Sternio/AM

What's up

Well, I am going to put Distraxion on hold for a bit:)

It's going to take a few months to get all settled in the new apartment in LA and get up to speed at work. The hours are precious these days.

Once I get into a regular schedule I'll pick up right where I left off and finish off the remaining shots.
To make sure of that I stay motivated I hired someone to chase me around with a sax until it is done :)

Dreamworks, It's on!!!!!

I know it's been quiet for a little bit here, but now it's time for some big news. On Nov 20th I will be starting at Dreamworks Animation in Glendale. How sweet is that?

I'll be moving to LA in the next few weeks to get all set up and ready to go!!!

Shot 9 FINAL

I could probably work on this shot for the rest of my life, but at some point you gotta call it. I know there is still room for improvement, but it's got enough juice to read in the film.

OK so just repeat after me. "FINAL!!!!"

So....What's Next????

Ah...good question. I am just going to keep on gunnin' along the same way I have been. Keep on animating at work, keep on animating at home. I am going to slow the pace down a bit to try to balance my life. (Only 5 days of animation at home per week instead of 7 :) . In this last week I did manage to work out a house share in Tahoe for the upcoming season so I plan on getting some serious snowboarding in after the new year when Distraxion is all wrapped up.

The graduating class of AM has been split off into a separate site for alumni. It contains most of the same features as the main AM site. We can still post and crit each others work and receive mentor critiques on a pay per basis. It's nice to know that we will be able to stay within the loop of feedback.

I did take a week off after the final deadline to catch my breath. Then of course we had to take a celebratory night on the town (or two), but now it's back to business. In the last week I have been dealing with a lot of technical things including updating to the latest version of the rigs (now with UVs) and dressing up the set. I also have to give it up to Scott for helping me out with the lighting. The stills I have been posting are his handiwork. I also talked to some friends that are going to help with the sound mix when I get all the visual stuff under wraps.

At work we just hit a major milestone on the game we are developing. We are still pushing along and things are lookin' great. I can't say much about it other than that it is an unannounced first party title for Nintendo. The fun thing about it is that I have been able to work with a wide range of characters many of which are non-human.

That is update for now. I'll keep animating and posting. C-ya

Goodbye AM

It's been a trip :)

Distraxion: First Polish Pass

Yesterday was my final upload to AM I can't believe it's over. 18 months flew by.

Here is Distraxion as it stands. Of course, I would have liked to have a completely polished piece, but it just wasn't a possibility with the amount of shots and their complexity. I kept the polish passes pretty broad to make my way across the whole film and bring it up evenly. For the most part I feel I was successful in doing so. However now it is time to start breaking shots off and giving them the attention they need.

I will be finaling these shots one by one starting from the most important. My first task will be the trip back and forth to the filing cabinet. There are a few shots in there that will require some heavy overhauls to get the mechanics right. Especially the trip and the slide across the floor.

This has been quite the learning experience. I really appreciate everyone's critiques and encouragement. These characters have been such a blast to animate, and I have no doubts that I will finish this. It's only a matter of time.

Shine a light on me!!

I got a little help from a friend in lighting this thing up. Picturing the whole film looking like this gets me even more pumped to finish the animation.

The animation polish is moving along. Having spent 12 weeks in story and 8 weeks in blocking, I struggled a little bit getting the polish started, but now I am starting to hit my stride. I will post my progress one more time at the end of next week and then I am going to go into total crunch mode. The next post after that will be the entire short with lighting and sound design some time after October.

That is all I got. Gotta keep gunnin' along.

Distraxion Blocking Plus

Closer....Closer!

Here is the blocking plus version of Distraxion. These shots are at various stages some re-blocked some broken down and some on spline, but all of the acting beats are represented.

I would still love to hear comments and suggestions about what is workin' and what isn't. I have gotten so close to this thing that it's hard for me to tell at this point.

I am sucking wind a little bit but I think I am in good shape to have this thing in acceptable shape by the deadline on Sept. 15th. 26 days!! I planned on some extra time after that deadline for super fine polish details, and some more for set dressing, texturing, titles, lighting, rendering and compositing.

