01.20.08 New year, new location Good bye North Carolina, hello Arizona. In a flurry of activity I packed up everything I own into storage in Raleigh, NC, and after finishing class instruction at SCA on Friday afternoon August 31, I jumped into the car, drove 2150 miles to Tuscon, AZ and began teaching at The Art Center Design College on Tusesday monrning September 4. Its a welcome change for a lot of reasons but 4 months later, I must say that 6 separate classes in 2 academic departments (including some extensive curriculum development), 70 pages of illustrated character rigging tutorial, an nearly and hour of recorded video of character modeling tutorial, 2 residences and another crosss-country to retrieve my belongs... ladies and gentlemen, don't try this at home.
Webstite is in serious need of recent work, and I'm eyeing the blog with a desire to give it a makeover... well... at least I should start posting again.
05.28.07 Blog-o-rama Well, I've gone and done it... now I'm blogging too. Just what this world needs, yet another animator who blogs. Improvised into existance when all I wanted to do was post a comment on Victor Navone's website/blog about some beautiful stop motion animation he posted.
The blog name was improvised too: Pushing Poses, as in what animators attempt to do with key poses as they are working to create the most vital energy in the story they are telling with a character. Let's see if I can make something useful of it. Three days into existance and people were posting on it already. Shesh! Now, I'll never stop.
Oh, and I was introduced to the idea of sitemeter... so, now when you watch me, I'm probably watching you back... unless of course you behind some giant, friggin' firewall or something.
04.15.07 Navigation and banner I've been meaning to tweak the navigation of this website to add clarity regarding which page visitors are currently viewing. Just trying to go with better user interface design. Also updated the banner in match my identity design. Looks a little sparse, doesn't announce my career focus... hummm.
Last week as part of a semiannual advisory board meeting, our school was visited by industry folk including from such studios as Destineer, Icarus, 3DSolve, and Virtual Heroes to name a few. We got some very reassuring feedback regarding our focus, priorities, and the demo reels that are being created by our graduates. I'm waiting on the written responses, because there is always room for improvement.
Finally, at long last, I've returned to regular life drawing by attending Tuesday night figure study sessions at ArtSpace located in downtown Raleigh, NC. I've been encouraging students, especially those who are interested in character animation, to attend as well. Got one taker so far. New art, models, and animation to be posted soon.
03.18.07 More links, more content Little-by-little I've been adding links from my extensive bookmarks collection. Mostly complete, now I've added more links to locations where friends and former students are working, added more links to include festivals that have screened animated shorts created by our students, and links to silly stuff like Soda Play.
A few relatively recent works-in-progress have been added to the models page. Although mostly created just as demonstration it would be nice to have a block of time necessary to finish some of these things. I'm experimenting with easier methods for creating organized topology. I have new animation work almost ready to add as well, but that will have to wait until another day.
Last, but not least, as of Spring 2007 former students of mine from School of Communication Arts, Joey Lenz and Sarah Shaw, are continuing their education at my Alma Mater SCAD. Both are very talented and hard working artists. The portfolios they created while students in my department proved worthy of earing each substantial tuition insentive to attend SCAD for higher degrees. I wish them all the best!
01.11.07 More updates All too human... I've been fixing lots of typos all over the place. A student of mine who happens to be a very experienced proof reader has been helping me quite a lot. It appears I need all the help I can get. :)
Added PDF of my current resume, HTML version and CV to come. Added link to Kyle Dunlevy's website. Updated "good" and "bad" examples in tutorial section as well as my basic walk tutorial PDF... typos galore.
01.07.07 Updated Website This is my animation website, version 5.0. Exciting, eh?
Actually, for me this is quite an accomplishment. Version 1.0 was merely a splash screen. Version 2.0 got lost in a battle over domain name ownership with a rather unscrupulous website hosting "service". Version 3.0 actually got off the ground thanks in no small part to the able assistance of Kate.
Then version 3.0 was tweaked into version 4.0 for the sake of handling content with better navigation... but wasn't as simple and elegant enough for my (arguably) fussy tastes.
Now, we have version 5.0! I hope you enjoy.
Direct links for my current demo reel will arrive shortly. In the meantime peruse the new and improved website and if you would like, send me a shout.
