My Demo Reel

Hey everybody. Dan here.

As some of you know, for the past couple of years I've been studying Computer Animation at Full Sail University in Orlando, FL. The last bit of time at school was spent working on my first Demo Reel. Essentially a demo reel is an animation portfolio containing a few short scenes that demonstrate what kind of stuff I am capable of for prospective employers. It's what I'll use to get a job - hopefully. Otherwise I'll just continue pitching in on Ross's soon-to-be award winning series of books.

I recently submitted my reel to the 2008 aniBoom Awards Animation Festival. Essentially this is an annual competition put on by the YouTube of the animation world, aniBoom.

So if you have a minute (1 minute and 20 seconds to be precise), and want to watch my efforts, I've included my reel in this very post. After watching it if you have another 10 seconds or so to kill, and want to help your friend Wheezy out, go give my video a ranking over at it's aniBoom page.

Hope you like it! Thanks for taking the time to watch it.

The competition goes through December 14th, so I imagine I'll be mentioning this again sometime within the next couple of weeks. Indulge a poor unemployed animator.

TF2 Sniper and Sandvich - Valve

Today I've got some more video game animations for you. Why so heavy on the video game stuff lately? I dunno. Let's call it a theme month or something.

The guys over at Valve have released a few more videos to promote their game Team Fortress 2. For those of you that have been following my Twitter, you know that lately I've been on a bit of a podcast kick, and one of the podcasts I listen to is the ReAnimators. These are a group of video game animators that talk about various aspects of their industry. One interesting point they brought up was that in a field where photorealism is so strived for and desired, something stylized like Team Fortress 2 really stands out.

And I couldn't agree more. These promotional animations are the icing on that cake. For me, something unique and well designed like the Team Fortress 2 crew are so much more appealing to me than a Marcus Fenix or Master Chief (although I do like Master Chief's design in general). Just like movie animation, it seems like the more you try to make things look super realistic (Beowulf) the further you get from something appealing that I'm actually going to enjoy (Ratatouille).

Anyway enough chat from me. Here's the first video introducing "The Sniper."

That character has been around from the beginning, but the next "character" is something new that was only recently introduced to the game. There really isn't a lot of actual animation in this one, as in character movement, but the animation that is used is perfect for what needs to be accomplished.

Haven't had enough videos? Wander of to Immediate Regret and vote for who you think has the best picks in our "Best Will Ferrell Character" Draft. If I lose I have to go see Disaster Movie, which I believe is still rocking a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. So go vote! (Preferably for me, but you should really watch the videos and decide for yourself).

Warhammer Online Cinematic - Blur Studio

Remember that short I shared a while back called "A Gentleman's Duel"? Well if not, go watch it because it's good stuff. That was a short by Blur Studio, which I found out recently also was the force behind that Marvel short I showed a few months back.

Well turns out that Blur Studio does a lot of game cinematics as well. Their most recently released one is for the upcoming World of Warcraft challenger, Warhammer Online. Yes, I know Blizzard stole all their ideas from Warhammer, so don't bother getting into that. This blog isn't for that.

What this blog is for (these days anyway) is showing some awesome animations, so moving right along, this is Blur Studio's Warhammer Online cinematic.

Oktapodi - Gobelins l'école de l'image

Hey there everybody. I've been away from the internets a bit this week on account of my attendance as a student volunteer at this year's SIGGRAPH conference. SIGGRAPH is a computer animation conference held every year where studios and tech companies show off their latest and greatest achievements in the arena of computer graphics. All of the major animation studios are in attendance, and as such it's a great time.

There is an Animation Film Festival as well, which shows some great shorts throughout the week. This year's film festival was pretty spectacular in my opinion, and there were a lot of great shorts, including a few I've posted here on this very blog in the past.

The winner of this year's Best of Show and Audience Prize was a short called Oktapodi. This is another student work from the French Animation school Gobelins l'école de l'image. You may remember that crazy french name from another short I posted a while back - Pyrats.

Enjoy!