The polish starts.......NOW!!!

AM Student Showcase

The new AM student reel is up on the site, and man it's jam packed. Lot's of good stuff in there and it makes me really proud to be a part of this. The impressive work being done by the earlier classes totally shows how much this program has evolved since the first class started.

I'm a little embarassed by the fact that I have been so involved in my own film that I hadn't seen a lot of these pieces around campus. I am hoping to get around some more after this is all done.

Speaking of which I am two thirds through the blocking-plus stage of my film. I've gone in and added breakdowns to all my shots and switched a few over to splines...yikes!!! I'll be posting the whole short when I finish breaking down the final third this week.

Distraxion Rough Blocking (Full Short)

Here it is :)
Distraxion in blocking from start to finish. This represents the main ideas of all the shots in the short. I am still running through and doing some nips and tucks but at this point in order to finish there will be no shots added or major revisions.

As far as the acting I am going to be pretty much starting the boss over from scratch. My idea for his character in the blocking was to make him somewhat of a nitwit. I have since reconsidered things and came to the conclusion that he IS the sax guy!! Well he should have that same personality.

I will be spending the majority of this week going in and making the changes to his character. I also hope to get some breakdown and tie-down passes for some shots in the first third.

Well I am off to it.

Distraxion Rough Blocking (2nd third)

Wow, this third is going to be the widow maker. It has the fewest number of shots but they are all very complicated. In this blocking some shots got a lot more love than others. For example I think shot 9 may be the most important shot in the whole film so I put some extra effort in there. Things are pretty loose towards the end of the sequence because they depend pretty heavily on the shots that follow. I am most likely going to cut out shot 14 altogether and add that time on to the following shot.

An important note that I got on this section is that the space between Julian (the sax player) and Tim (the office worker)should be less consistent. Right now the distance stays the same throughout the shots. In the end it will probably be more effective to show a change in that space. Tim will move ahead and open the space and then Julian will close in on him and process will repeat.

alright, I am going to keep powering through this...finish the final third and then come back around to tighten things up. Please keep the comments coming. They really help me to stay motivated:)

Distraxion Rough Blocking (1st third)

Here is the first rough pass through the first third of my film. I am going to be blocking the 2nd third this week and the final one the week after. It breaks down to about 30 seconds a week. The first trip through the whole thing is going to be super rough in the hopes of nailing the major landmarks and getting the cuts working in the edit. The following three weeks will be spent in blocking plus refining poses and working out faces and smaller details.

Let me know what you think so far. I realize the boss character is pretty weak right now. I am going to have to tone him down a bit in the next pass. To be honest he is the one character I didn't really do my homework on and it shows in the shots. I will have to write a little back story for him so that I can make some sense out of his motivation.

A'ight back to work... This has been a fun project so far but I am already starting to feel the time getting tight.
Gotta keep it movin' along.

Whoa, sternio.com got a facelift

Well it's about time. Things were pretty ugly for a while there.

During the week off from AM I went through my site and livened it up a bit. The old design was ok when I had a bunch of clips to show, but once I started weeding things out it just became silly lookin'

This new look brings everything together. I put up a bunch of stills and some sketches in the gallery section, and built my blog into the navigation. By the way the headers in the blog are supposed to be blue. I have been pulling my hair out trying to fix that, but I am not really good with CSS stuff. If anyone out there is reading this and can help me crack the case... PLEASE let me know. (EDIT...I FIXED IT!! WOO HOO)

So check out the new site and lemme know what you think. Especially if you find something broken :)

Distraxion: Final Layout

This is the final layout pass for Distraxion. Things are pretty rough but all of the major story beats are represented. I figured I would toss this up here now while we have the break to try and get some feedback before crunch time.

A minute and a half of animation in 13 weeks (including this one.) It will be tight. I have a few shots in mind that will definitely be getting more love than others but the goal here is to get the story across.

Aight, I am going under. Wish me luck :)

Updated: 2D animatic

Thanks to the feedback I got from my mentor, classmates at AM and notes from right here on the blog I took a second pass on my story. I trimmed out all the fat and made things work out a little bit better for our struggling worker :)