Music Video Shoot: The Apollo Effect

CLICK HERE FOR GALLERY.

Bryan Belanger-Diaz invited me to PA for a day for his new video for the indie rock band The Apollo Effect. Last year he did a video for them and dropped by the shoot and found it fun to be on set with camera and crew. I jumped on the chance to be involved again. With the recent experience with the Aylmer Tomato sauce commercial shoot with Billie Mintz, I hope that I get involved with more live sets and shoots. It's definitely refreshing to get out of from behind the computer monitor sometimes.
The hours are long, and you need to problem solve a lot in person, but it's hella fun.

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Reel Asian 09!

Click on HERE for more pictures from Reel Asian!
So far so good! Film finally screened, got to meet very talented filmmakers and creative individuals. and I got to walk on a red carpet! So weird! But fun!
More pics to come from the rest of the weekend.

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Original Jolly Melancholies!

This was my first foray into old men in animated short film! Made in '06, it was part of my Fine Arts thesis regarding sentimentality and mundanity. My final film was a multi-framed window of various banal activities an retired man would preoccupy himself in his later years... (ex. eating cereal alone, reading a book, pleasing himself in bed.. .:P)
The title connection for my recent black and white film and this film was deliberate since i feel they share similar qualities.

I wanted also explore the length of time I can push the anticipation and see it's hopefully humorous and sad results!
You may recall the bit from a Rowan Atkinson stand up routine...

The diddy you hear was a song I heard from a clip from the first talkie 'The Jazz Singer' and thought it was a perfectly upbeat choice for such a depressing moment.

Enjoy!

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Try the Sauce! Tomato Sauce Campaign

UPDATE:
CLICK HERE FOR PRODUCTION PHOTOS

The site is finally up!
I did storyboards, motion graphics, concept development and assisted directed for Billie Mintz as the director and main man on this Aylmer Sauce Campaign! It was a crazy fun experience! Hope you enjoy the vids.
Click on the image to see.

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See my Short Film at Reel Asian! Nov 13 1pm. NFB Mediatheque!

You can find a gallery of how I made my film Here

The gallery also includes picture of other assignments I worked on with my friends Louis Yeum and Wayne Yum.

It's been a long year but an eventful one for sure. Taking time off from computer animation to study film at Ryerson has been one of the most scariest but exciting decisions of my life.
Being able to work with real cameras (16mm & HD), light meters, real locations and people is an extremely refreshing change from the virtual world behind a monitor.

But it was my goal to better myself as a story teller and filmmaker in general and I've definitely achieved that. And having my film screened at Reel Asian has been a great sense of accomplishment for me.

So a list of highlights of the year for me would include:
0. Moving downtown Toronto (Parkdale represent!)
1. 16mm filmmaking and created a film
2. Amateur acting (I went to an actual audition on a crazy whim! lol. More on that later)
3. HD Documentary filmmaking (With musicians Yoshi and Chie Yamano as my subjects. Still working on that film)
4. Developed a 1st draft script with Louis Yeum for an Animated short we're trying to make.
5. Storyboarded and assisted in direction on set for Tomato Sauce Commercial with Billie Mintz.
(Photos to come!)
6. Going to 5 of my friend's weddings (2 caketoppers and 1 animation)
7. Going to see my friend Charuvi Agrawal again at Siggraph 09 in New Orleans
8. Traveling across canada
9.Having my film screened at Reel Asian

I look forward to to the future!

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Chicken Jam

Here's another clip of the chicken animation.
Working out the kinks of the rig. There has been issues w/ the hair joint, and wing.



More to come.

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Chicken Jam

Sorry for the lateness of my post, I've been tied up with film class making a documentary,
based on the music group Kaminari, you can check them out here. Their music is a crazy fusion of traditional world folk instruments and electronica.

In the meantime right now what I've been meaning to show you is my update on the chicken Jam submission. It will be screened at the TAIS Showcase at the end of the month.
and here's their blog.

