Printed Buttons!

We got the test versions of the buttons yesterday and they look pretty sweet, I'm so excited!  My teacher, Darlene, is having her daughter go ahead and make the rest.  Monday is the premiere and we will have ~450 of these buttons, along with the GaiaSpora designs, for sale as a sort of raffle for larger pieces of artwork from both films!

New Buttons

Due to the previous buttons for the premiere event not being of high enough quality and the characters in some of the designs being too small to recognize when in button form, they had to be redesigned.  Here are the new and improved designs!

Visit from John Hurst

Today we had the opportunity to meet with John Hurst, from Blue Sky studios, for the second time this year.  The first time he came to see our productions they were still all playblasts.  Today we were able to show him the final rendered version and he really liked it!  It means so much to all of us who worked on the film to hear from people outside of the production love it as much as we do!

Premiere Buttons

So today I put together the photos for the buttons that we will wear at the premiere.  They turned out pretty well and I'm excited to see them turned into actual buttons!

New Poster

Today our poster was put up on display in the main lobby of our building!  All the new posters look amazing and it will be nice seeing them every morning on the way to class!  

Soon to come

We now have our beautiful new credits thanks to our director, Trey Buongiorno, and they look amazing!  Also, me and the other assistant director, Kelsey Binninger, have started working on creating a website devoted to all things ember so stay tuned for exciting things!

Submitted!

We did it!  We met the SIGGRAPH deadline and submitted to the character animation festival at 5:55am this morning.  I am so proud of team Ember for sticking to our deadline, meeting it, and creating one amazing animated short!  The rest is smooth sailing until the premiere on April 22nd.  I'm so excited!

Ember's embers!

So since animation is currently done for SIGGRAPH, I have been helping out in the creation of the embers that will emit from Ember's body throughout the entire film, and they're looking pretty cool.  Turns out effects work is a whole lot of guessing, yet still enjoyable.  All things appear to be running smoothly as we approach our deadline, so fingers crossed!

Animation Deadline

Today's the day!  We finally finished all the animation for the film and I am beyond excited!  Everyone on the animation team really stepped it up these last few weeks and spent quite a few long nights pushing out some great animation.  I can't wait to see all of the shots rendered and looking beautiful!  March 5th is the SIGGRAPH deadline and I'm proud of our team for actually being able to reach that goal. :D  I can't wait until the premiere to show everyone our film, but for now, here's a screen shot of one of the shots I animated! 

...and some pictures of our impressive animation chart full of gold stars because we're awesome