Update

Hello everyone!  I don't know if anyone actually looks at this blog anymore since I've started my art blog, but I thought I'd post an update.  The premiere went well, although we didn't sell quite as many DVD's as we would have like to have sold seeing as now we are out of money for submitting to film festivals.  We were able to submit to around 12 film festivals though.  We won 3 awards at the 2013 Central Florida Film Festival and received an Honorable Mention at the 2014 Otronicon Film Slam.  We're still awaiting the decisions of a few festivals to see if we got in though.

If you would like to check out all things Ember, or possibly make a donation, the new website url is http://embermovie.weebly.com/.

Thank you to all of you who have already supported our film!  We truly could not have received the recognition that we did without you!

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

End of the Semester

Well I haven't really kept up with this as I first intended to, I guess it comes with being so busy all the time I just don't get around to it.

First off, somewhere between the last post and now, I was given the title of lead animator on our film, along with one other person in our group, and I am just ecstatic!

Also, in the last post I mentioned that the Junior class had presented their stories that they would possibly be working on for the next year and a half.  They recently had their final presentation and the two stories were selected, they were all pretty good and I can't wait to see how they end up creating their amazing stories.

On the Ember front, things have been hectic as always.  We have come to the end of the fall semester but that definitely doesn't mean we get a break really for the winter holidays.  I mean, we technically do have a break, but we will be working like crazy on our animations for our film since we want to get it done by the first or second week of January.  Also, since I am one of the lead animators and I have a very short attention span when trying to work from home, I will be going into the studio for the majority of the "break".  I am looking forward to it though, seeing as I want to be an animator somewhere in the industry after I graduate, I do enjoy it quite a lot.

Also, we have a few test renders of our film and, if I do say so myself, they are looking quite gorgeous!  Our team is full of extremely talented people who know how to make our movie come alive.  I'll have to get a copy of some of the frames and post them up here for the world to see, even if the world doesn't look at this blog... :)

Junior Gong Show

So today was the midterm Gong Show for the junior class where they pitch their 6 story ideas to us seniors and the faculty, and it went pretty well.  They had some interesting story ideas but a lot of them still need work, can't wait until the end of semester presentation to see how they all change!

Rig testing

So I started my animation today to test the man rig for our film, cool things happened when I tried to rotate the body, like hands exploding, feet breaking, and eyes coming out of his head.  I'd say it's not quite ready yet...

Unexpected

     So I guess I should give some information on exactly what I'm working on before I start going crazy about what's happening.  So I am working on an animated short with a group of 15 other students and it's been pretty amazing.  Our movie's title is Ember and it's centered around the lives of a Mongol man and a fire spirit named Ember (hence the title of the movie).  In this production I am currently the assistant production manager.  Here's the link to our facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/Ember2013

     Anyway, on to what unexpected thing happened today.  So normally every graduating class in VL submits their film to the annual national SIGGRAPH convention and the submission date is used as a deadline for when the film should be completed. We came into class today, however, to find out that the date of submission has been moved up a whole month so that means one less month to create our film.  Now we're going to have to see if we can produce the quality of film that we want in the time of 19 weeks.  If we don't get the quality of film that we want by that date I guess we'll have to wait until next year to submit.  There are more festivals that we can apply to, it's just, you know, SIGGRAPH is kind of a big deal.