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Merci Annecy!

This year's Annecy Animation Film Festival was again, like last year, great fun! I saw some great animation, and some a bit less great. Attended some great lectures, highlights for me were 'the Cloudy with a chance of meatballs 2 WIP' talk by Kris Pearn and Cody Cameron. Thanks again to Stephan and Kris for inviting me along. I didn't get a ticket upfront, but they were so kind to take me into the Salle Pierre Lamy to see the presentation. Second highlight for me was the presentation from Stephan Franck about 'The Legend of Smurphy Hollow', which in essence was a crash course lecture on film making and storytelling. Interesting and unexpected. Third highlight was the 'TV series and special project pitches' session I attended. Very inspiring and motivating to see young ambitious creators pitch their projects in front of a pretty crowded room full of interested people. I'll be coming back next year for sure, looking forward already!

Besides all the great stuff I got to see, it was great to meet so many great people with a similar love for animation at Annecy. It was great to meet you all: Stephan, Kris, Cody, Jana, Sam, Michelle, Joost, Erik, Erik, Jiek, Josie, Floor & Dennis, Florian, Eren, Katharina, Alexander, Henk, Anttu, Lana, Alvaro & Carlos, Christelle, Yoshiya, Shamik, Joanna, Michelle, Uri, Vinni, Dawn, Raymond, Kwame, Aimee, Daan, Pim, Ralf & Bart. (sorry if I forgot anyone)

Annecy a l’année prochaine!

Fromage!

Annecy 2013!

Woohoo! Next week it's time for...



If you're there too, drop me a line and see you in Annecy!

(French)Cheese!

Final animatic for Rad Sechrist's Storyboard Class

Yesterday I had my final critique on my final animatic I created for Class #9 of Rad Sechrist's Stoyboarding for Feature Animation Class Spring 2013. I really enjoyed Rad's class and I learned a lot from the lectures Rad gave during class and from his critiques on my weekly homework assignments. I decided that I'm going to try and put all my learnings from the class into my next story project, and leave this animatic for what it is at the moment. There's a lot of room for improvement on this little story, and perhaps I'll revisit it in the near future.



or you can click this link

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Drawing from films: The Incredibles, CHECK!

It's DONE! I finished my last 100 thumbnails of the Incredibles tonight. 137 pages; 3.435 thumbnails in total, and I learned a lot doing this exercise.

What did I learn?

My top 3 things: In the Incredibles there's a lot of great examples of cutting on action. A lot of great examples how Brad Bird guides your (the viewer's) eye and a lot of interesting action scenes to study, how they cut these scenes and how does he use the camera in those sequences. Great stuff; great movie. So I'm ready to pick a new film to study.

Here's the last 100-ish of the film.











My next film: Jaws or Ratatouille. It's the choice between doing a live-action this round, or another animated film?

Cheese!

Got Slogans?

As I'm writing this I'm working on my 2nd thumbnail pass for Rad's 4th and 5th homework assignment, which is thumbnailing and beating out your story.

I also happen to be reading this book at the moment:

On Filmmaking: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director by Alexander Mackendrick.



While working on my thumbnails pass this evening, I just recalled reading this in the chapter titled: Slogan's for the Screenwriter's Wall,

"If it can be cut out, then CUT IT OUT. Everything non-essential that you can eliminate strengthens what's left."

Makes a whole lotta sense right now. I'm going to continue working on my thumbnails now...

Cheese!

Homework assignment #3 Radhowtoschool.com

For the third homework assignment the thing to do was: Think of cool sh... stuff. Stuff that in about 5 weeks time can spark and become a story sequence, 80-100 panels with a clear begin-middle-end.

Here's what I came up with...


1. EGGBEARD


2. BITE ME


3. THE LEGEND OF THE KORENWOLF


4. PIRATS


The first idea:EGGBEARD came out as the winner in the critique. So that will be the story I'll be working on for the workshop the coming weeks.

Cheese!