July 28th, 2010
Bishop 2.0
Yesterday we announced our Bishop 2.0 rig for the AnimationMentor students. We wanted to take seriously the feedback from the Studios in providing a more flexible rig that would allow students to customize their characters in a lot more ways than they were able before. See the movie below for more information.
I wanted to acknowledge the incredible job that Alexiss Memmott, Taylor Mahony, Kevin Freeman, Keith Ribbons and Brandon Beckstead have done over the last few weeks.
Carlos.
Ps: the animation piece at the end of the video was done by Alumni student Brandon Beckstead.
July 17th, 2010
Clara Bow Face Reference
I recently found reference of early actress Clara Bow. Highly recommended to study subtext and inner monologues for animation. Here is a link with great stuff in it. Thanks to Dhar Jabouri for finding this. Enjoy.
Carlos.
July 15th, 2010
Best Day Ever
Still recovering from Sunday. One of the most fun, most intense days of my life.
Enhorabuena a todos los españoles. Mas que orgulloso de ser español.
Carlos.
ps: our friends at Disney Spain put this together
July 5th, 2010
Using Cinevate rails/dollies.
So back to the topic of Shortfilm equipment we used on the live-action short, the other types of dollies we used came from another company, Cinevate. Thanks to Dennis Wood/Hubert Den Draak from Cinevate, we used both their rails and their Dolly-Ballare. Their rails are seriously strong, and could hold the camera, plus adaptor, ARRI lenses, mattebox, ff, etc with no problem.
Once again with the 3D help of my friends Edward Robbins/Eduardo Martin in providing models/sets, my DP Tiffany Taira and I used 3D animatics to figure out what sorts of shots we were going to use, and why were they important that we used a dolly move. Having dollie/track moves really adds a bit of production value to any film as long as it’s not overdone. As I mentioned before, moving the camera can make things more distracting than beneficial except for when they serve a purpose. This became even more important when working with kids because setting up dolly/tracking shots was time consuming and we only had 7 hours a day to get over 15 setups completed…so at one point we need to know exactly which moments in the short are we going to need a camera move and why.
In some of the shots we used the Cinevate rails I had previously purchased on my own about a year earlier. Here you can see how they were used, including tests and animatics.
Then for some key scenes, we needed a much longer, stronger and more stable dolly but our budget didn’t give us the flexibility of purchasing equipment. So Dennis/Cinevate helped us out for a weekend to get some shots we needed. We used their Dolly-Ballare. We put it together the previous week to the shot, and by Saturday/Sunday we were using it and getting great stuff with it.
Here below are a couple of production photos taken by my friend Bob Roden who wrote the story and was also script supervisor on the set. On the pictures are DP Tiffany Taira, Camera operator Jason Kim and camera assistant Grace Thompson.
For those looking into live-action independent shorts, this is another one of those very affordable/well constructed tools I’d love to recommend. Thanks again to Dennis/Hubert for their help on our short. Very very appreciated.
We are currently finishing editing the short, and learning great deals through it. It’s been a ton of work. It really is true that while this is really fun, is also really hard. So having some key people help us in the process has been great.
Carlos.
June 17th, 2010
ToyStory 3 opens tonight.
The experience of working on his film meant a lot for me. I sure hope you go see the film, and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed working on it. The reviews are amazing so far. The film opens tonight at midnight. I’ll be in line with friends watching it.
Update: Here is a video from Director Lee Unkrich on the countdown at the animation department this morning.
Carlos.
June 17th, 2010
ToyStory 3 Roundtable (part 1)
Andrew from SplineDoctors gathered a few of us who worked on ToyStory3 to talk about our experiences. Thanks for putting this together Andrew.
I hope you all enjoy it.
ToyStory 3 Animators Roundtable (part 1)
Carlos.
June 14th, 2010
Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders
I had the geat opportunity of meeting Dean DeBlois through AnimationMentor back in 2006. I only have the upmost respect for him and his sensibility. He’s also about one of the nicest guys I’ve met in this industry. That’s why I was so excited about How to Train your Dragon, which came out beautifully. Very special film.
This is a great podcast the guys at Speaking of Animation put together, and a great listen on the making of the film, as well as storytelling, structure & animation.
Dean DeBlois & Chris Sanders Podcast
Carlos.
June 9th, 2010
Reminder: Blog & WordPress
Just a reminder,
I have moved my blog from Blogger platform to WordPress. Please update your RSS feeds:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/carlosbaena00
My blog is still at:
http://www.carlosbaena.com
Please be patient as I’m going to be transitioning the rest of my site over to wordpress in the upcoming months. Thanks.
Carlos.
June 7th, 2010
Golden Gate Fog
Went to Marin Headlands a couple of nights ago. The fog in this city is simply stunning.
C.
June 4th, 2010
Omni-Tracker
So one of the things I’d like to do through my blog is to acknowledge those people/friends that have helped us in the shortfilm unconditionally. My friend Warren from Omni-Tracker went above and beyond in helping me. So even if it’s through my little blog, I’d love to help him back how he helped us. We used two types of dollies. Tracks/rails and this Omnitracker. Warren let us use his Heavy-Duty version of this small but very practical dolly. Our main setup was aproximately 20 pounds…so it needed to be strong. They just released a lighter HD setup which I recommend for DSLRs.
Here below are my good friend and talented DP Tiffany Taira, as well as Luigi Passalacqua (color grader) doing different tests last year. I think at the end of the day, you use whatever it is that you have and explore all the possibilities. We could put the dolly on either classroom tables, floors, etc. Really practical especially when you don’t have the flexibility of setting up a big dolly.
We used the Omni-Tracker in a variety of ways, straight moves and circular dollies. Since we didn’t have a way (or budget) to have orbital type of dolly moves either for reveals or to lower the camera to the ground while hiding tracks, we found this to really help us achieve what we were looking for.
What helped us was to preview whatever we were going to shoot in animatics in Maya. It also saved us a ton of time on the set. We didn’t have that much time for certain scenes, so we had to get what we could. I got the help of my friends Eduardo Martin and Edward Robbins when it was time to get the models for previsualization. You both rock. Then Tiffany and I could start trying different things and braimstorming ideas based on the scenes.
So, we used the setup for three different shots. A low angle shot of the kid entering his bedroom, a reveal rack focus shot from one kid to the next and a long circular dolly around the main kid in a key scene. I want to mention also in the videos are our camera operator Jason Kim and our focus puller Rich McKain who worked totally hard on the shoots.
For those looking into live-action independent shorts, I can’t recomend this little tool enough. There is a lot of stuff out there. This is just one of the tools that worked for us.
Hopefully this helps.
Carlos.