Another week, another animated blockbuster-to-be! This time it’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It’s not easy to follow the transcendent Up this summer, but the Ice Age series has generally been pretty charming, and this third installment earned a very positive review from Variety.
Among the grads who worked on the production by way of Blue Sky Studios are three who we’ve name-checked before on this very blog: animators Scott Lemmer and Thom Roberts and modeler Brent Wong. Look for their names in lights!
Like most Canadians, we’ll be taking Wednesday off, back later this week. Happy Canada Day, everybody!
Blockbuster season is well underway, so it’s a time when a lot of VFS grads can look for their names up on the big screen when the credits roll.
This week’s highlight is Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen – bigger and robot-ier than ever. With much of the animation and VFX work done at ILM and Digital Domain, a number of VFS grads – all from the 3D Animation & Visual Effects program, worked on Transformers, including compositors Aruna Inversin and Bryan Jones, creature TD Henri Tan, digital artist Teh-wei Yeh, and animator Stephen King.
Some are calling the film ‘robot overload’ – we say there’s no such thing. Congrats, guys!
Friends? is one of three nominees for the Well Told Fable Award.
Tongue-in-cheek acronyms aside, it’s obviously a huge honour. “I was really excited about the film being accepted to the festival in the first place, but being nominated? That’s just crazy,” he tells us.
Great news, and we’ll be watching closely! Of course, VFS will also be at Siggraph, so stay tuned for details on where you can find us and what we’ll be doing!
We’re about a month away from the VFS 2009 Summer Intensives! Due to the high demand, extra dates have been added for the Writing for Film & Television, Film Production, Acting for Film & Television, Sound Design for Visual Media, and Animation & Visual Effects Intensives.
The Game Design Intensive and the 2nd date for the Writing for Film & Television Intensive are almost sold out! Don’t miss your chance!
As announced in March, these 5-day creative boot camps put those who are considering attending Vancouver Film School in the trenches of their chosen program, where they’ll gain hands-on experience under the guidance of VFS’s staff of industry professionals.
James Choi,a graduate of the Foundation Visual Art & Design program and current 3D Animation & Visual Effects student, has come a long way to find the career he’s currently pursuing. From studying Chemistry and Nuclear Science to finding his artistic voice at VFS — and now refining his area of interest in 3D Animation & Visual Effects — James’ story is one common example amongst the many different portraits of recent Foundation students.
He shed some light on what made him decide to change career paths, and where he hopes to end up when he graduates next spring.
Q: Can you talk a little about your background before coming to the Foundation program?
A: I was imported from Korea in 1993 at the age of 10. I graduated from Simon Fraser University in 2005 with a Bachelor of Science, majoring in Chemistry and Nuclear Science, and then worked in various fields, including environmental science, forensics, research, and business management. I had no training in the fine arts, and I hardly watched films.
Ben Stern came to the Digital Character Animation program with a little CG experience and a longtime love of acting. “When I was introduced to CG, I immediately saw how my acting experience could come into play in animation,” he says.
In his six months in DCA, followed by a two-month extension on a Festival Scholarship, Ben made Cricket. “The film draws you into a world, tells you a tale, and pleases you by its ending,” says Senior Instructor Greg Berridge. “It has all of the features of good visual storytelling.”
The process wasn’t without hiccups, and Ben actually switched stories at the eleventh hour. “He made some drastic changes late in the program which saw this film come into being,” Greg explains. “He wanted to see his film made no matter what obstacles arose.”
Ben, who now works at Vancouver’s Image Engine, was kind enough to delve into the process from start to finish. But before we get to that, let’s start with the end result:
Where are you from? What drew you to animation?
Germany, but my family is a bit of a traveling circus act, so we have spent time in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
Since as long as I can remember, I have loved acting and participated in school plays. When I was introduced to CG, I immediately saw how my acting experience could come into play in animation, so in a sense the desire to animate has been with me since the beginning.
Did you have any previous training before joining VFS?
My previous training consisted of CG introductory courses, combined with work at Studio Aiko, my previous employers – and good friends!
The animation is important, but obviously a great deal of care went into Cricket’s look. Why was that important?
The cartoon-meets-reality style of CG is something I have always wanted to do. I saw many many great shorts online from many different students and studios that truly inspired me and served as reference.
The animation is important, yet I consider myself a very visual guy, so I really wanted the film to have a graphic punch to it. The approach was to keep geometry as basic as possible and let the textures do as much of the work as possible.
