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.

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.

Last night we had a wonderful opportunity to go up to the University of Utah and listed to Dr. Catmull speak.

It was an excellent talk on the industry, studio environment, and how to develop yourself personally.  It was amazing how some themes have been reoccurring lately.  I have picked up the book The Power of Now as recommended by Bobby Beck. At first it was kind of a mind job (not that its too difficult to go over my head) but a lot of the things taught in that book are appearing everywhere, including Dr. Catmulls speech.   There was some talk of not getting too caught up in the past, and taking the time to fix what wrong at this moment.  There was a great line delivered, and I may be taking it completely out of context, but it struck a chord with me. He said “its easier to fix your mistakes, than to show them”  I really took that to heart as I find that one of my weaknesses is what I call the ‘good enough syndrome’  Maybe I get tired, or other matters are requiring my attention and it becomes all to easy to look at my shot and say ‘thats good enough’ knowing all too well every little mistake that needs to be fixed.

Real quick, I also found a little article on the local news website about Dr. Catmulls visit.

A University of Utah alumnus is sitting on top of one of the most powerful companies in Hollywood. But what can his company do to keep from being hurt by the recession?

He’s the head of two major animation studios, and even he, at one time, had doubts of his animation skills.

Pixar Animation and Disney Animation Studios President Edwin Catmull said, “By the time I got ready to go to college, I came to believe I couldn’t draw well enough.” He added, “I now know in retrospect that I had the skills that I could have gotten there.”

Catmull says tough economic times can make people revert to behavior that’s worked in the past to avoid risk, which doesn’t always work.

“Something will go wrong. So, your measure is not whether you avoid risk or not. It’s what you do when things go wrong,” he said.

Catmull says even his companies haven’t grown to recession-proof status yet.

“We’re always at the edge of having something disastrously go wrong. I think part of the trick is just to realize that,” he said.

Since he’s run Pixar, he’s seen things go wrong many times. Catmull says every movie Pixar has made has had major problems, and in some cases, the company has had outright meltdowns.

“‘Toy Story 2,’ the core story was the same, but they retold it because it didn’t work the first time. Same with ‘Ratatouille,’ it was always about a rat in a kitchen, but the first time, it wasn’t watchable,” he explained.

The next movie is called “Up,” and it’s set for release in May.

“It’s a 70-year-old man and a young boy who go off on a phenomenal adventure,” he said.

After that, “Toy Story 3″ is up for release in 2010. It includes all the stars who worked on the first two, with the exception of the late Jim Varney. But, plans still call for using the “Slinky” character.

“There will be somebody else doing the voice,” Catmull said.

After that, it will release “Newt,” “The Bear and the Bow” and “Cars 2.” He says it’s too soon to release any details on any of those movies.