Here's wishing you an amazingly interesting New Year!!!

New Horton Trailer!!!

Hey the new Horton Trailer is up. Check it out and let me know what you think. I think it came out really cool, this one has a more zany, fun feel. Its weird watch it knowing the cuts and noticing the dialog replacements.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/hortonhearsawho/

My New Laptop!!

Hey I finally got my new laptop....thats what I'm blogging on right now! I bought a HP dv9500t I priced it out and customized it to my liking and its kicking ass so far. I have Maya running on it and it runs great. I even got XP running on it instead of Vista. Now I'm all ready to start AM back in January....I'm so excited about that. I can't wait to be back and start my short film. I'll be chronicling that on my blog. I've worked on a short that made it into SIGGRAPH in 2001, but this will be the first time I'm doing my own....thats really exciting and inspirational to me.

Holy Updates Batman!!
Woooo! I had some time to blog. I told you I'd get better at this. I plan on forcing myself to make at least one entry a week from now on.

IBL for Animators is up!!

I've received several request to put my "IBL for Animators" lighting tutorial, that I originally posted on the AM forum,up on my website. For those of you unfamiliar with this tutorial, its explains how to get some nice lighting results with little effort using Mental Ray for maya and Image Based Lighting(IBL). You'll find the link in the links section on the sidebar of the blog.

Enjoy!
-Stephen

Horton Hears a Who!

I wanted to blog a little about my experience at Blue Sky. Blue Sky was a freaking blast!! It was a lot of hard work and long hours, but it was worth it. I had a really great time working there. I got to work with two of my Mentors; Pete Paquette, and Mike Walling, you guys Rock. I also got to meet face to face with a ton of AM students that I've seen there work and knew their name but never met. Also as I've mentioned in my Pixar post, I got to work with Curran and Tun again as well.

Horton has so much eye candy in it....its so tasty. The animation we were seeing on a daily basis blew our minds. Blue Sky has an all star team of animators that were just bringing it every day. For me the best part was the style of animation. I've never done that exaggerated or that broad before and being exposed to it everyday just gets you hooked. I love Chuck Jones, his cleaver direction gave us some of the best animated shorts of all time. I feel that Horton has a lot of that in its animation. To really see what I'm talking about your just going to half to wait until March 14 cough Plug cough.

I think the one of the coolest things that happened on that project was on my last day. We were doing rounds and I had the Directors, Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino at my desk and I said to them..."Thank you so much for letting me work on your movie." and Steve looks at me and says "OUR movie" I said "thats right, our movie!" That really made me feel good! Even though I was a temp and only there for two months they really considered us part of the team...and you really felt that there. I'm very proud to be apart of Horton...heck I'm even sporting my Horton T-shirt as I'm blogging this. So go see Horton on March 14 and Blue Sky kicks Ass!......."Good Stuff!"

Pixar Wrap-Up.....

Ok so now that I have some time off I can finally update this thing. I got a bunch of my pictures together from my internship and put them up. You can check them out here. They are a few pics from around the facility and from the Autorama. I also added a few of my assignments to my demo reel. I'll compress the rest and put them up soon. I got to intern with 3 of the best animators I've ever met; Curran Giddens, Veerapatra Jinanavin, and Blake Johnson. These guys are awesome, you may have seen their work before, if not check'm out. To prove that it is a small industry, all four of us said our goodbyes not knowing when we would see each other again. Well 3 weeks later, Curran, Tun(Veerapatra) and I were waiting together in the lobby of Blue Sky to start our first day. Blake probably would have been there as well but he went back to school. It was awesome getting to work with them again!