Oh yeah. Check out my new website!

http://www.DanAnimation.com

Lots of animation goodness on there, and more to come!
Thanks to Mr. Wirick for the design and implementation.

Changes - Daniel Martinez Lara

Woah! Look at that. I'm still posting over here too. Crazy eh?

Here's an animation we were shown during class the other day, and it made me chuckle. It's by Daniel Martinez Lara and company. Lara has a tendency to mix character animation with more realistic palettes, which generally turns out a pretty cool result. He seems to put a lot of thought into the camera for his animations, something that a lot of people take for granted.

The animation I'm sharing today isn't trying to be realistic, but the camera action is still fantastic. Hope you enjoy!

One of those camera shots might look familiar. It made me laugh this time too.

"Changes" - Daniel Martinez Lara

"For the Birds" - Pixar Animation Studios

Looney Tunes - Chuck Jones

Hey there everybody. How ya doin'. Good? Good.

We just started our first class in a 5 month span in which I'll be making my demo reel, and our professor asked to to take a few minutes and remember why it was we wanted to get into animation to begin with (because, according to him, the next five months are going to test our desires a bit in terms of work load).

Well after thinking about it, there were a lot of factors in my life that got me started, but one of the earliest animations I can remember truly loving was pretty much any Looney Tunes short. The Disney shorts weren't being shown in front of movies anymore when I was a kid, and the Looney Tunes were playing pretty much in non-stop syndication, so I watched every minute, every episode, over and over.

Well, I managed to find a couple of them up on YouTube, and these ones in particular were favorites of mine. They also happen to be directed by Chuck Jones, one of the best known from Warner, at least by my age group.

Hopefully they'll bring back some fond memories for you too.

If you want more, Warner has been releasing them on DVD for quite a while now. Check 'em out here.

Mandalorian Dance

Did you see Wall-E yet? Go see it. Best Reviewed movie of 2008 according to me. And Rotten Tomatoes apparently. I'm going to have to get a Blu-Ray (read: PS3) for that movie alone.

This week's featured animation was something I just found floating around the internets. I don't know much about it's back story but I do know that it is impressive in its own way. Not every animation has to be high brow artsy stuff.

Mandalorian Dance

Have a great 4th of July weekend everybody.

Wall-E by Pixar Animation Studios

Ok ok ok... I'm kinda geekin' out right now. Admittedly, I'm extremely biased when it comes to Pixar in general. But I am downright exploding with ... I dunno... SOMETHING about Wall-E. And I haven't even seen it yet.

In fact, emily tried to talk down my excitement a tad the other day, just on the off chance that I'm disappointed by the movie. What can I say, she's looking out for me :).

"Dan, I come here on the off chance that you posted a comic, and occasionally for videos. Not movie reviews for movies you haven't seen yet. Honestly. This blog jumped the shark back when you posted 'Rejected'."

Fine, fine. You want videos? I'll give ya videos. MORE WALL-E VIDEOS. These are more in the "Wall-E Meets" series of vignettes. Don't worry, not a spoiler in sight.

This last one has caused me to contemplate thievery on multiple occasions. I hear these things are wandering around the Disney theme parks, which happen to by right down the road from where I live. I could probably fit one in my car, right?

Lastly, check out Disney's website and wait for the intro to load up. Careful though, after the intro a trailer plays, so be prepared to hit the pause button if you're trying to save the movie for when you actually go see it.

GO SEE WALL-E.

More - Mark Osborne

Today's featured animation is "More" by Mark Osborne. This was released in 1998, and was the first short to be filmed in the IMAX format. As with most things I throw up here, it won a ton of awards, and was nominated for an Academy Award the year it was released.

Animation wise, we're looking at another Stop-Motion, or Claymation piece, with a little 2D thrown in for good measure. There's a good interview with Osborne about his process overe at AnimWatch.

Check out Mark Osborne's official site here. Enjoy!

