Production Update 213: Panel Refresh

This week I spent some time refreshing a couple of my panels before I head to AnimeFest at the end of the week. This week I am going to be spending some time expanding on my animation panel. This panel is still in it’s early phases, I performed a strip down version last year at Nebraskon and it did really well, the room was packed. So I want to polish up a few areas and also expand some areas that other attendees had questions on. My goal with the panel is to help people understand more about animation but to also help give some resources to people who are interested in animation and to help demystify it.

Last week I also met up with another local content creator to just pick his brain a bit. The reason for this, is I want to update and relaunch my Patreon page in next couple months, with more focus on content creation and what all goes into animation production. I have another meet up planned for this week. Speaking of meet ups, I am also relaunching the local animation meet ups. I used to organize these a couple years ago but things tapered off a bit and our venue also went through some remodeling. However, I have met some more animator’s and wanted to bring them together in a place where we can learn and talk shop together. I will be sure to bring the content I make to the site and more. I am looking forward to these meet ups and can’t wait to see what everyone is working on!

Production Update 212: Con Announcements!

I have been a little behind the past couple weeks, we had some issues crop up at the house that required some attention all around the time I was getting ready for a weekend of travel as well. Everything is returning to starting to wind down a bit more.

I found out last week that both of my panels for AnimeFest have been approved. This year I will be presenting a panel on J-rock and also one on an Introduction to Animation. I went to AnimeFest for the first time last year and it was an amazing time, I felt that the convention was focused on art and artists and I look forward to being back next year. This past week I have been working on refreshing my J-rock panel and updating my Animation panel will be on schedule for this week. I ran a light version of it last year at Nebraskon and I had a large turn out so I look forward to seeing how it does at a convention like AnimeFest.

I have been pretty busy critiquing artwork the last couple weeks that I haven’t had a chance to finish up my animation project that I started working on. However I did get the timing chart break down uploaded to Youtube last week, check it out below if you haven’t already.

Production Update 211: Direction

I admittedly wanted to do a video production for this update but I will get one done that dives into this a bit more in depth. I finished up Independent Animation by Ben Mitchell as I wanted to get a little more insight into some of the points of view and experiences of independent animation. After wrapping up the first episode of Cosmic Rage, I wanted to take a little step away to decide which areas I could improve, what things I should cut, all kinda of things like that to revise things moving forward.

I am also starting a new animation teaching assisting session, this past week I have been working with a new group of animators and going over their work. The next few weeks will be pretty busy working with them.

Besides the TA work, I am going to move forward with episode 2’s script this week and go through and revise and tweak now that it has had a little bit of time to brew. I am not sure I will get a chance to finish up my first exercise in my online class I am taking, but I do have a video with the first step of the process that I am aiming to have out by mid-week on Youtube.

Production Update 210: Moving Forward

Writing this weeks production update from California! I’ve been here for almost a week now for a wedding but I have kept things progressing forward as well. I spent one day out and about looking for old artbooks and imported CDs. I was able to snag a few CDs, didn’t find much on the artbook front. I have recently been digging a band called FACT (disbanded) so it was awesome to find a handful of albums that I was able to purchase. I have been able to also find some time to get into Cosmic Rage a bit inbetween rehearsals, and getting things prepared for the wedding and family gatherings.

I’m in the process of reworking and rethinking a lot of stuff, which I will be getting into more depths with very soon, I really appreciate everyone’s patience in the matter.

Anyways, I am almost done with the book I mentioned a few weeks ago, Independent Animation. I have a few chapters left but I anticipate plenty of reading time on the way back home on the plane and in some downtime post-wedding.

Before leaving for the wedding, I did record a video on the first lesson of my animation class I am taking. It will be posted up soon and covers the process of keyframing and roughing out timing of the first animation/exercise in the course. On the same front I created some bumpers for videos that will get posted to Youtube in the future. This goes hand in hand with some revisions I am in the process of making on Patreon as well, but again, more on that in the near future!

I hope you had a great holiday and we’ll talk again soon!

 

Production Update 209: Books and Orientation!

I wanted to record a video this week, but the week took a bit of an unexpected turn. We had a death in the family so we spent some time away this weekend helping to go through some things and just to support other family members and plan for a funeral later this week.

I completed 2 more chapters in my book on animation production and have crossed the hallways point. I am on pace to finish the book while on vacation, which will help me form a route on episode 2 for Cosmic Rage.

I also completed my orientation for my online class, which is a go at your own pace, traditional animation class. I plan on documenting the progress of the class and hopefully recording my work as I go through it. The first video/lesson is planning out a shoe animation with timing charts and such. This will be a good way to knock off the rust and also try out some new tools, AnimDessn, a plug in for animating in Photoshop and also my new Cintiq which I haven’t used nearly enough since I purchased it. I look forward to sharing everything with you! Let’s get to work!

Post-Wedding Quick Update

Hey everyone! Long time “no post” right?

Our wedding was fantastic and ran smoothly. No issues at all and it was fantastic to see so many of our friends and family in one place. The downside was that we didn’t get a chance to talk to everyone as much as we would have liked. We had a blast unplugging for a week after the wedding on our honeymoon. We got outside and did all kinds of hiking. We talked about so much stuff it felt like we were dating again, which makes sense, because so much of our conversations lately have been dominated by house and wedding stuff over the last year. Getting a little sentimental already, right? Anyways, I will be back Monday with a video post and also inform you all of what is coming up.

I appreciate all of your support and continuing to check out the blog and see where things are at.

Time to get back to work!