AnimSchool!

Okay, I feel just a little embarrassed.

In the last post, I ended with a teaser about a possible teaching opportunity, saying that I would share "more on that later."  I guess that I got so wrapped up in actually doing it that I forgot to come back later and write about it.

In early April, I began teaching the inaugural Intro to Maya class with AnimSchool.  I was approached about the opportunity by my friend Tony Bonilla, who works as the curriculum manager for AnimSchool in addition to teaching several classes.  It didn't take much prodding for Tony to convince me that this could be a fun opportunity, so I took the plunge.  As of this writing, the term is nearly over, and I can definitely say that it's been a great experience, and I'm looking forward to the next term, which kicks off in July.

One of the perks that the students get at AnimSchool is a full recording of every live class lecture.  Little did I know that Tony and friends would take one of these lectures and turn it into a short promo video for the course.   I guess I should have seen it coming.  ;)

Joinin' Jamaroos!

It's funny...when I switched from 3D animation to technical development at Reel FX several years ago, I was pretty much ready to just let animation go and never do it again.  Even though several friends and colleagues responded to this change with comments like, "Once an animator, always an animator," I wasn't convinced.  I mean, animation at that time had sorta become an artsy synonym for "stress" in my book.  Why on earth would I want to pick it up again?

I bet you know where this is going.

Yup.  I'm animating again.

You know what else?

It's fun again!

Zap the zebra from Jamaroos

Early last week I sat down with Dale Carman, one of the co-founders of Reel FX, who had approached me about possibly contributing both creatively and technically to a side project of his called Jamaroos.  It's a series of interactive books for the iPhone and iPad (and related iDevices) that aims to entertain and engage young readers with fun stories and characters.  The first book in the series, Z is for Zap, is already available for the iPad on the iOS app store, with an iPhone version coming soon.

I quickly became interested in the project, and joined the Jamaroos team as a freelance animator/developer.  For now I'm helping to complete animation on the next book in the series, J is for Jag, but I hope to get a taste of the development side of things in the future.  And yes, I'll probably do a little voice work as well.  :)

So what makes animating on Jamaroos so fun?  After working on it for the past week or so, I think it has to do with simplicity: the characters are very simply designed and drawn, and the animation tool we're using has very simple controls for animating them.  This forces us to keep our animation simple, but don't think that simple means boring.  These books are all about rewarding kids' touches on the screen with entertaining moments, and I'm blessed to be creating these moments alongside my friend Barrett Lewis, one of my former Reel FX compadres and a creative lead on the Jamaroos project.  We're constantly throwing ideas back and forth, and are pouring all of our animation knowledge into these characters to make their performances as lively and whimsical as possible while working within the constraints of the animation tool.  I'm constantly amazed at what we're able to come up with using nothing but 2D images assembled into simple hierarchies, and animated mostly using position, rotation, and scale.  It's forcing us to think much more creatively, which just adds to the fun of it all once we see what we can actually pull off.

So yeah, I'm animating again, and I'm having a blast doing it.  What's more, I'm only doing it part-time, so I can do other work as well, like VO and acting...

...and maybe teaching?

More on that later.  ;)

Winnin' with minions, part 2

Dang, this just keeps gettin' cooler.  :)

Last night, another award was bestowed up on "Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem," the 3D ride film that was produced at Reel FX for the fine folks at Universal Orlando and Illumination Entertainment.  This one was from the Visual Effects Society, another of the major names in award-giving for the CG/VFX industry, and was for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Special Venue Project.

To win both an Annie Award and a VES Award in the same year may not be that big of a deal for some studios, but it's a huge deal for Reel FX.  Unless my memory is fading prematurely, the studio has never won an Annie Award, though several of its creations have been nominated in past years.  I'm not as clear about the VES awards.  I know the studio has submitted material in the past, and I think received nominations, but I don't recall if any VES awards have followed.  If someone at the studio sees this and can correct the record, I'll update the post accordingly.

