Mission: Success

Go forth and OHMYGUHHHH...!

"aMUSEd" the commercial - COMPLETE

We are awesome.  And so are all of you who supported us throughout the production of this commercial. 

THANK YOU!

Meet the Crew: 2D Team

Louie Manny is described as an enthusiastic Storyboard Artist and 2D Animator, always willing to take
direction, rework boards or animation, and always willing to take more work on - being realistic with
what he can accomplish. He works clean, fast, and his work ethic makes him an incredible asset to any
production.


                                                      His work can be seen at: 
                                                      louiemanny.blogspot.com

Cristina Quintero specializes in Character Concept Design and Digital Painting.
Her favorite style of art drifts between cute and creepy; her favorite things to draw are dynamic anatomy pieces that
experiment with shape and proportion. She currently lives in Sacramento and loves cake, cats and the
color burgundy.

View her work at:                                                                                          blackqueenofhearts.deviantart.com

Jacob Jones is an animator and storyboard artist from the Sacramento area. His interests include traditional drawing, digital painting, and classic films. Known to many as Jacob “Danger” Jones, he is often seen enjoying anything Harry Potter related, Disney related, or watching Lord of the Rings. His idea of a perfect date is April 23rd.

His work can be seen at: 

                                                      jacobdangerjones.blogspot.com

Grace Woo is from Southern California. From a very young age, she aspired to become an animator, and looked up to Walt Disney as her biggest inspiration. In addition to drawing, Grace also likes to daydream and watch movies during her spare time. She lives in Sacramento, California, with her family.

Check her out at: http://www.facebook.com/grace.h.woo

Meet The Crew: 3D Team

Sara Nicole Sandoval likes to model 3D environments. She also likes to dance and stay up late. She lives in Sacramento with her boyfriend and her dog, Fluffy. Nachos.




Check out her portfolio at:  http://SaraNicole.me 

Jonathan Garrucho, Computer Graphics Artist, a native of Sacramento, loves video games and films.  His interest in computer-generated graphics started at a young age.  The idea was to manufacture places and things that the audience could experience for themselves.  If he could imagine it, he could make it, and they could see it.

Check out his portfolio at:  JonathanGarruchodigital.tumblr.com

Kaci Pulido is a colorful artist. She has two pugs that are her world. She loves to draw on her tablet and hopes to be in southern California in the near future. She loves her iced coffee and wants to paint a background to every blank canvas.

Look at her stuff at:
www.kacipulido.com                           

Dante Curiel is a 3D modeler with a goal to be on the developing side of the animation and video game industry.  .  During his spare time he delves into the world of MMOs and fighting game tournaments.  He was raised in Fremont, California, and is currently living in Sacramento.

Check out his portfolio at:  www.dantecuriel.com

Meet the Crew: Leadership

Blake Krause lives in a fantasy land filled with bizarre and inane creatures. He spends much of his spare time tracking down and trapping these creatures on paper. All other times he is learning, collaborating, and building up his artistic arsenal. He hopes to one day bring his strange collection of creatures to life and release them upon an unsuspecting world.


                                                    You can find Blake Krause here:            
                                                    squidblake.blogspot.com


Alice Woodruff is a visual designer and perpetual student of the world. She has a foundation in and passion for the traditional arts. She enjoys collaborating with other creative people and is always looking for new ways to expand her skill set. She lives in Northern Sacramento and loves to travel whenever possible.

Check out Alice's website: cargocollective.com/alicewoodruff

Leilani Adams is a motion graphics artist from Washington State. She loves labeled layers, vectored lines, patterns that come in 3s or 5s, and practically anything blue/orange/yellow. She lives just outside of Sacramento, California with her husband and shiba inu, Ryu.

Visit her at:  LeilaniAdams.com

Words of Caution: Leadership Edition

BE READY TO BE TOUGH ON YOUR TEAM -- If you are a team lead, you have to be prepared to tell some hard truths that some of your friends may not be ready to hear.  Get the point across that once the classroom door closes, it's all business and personal connections take a backseat to getting the production done right and on-time. Be tough, but professional, you do your teammates no favours by being too nice.

ALWAYS BE PROFESSIONAL --  Leaders should want to motivate the team to do their best work, but also need to keep in mind there is a very fine line between motivation and just pissing everyone off.

LISTEN TO THE QUIET ONES:  Just because someone doesn't speak up in a group-setting doesn't mean they don't have something to say.  Take some one-on-one time with your quieter team members to make sure they are having their opinions (and problems) heard.

TAKE THE TIME TO TALK IT OUT -- Talk about problems when they are small before they grow to become even bigger problems.  Bring in a neutral third party, if necessary. But don't let all that talking eat into your production time.

CHECK-IN with each team member (occasionally) -- "en masse" messages are fine most of the time.  But everyone wants to know their work is appreciated.  Send a quick personal text or email or private FB message giving/asking for one-on-one feedback.

CHECK-IN with the instructor OFTEN -- for feedback and advice. Even leaders need help sometimes.

OBSTACLES CAN BE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES -- See improvements as places for potential, not moments of failure.  When giving feedback, try a more constructive, rather than destructive approach:  "You might try this [solution/suggestion] as an opportunity to improve [problem]."

"PLEASE" and "THANK YOU" never go out of style -- compliments on good work shouldn't be withheld, but don't give them too often or else they will lose their emphasis.

Words of Caution

BACK-UP YOUR FILES.  We had multiple people backing up all the dropbox.com files every week from week 1 and this saved our butts more than once.

HONESTY.  Don't lie to yourself or your team about your skills or your availability.

NO EXCUSES.  Own up to your mistakes when you make them.  Just apologize and amend it.  Nobody wants to hear why you missed your deadline, they only care that you missed it and the production is suffering because of it.  If you know you're going to miss a deadline, give everyone a heads-up ahead of walking into class and being late.

BE AVAILABLE:  not necessarily as in "drop everything when the team requests it" but make sure you have at least 2 forms of communication that people can use to give you feedback or changes that you will receive AND ANSWER in an efficient fashion.

Words of Wisdom: Torrey Loomis

As our team moves into the final stages of production and some of the team prepares to face the terror that is graduation review, a few words of wisdom to keep us on track:


"Sometimes, you get the slight urging to revise your material, change a page or two on the script, tweak a line...or just fiddling around in general.


This isn't that time...And this isn't about your project, your material, your whatever--its about you.


These are the times when you are so gripped by the realization of the potential of what your life could be that it would be a crime to not allow it to be razed to the ground and rebuild it from the ground up.  Its the kind of awakening that haunts you at first, it says "this could be a lot better" but we dismiss that little voice of perfection.  We all have that inner voice and if we listened to it every time, nothing would ever get done.  But on this occasion, the voice persists.  It doesn't want to be ignored this time.  "Neglect me at your own risk.  This WILL be better, or my voice will be the last thing you hear as I pester you off a cliff..."

Your odds might seem incredible, your deadlines impossible, your challengers overwhelming...All ventures of this sort are immense.  Yet, you are compelled by the voice that won't let up--it keeps pushing you forward.  It is something far greater, far stronger within each of us that knows where we draw our own lines...and exactly how far we can be pushed past those self-imposed limits before we truly keel over.  You may hate the voice for how much it pushes you, but sometimes that voice is the ONLY thing propelling us towards our maximum capacity.  It would rather you hate the voice than to hate yourself for squandering your true potential.

Remember that night before it is molded into something incredible, clay is crushed down to it's core--destroyed beyond recognition--before its reformed.  You might be at a point in your life where you feel like you have no form, no structure.  Guess what?  You're probably right--and you're exactly where you need to be. 

Its okay.  You can be destined for greatness even as it seems like the world is imploding around you. 

Let it explode.  It just means you're being prepared for something amazing.  

And listen to the voice--its your friend"

Torrey Loomis

(originally posted by A. Woodruff to the team's facebook page)

Wrap-up from Pre-Production I (Winter 2012): PROS & CONS

During the last hour of the Pre-production class, we discussed as a group what everyone felt were the best and worst parts of the first 11 weeks.  Here they are, distilled as best as possible from pages and pages of notes that were madly scribbled into multiple sketchbooks that morning: 

STRENGTHS

+Having the 11 people broken into smaller teams of 4-5 with 1 leader worked well keeping everyone on task

+We kept personal drama to a minimum, even when we were panicking.

