August 10th, 2011
Help: ShortFilm Positions
I’ve been working and collaborating with a serious great group of people over the last half year on a personal animated project. The work being done is something else. Can’t describe how rewarding this process is being for me.
I’d love to pass this out there in case anyone is interested. I’m currently looking into finding a CG Supervisor (if possible in the Bay Area) as well as two Maya Layout positions. Here is the description of the CG Supervisor.
Let me or my producer Sasha Korellis (sasha@sashakorellis.com) know if you are interested. I’m also currently at Siggraph, so let me know if you are here.
Thank you.
Carlos.
August 10th, 2011
Animation Collaborative
I’d like to pass a link to a new Brick & Mortar School started by some great friends I’ve had the luck and pleasure of working next to for the last 5-10 years. Look for information here:
I’ve known Michal Makarewicz and Andrew Gordon for a while now, and both are people I respect dearly from a personality to a talent point of view. I miss working with them a great deal. Additionally, I got the chance to work with Aaron Hartline and Rob Thompson on Toy Story 3, and can’t say enough good things about them as well. It’s a wonderful group of instructors.
So from here I wanted to both give them props to get this started (no small task), as well as offer them my full support. So check it out.
Carlos.
July 10th, 2011
Toy Story 3 Spanish Buzz Test
Before beginning production on Toy Story 3, I had some time to do some testing on the character of Buzz Lightyear. I’ve never animated this character prior to working on this film, so it was a great way for me to learn from what previous great animators had done with him. The test has a bunch of flaws, but it was great to make those mistakes early on. Additionally, Director Lee Unkrich was very open and encouraging to me trying different things with the character, with the goal of making this character as entertaining as possible. It was certainly intimidating to animate a character you’ve loved and admired for the last two decades, so I spent a lot of time at work and at home studying what’s been done and figuring ways to add something to it.
I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I enjoyed animating it.
Toy Story 3 Spanish Buzz Animation Test
Carlos.
June 25th, 2011
Toy Story 3 work
Just updated the site with some of the animation work I did for Toy Story 3. Had a fantastic time working on this film, with these characters and especially the crew. I miss working with many of them very much.
Carlos.
June 14th, 2011
Munich
I recently had the opportunity to visit Munich. Had a fantastic time there. Met some old friends and made great new friends. I’d love to thank Ralph Lindner, Katrin Albretch, Sabine Blessing, Tobias Von Burkersroda, Martina von der Wense and the crew at RTT, for going out of their way to give me an incredible experience the days I was there. I had a blast.
I took my camera this time around and wondered around the city on my own. It’s a beautiful city. Here are some pictures I took out of the trip.
And here are a couple other pictures that don’t need comments.
Carlos.
June 14th, 2011
Andreas Deja Blog
I found this recently, and really wanted to recommend it. Great stuff all over the place. If you don’t know who Andreas is, find out as you’ll see why he’s one of the key animators shaping the current generation of animators.
Also, be sure to check out these great posts on Ward Kimball:
Carlos.
June 14th, 2011
New Website layout
This is very exciting. I finally changed the layout design of the website. The last one was getting old fairly fast. Menus and functionality remain the same. But it’s a lot faster to navigate, and simpler to the eye, which is what I’ve been wanting for a while. I’d like to give major thanks to Michael Dauz for coding the entire site and help me get up to speed on website stuff, as well as to Rachel Ito for her design help and eye in the new layout. I hope you like it.
I was away in Spain visiting my family. Hoping to get back to posting something useful throughout the summer.
Carlos.
April 5th, 2011
Play by Play Behind the Scenes
Happy to share this little learning “Play by Play” shortfilm that I was part of, and fortunate enough to direct for the last couple of years seems to be enjoyed by some festivals. Over the weekend, we just found out that at the Fresno International Film Festival, it won two out of three awards:
- Audience Award for Best Short
- John Kelly Excellence in Cinematography Award for best Cinematography in a shortfilm.
Needless to say my talented Director of Photography Tiffany and I were more than excited. She was a tremendous help and a wonderful right arm throughout the entire process. Here is a little behind the scenes of some of the stuff we did and learned through the process.
Live-Action is a whole different beast that animation. In many ways. Still, at the end of the day we are all making movies and it’s wonderful to be around filmmakers. By the way, the main two kid actors in the short film, Charlie Bright and Jeremy Leary, were voice actors in ToyStory3 and Up respectively. Charlie played young Andy and one of the green pea characters, and Jeremy played young Carl. I had a total fantastic time working with all the kids.
Carlos.
March 30th, 2011
PlaybyPlay Trailer
Trailer for the Shortfilm “Play by Play” (USA 2010, 23 min).
Actors: Charlie Bright, Jeremy Leary, Pamela Gaye Walker and Mattias Christensen.
Director: Carlos Baena
Writer: Bob Roden
Director of Photography: Tiffany Taira
Co-Director: Sureena Mann
Producer: David Munier
Co-Producer: Christopher Stewart
Music: Andrew Jimenez
Sound Design: Andrew Vernom
Production Designer: Ryan Lynch
Costume Designer: Carrie Winchell
While the Short film has a LOT of room for improvement, I’m still very proud to have been part of this experience and this amazing crew. Hopefully what I learned (including the mistakes) I will be able to apply to a future short film. For those in the Bay Area, it will be playing at the San Francisco International Film Festival in late April/early May as part of the Shorts program.
This short film was produced by Afterwork Films, a wonderful learning program that allows Pixar employees to work on outside projects to learn tasks we don’t have the chance to learn in our day jobs. I worked on this short as I was working on Toy Story 3 during the day, and while it was a lot of work to do both, it truly was like going back to School.
Carlos.
March 7th, 2011
Eye Slow Mo Reference
Wonderful Slow Motion Eye Reference. Definitely check it out. Amazing how each of the parts in the eye work together with the eyeball rotations. Thanks for the tip Ben.
C.