Memory-fuzziness aside, to receive awards from both organizations in the same year is a major achievement for Reel FX, and I applaud my formerly-fellow studio minions for their amazing work on this project.  Even though I'm no longer with the studio, I was very deeply involved in the project while I was there, and couldn't be happier about this pair of awards.  While the bestowal of awards is never (or shouldn't be) the goal of any effort of this kind, it's wonderfully gratifying when one is received.  When that one becomes two, it's a double helping of awesomesauce.

Winnin' with minions

One of the final projects that I worked on at Reel FX before making the jump was "Despicable Me: Minion Mayhem," a ride film for Illumination Entertainment and Universal Studios.  It was a blast getting to work with Gru, the girls, and of course the ever-present minions, but it was quite a challenge at several levels, and many of the technical hurdles came across my desk at various points throughout the project's production.  I specifically remember spending several incredibly-late nights at the studio, feverishly cranking on code or troubleshooting problematic playblasts.  To say that I've got mixed feelings about the project is an understatement, so it was quite gratifying to surface from fixing some elusive technical issues on a freelance programming job to find reports that "Minion Mayhem" won for Best Animated Special Production in the Annie Awards!

Congratulations to all of my friends and former co-workers who poured their blood, sweat, and tears into the job.  Y'all done good, gang.  :)

Today is my last day at Reel FX. It's been a fun eight years, but it's time to move on. From here forward, it's all about getting on mic, on camera, or on stage. Thanks to everyone who has been a part of the journey so far. It's been quite a ride, and I can't wait to see what comes next!

One of the pieces that I animated several years ago ties in nicely with my feelings regarding the next phase of the journey. It's probably my favorite piece out of all the work that I did as an animator, in part because I had so much fun animating it, but also because it represents (in some small degree) the joy that I feel when I have the chance to perform. I hope that you enjoy watching it as much as I did being a part of its creation.

Change is coming

In one month, my life will change. Dramatically.

I initially discussed this change with my wife nearly a year ago, and we planned to take action at the end of last year, but it just wasn't the right time. However, after a few more months of planning and thought and prayer and work, things finally started to fall into place. I announced my plan at work on April 30th, and now it's time to share it here.

As of July 25th, I will no longer be working at Reel FX, and will be pursuing acting and voiceover (and some other creative interests) full-time.

I'm both exhilarated and terrified at the thought of what's about to happen, but as I've been telling many people recently, I can't not do this. Years ago I thought that I would be satisfied acting through animated characters. It took seven years to learn that I was wrong. I then thought that I would be satisfied working as a not-so-mild-mannered programmer by day and dabbling in voiceover on the side. It took four years to learn that I was wrong there, too. This fire is just too strong to burn "on the side." It's begging for my undivided attention, and in a month, I'll finally be able to satisfy that request.

FWIW, this blog -- and my justinanimator.com web site -- will likely change just a touch as a result of this transition, though the exact nature of that change is still unknown.  I still love programming and animation, and I'd like to think that I can keep sharing elements of those interests here, but only time will tell.  Keep an eye on this space for more info.

Let the countdown begin!

I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat!

Entertainment Weekly has posted a sneak peek at I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat, a new CG animated short film featuring Sylvester and Tweety.  The short is one of three new theatrical Looney Tunes shorts that Reel FX has produced for Warner Bros, and one of two that feature revived audio of classic cartoon voice talent, Mel Blanc.  June Foray, another legend in the world of cartoon character voices, was brought in to voice Granny.


I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat will play in front of Happy Feet Two this coming weekend, while the other two shorts -- one featuring Daffy and Elmer (again with Mel's stellar vocals), the other bringing back Wile E Coyote and Roadrunner for more mayhem -- will appear in front of other WB features in 2012.

