Coraline Swag!

The UArts Animation Department got the coolest surprise ever today. We received a giant box of swag from Laika for Coraline. Vee and I said, "Holy Crap!" simultaneously and darted up the stairs. I got everything that was available (without doubling up) and was quite excited for the rest of the day.

Four pens:

Two button sets:

A poster (I actually grabbed this one from Fat Jacks Comics, but the same one came today.):

And a t-shirt (which I was stoked for):

I have to say, I love viral marketing and free stuff. Especially free Coraline stuff. I am going to see the movie in 3D on my birthday, February 15. I can't wait. The story is just awesome and the animation looks great. I hope it is as cool as my expectations are for it.

Nearly Complete Goals for Winter Break

Just finished drawing the closing shot of my senior thesis. It took about a week to finally get the animation done. The shot's about twenty seconds long and is the first time i really had to choreograph a shot to music, so there were set frame limits I had to hit. Which actually, more often than not, meant I had to add frames to my timing charts to get it right. Thankfully the most often of number where I had to do that was eleven frames. Which meant I would figure out the timing for five inbetweens and then inbetween the inbetweens. In the end my timing charts looked like this:



I'm shooting it tomorrow along with the animation for my opening shot, which are just two loops of animation that have to be composited together in AFX. I can't wait to get down to business finishing up those shots. The opening shot just needs the animation cleaned up and dropped in for it to be complete. The closing shot needs to have the background and a few clouds to be built, then the lighting has to get set up in AFX and the camera moves and all that jazz. That's gonna be really fun. Maybe i'll get the animation for the second to last shot done so I can shoot that too and have even more stuff finalized for DDLM.

Gonna start putting together a new reel soon so that I can start selling myself or something. I probably should start trying to find a job. I really hope I can get something I can tolerate that's here in the city and then work on a new short on the side. I'm still trying to figure out what to do if I have that teacher's aid job, should I get a part time job with flexible hours so that when I start at school, I have the time to work that job and the other job? These are questions I should find the answer to soon.

I'll post some new art to finish off this post.

Helpful Tips for Animating a Short

Jim Capobianco of Pixar has been making a short on his own called Leonardo. It looks cute, and I'll probably see it at a festival sometime soon, but what I'm really interested in are his little nuggets of wisdom about making a short animation. I found his blog through CartoonBrew and now I'm passing it on here because I just have to share this. He has great ideas and I figured it would help out my fellow seniors pushing their way through their thesis.

Opening Camera Move 1

Well I've been doing some work on DDLM and I worked out the opening shot basically but I need to smooth it out. I'm trying to figure out how to do it without messing with what I've already done. But here's the shot basically without any animation. I'll post the smoother version later.


opening title camera move - DDLM from Vince Mascoli on Vimeo.

Any help is appreciated. The current camera move was made by parenting the camera to a null object and separating that objects XYZ axises that makes the camera easier to move in a single direction but it makes the movement stiff and bumpy. If there's some expression that can be used to curve the path that would be awesome. My guess is there isn't so I'll be working on a null object that has a bezier curve path to solve this one.

Neri vs. Skiff: Master Thief

Neri vs. Skiff: Master Thief from Vince Mascoli on Vimeo.

My final from my character animation independent study class. I had to take two characters, one has something the other wants, the other attempts to get it. I went back to my blue-footed boobies because they're easy for me to draw. I like the result personally.

Car Ride - DDLM

DDLM -car ride from Vince Mascoli on Vimeo.

"DDLM" - Progress Report

I've been working hard on Dear Dad, Love Maria trying to get the visuals to work. So far so good, everything is starting to come together. The animatic is almost entirely done, with several scenes completely ready to go into full animation. I have to make up a new shot schedule once the visuals are completely laid out. I'll have to go crazy to work on it, but I'll get it done. Next week and, if I feel up to it, this week I'll begin to animate the final shot, which has to be very meticulously timed out so it matches the music that will be playing at the end of the film.

I have two shots finalized, one of which I needed to have done for my end of semester crit to give my teachers an idea of where the film was going. I meant to post it to Vimeo and then embed it on here to give a little teaser for DDLM, but I forgot to bring home my traveling hard drive, but I'll do it later today. The crit I had went exceptionally well, with all the teachers there really liking the film and where it's going. I took the time after I was done being critted to show it to Mike Enright, to get his opinion on the film and he really liked it as well, calling it "festival worthy" which made me extremely excited about seeing this film live on beyond its opening showing at the senior thesis show.

I took a lot of notes from the crits and plan on implementing them after review. I really think that I have something worth note in the works and I'm really excited. In the end, I just want people to like my film and find it hits them inside them. If one person comes up and says that, I will be satisfied. I'll post the shot on here later and maybe a sketch or two. Gotta get that harddrive home safe first.