Unfortunately my new WIP is broken and doesn't look much further along than my previous. I created 8 versions of nearly each asset to be animated in photoshop which took the lions share of my work time.

First version of demo reel.

 Monday November 21

Tuesday November 22           

Wednesday November 23 – Have at least 50% of hand drawn assets finished

Thursday November 24 – Have at least 75% of hand drawn assets finished

Friday November 25            - have 100% of assets finished

Saturday November 26 -

Sunday November 27

Monday November 28 – Animate first fantasy scene           

Tuesday November 30 – Animate 2^nd  fantasy scene

Wednesday Dec 1 – Animate 3^rd fantasy scene

Friday Dec 2

Saturday dec 3 – begin toon boom animation

Sun dec 4, Mon dec 5, Tues dec6 – all toon boom

Final WIP

Act. I:
Act one opens with an Indian-Jones-esque pulp adventure character in a lava filled cavern. He his hopping between rock platforms jutting out of the magma. He stops to examine a relic he just found. Suddenly a motherly voice calls from off screen and the scene switches to a small boy jumping onto pillows arrayed out on a living room floor, the whole scene was a play pretend of the boys imagination with the relic as a baseball. He brushes his mom off and returns back to his fantasy except now the scene has taken on the character of a science fiction story, the character is no longer a pulp action adventurer but is a space explorer. He is leaping across the same rock path but now it is over a fetid alien swamp with creeping tentacles. He finally reaches the shore just as the tentacles expose themselves as a hideous predatory alien.
Act II.
Mother calls out again for him to come eat lunch. The scene switched back to the boy and he stands over a tennis racket. He picks it up and the scene switches back to fantasy. The tennis racket has become a beam sword, he turns around to face the encroaching monstrous foe. He rushes into battle and slashes off a tentacle. Mother, increasingly agitated yells at him to come eat his lunch before it gets cold. The scene switches back to reality, he had been battling the drapes. He goes to the kitchen, quickly eats his lunch and rushes back to his imaginary adventure. He returns to his imagination but it has changed into a Arthurian fantasy setting. He has become a knight and his alien foe/the drapes has been transformed into a fierce dragon. He rages into battle and eviscerates the the dragon.
Act III
The dragon has been vanquished but we switch back to reality and the boy has battled the drapes off the wall. A silhouette of mother appears with a body language that says "Your in trouble, little boy."

Revised Story board and color card.

Travel Fellowship Application

Tyler Sutton

The history, art, and architecture of the city of Venice have always fascinated me. A visit to Venice, the absorption of the history of Venice and the Venetian culture would greatly enhance my story telling ability as well as technical artistic ability.

The rise of the Republic of Venice, it's trials and tribulations, my stories for animation projects would practically create themselves. The rise and fall of the Doge, the intrigue of the masquerades of the Renaissance with the distinctive Venetian masks, and the horrors of the black plague beset upon an island city are rich and fertile grounds for the creation of complex and interesting plots. Great writes such as Shakespeare and Anne Rice found inspiration in the ancient city. Even in the two days I spent in Venice my mind raced with ideas for stories and plots.

On the technical side, all of my various interests would be piqued in Venice. In the field of industrial design I could learn a great deal from the classic Venetian glass smiths. One of the longest running companies in the world is a Venetian glass company that has been in constant operation since 1295. The beauty and craftsmanship of Venetian glass is world renowned.  The forms, color, and texture of Venetian glass work would help me better understand form and function in 3D space, improving my ability to craft designs for dimensional objects.

In the field of architecture, Venice is a veritable goldmine. There is nothing quite like the city of Venice. An illustrious mixture of Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical-Moderne architecture is a muse unto itself. One is simply left in awe when stepping onto Piazza San Marco. During the Southern Renaissance, Venice was the center of world trade and it shows in the Arabesque and Near Eastern flourishes that left its mark on Venice's architecture. I have a great interest in architecture, filling my sketchbooks with designs of hypothetical structures and I believe a fellowship in Venice would have a grand impact on my ideas concerning architecture.

In painting, Venice was one of the hearts of the Italian Renaissance, next only to Florence. Home of Cenaletto, Titian, Bellini, and Veronese, Venice left its mark on the world of fine art.  One cannot spend time around such work and not gain some technical enhancement from it.