Concept sketch by David Sookochoff
Preproduction: I know there were some aspects of preproduction that you skipped or hurried through. Still, the character designs are inspired. Could you describe what you did do at this early stage?
This may sound a bit corny, but almost the entire idea for the story – including the look – was born pretty instantly. It was a daydream that unfolded almost seamlessly, and was accurate down to 90 percent of the shots that I ended up doing.
There were certain things that needed to be refined – the way the army was destroyed is one of them. Originally I thought they would be swept away by a broken dam, but doing water simulations was just a bit much. So initially what I did was look for reference validations. Having seen so many great videos online, I knew where it had to go and I was just refining ideas, gathering references, and had some help doing character sketches from David Sookochoff.
What were some of the important considerations with the design of the story’s hero?
Ichiro was supposed to be cute and approachable, slightly doll- and infant-like. While designing, it was imperative to keep the overall proportions intact with that concept – large head and eyes, small stature, and so forth. In terms of matching the general theme, he adheres to the same design laws as the rest of the characters and objects – hard edges, low-poly, high texture.
Concept sketch by David Sookochoff
The army – Sendo – were supposed to be ghoulish in appearance, half-demon [and] half-metal, and they needed to breathe fire. I played around with several colour options and shapes till I was able to get them to be the way they are now.
While they were initially supposed to be completely black, I quickly realized that it wouldn’t work well and decided to go with a more “natural” approach regarding the materials. The idea for the helmet was a simple stylized skull with horns.
Moving on to the modeling and rigging… You’d worked with CG before. Did you have Maya experience prior to VFS?
I took an introductory course when I first got in to CG, but had since then forgotten almost everything. The only thing I remembered was hitting the space bar to move between windows.
Could you describe the elements of this stage – what you had to do and how you achieved it? Why is this process important to a student pursuing character animation?
Over the last ten years, Classical Animation grad Mike Geiger has gained a lot of valuable experience working for companies like Bardel Entertainment, March Entertainment, and Carbunkle Cartoons (The Ren & Stimpy Show). He recently made the leap into the potentially unstable, but creatively rewarding world of the Independent Animator. For a lot of people, that’s a risky move, but for Mike, it’s one that’s proving to be a very successful choice.
We had a chance to ask him about his career and life, and here’s what he had to say:
Q: Hi, Mike. Thanks for your time. After a quick look at your recent work history, it seems like you must be swamped all the time. How do you balance your life while working as an independent animator?
A: Not very well. I recently tried to solve that problem by getting a studio space to work out of so that when I go home at night, I have no way to work even if I want to. But previous to that, when I was working from my house, there was just no excuse for not being productive, which threw me pretty far off of any sort of work / life balance. I got a lot accomplished during that period, but it was not much of a healthy situation while I was doing it.
Q: What prompted your decision to go out on your own?
A little under a year ago, we spoke with then-recent Classical Animation grad Pedro Eboli about his VFS films Papercut and A Pug’s Life. It was the culmination of a professional reinvention for Pedro – he’d gone from advertising copywriter in Brazil to animator.
When asked about his short-term hopes for his films, he was pretty specific: “It would especially be a dream to get them in the Anima Mundi Festival in Rio de Janeiro, which I’ve attended for so many years and at which I’ve seen some of my animation heroes on the screen.”
Well, that day has come: Papercut is an official competition selection in the 2009 Anima Mundi Festival! Huge congrats, Pedro!
Congratulations to Classical Animation grad Cam Lizotte for his recent win at the 3rd annual Elan Awards. The Elans recognize excellence in Video Games, Visual Effects, and Animation. Cam won for his work as a Director on the animated series Wapos Bay: The Series.
Huge news today: Pixar is opening a studio in Vancouver. This is great for the city’s already thriving animation scene, and it’s no wonder Pixar cited Vancouver’s “huge, very robust, mature talent pool” as a reason for setting up shop in our fair city. The word is the new studio will be employing up to 100.
Welcome, Pixar! We know you’ll be blown away with the talent you find here.
Another week, another animated blockbuster-to-be! This time it’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. It’s not easy to follow the transcendent Up this summer, but the Ice Age series has generally been pretty charming, and this third installment earned a very positive review from Variety.
Blockbuster season is well underway, so it’s a time when a lot of VFS grads can look for their names up on the big screen when the credits roll.
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We’re about a month away from the 
James Choi, a graduate of the 
Ben Stern came to the 
Where are you from? What drew you to animation?
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