For my chicken, or rooster that is, I had to figure out how to work constraints for the feathers to automate it opening up like an umbrella.. hell.. I could have just modeled it all out and faked it with rigging and deformations.

On top of that, I've decided to pick up some knowledge on hair dynamics for bones, and working in collision objects so that when the chicken does his peculiar performance, the limp 'siamese twin' just limps around and shite.



I've attached a test of me messing around w/ the rig, and to be quite honest, stylistically, it's kinda intruiging... makes me wonder if if I'll see more '3d workspace-styled art'.... i'd say there's a lot of potential for expression even before sending things to render.

speaking of which this dude has inspired me: David O'Reilly. Not even 20 years old yet and he's thinking like a genius. Holds talks at festivals regarding this art theory on computer art and his comparisons to art history. The jist of his thoughts are that computers should stop trying to replicate other styles and search for it's own style and embrace its own self.


In any event I've also attached a clip of some feather test for the chicken.



I'll post a still of the animation this weekend.

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Bock Kaw! Chicken Jam

So this blog is getting pretty stale with in terms of what the hell I've been doing lately,
so I've decided to keep you posted on what I've been doing lately:



http://tais.ca/chickenjam.html

The Toronto Animated Image Society does yearly animation jams. Last year it was monsters. This year, it's chickens! Bock Kaw! Convenient. I'm born on the year of the chicken.
Here's a post of what I'm going to try and capture in a 10 second animation:
It's a self portrait. No really. Ahem. Yeah.
I drew this a few years ago, but I figure this would be a perfect excuse for me to try and attempt to recreate this in animated form. Enough Laziness Jeff! Chess Due Eat! I keep on thinking of ways of mixing 2d and 3d elements and never do it. well this time is different... 10 seconds is doable rite?
10 x 24 frames =240 frames?
I'm thinking of modeling the whole thingamagigger in 3d , animate it, then trace the damned thing over w/ a brush or pen and ink, to give it the crafty hand drawn quality but a strange 3d complexity to it. we'll see how I come up with this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqi5ol2TjKI
Apparently Aardman would animate in 3d, then print out each sheet on paper, then work traditional media on it then scan it back in.. Insanely laborous, but BAD FACKIN ASS!
I have LO to NO 2d animation experience so this is going to be a fun test for me.
Now that i think about it, this black ink brush technique is all the rave now with Street Fighter IV and OKAMI using it all over their game. Which is another dream of mine to try and replicate in 3d but i digress. My next post I'll show a screen shot of my 3d model.
PAYCE!

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OMG It's been 2 years.

Well, save 1 day. Tommorrow would be officially the 2 year anniversary of me posting anything on my blog. It's 2009 now, and what can be said about this Title? The Victory Lap... Not so sure if it should be called that... its original meaning was to imply:
A victory lap (also lap of honor) is a term used in motorsports to describe an extra lap of the race track after the conclusion of a race.
(thanks wiki!)
When I first used the title, it was mainly cos of my extra years it took for me to finish university (from switching to Comp Sci to Fine Arts). Then yet another year, I took at Sheridan for Computer Animation.

Well how does it apply to this year?

To explain the missing year between blogs, I'd have to say it was mainly because I was officially working in Animation for the first time. I had broken in! Or had I? It was a crazy year, working on Super Why! The kid's animated series as well as side projects (collaborative and independent). I learned a heck of a lot in '08. But it's already '09. And I'm again looking to see what next lies for me.

Well get this: I decided to go back to school! This time it's more so for film studies, which I realize now I have an immense passion for. I've taken quite a few film theory and practical courses in uni, but never had the inclination to pursue it further. I think it has to do w/ growing more balls. It's a strange path way in my school and art experience:
from CS to Fine Art to Computer Animation - Film Studies???

So to wrap up this topic, (which is a new thing i'mina try this year... to have a structure to my thoughts! WE'LL SEE!) the title of this blog, applies in a sense, I've got my first gig in the animation industry... but the work, learning and evolving doesn't end there. So to that life's about small Victories, a few laps at a time. And for that I'm doing one again.

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