All these interests and more would be immensely enhanced by a fellowship to the beautiful, ancient city of the Lion (the Lion is the symbol of Venice) but my purpose there would be to create a work of narrative animation. A piece of animated narrative, colored by such a city, would be something unique and bold. Creating a world based on Venice, its history and culture and the character of its population, would entail a great deal of research, documenting, sketching, and photographing as well as socializing with the native people.

I am already familiar with the layout of Venice on a basic level and the language barrier is not much of an issue due to most Venetians speaking English. Cost is an issue as Venice is considered to have a relatively high cost of living. Housing is extremely costly in the old city though inland housing is much cheaper albeit with the subsequent need for transportation into the old city which is an additional cost. A one bedroom apartment in the old city is about seven-hundred dollars a month in rent. Utilities are approximately two-hundred dollars a month. An “inexpensive” restaurant is approximately twelve dollars a meal for one. A Coka-Cola is two dollars and fifty cents. (All prices equivalent dollars in Euros) Thus Venice is an expensive place but the rewards are undoubtedly worth it.

My final project is about a small boy and the fantasy worlds he constructs to play pretend in. As children we all were so easily able to construct vivid imaginary worlds to play in. A group of pillows becomes rocks which one has to precariously jump on in order to avoid the floor that has become lava and then it becomes a fetid marsh on an alien planet. A baseball is a ancient relic, then a holocube. A tennis racket becomes a laser sword and then it becomes excalibur. Drapes are alien tentacles then a dragon. 

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/galactic_orb/

This is the tutorial I based my project on. Unfortunately the trial version of After Effects is missing many of the effects used by Mr. Kramer on this tutorial so I had to approximate with substitutions on my project - namely the lack of particle simulations and CC Lens effects. I used spherize to approximate the lens effect and foam in place of particles.
In the end my project ended up more like a gelatinous blob than a energetic galactic orb. Oh well.

Regarding the final project.
Im still feeling out the story and setting. Im definitely setting more realistic goals and expectations for this project in terms of length and breadth of story and detail. I will use the 2.5D elements we used recently and will also be using more hand created/analogue assets. I really enjoyed how that looked when brought into 2.5D space. Right now, in terms of story, im thinking about showing (using a split view) an adventure of a small boy. On one side of the screen you see reality and on the other side you see the fantastic world of the kids imagination. What on one side is pillows scattered on the floor is, to the small boy, rocks he uses to navigate over a lake of magma or maybe a river full of crocodiles. I think this would be an interesting experiment to show the same scene from 2 points of view: the real world as seen by an adult and the fantastic world of imagination seen through the eyes of a child..both "worlds" existing side by side.  After the heady and fairly depressing subject matter of loss of a loved one and suicide I want to do something more lighthearted and whimsical.

AE Effects bonanza woo hoo

2.5D animation

I created a sort of 2.5D diorama constructed of hand drawn assets. My render is coming out jerky for some reason. If I render in lossless its smooth but if I render it in H264 it has a weird jerkiness to it.
Any suggestions, interwebs?

Final Revised. Im glad to finally be done with this project. It didn't turn out quite like I wanted and I became disillusioned with the original story arc quite early. And the overall subject matter was incredibly depressing to work with and took its toll on me personally. I will continue to tweak it so its more presentable by the time review committee rolls around but I'm glad to be moving on. Sometimes me reach exceeds its grasp. My next project will be much more light hearted with an aesthetic much less tied to the real world - the aesthetic I chose did not very well match the tools I was using and it became overly time consuming.

David Dupont's Demo Rell
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKzwJGV-njo
Shows small clips of 3d computer animation demonstrating the artist skill as a character animator. He starts with clearly his best work, a very realistic monster and in the middle demonstrates more of a cartoon aesthetic. He ends it rather poorly with a rapid succession slide show of charcoal character sketches.
William Phillips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94QNZ5uiCQs&feature=related
William Phillips is definitely interested in computer/video game development. He focus on character models and environments with the maximum amount of detail with the minimum amount of geometry (polygons). Video game systems and home computers aren't render farms and need to generate images in realtime, interactive framerates of thirty frames per second or more.
Phil Chornohus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=VnOLEySbrJM
Mostly a solid demonstration of modeling skills. Not everyone is an animator and that is ok, there are plenty of positions for just creating and modeling characters. But a little bit of animation would go some lengths to making this a more compelling demo reel.