Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Career Choices


Another image from Robin. I would love to show everyone some of the more recent stuff we are working on but they are top secret, so you will have to satisfy with our old crap.

I've been talking to a number of artists recently about choices to make in their careers. Do I go to a big studio and learn or to a smaller studio and hopefully to get the opportunity to supervise? Do I sign a long contract for security and more money or move to where the best projects are. I always advise to search yourself and find out what your ultimate goal is.

If your answer is "I want to be the best animator in the industry" or "I want to develop the most beautiful show on the planet", I suggest finding a very secure company like DreamWorks or Nelvana and hone your craft beside the most talented people you can find.

If what you want is "my own studio" or "to direct my script", you must be willing to make sacrifices. It is unlikely that you'll be able to do any of these things within a studio. "But Ricardo, I understand that I can't run my own studio working at another, but I surely have to be in a studio to direct". Well, the reality is that most studios do not promote their own artists to director and the few that do have long lines of very creative people ahead of you to fill the few spots available. Even if you do happen to fight your way into a director's position, it is very likely that you will be developing your project for years waiting for the much wanted 'green light'. My advice to anyone looking to own a studio or direct is save lots of money, make friends with influential people, get a good agent and quit your job.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Max loves comics.



Ok, ok, the pages were already loose from Max reading his dad's comic 500 times but i couldn't resist putting this together.

-Come visit again soon Max!

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Flash

Reggie from Dog Tags.

At HoC I have been looking for ways to use flash to emulate our prefered organic style of designs. I find that most usages of flash is very slick. Not that I have anything against the slick look. Ghostbot does great work in a very clean style. Nelvana has a show called Grossology that we are boarding on that also has a good looking clean style using Toon Boom's Harmony. I'm just hoping to find ways of using flash's power to make organic design and animation easier. I'm also not willing to compromize the quality of animation for speed of production.

So far I've only found a ripping good illustrator/animator, Pascal Campion.
If anyone knows of other good examples of flash used more like rougher classical animation, I would love to hear about it.