tiny update
A small tiny update with some fun news. I started working at CAOZ in Reykjavik a couple of months back. (Before that switch I animated two frog-filled Vodafone spots for Mistrti). I’ll be working on the first Icelandic CGI-feature Thor - the edda chronicles which is a co-production between CAOZ in Reykjavik, Ulyesses in Hamburg, Germany and Magma Productions in Galway, Ireland. I’ve been working on the storyboards (editing them together and such) and writing some rigging scripts and soon I’ll move over to some pipeline tools and some more rigging scripts. And of course animating once animation starts. Fun times ahead. So expect fewer posts than usual. (There is something less than 0?)
Back from Siggraph
I’m back from Siggraph, which was a blast (although a bit hot). Met some fun people and it was unreal seeing my film on the big screen. At Siggraph I saw some clips of Sony’s Cloudy with a chance of meatballs (in 3d, which I don’t find all that exciting) and this looks like it’s going to be a really fun movie. I’m really digging some of the animation choices made on this film. For example I find the way Flint walks toward the garbage can on the pier in the ‘burger rain’ sequence (you might know what I’m talking about, if not you will in a couple of weeks) awesome. It’s just a fantastic walk! Anyway, I can’t wait to see this film.
Siggraph here I come!
Leaving for New Orleans (via New York) in roughly 6 hours. In the meantime you can check out my ‘almost’-new reel on the work page
Small update
I updated my resume a little bit. I’ve also updated my reel, but I’ve yet to upload it. I’m sure it will turn up here in the near future These are all small parts of the great “going-to-siggraph” plan.
Siggraph 2009
Well, it’s settled - I’ll be going to New Orleans this August to attend Siggraph. Now I just have to decide what to do and when to do it while I’m there. We should definitely grab a beverage of some sort if you are going.
A tiny FCP tip
I had this issue the other day where I had at some point deleted the sound that accompanied a clip from a timeline. The quickest way I found was the ‘match frame’ (shortcut: f) command. Just put your playhead on the start of the clip you want to get the sound back from and hit f. Then the viewer loads with the source clip (not the clip from the timeline) with the appropriate in and out points. Then you can either hit f10 or use your preffered method of inserting thing into your timeline. And there’s your clip with sound. I found this extremely useful when I had to recover the sound from around 100 shots. Then I pressed the down arrow key, hit f, f10 and repeat.
A really nice post on using GTD for animation
Jason Schleifer wrote a really nice post about GTD and some ideas about how to use it for animation. He’s also got some nice posts about using gtdagenda.com and other nice stuff. Check it out.
Really old stuff
Back in the day when I started messing with 3d I was usually planning
crazy shorts, and I think this one takes the cake: Ducks at War. I
think I only modeled a few assets for it, and If it looks a bit like
Band of Brothers it’s no accident. Those were the days. (Click for
bigger version) 
Siggraph 2009 - the adventure continues
If you haven’t seen this already, I got nominated for an award at the siggraph 2009 computer animation festival, in the WTF (Well told fable) category. Official press release So I guess I’ll be going to New Orleans in August, or at least trying to.
Replace layers in a composition in AfterEffects
I found this tip somewhere and thought I’d share this as the first in hopefully several posts of the “post a week ‘othon”. To replace a layer in a composition with a new item from the project window select the layer to be replaced in the composition window. Press option and drag the item from the project window and drop it on top of the selected layer in the composition window. Simple. This preserves everything you had done to the first layer. So this saves you the hassle from dropping in the new item, copying animation, effects and transforms. I don’t know why I didn’t know before last week.