Jackson Alley Film Festival

This year, a bunch of us faculty at APSU decided we needed a film festival.  The result of lots of brainstorming with the departments of Theatre, Communications, and Art+Design is the Jackson Alley Film Festival!   (Jackson Alley is the name of the city street that defines the "arts" area of campus)

We have about 35 students on 6 teams competing in this first year!  We've been holding some workshops and really trying to get the students to collaborate outside their usual department influence.  Today we announced the teams as well as the theme for this year's films.  Now the teams have one month to film a short film that will premier during the Festival on April 26th!

Highway Rat Wins At NYCIFF

The Highway Rat just won the Audience Award (age 3-6) at the New York International Children's Film Festival.   It was also it's North American premier.  Congrats to Jeroen Jaspaert and everyone at Triggerfish!

MoCap Arrives At APSU

Here's a video with Professor Talon Beeson from Theatre and I talking about the five new motion capture suits we co-wrote a grant for.  We received a Faculty Innovation Grant to purchase the Smart Suit Pros from the Rokoko company in Denmark.  We just got the suits about a month ago and are starting to play with them.  This is super exciting - and is a great way for the theatre and animation students to interact!

UPDATE:
Here's an updated video including footage from Ed Tech day!

Crew Gift Maquettes

Our house now has a new home for all our studio statues.  This was always one of the best perks of working on an animated film was the crew gift maquette.  Of course, there's a few movies that didn't have enough budget left for a full maquette (Peabody, Megamind).  But we have Madagascar 2, Madagascar 3, Turbo, Home, Shrek Forever After, Moana, How To Train Your Dragon, and Kung Fu Panda 3.  I also have a Mr Toad statue thrown in to fill in the space.

Here's the final animation of Wizard the Frog for Planet Blue.  Lots of fun animating this little guy. 

You can also see Wizard as part of the extended trailer at https://vimeo.com/259407570

You can learn more about the Planet Blue series at the Arrow Sky Media site:  https://www.goplanetblue.com/

DreamWorks Pipeline Video

I showed this in class the other week - and had to laugh seeing all the old familiar faces.  I forgot they interviewed Allen Stetson and Adam Ely for this video!

It's actually a really great video.  It was the brainchild of Tim Ingersoll, one of the resident trainers at DreamWorks (and amateur magician) who was actually the first person to ever teach me animation during his "Animation for Non-Animators" workshop there.  He kept having to explain all the CG terms to executives and non-artist employees coming through DW Training Dept, he thought he needed a video to show.  He wrote it up and got Tom McGrath (voice of Skipper) on board.  Then it became a big official thing, and the studio got the DreamWorks India group working on it and it turned into a mini-movie.