Aspiring Animator – The other A.A.

This is nothing short of pure genius!  I can’t wait to play around with it!

So AM has put out these spiffy little badges for folks to put on their websites.  I think its a great idea as it quickly identifies AM fans, students and alumni.  Way to go AM!

Hey all, like the new theme? ya me too.  I have recently been getting into the whole Twitter phenomenon.  I’m by no means a power user, but I have been keeping that up to date more often than this blog.  I always feel like I have to have something ‘big’ or noteworthy before posting to the blog.  With Twitter, I can just throw quick snippets in.  So, I have integrated a Twitter widget to the blog, so there will be the updates from that, plus I’m hoping it will prompt me to update the blog formally more often.

This coming week is gonna be a great time.  I am going up to Bear Lake with my family for the first half of the week.  After that, I will be heading over to the Bay Area for the Annual AM BBQ.  I’m excited to see a lot of my animation friends again.

I have had a couple freelance projects that have eaten a bunch of my time, and I have felt my animation slipping as of late.  I have had a hard time dealing with this, and have talked to a few AM friends on how they have dealt with similar problems.  I have come to a point where I believe it has all been worked out, and I am ready to dive back into it and continue to pursue the dream of becoming a professional animator.  So, with this blog redesign comes a commitment to spend more time on my wips, and post them often.  If you are stopping by and see something new, please feel free to let me know what ya think.  I will be sure to return the favor.

Hey all, just a quick update.  This are going swell, I have 3 pieces I am working on to put on my demo reel.  I intend to have that ready for the AM Job fair in July.   In other AM news, I am excited to be a Peer Buddy for Spring ’09 Term.  I havent been PB for a few terms, so I’m very excited to get back into the community.  In addition to PB, I am also gonna be a Maya Springboard Trainer!  I’ve never done this before, so I’m excited to see whats up with that.

So I finished up Class 6 and am now a part of Graduation Class 10!  I am heading off to San Francisco next week to attend the graduation ceremony.  This last class or two kinda kicked my butt.  Not for lack of understanding, but mostly for lack of time.  With a new baby in the home after 9 years, it was definatley a change of pace.  I have set up a pretty rigourous schedule to put together some pieces for a demo reel.  So expect to see some updates on that.  Just want to give a shout out to all my family, friends, and AM family for all the love and support. Congratualtions to all of GC10. I expect that we will see great things come from this experience.

So it begins. Again.  After taking a leave of absence last semester, I am back for more.  My Class 6 mentor is Kevin Koch.  I am way excited to learn from him, I have heard great things about him.  Here is a little background on him from his website www.synchrolux.com:

After a brief career in neuroscience and medicine, I’ve been animating professionally for the last 12 years. I actually started before that on a friend’s personal project (Steve Rude and Nexus, specifically), learning from books, and trial and error (still a great teacher). My professional career began at Warner Bros. Feature Animation, in a tall building on Brand Boulevard, as a lowly inbetweener on The Quest for Camelot. I was lucky that my first supervising animator was the inspiring and talented Mike Nguyen, so even though the film was a dud, I couldn’t have been happier. Then I moved over to DreamWorks as an assistant and worked on all the studio’s hand-drawn films, eventually progressing to animator. I learned from and assisted some of the best of the best, people like James Baxter and Kristof Serrand and Rodolphe Guenoden. I switched to CG animation about six years ago when the rest of the industry changed over, and happily found the transition as natural as could be.

My credits include Over the Hedge, Madagascar, Shrek 2, Terra, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, The Road to El Dorado, The Prince of Egypt, and The Quest for Camelot. I’ve also done some freelance and consulting work to keep things interesting.

I enjoy teaching animation, and for the past year I’ve been a Mentor for AnimationMentor.com, teaching Introduction to Animation, Beginning Acting, Advanced Acting, and Short Film Production. There’s nothing like teaching eager students to sharpen your skills and your eye.

Man this stuff is soooo cool!