great show!

an enthusiastic audience, a collection of works with originality, quirkiness, and variety...

good job, everybody!

: )

here's a list of the junior animation shorts that screened (and a couple that nearly screened), in the program order, with both sections of juniors (elliot cowan & myself):

• Timothy Martin – Hitman He Was

• Andrew Applegate - Shaded In

• JonathanMcGuire – Brotherly Ever After

• Alleanna Harris - Why I Hate Ducks

• Austin Alexander – Socially Awkward

• Meghan Loeb - No Luck, Charles!

• Kaitlin Graziano - Bigfoot & Baby

• Garion McCauley – Mornin’ Joe

• Evan Maron – Shellter

• Dwayne Gaither - Kite Flight

• Alexa Gibney – Till & Toil

• Michael Green - Lunch Menu

• Shannon Brice - The Lady of Shalott

• Chyna Shyland - Hateful Thangs

• Kurt Freundlich – Thunder’s Secret Food

• Tahirah Pryor – Amity Fruit

• Jacqueline Bauwens - Life Is Butt A Dream

• Elsamar Muniz - Cat and Kitten

• Phillip Stankus - Tetragon Hall

• Marianne Murphy - Being A Girl

• Allison Buhl – Bad Food, Good Times

• Jim Dai – A Fireman’s Test

• Caterina Vivona – Boulderdash

• Jessica Marcus – Weather Dealer

• Angela Kim – Little Archer

• Benjamin Howell – Beloved

• Zachary Hardy – Randumation

• Mark Pappajohn – The Gladiator

• Nishant Thelakkat - Drawn Incorrectly

a few screenshots to come...

jr soph screening

from our very own timothy martin

: D

...and the flyer for the show:

faculty crits

faculty crits will take place the week after spring break - monday, march 17th for our section of junior animation.

please prepare for the crits by having both an online animatic, fully updated with your latest files, as well as a Quicktime movie loaded onto the classroom iMac in case of internet connection (or other) problems.

there should also be sound - scratch music, diegetic sound (real sounds) on the animatic. it doesn't have to be final, but there should be audio.

please let me know if you have questions.

50% through rough animation

We're at 50% of the way through rough animation at this point - where do you stand in relation to that? In front? Behind? On target?

Do you have calendar dates set for cleanup, color, or whatever your technique requires?

Check out the production stills on the "student blogs sp14" page - starting to get the feeling these pieces are going to become films...


Please make sure your production calendars & shot lists are up to date: that's our contract.

character history

character history questions - not all of these may apply to your character, but even the ones that seem irrelevant can reveal aspects of someone's personality that can tell you how they would behave in a situation.

adding these to your "about" page counts as extra credit.

~ Chris

taglines and production stills

Links to festival programs, showing production stills and taglines:

• Annecy
• Hiroshima
• Animafest (Zagreb)
• Ottawa

blog format

• use the simple template (like this blog)

Pages:
• Journal: place homework videos & other images. This is where posts are created.
• About (Production Still, Tagline, Inspiration, Character History, Influences)
• Shot List & Production Calendar (link to Google Drive document). Template here. Shot List gives dates for specific tasks. For most of you, this means: rough animation, cleanup, coloring, and compositing/editing. The Production Calendar uses class dates to indicate what will be finished for a specific week, loaded on the blog by 9am. These need to be clear and easy to understand, with color-coding for work that has been done.
• Naming Conventions (folders, shots, character drawings, backgrounds, sound, etc.). See link on "The Ogre & the Mermaid"for an idea of how to organize your drawings. Naming convention suggestion, below:

my junior animation (folder) > (folder) sh01 >

(file) sh01_001_chicken.jpg (for character)
(file) sh01_bg.jpg (for background)
(file) cluck.aif (for sound effect)

Identify an image by its shot number, the drawing number, the character or background it portrays, and the type of file it is.

Organize PSD's by labeling each layer in a multi-layered document:

sh01_001_chicken_rough
sh01_001_chicken_clean
sh01_001_chicken_color
sh01_layout
sh01_bg

Depending on your technique and approach, you may need to create the following folders:

• animation > shot #
• backgrounds > shot #
• sound
• project (After Effects and Premiere)

Put these sub-folders in a single, main folder called "junior animation," or whatever the title of your piece is, so that if everything needs to be transferred to another computer, After Effects and Premiere will be able to find individual items. Backup your work regularly to a second hard drive. Start now.

I find the clearest way of naming versions of the same file is to add the date. For example, successive iterations of the main timeline file (After Effects or Premiere) would look like this:

om_main_01_27_14.aep
om_main_03_03_14.aep
om_main_03_17_14.aep

etc.

(om = ogremermaid, main = main timeline, 01_27_14 = the date, and aep = After Effects Project)

One test of your ability to work with other people, as well as being able to demonstrate your ability to make it through a complex project intact, without getting lost and/or frustrated trying to find files, or versions of files, is file organization and naming. Do not leave things unlabeled or un-dated. Pretend that someone else will need to step in and easily understand how to locate a particular file.

springing into action in 2014

Hi Class!

Welcome to Junior Animation, where you will make an animated short from the animatic you created last semester in Storyboarding.

As a reminder, these are the guidelines for the piece:

• 90 seconds to 2 minutes in duration, including titles but not credits
• in order to be accepted as finished, the work must be:
- fully animated and colored as per the agreed-upon design aesthetic
- equipped with a fully-realized soundtrack (sound effects and/or music)
- a 1920 x 1080, H.264-compressed Quicktime movie
- handed in on May 5th (Cinqo de Mayo) for the May 6th Junior & Sophomore Animation screening, to be held at 7pm in Connelly Auditorium, Terra Building, 8th floor.

This is your first opportunity to make a fully-realized animated film of your own creation. It is a large undertaking that requires organization, discipline, perseverance, and inspiration. As your first major work, it is also an experiment, and you will make many mistakes and discoveries throughout the next 15 weeks. The main thing is to keep your eye on the overall target and to make consistent, regular progress towards your goal of completion - do not let the speed bumps throw you off course.

I will serve as your guide and producer, your cattle prod and your fellow problem-solver, and you will be part of a class where everyone is expected to contribute constructive criticism and share in the process of making a film.

So let's have at it and make some animation!

~ Chris