Goin' to Maryland!

UPDATE: Below is a scan of the paper about the festival I taught workshops at - what an amazing weekend! Click here to read the article online.


We are still in the midst of some boxes and unpacking here in our new home in Coquitlam, BC... but already we are feeling like this is the place for us. We miss home and the people there like crazy, but we know this is where we should be. Amid us unpacking, I got invited to a film fest in Maryland to come and teach animation workshops to kids. Of COURSE I was all on board for that!

Click on the link above for more info. If you're in the Frederick, Maryland area during Nov 19-20, stop by! I love when life brings about random opportunities :)

Yield a Krop.

So many online portfolios to create, so little time!

Here's one more I just did, it was easy and rather snazzy!

"Tah-Dah" - now available on the web!

"Tah-Dah" [2009] from Stacey Chomiak on Vimeo.

Since the film fests have started to die down [although this month "Tah-Dah" was screened in five different locations alone, yahoo!], I thought it was time to put it online. I hope everyone enjoys!

artschoolreviews.ca

I was asked by a great guy, Michael Ngo, working over at artschoolreviews.ca, if I wouldn't mind writing a review of my experiences at Sheridan College.

The idea of them having this great site designed to help anyone who is looking into various colleges and wanting honest feedback from people who have gone before them, is a great one! So of course I was happy to write one from my humble experience.

Click on the image above if ya wanna check it out, and thanks Mike!

Aloha, Animation workshops!

Here are a couple [rather rough] quick snippets of videos that Tams took whilst Andrew [Marshel] and I taught the animation workshops out in Kaua'i, Hawaii last week.





What an amazing time; the wide-eyed kidlets with their pencils brings everything back to perspective! :)

23rd & 24th fest for "Tah-Dah"!

Just getting back from an amazing time in Kauai, Hawaii, I heard that I got into two more festivals, which is continued great news!

In February 2010 in Brooklyn, NY:

In March 2010, in Chilmark, Massachusetts:

Sketches from my Hawaiian experiences to come, I promise!

Teaching animation in Kaua'i!

I am enjoying the last couple days we have here in gooooorrrrgeous Kaua'i, Hawaii, but I thought I would post a few pics of my experiences teaching a few animation workshops with my newfound pal, Andrew Marshel! We met out here in Kaua'i for the LA Intl Children's Film Fest, as both of our films were screening there.

We had a BLAST teaching the 7 different workshops over the festival weekend, but the best part was seeing how excitedly all the kids responded. It makes everything SO worth it!













More updates to come.
Muhalo!

Winnipeg newspaper article

I was fortunate enough to be featured in one of Winnipeg's regular newspapers - The Metro - this week! It feels great to have the support of my homegrown community behind me! Here is a version of it online for those who feel compelled to read it:

http://www.canstarnews.com/page/story/1/4509

And now.....off to Hawaii!! [in a few hours...I cannot WAIT!]

From Chicago to Hollywood!

Happening next weekend....


Above is my "official" certificate of nomination from the AniMazing Spotlight fest, happening next weekend at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, CA! I am very honored to be up for Best Student Animated Short, yahoo! Wish I could be there to support everyone else's shorts as well!

Happening now.....


Also, this weekend "Tah-Dah" screened at the prestigious Chicago International Children's Film Festival [CICFF] - the only Children's Fest in the world that is an Academy-Award Qualifier! That is trés exciting for moi! My film screened multiple times throughout the fest; yesterday at noon & 2pm, and today at 9:30 am. For more info on the fest and schedules, click here.

"Tah-Dah" DVD & disc designs

At the end of finishing my final year at Sheridan's Animation degree, I was so worried about getting my film "Tah-Dah" finished in time for the big Industry Day screening, that I was slightly forced to design up my poster and DVD case/disc rather quickly!

However, I am sure glad I did do those designs, as soon after that I have had to send out my film to all the film fests, and well, writing on a disc with a Sharpie just doesn't have that same professional appeal :)

Here are the designs:

"Tah-Dah" teaser trailer

So I finally threw together a quick teaser trailer of my film, "Tah-Dah"! A few of the film fests were requesting a trailer, and I thought then it could have some online presence without having to post the whole film...yet.



I hope this makes ya wanna see the real deal!

A finished still from "Tah-Dah"

I honestly feel like I am developing Photoshop Elbow. [in lieu of Tennis Elbow!!]

However, since I am on the almost-last stage of my film, I can deal with this never-ending Photoshop colouring frame by frame! By the end of all this, I will have felt like I ran 14 marathons. With my pencil :)

So here's a finished still from my upcoming film, "Tah-Dah"! I am excited to finally start to see it come to Technicolor life – I have been staring at the grayscale animation and backgrounds for what seems like eons, so this stage is exciting for me!

Stay tuned!

A "TAH-DAH" test

I am madly ruff animating as we type.....HOWever, I thought I shouldst post a test scene I did before Christmas to see if I could ACTUALLY animate the way I was thinking in my head. In order to get the result I wanted, I mean. It's not perrrrfect, but it helped me work out a LOT of pipeline bugs, and is definitely helping me not lose sleep during the ruff animation stage....wondering how I am gonna clean up and colour all those frames.....

As you can see, I didn't finish colouring all the frames, but it was good enough for moi.

So enjoy the sneak peek!
Stay tuned for the real flick, April 2009 :)

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!

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

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:

Herbert's Hijinks

So when I finished this on Thursday night, I realized that this is longer than my film needs to be next year! And I did this in a couple days. Yeesh.

Well, this idear was a collaboration between Tams and I - it's funny what comes to you when you are relaxing in a coffee shop! :) This is a short animation purely based on musical cues. No other audio. It was great fun to envision what each musical cue might do for the story beats.

I love this piece by Saint-Saens, entitled "Pianistes" [from the Carnival of Animals suite] - and to me, it sounded like it would be about a bird named Herbert.
Enjoy!

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??

A Finito Action Analysis!

Okay, well, not FINISHED-finished... but it is completed in terms of what was required for the assignment... and lemme tell ya, THAT'S a miracle in itself!

The third scene, where the "Ann" character is side-stepping the old lady, is the completely finished one; cleaned-up, painted, complete with ground shadow and two-tone shadow on "Ann".

And amazingly enough, after working 13 weeks on this puppy, I'd still like to finish the rest of it! I am happy with the way it turned out [thanks to everyone who helped! - see the credits].. PHEW that was alotta work! [Pardon the low-res for web, it will be much clearer on my reel!]

And now it's time to jingle all the way to a holly jolly Christmas!