HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA TRAILERS & CLIPS

Yahoo has released a bunch of trailers & clips from the film I just finished working on. For more updates you can check HERE. Hotel Transylvania will be in theaters Sept. 28!

BLUE PENCIL FOR MAYA

Animating with Blue Pencil from Chris Zurbrigg on Vimeo.

THIS IS A MUST HAVE!!! Over the years there have been many ways to go about achieving annotations in Maya, whether it be through FlipBook or Annotate Pro or some other program, but to have this integrated into Maya is amazing! This is a tool that I will forever integrate into my workflow and critiques. I can't wait to try it out! Thank you Chris Zurbrigg! You've really hit a home run with this one!

 For more information on Blue Pencil and where you can find a link to download click HERE.

THIS IS TERRIBLE. ME NO LIKE.

Disney veteran Rob Pratt is at it again, this time with "Bizzaro Classic!" Here is the brand new follow-up to his amazing fan-film called "Superman Classic." Man, I absolutely love this style! I have always believed the best time-period to do a Superman film is the 40's and the art direction for this nails it perfectly! Everyone who knows me knows what a huge Superman fan I am. I'll be studying this one frame by frame! And just because I'm a 3D Character Animator, I can't help but imagine what this would like like lit, rendered, textured, and animated with Maya.

Check it out!

NEW HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA TRAILER

From what I hear, the animation is pretty much done! Here's a pic of the Animation Crew that worked on Hotel Transylvania in Culver City. What a good looking' crew!

Although it has been 2 weeks since I was under contract at Sony, easily one of the most exciting parts of working on a film is when everything you've been putting all of that overtime and hard work into begins to be released and hopefully, starts to generate some excitement for the project you've been working on. The new International Trailer for Hotel Transylvania was released this week. Check it out!!!

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA CHECK OUT TIME

Friday was my last day on Hotel Transylvania at Sony Pictures Imageworks. Like a fanboy I HAD to have Genndy Tartakovsky sign my poster before leaving. What an amazing experience to have worked under his direction. From his past success in television animation there is no doubt he is heavily influenced by the UPA visual style of limited animation. I openly admit translating that style to 3D was difficult at times for me to fully wrap my brain around it. It seems like everything nowadays is focused so much on subtle lifelike movement that this was a challenge but I think in the end it definitely works! I learned a ton on this project!

It was also great to have worked with so many of my friends from studios past on such an exciting project. Like I've said many times before, my favorite part of this industry is the amazing people you get to work with and the crew on my team were all absolutely fantastic! Now it's on to the next!!! Stay tooned!

WHAT I'M UP TO NOW...

Wow! I can't believe it's been more than 6 months since my last post! The time surely has flown by! I'm currently working at Sony Pictures Imageworks on Hotel Transylvania. I've been here since January and I'm having a blast. If you haven't checked this out already, you can watch the teaser trailer here. Then, check out the movie's tumblr page HERE when you're done!

HAPPY FEET TWO TV TRAILERS

Here are 2 new TV Trailers for the film I am currently working on. Check them out!

HOW TO MAKE BIRDS FLY

Animating flying birds can be a lot more involved than you might think. There is a lot more to it than just setting keys on the up and down positions for the wings.

Brendon Body is currently a Character Animator at Double Negative but he worked on Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole at Animal Logic and contained in his Showreel are some beautiful shots he did from that film. After having an experience like that there is no doubt he knows bird mechanics.

Brendon has a very informative blog and he's created a fantastic read every animator should check out with "Tips and Observations of Bird Flight." To see for yourself, click HERE.

You can check out his Showreel HERE. Really great stuff!

CG REELWORKS

Do you love spending countless hours watching animated short films and reels? If so, this might be the site for you! Big shout out to my friend and co-worker Adrian Lim for showing me this site today. Isn't the internet great!?

You can check out CG Reelworks HERE.

MAC 'N' CHEESE

This got passed around work about a week or so ago. Pretty amazing considering this short film was animated, directed, and created by four students at the Utrecht School of Arts in the Netherlands. This roughly two minute animation took about five months to make. While the "chase" format is starting to feel a little played out it seems to be a successful format for student short films.

REFERENCE! REFERENCE!

I'm working overtime today so I don't have much time to write about how blown away I am by this new site but WOW! That's really all I can say. Training your eye in the study of how things move is critical in the development of any animator, and you can never study enough! Thankfully there are sites like Reference! Reference!

I don't have enough time right now to write about how awesome it is. Just go see for yourself. Check it out HERE.

FRAME BY FRAME

Here's an awesome new website called Frame by Frame. Just as you might suspect, it's a great site to study animation... frame by frame, which of course is the BEST way to study animation.

To check out the site click HERE.

NEW HAPPY FEET TWO TRAILER

Here's the new trailer to the film I am currently working on in Sydney, Australia!

TOOLS OF THE TRADE OF A SUCCESSFUL ANIMATOR

CTN- The Creative Talent Network is an amazing animation resource. I attended the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank, California 2 years ago and what I loved about it most was going to all the seminars and learning all these little insights from the industry's top animators. If you ever get the chance you should go. Anyway, CTN has kind of become like the TED of animation with their Vimeo page. Check out this vid hosted by veteran Walt Disney Supervising Animator Andreas Deja, and Pixar Animators Victor Navone, Michal Makarewicz, Aaron Hartline, and Carlos Baena as they discuss 'Creating Believable Characters in Animation.' This is good stuff!

ANDREAS DEJA

Finally! Andreas Deja has started a blog! Check it out HERE.