Thursday, July 29, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wile E. Coyote
The New York Times has an article on new Looney Tunes. The CG shorts we have been working on at ReelFx got a mention, along with the first released image from the first short!
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Featured Mentor
I'm this month's "featured mentor" in the Animation Mentor newsletter...read my words HERE!
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Bedrock Studios
Big news today!! Here is the press release from the Hollywood Reporter!
Granat, Reel FX form Bedrock Studios
Animated feature 'Turkeys' is its first project
March 17, 2010, 02:07 PM ET
Cary Granat's Granat Entertainment is teaming with Reel FX, the company run by former ILM exec Ed Jones, to form Bedrock Studios, with the aim of developing and producing franchise films in the range of $35 million and under.
The company also hopes to produce content for TV, publishing and digital media.
Granat and Jones have been quietly working for months on the venture, slyly acquiring and developing material and is now hitting the ground running,
It is in preproduction on its first project, the animated feature "Turkeys," has tapped Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson to voice star as two turkeys who discover a time machine and travel back to the first Thanksgiving to take themselves off the menu. Ash Brannon ("Toy Story 2") is directing while John J. Strauss and David I. Stern wrote the script and are producing. Luke Wilson is also lending his voice, and Peter Farrelly will executive produce the project.
Bedrock has also acquired the screen rights to Madeleine L'Engle's classic young adult fantasy "A Wrinkle in Time" and William Joyce kids book "Dinosaur Bob." "Rats of NIHM," which Granat had set up at Paramount last year, has been folded over into a Bedrock project.
On one level, Bedrock continues the themes that Granat ran with when he ran Walden, which encompassed literary and family-friendly material and marries it with the resources of Reel FX, which made a name for itself producing CG animation for films such as Sony's "Open Season 2," Disney's "The Wild" and providing special effect for movies such as "Enchanted" and "Sin City." It also produced the animated companion piece to "Watchmen," "Tales of the Black Freighter."
Bedrock will continue to operate in the animated and visual effects world, where it counts almost every studio as a clients, and be based out of Santa Monica and Dallas.
The company also hopes to produce content for TV, publishing and digital media.
Granat and Jones have been quietly working for months on the venture, slyly acquiring and developing material and is now hitting the ground running,
It is in preproduction on its first project, the animated feature "Turkeys," has tapped Owen Wilson and Woody Harrelson to voice star as two turkeys who discover a time machine and travel back to the first Thanksgiving to take themselves off the menu. Ash Brannon ("Toy Story 2") is directing while John J. Strauss and David I. Stern wrote the script and are producing. Luke Wilson is also lending his voice, and Peter Farrelly will executive produce the project.
Bedrock has also acquired the screen rights to Madeleine L'Engle's classic young adult fantasy "A Wrinkle in Time" and William Joyce kids book "Dinosaur Bob." "Rats of NIHM," which Granat had set up at Paramount last year, has been folded over into a Bedrock project.
On one level, Bedrock continues the themes that Granat ran with when he ran Walden, which encompassed literary and family-friendly material and marries it with the resources of Reel FX, which made a name for itself producing CG animation for films such as Sony's "Open Season 2," Disney's "The Wild" and providing special effect for movies such as "Enchanted" and "Sin City." It also produced the animated companion piece to "Watchmen," "Tales of the Black Freighter."
Bedrock will continue to operate in the animated and visual effects world, where it counts almost every studio as a clients, and be based out of Santa Monica and Dallas.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Beep! Beep!
Today we start animation production on the first of three, Coyote and Roadrunner shorts for Warner Bros. Huzzah! It will be super fun and a little intimidating to work with such iconic characters. I gotta say it's been awhile since I've been this jazzed for a project. I can not wait to start!
The shorts will be playing in front of Warner Bros. films later this year and will be shown in stereoscopic 3D. Neato!
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Christmas Time is Here!
Yes with Christmas just five days away you may be in a mad scramble for some last minute Christmas gifts; especially if you are in the northeast and are snowed in. Why not give the gift of animation? How about The Very First Noel! On DVD and available at Amazon, just click HERE.
I finally caught Prep and Landing tonight, which was awesome by the way, and it made me wish our little Christmas show had made into the yearly holiday circuit on TV and cable....tears. If you are some big shot TV exec..could you make that happen please? I will send you a cookie...seriously I will.
I finally caught Prep and Landing tonight, which was awesome by the way, and it made me wish our little Christmas show had made into the yearly holiday circuit on TV and cable....tears. If you are some big shot TV exec..could you make that happen please? I will send you a cookie...seriously I will.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
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!
Thursday, October 15, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
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!!
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
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!!
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.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
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!!!
Monday, August 24, 2009
My Demo Reel
I uploaded my first video to YouTube! The upload/encode process took a looooong time but I'm pretty happy with how it looks.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Steven Spielberg Admires Animators
Maybe directors don't have to be animators first, but it sure is a wonderful thing when they have a clear picture of what they want.....
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Webosaurs spots
Later this summer ReelFx will be launching www.webosaurs.com a massive multiplayer online game aimed at young kids. The game is currently in beta....go give it a try!!
I animated on the Horns! Horns! Horns! spot. I did the shot immediately before the game footage and the shot immediately after the game footage. I also did the back flex shot.
More to come!!!
I animated on the Horns! Horns! Horns! spot. I did the shot immediately before the game footage and the shot immediately after the game footage. I also did the back flex shot.
More to come!!!
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