More - Free videos are just a click away

Wall-E Vignettes

So emily and I just saw Kung Fu Panda last night, and I must say it was absolutely awesome. It was a good story, combined with great action sequences (although perhaps a bit of over use in the "slow motion to full speed to slow motion" department) and hilarious dialog from Mr. Jack Black. Not to mention the animation itself was superb. All around fantastic, and without question Dreamworks' best animated film to date.

That being said, my enthusiasm for Pixar's next offering can not be satiated that easily. June 27th I will assuredly be seated in a movie theater, waiting to watch a movie that has little to no dialog. A stark contradiction to the Dreamworks approach of throwing as many Hollywood stars as possible at everything they make. I think Jackie Chan had maybe two lines in Kung Fu Panda, and between Lucy Lui and Angelina Jolie there might have been a page of script.

Hopefully you've seen at least one or two articles / commercials about Wall-E. In the "viral" marketing department, Pixar has been releasing some vignettes of the cute little guy coming across objects from our world that he might not understand at first glance. For today's featured animation, I bring to you some brilliant animation by none other than Pixar Animation Studios.

Fun Fact: The sound designer that created the robot "voices" for Wall-E is Ben Burtt, the same guy who designed Chewbacca's voice, R2D2's blips, and that lightsaber noise, among other things. Enjoy!

Marvel on the Small Screen

Today's video has been around the nets for a while now, but once again I have to give credit to Mr. Calendine for reminding me that it exists. Thanks Ben.

I really don't know much about the origins of this video, other than Marvel Comics had it put together to try and sell some more comics with their three current movie franchise characters. And I must say, it's pretty fantastic. So sit back, relax, and enjoy some super hero CG that wasn't ruined by any Hollywood interference.

Andy Continues to Get Old

Hello Wheezy's blog readership! Today is my birthday and for that you get another Fenley original comic. Dan gave me "contributor" status so when I get an idea for a comic I will be posting it myself from now on.

Anyway about the comic. I recently got engaged and I think it may be normal female instinct to go into super-planner mode. While the situation below hasn't happened yet (well not exactly), it seems like it is only a matter of time. This is far more drawing that I did for the last comic, but I think it turned out well. Enjoy!

The Cat Came Back - Cordell Barker

Today's animation is an oldie but a goody. "The Cat Came Back" is an animation by Cordell Barker from 1988. Based on an old folk song by Harry S. Miller (originally titled "The Cat Came Back: A Comic Negro Absurdity"), the Barker's version leaves out most of the lyrics, using the animation to tell the story.

I remember this cartoon from my childhood - although I'm not sure where I saw it. Maybe Sesame Street? Anyway. Let me know if this brings back memories for any of you. Enjoy!

Pop Culture Psychosis

Look at that. A real, actual, Wheezy original comic. Huh.

Thanks for sticking in there with me. With the end of my schooling coming up here in November, I'm going to be busy working on my demo reel pretty much non-stop for the next five months or so. I can't guarantee comics every week, but I'll certainly keep posting videos and some of my own work, and I'll do my best to get a comic up when I can.

Enough of that. Today's comic is actually part of a collaboration from a ways back with Enliv. Each one of us wrote the script for the other's comic... this way we had to do some writing with other people's characters and stretch our comedic horizons a little bit.

The idea for today's comic came from Mr. Johnny Nguyen. Enjoy!

You can see the rest of the collaborations here and here.

Guest Comic - Andy Fenley

Hey look at that! A COMIC!

Ok, granted, it's not a comic by Wheezy, but it IS a comic, and a good one too, something which this site sorely needs. Mr. Andy Fenley was nice enough to make a guest comic during my period of creative laziness, and for that I think we all owe him a debt of gratitude.

And now I'll hand it over to Mr. Fenley.

"Enjoy my first attempt at a comic. Shows you can do a lot with no talent and funny friends."

Thanks again to Mr. Fenley.

Team Fortress 2 Character Trailers- Valve

I've been in a lab all night watching a little bar scroll slowly across the screen, rendering out this month's school project one pixel at a time. There's a comic in the works, I promise. Just not for today. I think by Monday I'll owe you three.

