The Wrong Rock

It’s been a three year journey, but The Wrong Rock is finally online for the world to see. For me it was year full time, a year part time and a year on the festival circuit. Along the way we won Best Animated Short at the Burbank film Festival and Best Short Animation at the Davis Film Festival.

Siggraph 2017 Panel – Online Studios

I’ll be speaking on a panel at Siggraph to showcase our work on The Wrong Rock and talk about working in an online studio environment. http://s2016.siggraph.org/birds-feather Remote Studio Productions: Online Collaboration Tuesday, 1 August, 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm, Los Angeles Convention Center A discussion of issues related to online collaboration in production.

Tips for Making Films with a Remote Team

I contributed some tips to the Artella Blog. Advanced Tips Recruiting – Depending on your own strongest skills it might not be worth recruiting for some skill sets. Recruitment is a commitment in itself and it can be very time consuming reaching out, filtering, vetting and introducing new team members. That might be time better spent working on the project yourself. While some areas are easy to recruit for and benefit the project greatly. Choose wisely. Communication – This is key to every team member, especially when you’re operating a remote project. If a team member lacks the language skills, can’t write responses or even read your notes…. it’s going to be a struggle. Partnership – Find out what your team members want to get out of their involvement in the project, then make sure they are getting it. If people realize they aren’t getting what they want and they’re paid they won’t last long. But if they realize they’re not getting what they want and they’re volunteers, they’ll drop the project so fast, you often won’t even hear about it until you’ve wasted a lot of time chasing them. So make sure both sides are meeting their goals, or […]

Showing my portfolio at Disney Florida

I was visiting Disney World Florida, with my family when I was a kid. It was my first time in America and the first time being that close to an animation studio. They had a fully operational animation studio in Florida back then and you could take the tour from Disney World as if it was part of the park. It was a major draw for me, and I was pretty excited. My parents were being very supportive in taking the family in the first place. I’d long ago stopped taking family holidays with them in order to focus on making my own films instead. But I wasn’t going to miss this one (they were very cunning). During the tour you end up in a room with one of the experienced 2D animators at his drawing desk talking to the crowd and showing them what he does. We watched his demonstration. My parents, not knowing anything about the process of getting work in the industry, encouraged me to walk up to him and ask him if I could show him my portfolio and ask about a job. I (kind of) knew that it wasn’t the way to do it, but […]

Virtual Studios and Remote Collaboration

For Siggraph 2013 my friends and I put on a presentation along with a question and answer session to talk about remote collaboration. The following is a summary of the introduction I gave and two videos containing the audio, slide shows and clips we showed at the event. The speakers included: David Andrade and Mark Olson from http://www.theoryanimation.com Matt Berenty and David Bokser from http://www.loveinthetimeofadvertising.com Kenny Roy from http://collabs.arconyx.com Michael Cawood and Shane Davis from http://devilsangelsanddating.com The United Nations predicts that by 2050, 70% of the world’s population will live in the cities. Can you imagine that? In terms of mankind, as one big machine, cities are essentially more efficient. But on the individual level, they’re expensive and you can expect a lower quality of life for your earnings. I’d like to challenge that prediction, and suggest that the U.N. hasn’t accounted for the increasing development of remote collaboration, and in the case of our industry, Virtual Studios. I’m going to use animated features as an example for our discussion, but many of the principles apply to visual effects, TV series, commercials, games and many other industries. Let’s jump back in time first to remind ourselves of some of the […]