DEMO REEL- SUMMER 2008

SIGGRAPH LOS ANGELES, CA 2008

Yesterday was my day off, so I made it up to Los Angeles for the 35th Annual Siggraph Exhibition. It definitely seems to be getting smaller and smaller each year, but I still had a great time getting away for the day. I got to meet up with a few old friends , I saw some familiar faces from school, and made some amazing new contacts. It' pretty freakin' awesome when you get to actually meet your heroes!

Despite this year's size, there's still quite a bit to see and do. I always come back wishing I had taken more pictures (this year was no different) but here are a few that capture some of the things I saw.

MEATLOAF

Finally, my latest animation creation is complete! This was just a really fun animation exercise to do and I really got into the character. This audio clip is of Will Ferrell from the movie Wedding Crashers and it's probably my favorite scene in the whole movie. The hardest part in the planning on this one was disassociating myself from Will Ferrell's performance while trying to put my own spin on his dialogue. It only took listening to the audio clip about 14 million times before I was able to come up with the idea of this bratty kid at his birthday party, with only one other guest that showed up. Once I had that, everything else fell into place.

The fact that they are eating meatloaf only adds to how absurd this character is. The meatloaf is irrelevant. It's the fact that someone has finally agreed to have some of what he wanted that he feels justified in screaming and yelling for what he wants. After all, that's what he's done all of his life.

I wrestled with the idea of showing the guy who speaks first, but I felt in the end, it would take away from what I wanted to get across with the birthday boy. This guy is a grown up and he's still having these kinds of birthday parties. Who does that? I imagine all of the invitations were sent out but only this one friend decided to show up out of sympathy. He probably feels pretty awkward being the only one there so he's probably thinking, "I better hurry up and eat this meatloaf so I can get the heck out of here!" It's the only hope of saving the birthday party and as soon as his guest agrees to eat some, the devastated birthday boy immediately goes back to his old ways. He hasn't changed a bit.

I had a lot of fun with this one and I hope you enjoy it!