The Ox in Another Film Fest!

I am working like a nutcase on my current leica on my film....I have revised it twice and I am currently awaiting a scratch track score from my awesome composer Corey Wallace from USC. I shalt post it post-haste [haha] whence I get that.

BUT an update on The Celestial Ox! We got into another film fest - this one entitled The Short Short Story Film Festival, which will be screening our film on two occasions in New England. Check out their logo and site below! Way to go team!

Ottawa Animation Fest '08 highlights!

A bunch of us went to Ottawa for the annual Animation Fest, and this year was fab! Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that The Celestial Ox made it into the Teletoon Scholarship Competition and was screening there....naw, that had nothing to do with it :) [BTW we got Voter's Choice, go Penguins!]

This was my second time there, and it was great! Saw many great shorts, and saw some amazing peeps - most fab for moi was Doug Sweetland [Director of Presto from PIXAR], Richard Williams [uber-animator who did Roger Rabbit!], and Eric Goldberg [animator extraordinaire legend from Disney]. See below for a pictorial overview of the fun!

Cliff, Alysia and I in front of some of the awesome buildings in Ottawa, we were walking to another screening.

Eric Goldberg giving a talk about character animation - awesomeness!!

Andy and Brock [fellow Celestial Ox animators!] at our Teletoon screening, yay!

Moi drawring at one of my fav places in Ottawa - Byward Market.

Alysia and I being silly amongst the sculptures.

We always take a pic of this ginormous spider outside the National Gallery of Canada. This one is hilare, from left to right: Alysia, Cliff [pretending to have succumbed to the spider's wrath], moi [doing a sort of praying mantis], Kenny [apparently thinking the spider leg is a vine], and Andy [making grand friends with the 8-legged horror].

Richard Williams at the 20th Anniversary screening of Roger Rabbit - so fab!!

Tams in front of more coolio architecture...it made all the walking much more enjoyable!

Alysia, moi and Tams enjoying a dog of the hot sort. Yummmm.

You can't see me, I have perfectly blended into the skinny peopled sculptures.

Ox on YouTube

I know I have been SO lax in the posting as of the last few weeks, but it has been NUTSO with finishing at FP, visiting the Peg for a couple weeks, driving back to Oakville, moving AND starting 4th year this week.....PHEW!!

I am beginning work on my film and am getting super pumped, stay tuned for concept jazz to begin to pop up. In the meantime, here is our 3rd year film, The Celestial Ox, now posted on YouTube. Yay!



It is also on Teletoon's site, since we made it as a finalist for the scholarship - yay x 2!

http://www.teletoon.com/scholarship

Onward and upward!

UPDATE: "The Celestial Ox" won Teletoon Viewer's Choice award at the Ottawa Intl Animation Fest! Go team!

'The Celestial Ox' got selected for two festivals!

Some exciting news came my way in the last couple weeks, and I thought I'd do a special Ox-update post! The group film I animated on for my 3rd year group film this past year at Sheridan [see group film blog here], entitled The Celestial Ox has made it in two film festivals. Yay Mo-Cap Penguins! [Our studio name. 'Tis self-explanatory if ya think about it.]

It will be screened firstly in Los Angeles at the LA Shorts Film Fest on August 20.08 [SO exciting - wish I could be there!!], and secondly it will screen at the Ottawa International Animation Fest on September 20.08 - we made it as a finalist in the Teletoon Animation Scholarship category.

Me both excited and uber proud of my fellow penguins!

Allen made us proud!

A photo with a few of us Mo-Cap Penguins from our screening last Friday evening - from left to right: Mark, Allen Stewart-Coates [our amazing narrator!], Brock, Rachel and moi. We gave Allen a signed copy of our film poster as a small thanks for his amazing contribution!


Here's the poster that Garrett Hanna did for our group [thanks Garrett!] and some stills from our finished film on our group blog here.

And Brock put together a fun YouTube trailer of some clips of all the finished group films. See that here.

FABULOSO job everyone!! Sheridan Year 3, 07-08, a success for all :)

My finished scenes from "The Celestial Ox"

So we finally screened our FINAL film this morning, so it was a big YAY and PHEW all at the same time! I am so, so, so, so, SO proud of my fellow Mo-Cap Penguins - we actually did it! It's finished, and in my humble opinion, thanks to the hard work of everyone, fab.