Valve is one of the leaders in the gaming industry. If you haven't heard of Half-Life, I would wager that you haven't played a video game in the last five years or so. But don't worry, I'm not sharing video game screen shots today.

Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer first person shooter that was recently released as part of Valve's "The Orange Box" (which is a great deal, by the way). Prior to release Valve put out a series of animations introducing some of the character classes in the game. Taking heavily from the style of "The Incredibles", these things are pure gold. Great animation with hilarious, well defined personalities, this stuff just goes to show that film companies aren't the only ones capable of high quality character animation.

Meet The Heavy (Team Fortress 2)
by nofrag

Team Fortress 2 engineer
by minutemed

Team Fortress 2 soldier
by minutemed

team fortress 2 demoman
by ElectronicArts

Meet The Scout (TF2)
by nofrag

Fallen Art - Baginski

Stay with me folks. My class this months end Wednesday. We're almost back into sanity and with it, new comics. Just a few more days.

Today's Featured Animation is "Fallen Art" by Baginski. You can find the official website here.
In today's feature animaton world, it's rare that you get anything that's not kid friendly. "Fallen Art" is certainly not that - I'd say it falls in the realm of 'dark comedy'. Hope you enjoy!

Rejected - Don Hertzfeldt

I'm really sorry. I truly am. I WANT to make a comic, but this month is just killing me with school work. I know when I say "Don't worry - comics will come back as soon as possible" you may be skeptical. After all, I don't have the best track record with this sort of thing. However, I really do plan on coming back with more comics. Just... after this hectic class thing is over with.

In the meantime, I'll share another hand picked Featured Animation. Many of you may have seen this before, but I doubt that those who have seen it will mind seeing it again. But since you don't come here for looking for just the same old stuff, here's some information that you might not know. Rejected, by Don Hertzfeldt, was released in 2000. Although it has the feel of something made for the internet masses, it actually won quite a few film festival awards, and was nominated for a 2001 Academy Award for Best Animated Short.

No joke. It's an Oscar nominated film. It's also been described by some as the "A Hard Day's Night" of our generation.


It's a little risque, as far as things I post on this blog goes, so be careful as the audio in particular isn't necessarily safe for work (ANSFW - the "A" is for Audio). You can find Hertzfeldt's website here. And now, "Rejected".

Since you did come here for a comic there is a bit of new Wheezy comic work floating around the internet today. In another collaboration with Enliv, today's comic by Kevin Chibar was a concept written by yours truly. Go check it out.

Animusic

So I'm a little off my game this month. Kinda hectic classes going on. So this week we're pulling another switcher-oo. Featured Animation today, comic on Thursday. Thanks for understanding.

Today's featured animation is more of a featured animation company, Animusic. This company, started by Wayne Lytle, is unique in that they don't animate their zany computer generated instruments by hand. Instead, they create fanciful and original instruments that are then animated by music they write themselves. In essence, the music drives the animation automatically, without the need for a person to hand animate to a music track. Pretty innovative and cool.

Today I've embedded "Resonance Chamber", but if you just type "Animusic" into YouTube you'll find a ton of these things. They also have quite a few DVD's available at your nearest Best Buy. Enjoy!

Vincent - Tim Burton and Rick Heinrichs

Last week I shared "9" by Shane Acker, a short film that is being turned into a full length feature film by Tim Burton. This week I'm sharing some of Tim's (that's right, we're close) early work.

This short stop motion film "Vincent" was made by Tim Burton in 1982 with the animating talents of Rick Heinrichs. Even that early in Burton's career, he had a very distinctive style. "Tim Burton-y", I think would be the best way to describe it.

Here's a little Tim Burton trivia for ya. Burton used to be a Disney Animator. Not surprisingly, he didn't get much of his character design stuff in until after he left Disney to work on his own projects. I dunno how well a Jack Skellington type would have fit in with Bambi's mom.

And now - Vincent.