Saturday or Monday depending one when he finishes up layout.

Found out about this cool independent no-budget special effects movie called Project London. It should be coming out soon. Everyone working on it is a volunteer and it looks professionally made.

For the first time in weeks I can honestly claim that I have moved forward on my motion capture final project. I've figured out how to progress on this part of the timeline and I can say modestly that it looks pretty good. I have to thank my actors for doing a great job. If you don't know I am recreating an imfamously bad fight scene from the original Star Trek show in motion capture. Here's the clip I'm working from.

I met with the DP of the live action film I'm working on. Everything about this show is really intense, especially the people. I had some questions about some of the shots and my friend Alec started acting out all these battle scenes. I took down some notes and will meet him with revised storyboards Friday.

At seminar today we had USC alum and animation producer Barry Weiss. He's worked on such films as Starship Troopers, Stuart Little, the Spiderman movies and recently Yogi Bear. It was interesting to hear from the managerial side of animation. He had some good stories about being the intermediate between the studio heads and the animators.

My new website is up and running. You can find it at www.ianmccormack.net There might be a few bugs in it still so let me know if you find anything wrong with it. Its nice to know how to update a website now. Before I felt really helpless when it came to upkeeping it. I don't know any web designers to my site wasn't updated for years. Had a Skype call with two USC alumni now working at Pixar today. It was for my pre-thesis class. We all spoke about overcoming obsticals on thesis. I feel better about my film now as I believe that I am on the right track. Ordered some glasses over the internet via www.zennioptical.com today. I bought two pair for $30. My friend Sara suggested the site. I needed to enter in my Pupil Distance though and my perscription sheet didn't tell me. My friend Matt and I took a half hour trying to figure it out.

Didn't do a whole lot of thesis this weekend. Mostly worked on my report for the informational interview, played around in Mocap a bit and started out on the storyboard project. Mocap is getting a bit frustrating. I think when I figure out a couple technical problems, things will go much more smoothly. Until then it is a lot of looking through my old notes and trying stuff out. Everytime I think I've gone forward I find that I need to start over. I have almost a month though. I'm not too worried. The storyboarding is going fine. The director of photography has given me a list of shots to draw out. I've done some rough thumbnails for about a third of them today and will send them over tonight for review.

Today I traveled all the way to Santa Monica to meet with David Rosenbaum, head of story at Illumination Entertainment. This was a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I was required to meet with a person in the industry for my Business of Animation class. I spoke with some people via email about going to Illumination and found out last night that I was able to go. At the studio they are still doing some work on Hop which came out last Friday. They are planning out theme park rides and other stuff to capitalize on Hop's financial success. This was mostly marketing though. Production was working on the Lorax which is coming out on March 12th of next year. Danny Devito is playing the Lorax. The director of Dispicable Me and the French animation company that made it will work on this film and the Dispicable Me sequel.

I met with the critical studies students today about storyboarding their film. They want the storyboards to be done by May 22 which should make the project a good end to the year. This should turn out to be a good learning experience and help me find out if I'm into being a storyboard artist.

The film's working title is Total Fistbump Destruction and is based off the Army of Two video game. This will be an intersting project.

Finished off the day by working on mocap and studying an old Yogi Bear storyboard.

Here's some more life drawing:

I've had a couple meetings about SCFX over the last few days. One at the SCA graduate council meeting about getting a website. The school won't directly fund it but they will give us gift cirtificates to the USC bookstore. This might work out, especially if we get a student to run it. Another meeting was this afternoon. A freshman is creating a new social network site for USC groups. It should be useful in getting people to the SCFX events.

Last night I had a website building class. The professor wanted a volunteer to use as an example website. I volunteered and he pretty much built my website for me. It looks good but now I don't know how to make a website. The site should be up in a week or so.

I'm working on Mocap all day today. I helped out a classmate yesterday and today I'm cleaning up the data on the footage I took Monday. There's a lot of bugs but I think I can get through it all today and start the next step tomorrow.

I'm thinking about taking a new job. I spoke with a critical studies student today about an independant project he is putting together. It is a short film based on a video game. I'm going to meet him tomorrow and discuss if I'll be storyboarding it. It should be good portfolio fodder.

Here's some more life drawing: