Last night I had my very first Cirque du Soleil experience. It was very cool, and I couldn’t help but think about it from an animation perspective. It was really neat to see some modern day mime theater entertainment for one thing, but it was also a great chance to see the upper limits of human body mechanics being pushed to the extreme. It’s quite incredible what these contortionists and acrobats can do with their bodies. I recommend the show to everyone that gets a chance. It’s a great mix of comedy, music, and acrobatic entertainment.

The coolest part of the show:

These girls are insanely flexible:

I’ve posted the Alice one before, but it’s since been removed from Vimeo.

It’s my birthday today! Here’s a hilarious piece by Austin Madison that made me laugh:

I stopped playing video games years ago. The last system I played was a Nintendo 64, and the last game I played was Diablo 2. When I decided to go cold turkey it was because I considered them a waste of time, and there were so many other productive things I’d rather be doing. I haven’t played any of the more modern systems, but they’re becoming a little ridiculous. It seems we’ve now come full circle and have rendered video games obsolete. Can someone tell me what the point of scanning your skateboard into an Xbox (so you can skateboard just like in real life) is when you could just go out and skateboard? Wasn’t the point of playing video games to sit on your ass and do nothing but have fun? Someone is going to re-invent that concept when people get too tired of playing all these active video games like Wii Tae Bo. It’ll be perfect timing as soon everyone has forgotten what it’s like to sit down and use a controller. I understand that it’s all about promoting better habits amongst adolescents, but come on people, get outside and be active. It’s so much more fulfilling. What do you think?

I know it’s called Tangled, but I refuse to call it that. Here’s the first real glimpse of what we’re in for. I gotta say, these CG Puppets are looking delicious. They are getting closer and closer to looking like drawn characters. The flexibility (or whatever you want to call it) of these characters makes for a ton of fun for the animators I’m sure. Imagine where we’ll be in ten years.

Tonight, at midnight, I’ll choose a winner for the Nicolas Marlet Sketch Book. So make sure you enter by then for your chance to win. It’s open to anyone in the world, and you don’t really have to do anything, so what have you got to loose? If you don’t win, don’t fret, I’ve decided to keep doing the giveaway thing. So as long as you’re a member, you’ll be eligible for other great goodies that I’ll announce later.

On another note, I’m doing some changes to the blog’s theme, so please be patient if things aren’t working properly. It seems to look really good in some browsers, and horrible in others.

A lot of people have been e-mailing me and leaving comments asking about my “CalArts status.”  That is, whether or not I’ll be attending this year. Before I start belaboring on, I’d like to explain why I’m posting this. I made a public appeal for money, and I feel I have a responsibility to let the public know what happened to that money. For my peace of mind at the very least.

The kids that applied for this September have all been notified if they’ve been accepted or not by now. For those that don’t know, I deferred the first year I was eligible, and planned on attending this September. I’ve held out as long as possible on making the decision because it hasn’t looked good, and all I could do was hold on and hope I could pull it off. But it’s time to move on. Even with my savings, scholarships, and donations, I couldn’t come close. It’s time to let go and re-focus. As I posted before, I will be teaching myself from now on, and if CalArts becomes a possibility in the future, I’ll be sure to post about it.

I’ve always wanted to go to the school, and I thought that if I could afford AAU, then I could afford CalArts. But the truth is I attended AAU and I couldn’t afford it. Granted I did receive better loan support for AAU than I would have for CalArts, but I couldn’t keep it up at the rate I was paying for tuition. The way it worked out with my government’s student loans program was, I would have to wait until half way through a semester before the paperwork would go through and they would release the funds to me. So there were times where I was carrying a $10,000 tuition balance on my credit card for months until the funds were released and I could pay it off, which is pretty stupid. But hey, I really wanted to go. And it’s not like I knew it was going to be like that going into AAU. Since CalArts costs more, and I would receive less in loan support, it’s just not possible even with what I have saved up.

The #1 Question: What happens to all the donations?

The donations I received from Cartoon Brew readers in response to Amid’s post on my behalf have gone to Help the Hodges. I kept the money for the past year and change as I’ve been holding on to the hope that I still may attend CalArts. It was uncomfortable for me to ask for assistance, and it was uncomfortable for me to have the money sitting in a Paypal account waiting to be used. I have contacted the donators and asked for their permission to re-direct the the donations to Help the Hodges (crediting the original donators and not myself).

So there you have it. It unfortunate, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ll just have to work a little harder on my own, that’s all. Nothing I’m not used to. I don’t want this to be a soap box post or something that reflects poorly on any of the schools I have mentioned. This is my personal situation, and no one is responsible for it but me. Needless to say I’ve learned a lot in this process, if that’s what you’d call it, enough to be a resource for others. And since I love to share and help others (the reason I started this blog all those years ago), I’d be happy to help anyone going through similar situations by answering your questions. Just shoot me a message.

I’m back from an unexpected break. It seems I was working so hard my wrist decided to stop working again. I’ve been dealing with RSI problems on and off for the last ten years. I’ve always just taken time off rather than face the problem. I’ve tried all sorts of easy fixes, like buying a new chair and physiotherapy and chiropractic care, but it seems my “injury” is at a stage where I have to make life style changes in order to continue doing what I love. I started by taking about three weeks off (so the swelling would go down) and starting a new strength training routine. This along with many other things I’ll write about later seem to be working, and I’ll gradually be getting back to spending hours in front of the computer a day (yay…).

In my spare time I’ve been reading up on this debilitating condition, talking to fellow sufferers (Eric Luhta has been an amazing help), and enjoying the Stanley Cup Playoffs (Go Canucks Go!). As mentioned above, I plan to put together a helpful post about this often misunderstood injury. I had to dig to find good information for myself, so I thought it would be another good resource to add to the site. I’ll get some testimonials from industry people that have dealt with the problem and find out what worked for them in overcoming it, and how they live with it and work through it every day. If you would like to share your own experiences, just shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment. I might include your insights in my post.

Anyway, I’ve also watched a few movies in my absence, and I’ve always wanted to start an acting reference section to the site. Watching all these movies really spurred on that desire. You really can’t get enough of this stuff as an animator. So following in the foot steps of Jean-Denis Haas, and Kyle Kenworthy, here’s my first entry to the brand spanking new acting reference category…

This clip is from The Count of Monte Cristo, one of my favorite films (and books). This is the moment where Edmond Dantes realizes his friend is screwing him over. At this point in the story he’s not very smart, and doesn’t know how to react. Look at the way he acts out his repetition of, “Complicated…”. There’s so much anger and misunderstanding going on under there, yet the movement in the face is so subtle. CG animation is capable of this kind of subtlety. It’s a matter of the animator having these observations stored away in his/her head in order to think of them in the moment.

In this example, his eyes maintain the same menacing/clueless expression, whilst his mouth moves up and almost smiles in a sort of sick desperation. It quickly drops, and that’s basically it. The effect is achieved. Tell me honestly, if you had to animate this shot, would you have thought of that? I wouldn’t have.

Lots more to come for this category, but as I said I’ll be taking it easy, gradually working my way up to the hours I was doing before. That’s enough computer for today…

I looked like this guy a minute ago.

I hit one of those walls where my creativity exceeds my ability. It happens all the time so you’d think I’d be used to it. Nope. I was going to get frustrated (because that’s the easy thing to do). But in moments like this I always remember the great words of Glen Keane in his interview on Animation Podcast. Something to the effect of when this happens, it’s not that you’re a lousy artist, it’s just that you’ve hit the edge of your knowledge, and you need to get out there and become a student again and figure it out. I always marvel that those words came from such an esteemed artist. At this point I come full circle emotionally and set out to learn what’s missing.

The next time you hit the wall, think about it like this and you just may avoid all that awkward self-loathing.

My Vimeo account has been “de-activated”. This is the problem with having content that it dependent on outside sourcing. I will slowly but surely convert the files to Quicktime videos and host them myself so this doesn’t happen again. This will affect the Richard Williams posts, and the Film Analysis posts.

Update: I have fixed the Film Analysis posts, which seem to be the most crucial. It actually works out better this way, as you can now download a better quality video.

So now that the Winter Olympics are over, and an estimated 40,000 people are leaving Vancouver today after the party of all parties last night, I think I can get back to work. I’ve honestly never watched Olympics this much before, but there’s something about it when it’s all around you. It’s infectious, and your heart just glows.

I was fortunate enough to get tickets to a bunch of events for Christmas, something I would never have been able to afford myself. The hot ticket in town was yesterday’s big hockey game. People were lined up outside the ice rink before puck drop offering lucky ticket holders $10,000 for their tickets. But those lucky enough to get a seat didn’t bat an eyelid, as they would rather experience the gold rush, and they did. Canada’s pride was saved when we won the big game. It was a close one, props to the United States. What a game! With the win Canada set a new Olympic record for the most gold medals won at the Winter Olympics. Nobody hear expected to beat the mighty United States in the total medals column, but for us to get third with 1/10th the population, is remarkable to me. I’m really proud right now.

Throughout the broadcast of the Olympics, CTV, one of our national networks, aired a couple of “Video Essays” that were put together by The Globe and Mail’s, Stephen Brunt. I thought these video essays did a good job of summing up the sentiment and pride this nation has shown for the past two weeks. I thought I would share one of them with you.

I’ve been getting a bit of traffic from Animation Mentor. I’m curious what it’s all about. I can’t access the page that is referring students to my site, so I was hoping one of the students could send me a screen cap?

It’s tough to get posts in these days. I’m so distracted by the Olympics everywhere around me.