Fixing Toolbar Issues in Maya 2012

One of the guys at work came to me with an odd problem: he couldn't get the Tool Settings dialog to appear. Clicking the middle button in the upper-right corner of Maya's main window normally makes this dockable dialog pop into view just to the left of the main viewport. In this case, it just made the viewport edge shift ever-so-slightly from left to right. It didn't create the usual drag bar, so we couldn't force the width using the mouse. Restarting Maya did no good. After digging into the UI elements, I found that the width of the dialog's main formLayout was at 0. However, forcing it to a different value did absolutely nothing.

I was pretty sure that Autodesk had to have created a way of keeping track of all those nifty dockables in Maya 2012, and it took a while to figure out where they put it. While the file where this data is stored is not exactly formatted for human eyeballs, I was able to read a bunch of things like "dockState," "dockControl," "dockWidget," and "toolBar", though, so I was pretty confident that I had the right thing. We closed Maya, renamed the file, opened Maya, and presto! The Tool Settings panel was working again!

If you run into this problem, the file in question is named "startupMainWindowState", and is the lone file stored in Maya's prefs/mainWindowStates folder. As I said above, it's not anything can can be edited manually (at least not easily). However, Autodesk did create a simple way to save and load the settings contained in this file. In the windowPref command, there are a couple flags that do the job: saveMainWindowState and restoreMainWindowState. If you make your own dockable windows or toolbars, those commands should let you save and restore their state so that you don't have to manually re-position them every time you make them. I haven't tested them yet, but I plan on doing so tomorrow, and will update this post with my findings.

Sneak peek at upcoming RFX project

I had the opportunity to work on a cool project at Reel FX last summer. We were awarded a contract to construct a series of sculptures to coincide with the opening of a new light rail station not far from the studio. Part of the prep phase involved posing some 3D models in Maya, with the resulting models to be used as templates for the final sculptures, and I had the honor of creating the needed poses under the watchful eye of Brandon Oldenburg, VP of Creative at Reel FX, who designed the installation.

Work is well underway on construction of the sculptures, although I can't give any more details at this time regarding what they'll be. However, if you happened to pop into Reel FX during the last month or two, you probably would have seen a work-in-progress version of one small portion of one sculpture sitting in our main atrium. If you didn't...I'm so sorry. Other than that, I can only say this: they will be BIG!

For more info, and a sneak peek at some of the smaller components of the installation (not to scale, in case you're wondering), check out the official site for the Deep Ellum Gateway Project. With the opening of the new station slated for September of this year, I imagine more info about the installation will come along any day now.

Open Season 2 trailer

Pop on over to the Reel FX web site to take a look at the first trailer for Open Season 2. I think it was a little over a year ago when we animated the test for Sony, we started working on cycles in October, and primary animation ran from early November through June/July of this year. Even with the initial animation stress mentioned in an earlier post, the overall project went very smoothly, with very little overtime, and everyone did an outstanding job. From what I understand, it'll hit shelves around January of '09.

Here there be Pythons!

I recall first hearing about Python when it was added many years ago to Blender, a cool little 3D app that I used for a stretch near the end of my days at the Art Institute. However, its inclusion in Blender was largely meant (from what I can remember, anyway) as a means to assist in the development of interactive 3D applications...namely, games. I wasn't interested in doing games, so I ignored it. I discovered Animation:Master not long before graduation, so Blender went bye-bye, and so did any thoughts of Python.

The next time I recall hearing about Python was some time in the last year or so, when I heard that we use it at Reel FX. It's becoming very popular to embed Python support into 2D and 3D production software, and number of the tools that we use are apparently making the shift to Python from their own proprietary scripting languages. I noticed its inclusion in recent versions of Maya, but didn't dig into it right away for some unknown reason. I think that part of my hesitancy was because I heard that Python was an object-oriented language, and the few times I had tried to wrap my head around object-oriented programming, something just wasn't clicking.