I shall try to post the finished film on here once we get the go-ahead. It's a little sketchy right now with guidelines and copyrights... we are trying to submit it to a few festivals, so there's some things we have to wait on before we post to the web.

Anyway, stay tuned, and in the meantime, here are my finished scenes! Yay, finished! Sorry they are sort of out of context, but think of it as a trailer. Sort of. :) And once again, major props to our narrator, Allen Stewart-Coates... perhaps better known as the voice of Rataxes in Babar. He totally makes our film amazing!

Scene 12 [the black is scene 13, I didn't do that one]

Scene 14, 15 & 16

Scene 17

A Sneak Ox Peek

A rendered still of one of my scenes from our group film "The Celestial Ox"... everyone is doing an awesome job and its looking great!

Stay tuned for the final film in a few days!

Celestial Ox - ruff animation

So we are in the last stretch of this year, which means - final leg of production on our Group Film "The Celestial Ox"! I am in the midst of cleaning up my ruff animation, which will then be coloured frame by frame and composited with the backgrounds to be put into the final film.

Here are my scenes a la ruff animation.
Stay tuned for the final film, to be completed by the middle of April!

Scene 12-13:

Scene 14-15:

Scene 16:

Scene 17:

Group film thus far

Here's the latest leica reel we screened at school on Tuesday.
And our narrator Allen is awesome - he was one of the voices on Babar, he rules!

Comments? Questions? Observations??

Pies in the skies

So these last couple weeks back at school have been kinda busy with this whole internship search for this summer... but we are going steady on our group film as well!

Trying to get the design pack locked down; here's some celestial sky designs I came up with. They were fun, and I experimented with some custom Photoshop brushes as well. Me likey stars :) And I did have pumpkin pie tonight [mmmm!], so it isn't only in the sky....

Teaser Poster for Group Film

This was such a fun assignment for me! We had to design a poster for our group film... I went with a teaser sort of poster.

The rough sketch [below] is rough alright! But the final is exactly what I had in my head from the beginning, so the rough sketch was just something I did super quick for hand-in purposes. The final is SO much better... yay Photoshop!

I even matched the right fonts for the bottom credits and the quote at the top... and I made up our own rating. I can't hold back the graphic designer within.

An oxy-moron?

I must give props to DQ for that title... he thought of that name for our group film, and kept bringing it up - however, I agree it is quite clever!

Tomorrow is our group character design is due - but our individual take on it. The assignment is to take a pose of the main character from our group storyboard [props to Brock for a great pose!], clean it up with our own style-ish additions, and colour the pose.

Here's my version of our oxy-moron! [I tried to do an Emslie-ish line, but it ain't easy by hand! I don't know how ya do it, Pete!]

Group film field studies

We are trying to work with a more graphic, fun, UPA-ish style [my fav!]... so I did a couple layout designs [well, one design, 2 colour palettes] trying to push the style a bit.

This is from a part in the film where the earth is newly covered with crops and food and the Ox is plowing the earth, so I wanted it to be fun and colourful, with some sketchy textures. If you click to enlarge the images, you can better see the textures.

And now.... I am gonna action analysize my heart out!!

Group style & colour concepts

We are working on nailing down the style for our group film... here's the piece I am bringing to the table for our meeting today.

I definitely LOVE this style, I'm really excited about the direction the film is taking.

Group Pitch Package template

I designed up this puppy real fast-like last night since we are pitching our film in this Friday's class.... then on Tuesday to the whole year.

Yee-haw!

Some group film concepts

Here are a few quick sketchy concepts/char designs for our group film... starring a celestial ox, an emporer... and the ox's tail!

Stay tuned for more :)

Mo-cap Penguins logo

I did a quick logo for our group film studio; we named it Mo-cap Penguins. As in, motion captured penguins. This would be humorous if a-you are in the animation field, b-sort of loathe the mad amount of motion captured that is done for every animated film lately, and c-realize how many animated films star motion captured penguins.

If not a, b, or c.... it's a penguin logo!

If Tracers reads this - isn't is ironic that it stars a penguin Trace?? I should have suggested we call it Chomper....

Good times! :)