+LOTS of reference (footage, photographs, peers, instructors)

+Time management: We sectioned out huge chunks of pre-production time for our animators to throw together character designs, practice 12 principles of animation drills with more experienced peers, get some refresher lessons perspective/anatomy, and even a couple crash-courses in toonboom (since not everyone had worked with that program before).


+Saturday night check-in was a good idea:  Our class was on Wednesday, so we had everyone check-in by Saturday night at midnight with whatever progress they had made on their tasks for the week.  That way we knew if anyone was running into problems with enough time to fix the issue before the next class. 

WEAKNESSES
--Make sure leadership knows how to be clear about their instructions.  Make itemized lists if you must, but make sure EVERYONE knows what their task is for each week so nobody can be confused about what they should be doing and what's being done by someone else.

--Trying to make sure everyone was happy/friends with leadership ate up a lot of time, which resulted in less time working on the production, which resulted in missing deadlines, which is NOT. GOOD.

--Everyone had to learn that once class began, the feedback leaders gave wasn't personal, it was all for the sake of the production.  Feedback, positive and negative, is necessary for progress.  Accept it and give it in the most professional manner possible.

Wrap-up from Pre-Production I (Winter 2012): THE TEAM

Eleven.  That was our lucky number.  Eleven weeks in a quarter.  Eleven students working on the production.
 
Our #1 priority during the first few weeks of class was establishing lines of communication. The VERY first item of business on our first day of class was collecting everyone's contact information and availability for the quarter.  We also created a facebook group as well as a public dropbox.com folder.  We cannot stress enough how important this was to the success of the first eleven weeks of class.

As mentioned previously, our team was primarily split into a 2D team and a 3D team.  Then a hierarchy of leadership was decided: one director (in charge of the vision of the commercial), two producers (in charge of keeping the production on schedule), one 2D animation leader (to ensure quality and continuity), and one 3D animation leader (also for quality and continuity).

Every week, everyone (including leadership) had tasks assigned to them.  Every week, we did weekly reviews and feedback, both as a group and one-on-one.  (Production work and character designs are being compiled into our art book that will be available as a PDF upon completion of the project.)

Some of our roles have changed slightly since we have moved into the final stages of production.  Our texture artists have evolved into colorists, our 3D asset creators into compositors and sound editors.  All in all, the project is moving along well, and at a pace much faster than we anticipated.  We've got high hopes, but we're trying to keep it mostly under our hats (for now.)

Wrap-up from Pre-Production I (Winter 2012): THE PROJECT

Our client is the in-school, student-run cafe called Muse.  The Muse wants a commercial that they can play on the school monitors to draw in more business.  They gave us complete artistic freedom to portray Muse as a place of creativity for the culinary students who work there as well as the customers who frequent it. 

The talent in the room was pretty evenly split into 2D and 3D animators, so we meshed everyone's skills to create a commercial with a cel-shaded 3D environment and 2D characters inhabiting said environment.  There was a little hesitation when we started about how well everything would come together in the end, but so far, it's looking pretty good.

Our AMAZING 3D team is wrapping up the background for the commercial and popped out a few renders for us to look at. 

Doesn't it look gorgeous?!

Y U NO behave, tablecloth?!  Y?!?!

Animation Test for Esteban

Animation Test for Penny

Animation Test for Ron

Early 3D Camera test

Early Test Renders of shaders, environment, & 3D camera movement

Test animation for "Alex"

Test Animation for "Esteban"

Early animation test for "Chef Keith"

Muse: The Beginning

We're drawing near the end of the first 11 weeks of our 22 week project creating a commercial for our school's student-run cafe, Muse.  This quarter has been an exciting one!  Our team has grown so much since it's creation in January.

In this blog, you'll get to follow our group as we enter the production stage our senior group project.  This blog will be the only place you can view some behind-the-scenes footage that has only been available to our superbly talented 2D and 3D animators.

Our commercial will be ready for the world in June 2012.  We hope you enjoy seeing our project come together and look forward to your comments!