One of the things that was discussed in my annual review was broadening my knowledge base in the area of programming/scripting languages. It was recommended that I start with Python, so after we wrapped animation on Open Season 2 and things settled down a bit, I started digging into it. I've only been working with it for a short stretch -- less than a month, I think -- but I feel it's pretty safe to say that I've become a Python junkie.

I just can't get enough of it! I don't think I've ever found a language that was so powerful, and yet so easy to learn. While I spent a good bit of time reading about it before I sat down to start actually using it, I found that I was able to jump into real, usable programs very quickly because the core syntax is so intuitive and easy to learn, and because there are so many things you can do with the collection of modules that come packaged with it. After using it for only a couple days, I was able to start writing some fairly in-depth tools for work, and in some cases it's the kind of stuff that would be literally impossible to do with MEL (the Maya Embedded Language). The majority of what I've done with it so far has been organized in a very "structured" way, similar to how I would build a MEL script. However, I'm starting to explore classes and objects as I work on porting our existing MEL-based pose library tool into a Python-based animation library tool, and it's coming along really well.

I certainly wouldn't call myself a "Pythonista" at this point, but I'm very pleased with what I've been able to do with it so far, and I'm super excited about all the possibilities that it opens up. In addition to using it at work, I plan on using Python for a number of personal projects. One idea I'm toying with is rewriting some (or possibly all) of my tweenMachine tool in Python, which I hope would speed up some of its operation, and also would make it easier to add some of the new features that I've had in the back of my mind for a while. I also plan on using Python for a personal web project that was originally going to be driven by PHP, and might convert some existing PHP-based web stuff to Python as well.

Yeah, I now...I can see some folks making the hammer/nail comparison when I talk about it like that (i.e. when a guy gets a new hammer, all the world becomes a nail). However, Python isn't just a hammer. It's an entire toolbox, and that's what I think I like about it the most. As the Python community likes to say, it comes with "batteries included," and I'm eager to put those batteries to use!

P.S. Yes, this is one of the reasons why I haven't yet posted a link for purchasing the last few Animate a Face sets. I do hope to get that up soon, though, and I appreciate those who have written so far to express interest in it. Watch for an announcement here in the hopefully-not-too-distant future! :)

Looking back on the year

Yeah, I know most folks do this kind of thing in December, but considering that I just had my annual performance review at Reel FX (they always do it in the summer...don't ask me why), I thought it would be appropriate to toss some stuff out here.

It's definitely been an interesting year since my review last summer, with the most significant change being the switch from animator to TD that happened about halfway through. If you'd told me last July that in six months I'd be stepping away from animation, I probably would not have believed it. It might have sounded like an interesting hypothetical situation, but I still don't know that I would have accepted the reality of it it too readily. Even when I knew that I absolutely had to step away from animation, it was difficult bringing myself to actually believe it. After thinking about this for a while, I feel that part of that reluctance was due to recollections of a special church blessing I received many years ago. In this blessing, there's a phrase that's always stuck out to me. From what I recall, it says, "Don't get stuck in a rut in jobs you don't like."

It sounds pretty straightforward when you first look at it. For me, though, I never imagined that animation would become the rut. I always saw it as the thing that was keeping me out of the rut, and up until the point when the stress really started settling in, the mental picture of my career path was full of nothing but animation. I also remember hearing in high school about how the average person has several "careers" over the course of their lifetime, and recall thinking to myself, "That's ridiculous. Why go through all that? Just find something you like and stick with it. Why is that so hard?" And again, once I landed upon animation, I always felt that would be my job for the rest of my life. Why go through the hassle of switching when I've found something I love?

Well, apparently that love wasn't as deep as I initially believed. I'm still picking through the pieces and trying to find the one that is/was the key to the crash. Even if I don't find that piece, though, I'm at peace knowing that I've successfully made the transition to something that I truly believe I love more. Now don't get me wrong, I still have a strong love for the broad spectrum of animation. It's something about the process of animating that isn't exactly my cup o' cocoa.

