So I figured I’d inform the blogosphere about current cube life.

My film this year (which shall remain a secret as to surprise said blogosphere come late April) has 51 scenes… including full-color and dialog! Yippee! (Not yippee that there are only 130 days to do all this! AAAAAAAAAGHHH!!!) I figure I can do 5 scenes a week and have a month saved up for post production (translation: technical difficulties). I’m really excited about this year’s film, but still… That April 26th deadline is scaaaaryyy! (just for comparison, last year’s film, VALUE BLiND, had 19 scenes and it took me an entire 2.5 months from start to finish– and I completed a week before films were due, hooray for avoiding crunch time!) This year’s film has 32 more scenes and an extra minute of animation! But, this marks the last week of my third semester at CalArts! I can’t believe how quickly this semester passed! And I’m sure it’ll only get quicker!

Anyway, here are some shots of my cube in its current state of filmness.

Completed scenes are hanging out on the left side, field guide in the middle and a life drawing on the right.

Progress of a scene that got completely redone!

Scenes to-do and notes on the work-in-progress scene… Along with a mini candy cane!

Gabby pwezentz da foh-tee ate ow-oh fiwm fo’ too-thowzan’-niiiine!

You know you want to see the rest of this gory CalArts halloween, so click that READ MORE button! All makeup by the uber-amazing Michael!

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CalArts, you are awesome.

Besides being an excellent work environment with excellent people to be inspired/work with/goof off with, there were all sorts of shows I made it to… Peter’s Shadow (puppetry/theatre), Lost World (Theatre), Pure Grit (Theatre/Puppetry), the World Music Festival (Javanese Gamelan, African and Indian music… involving a robotic Indian set of drums), the Balinesian music performance (involving a robot that played gamelan– yes, robots are taking over the music department! Aaah!) two dance performances, the Open and Producers’ Shows, and probably a few other things I missed (those are just performances from the past month or so)!
I am proud of this:

Granted, that’s with all the 2’s, 3’s, 4’s and up… but STILL! 11 full minutes of pencil tests… yay

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VALUE BLiND is going to be in the Producer’s Show!!! YAY!

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WHEW! After countless hours and weekends of work (okay, so the weekends are much more countable than the hours)– crunch time has come and gone and once again, the world is silent.

Silent?

Okay, okay– so by that, I mean a regular, non-CalArts status of noise will be flowing through the cubes. Countless workaholic sleepy animators are currently slumbering away in their beds (AND RIGHTFULLY SO!)

I turned in my film at approximately 11:57 PM on Saturday, the 18th. Right before that I got my final soundtrack mixed (but certainly not mixed-up)– all that went without a hitch and I’ll be the 13th film in the Open Show!  (That’s within the first 25 minutes, so…. show up at 2 PM on Saturday the 25th– yes, this Saturday– before things get TOO wild and crazy– and you’ll catch its premiere)!

I would like to encourage you to compare my storyboards with some final screen captures. I’m amazed at how “refined” it turned out

Though I finished a couple of nights ago, I couldn’t resist but peek in on the smelly Mac labs two hours before the deadline today at 5 PM. Smelly? Why but OF COURSE! When you cram two dozen animators into a warm room filled with computers for 3+ days straight, it’ll get to the point of knocking you over if you’re not prepared for it. I’m quite surprised Matthew didn’t go in there and attack the air with his can of Lysol, like he did when someone cracked open one of the moldy refrigerators last semester.

BUT THAT’S A WHOLE ‘NOTHER STORY!

All that matters is: the Open Show deadline hit; complaints were filed about the servers going a-wonk; the deadline was stretched an hour and some people made it, and others didn’t. In the end, I think we all learned a lot– if not by making our own film, then by helping with other’s. (I got to animate some bats for Jushtin, which was cool). Celebrating with sushi was the perfect way to celebrate… And now people are wandering around, reminiscent of zombies, wondering: What do we do next?! Our films are done and turned in!

Fortunately I’ve got designs, illustrations and visdev in progress for a children’s book I wrote. My current goal is to get a deal with a publisher, then work on my book over summer! (Just a hint– it’s about color theory).

I’m really pleased with VALUE BLiND, the film I turned in this year. (I suppose I had time to slap together a 2nd film, but by the time I HAD time to make it two weeks ago, I felt that what I did in VALUE BLiND was satisfactory enough for my first year at CalArts!)

Here’s to an AMAZING Open Show on Saturday! Congradulations to all who made it, and to those who didn’t– you still had AMAZING work, and I hope to see your films sometime… soon

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Well, it’s been exactly 365 days since I got my acceptance letter from Calarts! I don’t think that a year ago I would have guessed that I would be frantically cleaning up and animating a film that I had no idea I would ever concoct, exactly a year in the future. Of course, by now I’ve acculturated myself to CalArts life (and really shouldn’t take it for granted, but… I do anyway)… I think I’m a lot busier than I suspected I ever would have been, but that’s okay! I’m having fun, I’m being productive and life’s great. (And I did have a new sort of revelation tonight, which is– I am a little bit TOO proficient at spilling soup. Actually, I concluded that the gravity in my dorm room is especially wonky and comes from every possible direction. At least if a chair-eating monster ever gets hungry and, for whatever reason, decides to enter my dorm… it’ll find that my chair’s quite delicious).

38

 

Days left

 

until

 

films are

 

DUE!!!!!

AAaaaAAaaaAAAaaAaAaAAaAAAGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, okay, so it’s going really well– 2 scenes left to animate, 5 scenes total left to clean up and digitize (out of 19). With gallons of luck and perhaps a magical pixie-dust (or, rather, eraser-dust) faerie,  I’ll be done by the end of the weekend (or else Monday night). Spring break’s coming right up and I’d best be finished with all the animation so I can go home and work on LAYOUTS!

whoo!