Bye Bye Reelworks (Complete with a Visual Tour!):

From the outside:

The guy that greets everyone at the door:

The ancient-looking paper puncher:

Stairs that leads up to Reelworks (downstairs is rented to a live action studio):

Displayed cells from past jobs:

The lobby/dinning area:

The kitchen:

Downstairs:

A full studio upstairs:

A workstation:

An animation station (with Bret tweening):

Action figures on monitors:

The crew including producers, animators, assistants, and interns (with me in black):

When you work at Reelworks, superheroes deliver your pizzas.
This guy came for my going away, I look way too happy and the delivery man looks so into it!

It's been an amazing half a year at Reelworks. I learned a lot and had tons of fun. I'm so lucky to have had the chance to get hands-on experience and work with so many different amazing and inspiring animators. I'll never forget how exciting it was to know that the studio saw potential in me and how the staff took the time to guide and teach me. What I miss most about the studio will definitely be its people :'(

But cheers to the future!

Mathieu Lauffray

Illustrator of the original Star Wars Posters, check out his site at http://www.lauffray.com/

Giants for Samsung

ANTSY!

15 day until Ringling and I'm antsy as hell. I would say it's more stress than excitement. I've packed all of my art supplies but am quite unsure what else I'd need. I'm assigned a single in the transfer student dorm (The Cove) and coincidentally am already friends with my neighbor. My online student account also has my preliminary class schedule along with a bunch of other info I haven't had time to read. I think some may find it interesting that my tuition is about $3900 per month (Holy Shit!). Thank goodness I skipped the first year!

Anyway, here's my class schedule:

AH 191/Lecture/08
Development of Western Art & Ideas 08/20/2007 - 12/08/2007
Day/Time: Wednesday / 08:30 AM - 11:15 AM
Instructor(s): Dr. Robert Lovejoy

CG 208/Studio/01
Traditional Animation I 3.00 08/20/2007 - 12/08/2007
Day/Time: Mon/Thurs / 12:30 PM - 03:15 PM
Instructor(s): Ms. Tammy Daniel

CG 220/Studio/05
Computer Animation I 3.00 08/20/2007 - 12/08/2007
Day/Time: Mon/Thurs / 08:30 AM - 11:15 AM
Instructor(s): TBA TBA

CG 227/Studio/06
Concept Development I 3.00 08/20/2007 - 12/08/2007
Day/Time: Tues/Thurs / 03:30 PM - 06:15 PM
Instructor(s): Mr. Dominic Avant

I met Tammy Daniel (trad animation) during my visit. She seemed very enthusiastic and welcoming. Before teaching she was with Disney for 9 years or so. Don't know anything about the other instructors but my classes all seem pretty exciting. I'm kind of nervous for jumping right into animation but it's nothing a bit hard work can't solve.

I haven't thought too much about Ringling. As of yet I'm just not looking forward to leave Reelworks and people in MN.

Amano Yoshitaka

Peeing Dogs

Sketches from Glacier & Beyond

Here are a few doodles I made on my trip. They were done while my parents took photographs so they had to be done pretty quickly. These ones range from less than a minute to probably 10 or 15 minutes. We were on the go all the time; we ended up driving up to Banff in Canada and a few surrounding parks. I wish I had more time to draw. There were many artists in Glacier painting away with watercolor and acrylic. Seems like a lot of fun.

Utterly Defeated

This digitally painted heart is for my current project with the moms & the babes. The heart turned out okay but designing the color model is giving me such a hard time. The final product is suppose to be a collage of photographs and 2d animation but I can't seem to come up with any design ideas. I feel tired and defeated today.

Final Choices:

More Mommies and Babies:

Mommys and Babies

Character designs for Reelworks:

My Traveling Kit:

Tomorrow I'm leaving for a road trip to Glacier National Park and I'm taking a few things with me:

• 3.5x5.5 sketchbook (leaving the Mokeskine behind, too big!)
• Pencil, red pencil, fill-tip pen, ball-point pen, brush pens, eraser, sharpener
• Sumi ink, bamboo pen,
  
• Watercolor set, brushes

I was trying to keep things simple and light but even the minimum turned out to be not-so-simple after all. Well at least everything is light and fits into my pack. It's always been a struggle to sketch and travel at the same time for me. There's always so much to see and do on such a short schedule!

Anyway! No road trip is complete without some background music:

Frederic Bussiere

Frederic is the newest intern at Reelworks. Go check out his work at http://www.fbussiere.com . There's a great mixture of traditional art and creative work that's really inspiring.

I have so much to do and so much to learn.

More!

Another Bird Pic Study:

More Plants

This is What Happens to Your Cookie When You Don't Come to Work:

JiYoon and I eating Bret's leftover cookie at Reelworks. I look confused....

The Loving Touch of a Tablet:

Here's a Vermillion Fly Catcher painted in photoshop (2 layers). I thought I should have a bit of fun with my research for my current rW project. I found some gorgeous photos of birds. Working off a photo means I didn't really have to do much: the picture already has the palette and the UNDO button takes care of any mistakes. No mess no clean up! I'm starting to love this digital thing.

Color Models from Project with Mike

Here are some stills from the project with Mike.






My involvement:

• Character color design
• Built backgrounds and props in Flash
• Some tweening
• All the inking
  

Mike did all of the concept design and animation. Bret did most of the tweens. Pretty cool huh? The characters were a lot of fun to draw and the animated products (3 spots) look amazing. The yetis, or sasquatches as North Americans would like to call them, are my favorite.

Properties of Reelworks Animations and Mike Owens (Don't sue me!)

A Healthy Dose of Birch

Two months later the project with Mike Owens is finished! And it looks amazing! Maybe I'll post some stills from it at legal risk for your viewing pleasure later. Meanwhile the next project is already underway. Here's a couple of birch trees I designed for this project. We are going after the John James Audubon look so it's suppose to be 'realistic'. Hand drawn & digitaly colored.