It's interesting, though...several people have made the comment, "Once an animator, always an animator," and initially I was quick to dismiss that thought. I figured that once it's gone, it's gone. However, after further thought, it's probably not a good idea to be so quick to toss it out. Perhaps something will arise down the road that will call me back to do a personal animated project. I can almost guarantee, though, that I won't return to full-time animation. But you know what? I'm all right with that.

Getting back to my annual review, one of the concerns that was expressed by my supervisors back in January when I initially made the transition was related to my salary. They told me that they would find it difficult to justify paying a TD the salary of a senior animator, and that if I wanted to have any chance of keeping what I had, the expectations would be very high. To make a long story short, I worked my tail off and was pleasantly surprised to receive a raise. More importantly, though, I enjoyed every day of work since the change was made.

I'd say this year is coming along quite nicely so far. :)

A new direction, part 2

Well, I'm a little over three months into the "new job" (see the last post for details), and it's going very well. And just to clarify a point that might have been confusing in the last post, my new work isn't a mix of animation and TD tasks. It's all TD, all the time. No animation at all. None. So far, that's turning out to be a very good thing. I still haven't quite figured out how all this is going to play out in the long term, but the immediate impact of the change has been very positive, even though the hours I'm spending at work tend to be a little more than what I spent as an animator. I'm providing technical support and tool development for somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 animators at the moment, about 70-80% of whom are working on Open Season 2. (Thankfully they don't all need help at once, or I'd have had a breakdown in the first week.) It's interesting work to say the least, and it definitely keeps me on my toes.

What's really going to have an impact on the future of this role for me, though, is our annual review, which just started this week. I've got to have my personal evaluation turned in on Monday, and with three-quarters of the past year's efforts going toward animation, it's going to be an interesting review. The process won't wrap 'til June or July, so I won't know until then how the switcharoo will impact my income. Here's hoping nothing changes...

Thanks and stuff

Happy Thanksgiving to all those celebrating the holiday this weekend! It's been a while since I've posted a significant update here, so I figured it was about time to crank through a few different things.

First off, The Very First Noel is going to be airing on DirecTV beginning Friday, November 24th, and running through December 31st. It'll be on channel 103, with the first show at 7:30 am, and repeats popping up every two hours after that.

More candy ballistics tests are on the way. Shortly after the first installment with Smarties, Steve and friends ran another test with Starburst. How on earth did they manage to get Starburst down the barrel of Steve's gun? What happened to it once it was fired from said weapon? Stay tuned for more candy gun fun...

Some questions have come up regarding further updates to the tweenMachine. I still have plans to add additional features, and even started working on some of them shortly after releasing 2.02. However, those efforts were short-lived, as I was just a little too burnt from the big push I made to get the updated TM released. Things were complicated further when the motherboard on my home box died and I had to get a new machine. My old hard drive survived, thankfully, but I haven't yet re-installed Maya (and to make a long story short, Alias doesn't make that very easy). Anyway, I do plan on picking up the torch again one of these days, but at the moment I'm working on a totally different scripting project that will likely keep me busy 'til the year is out.

And finally, on a more personal note, some of you will be receiving notification of a new e-mail address for me in the near future. While our spam filter does a great job of setting aside junk mail, the ratio of spam to real mail has taken a dramatic leap in the last couple months (about 10:1 at this stage...even worse on my wife's account). If you don't receive a note with the new addy and start getting bounces from my current address, just use the handy-dandy contact form to get in touch with me. (Sadly, even that has needed an update or two recently to deal with form-spammers. Just sick-n-wrong.....)

There are a couple other things I want to talk about, but they're a bit more involved, so they'll be coming later in their own topics.

The Very First Noel

We just wrapped production on a really sweet project: The Very First Noel. I animated a few shots on the side from my main work, and had a great time. It's definitely going to DVD, but the directors are pushing to get it on TV as well. Anyway, check it out and get ready for the holidays!

