Acting Insights

Great acting insights from Sir Ian Mckellen....

Webosaurs: Battle Arena

This is the other webosaurs spot I co-directed and co-animated with Eric Drobile; I did the big ass fight at the end. I wanted this one to be different that the other spots; more like the Marvel comics version of Webosaurs and I'm pretty jazzed with how it turned out. Huge thanks to everyone who made an extra effort on this one. Amy, Chris, Liz, Julie and Frank..big thanks to you guys!

Butter Fingers

So last Sunday we are having dinner...yummy lasagna. I poured myself some wine and as I went to put the half full bottle back in the frig..SWOOSH the bottle just drops out of my hand and hits the the floor...SKADOOSH! Wine and glass went everywhere. The only thing left in my hand was the bottle topper. I was bare foot at the time so I froze immediately..slowly looking down, I expected bleeding piggies. All ten looked ok.

What a lovely mess and a giant waste of wine! Initially I tried lapping up some off the floor but the glass shards made my tongue bleed. After bandaging my tongue and armed with rolls of paper towels and the vacuum, I set about cleaning up the mess. When I was done, I tossed the bag o glass into the garbage can in the garage and FINALLY was able to eat my dinner. My one thought, "at least no one got hurt".....well...at least not yet.

Today... is garbage day. I put on my flip flops and went out to the garage...filled up the garbage can with various miscellaneous bags o trash and tossed in a couple phone books; so now the bag was nice and heavy. Yanked the bag out of the can and began heaving it down to the curb. On the last big heave hoe the bag grazed my foot and immediately I feel a sting. I look and there is a 4 inch long gash across the top of my foot AND it looks a little deep. What the hell did that.....oh CRAP the glass from the wine bottle! Yep some glass was poking out of the bottom of the bag...awesome.

I hobbled into the house and sat in the bathtub. It didn't look as bad as when I slice my knuckle (see Meat Flap) but it was bleeding none the less. No one makes me bleed my own blood better than me. For whatever reason, I always think its a good idea to run water over major injuries. This does 2 things: 1. it makes the injury hurt way more 2. its like turning on the blood faucet because the injury starts to bleed...A LOT; clearly I never went to medical school.

With my wife's help I got band aided up and off to work I hobbled. Thank god for cruise control.

The morale of the story: If you drop the wine you WILL get cut.

More Animation Tips and Tricks

I have a couple more blog postings up at Animation Tips and Tricks. What steps do students often overlook was one from a few days ago. Pose to pose or straight ahead is the latest. Check em out!!

Toy Story 3 trailer

Looking forward to spending some time with the ol toys...

Animation Tips and Tricks

Woohoo!! I'm a guest blogger over at the AnimationTipsandTricks blog. The first question I am answering is: What is the importance of clean blocking? Can you provide some tips on clean blocking?

Quick...go see what I say!!

Cloudy With a Chance of AWESOME!

I took Wonder-pea to see Cloudy opening weekend in normal, boring 2D; I still find it odd that I go to see a CG movie and then request a ticket for the 2D version..the mind boggles. We both enjoyed it quite a lot and I dare say that it is my favorite animated film so far this year. Enjoyable story, fun characters, lots of good honest humor (no pop culture refs) and just entertaining start to finish. The snappy animation style worked well within the world that was created and I look forward to doing some single framing once the DVD comes out. I would love to give that animation style a try...so fun.

In its second weekend Cloudy retained the number one spot only falling 18.8% which is great!! If you haven't seen it yet then shame on you...and your family. Go give it a look, you will be glad you did.

New Webosaurs Spot

I co-wrote and co-directed this spot with my buddy Eric Drobile. We also animated the spot. I did the close up of Horns (Bring it Rexxy!) and the shot with Pterry at the end. Big thanks to everyone involved for making it snowtastic!!!