While at Pixar we got to spend a lot of time with the story department. All three of my roommates were in story. These guys were so cool and amazingly talented; Jeremy Spears, Alex Hirsch, and Eric Fountain. I can't wait to see them again. Speaking of super cool and talented friends, While I was out there I got to see a really good buddy of mine, the guy that introduced me to Animation Mentor, Mike Safianoff. He lives in Emeryville. Even though I didn't get to see him that much it was still a lot of fun...we hadn't hung out since we were both living in Orlando. I also got to see another buddy of mine that I hadn't seen since I went to the Art Institute, Scott Trosclair. He's an extremely talented lighter....you may have seen his work before, he's been know to light some assignments for us AM'rs. And Speaking of AM'rs I got to meet the leader of the pack...that's right...I got to have lunch with Bobby Beck!!! Bobby is so great. It was really great to thank you in person for starting a life changing school!

While at Pixar I learned so much, I can't thank them enough for having the intern program. They made us all feel so welcome and taught us soooo much.....no kidding, I have a notebook that I brought with me...by the end I was squeezing in lines in corners, anywhere I could find some space to write. I'd like to give some special thanks to the People that I really spent a lot of time with....Andrew Gordon and Travis Hathaway you guys are awesome, Victor Navone, You were such a great mentor, your guidance really took my work to another level, Michal Makarewicz, super mentor extraordinair, Adrian Molina and Austin Madison, thanks for teaching me Risk, Carlos Baena, Doug Dooley, Dave Mullins, Pete Sohn, Mark Andrews, and Matt Majers....you all are so generous, I really can't thank you enough! And everyone else in the animation department, you were all so generous with your time and advice! So that about wraps it up without writing an entire book. It was the hardest and most rewarding experience I've had in animation. Some stand out moments would have to be: Meeting John Lasseter and getting to ask him questions, having our Ratatouille dialog assignment critiqued by the sups, Mark Walsh and Dylan Brown, and watching WALL-E come together and seeing dailies with Andrew Stanton.

Enjoy the pics!

-Stephen

Bad Blogger

Ok so I've been a bad Blogger. I'm going to try and make up for that. So this is just a quick update and I'll be posting some real content in the next few weeks. The short of it is I finished up with Pixar, it was freaking awesome. I met so many amazing people. I updated the link to my reel so you can see some of my stuff from the internship. Ok, so right after Pixar I was picked up at Blue Sky to work on Horton Hears a Who! Horton is going to be sweet, I can't wait till it comes out. Again I had an amazing time and met so many awesome animators. So thats the short. I'm taking some time off for the Holidays and before I start mentor again in January. So that gives me plenty of time to really update this thing and be a better blogger...maybe that will be my New Years resolution. So more content to come....pics...stories....ect.

Animation Mentor BBQ

I went to the AM BBQ today and it was awesome. I had a really great time. Mike B and Dan drove up from LA and Logan picked me up and we drove over from Emeryville. It was great to finally meet some of my AM classmates and our wonderful founders. I'm new to the area so this was my first visit to San Francisco....wow...and how cool was it to have the Golden Gate bridge as the back drop to the bbq. So here are some pics from the day...

GO SEE RATATOUILLE......

I got a chance to see "Rat" this past Thursday and it is a fantastic film. It hits on so many levels. Check out Victor Navone's post about "Rat"....awesome stuff!!

What a view.....
This is the view from just above the pool at my apartment complex. If you look past the fence and down the street you can see the front gate to Pixar....how sweet is that!!

I'M HERE.... So I finished my first week at Pixar and it is truly an amazing place. I'll probably be updating this blog about once a week. Obviously I'll be keeping what I learn and do at Pixar confidential but I will be posting what I'm doing in the bay area, animation talk, and other such things. Speaking of the bay area....I love this weather. Its about 70 everyday here...such a big difference from the hot, humid summers in Florida. My roommates are all Story interns and are really great guys. All the interns are extremely talented and I'm so glad I get to work with them everyday.

-Stephen

What better way to start a blog!! I am so excited to be accepted into Pixar's summer internship program. I'm starting this blog to help stay in touch with family and friends while I am away. This is a fantastic opportunity and I can't wait to start!!.....So look forward for more to come!

My First Test Post