Everyone's Hero clips

Just posted a couple Everyone's Hero clips on the animation page. One is from the film, the other is a fun test from pre-production.

And yes, I know this note is redundant considering that I posted the same note to the front page of my site, but that page doesn't have an RSS feed. One of these days that front page will be this blog...or this blog will be the front page...or something...

Everyone's Hero, Part 2...sort of

I'd originally planned to post this part closer on the heels of the first one, and ideally before the film was released. Now that the film has been out for a short stretch, it probably won't mean as much, but here it is in a nutshell...

I'd heard/read several comments prior to the film's release about how the first trailer gave away the plot of the film, and people were less interested in seeing it if they already knew the ending. True, it did reveal a lot about the begininng and end of the film. What it didn't reveal much, though, was the middle...the journey.

You see, if films were about nothing more than beginnings and endings, they'd be dull. A lot of what makes them interesting and appealing is the journey in the middle...the experiences the characters go through on the way from the beginning to the end, and how those experiences change and influence them. While the end of a film is certainly important, it is nothing without the journey. So while we may say we go to a film to see how it ends, I have a hunch we're really going for the journey. It's the journey that gives the ending its power.

Now, while the journey in Everyone's Hero may not be earth-shattering or mind-blowing in its depth and complexity, it most certainly has an impact on the end, and there are some fun things that happen during that journey that make the end more meaningful. So even though you may know how the film ends, I think it's worth seeing for the journey.

Everyone's Hero, Part 1

My involvement with Everyone's Hero has a bit of an odd twist to it. It started when I was working as the lead animator at DPS, which was/is a sub-company of IDT. Somewhere during late 2003/early 2004, we got word that the head of IDT, Howard Jonas, had written a story called Yankee Irving that he wanted to have made into a feature film. At first, all I knew was that the title character was a young boy, and the story had something to do with baseball. Next we heard that Christopher Reeve was going to be directing it, and he even came through the DPS office at one point (I saw his bald forehead as he rolled down the aisle on the other side of my cubicle wall and into the editing suite for a meeting). Before I left DPS in the spring of '04, modeling had begun on a Yankee and the baseball, Screwie, but I still didn't know anything more about the story. After leaving DPS, I freelanced for Reel FX before they hired me full-time in the summer of '04.

Fast-forward to the late fall of 2005. I'm walking past one of the Reel FX conference rooms, and as I glance in, I catch a glimpse of an animatic that's being projected on the wall. My eye latches onto the lower part of the image, where I read "Property of IDT Entertainment." That made me stop and look more closely at the animatic drawings, and I saw that they were of a boy and a baseball. Was this Yankee Irving? I checked with my sup, and sure enough it was. We were bidding to help with animation and lighting on a project that I almost worked on at my previous job. How weird is that!

Not long after that, we started getting the character rigs to play with, and by late January of this year, we had started animating the first shots out of of roughly 20 minutes of footage that we were assigned from the film. A short while later, we got word that the name of the film had changed to Everyone's Hero, and about that same time I had to shift gears as I was starting to take over as animation supervisor for the BOZ video series. In the end, I only animated five shots for the film, and I'm probably only going to post one of those on the animation page of my site once the film comes out. Despite my short time on the project, I'm pretty happy with how my shots turned out, and I'm grateful for the things I learned in the process.

I was going to write more tonight, but I gotta crash. In Part 2, I'll be responding to a comment/complaint I've heard about the film's trailer...

Trailer for Everyone's Hero

The first trailer for Everyone's Hero is up on the film site. Kinda small, though. Oh well...it's up!

Site up for Everyone's Hero

The official site is up for Everyone's Hero, a film we're helping with at Reel FX. We just finished animating about 20-odd minutes of footage, and we're lighting a good chunk more than that. The characters were very fun to work with, and the story's got some heart to it. I only animated about five shots on it before I had to back out and focus on supervising the next BOZ video. It would've been fun to do more. Here's hoping I'll be free when the next one comes along...