New Website / End of Blog

I decided I needed a proper website - especially as I teach students how they must have a website in this day and age, but my own example is a blog. Also, the focus now is on social media, and my time and attention is on updating the APSU Animation + Visual Effects profiles.

I started this blog back when I was starting Animation Mentor, at the very start of 2011. Since that time I switched to animating full time at DreamWorks, then moved to Tennessee to head up a new animation program - which saw it's first graduates this past Spring. The wife and I have each embarked on our own freelance careers. We've also welcomed two amazing little boys into our family (who now insist on staring in their own visual effects shorts). It's been a helluva ride.

Please check out my new site at:  https://www.thescottraymond.com/

Virtual Graduation

Official graduation ceremonies has been postponed this year due to the pandemic. So the Department decided to throw our own version for our nearly 40 Art+Design graduates! The Chair opened with a few remarks, the Dean read off the names of the students, and we were very lucky to have Kaye Vassey join us to give some encouraging words to the students. It was a really fun experience - and we live streamed it to Facebook Live so any and all relatives of students could join in the moment.

You can check out the full video at:
https://www.facebook.com/apsuartdesign/videos/1341575792708778/

Spring Senior Thesis Projects

With the closing down of in-person University functions, it means all the senior thesis capstone projects have had to find a way to move online. We have several animation projects this semester which will be announced on the APSU Art + Design Instagram and Facebook pages.  Check out the full Press Release at this LINK.  Our animation student Myles is also quoted in the article:

On Monday, April 27, APSU senior Myles Johnson will present “After School Cartoons” - an animation project that recreates the channel-surfing experiences of his childhood. Johnson created a website to host his collection of videos. 

“I mean, this whole thing has been rough,” Johnson said. “My main idea was to immerse the viewers in a living room environment to transport them to a time specific in my life when I would come home from school and watch cartoons. Now that my show will be online, that idea is so much harder to execute. I have to find some way to make a website that will do the same job the living room would have done. I have a positive outlook on this, though. Animation lends itself well to being in an online format, so I'm lucky in that regard."

Pandemic Academic Life

Well, as with the rest of the world, APSU has moved to online classes for the rest of the semester. A few students are still going into the animation lab, but most students are at home. Classes are being held via Zoom.  It's been a bit of an adjustment, but I'm super proud of all my students learning to go with the flow.

Learning some remote collaborative workflows is actually a REALLY good career skill right now.

Loomie App is live

Excited to see the Loomie App get launched recently!  I had a hand in helping with this project and it was great fun to work with my ol' supervisor from DreamWorks Mahesh (along with a great crew of people). The app is available on Google Play the apple App Store and can be added to networking platforms like Slack!

Check out all the cool avatar projects in the works at Loom.ai

Heather VASE Talk Followup

APSU Press Relations has a followup article about Heathers speech last week.  Check it out HERE

The Department of Art + Design and the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts welcomed award-winning senior matte painter and environment designer Heather Abels to Austin Peay State University on Wednesday, Feb. 26. 

“Abels is a Clarksville resident and friend of the Department of Art + Design who works with major film, TV and animation studios such as Walt Disney Animation Studios, Rhythm and Hues and Nemesis Collective,” Michael Dickins, chair of the Visiting Artist Speaker Committee, said. 

Abels has worked on matte painting for various movies, including “Frozen II,” “Deadpool,” “Game of Thrones,” “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” “Django Unchained,” “300: Rise of an Empire” and “Moana.” She also worked on Academy Award winners in best animated feature or visual effects, including “Zootopia,” “Big Hero 6,” “Avatar” and “The Golden Compass.” 

During her talk at Austin Peay, she discussed with the students three major things that she has learned throughout her career: inspiration, failure and acceptance. 

Abels was inspired early in her career by legendary matte painters. She got her inspiration when she was a young child by watching “Star Wars,” “Toy Story” and “Jurassic Park.” 

“When I talk about inspiration, I’m not talking about what excites you,” Abels said. “I’m talking about people that you surround yourself with and surrounding yourself with people who inspire and motivate you is one of the first things that helped me in my career.”  

She encourages the new generation of artists to take the next leap and evolve from digital 2D to digital 3D matte painting techniques. She has taught at several universities and has an ongoing workshop at CGSociety. 

She reminds her students that they will fail at times.  

“It’s about failing and failing again until you get it right,” she said. “And it’s not always what you want. You’re trying to execute somebody else’s vision.” 

Acceptance is being able to take the feedback and create something better. 

“You don’t know what you don’t know, till you’ve learned what you didn’t know,” she said. “What I’m saying here is about being humble. There are a lot of artists whose careers haven’t taken off because they were unwilling to accept feedback, and visual effects is all about modification.” 

Heather's APSU Visiting Artist Talk

Last night Heather gave a lecture as part of APSU's and CECA's Visiting Artist Speaker Series. Even with a slight snow storm there was a great turn out and lots of great questions by the students in attendance!

Heather's talk this week!

Press Release for Heather's VASE Lecture

You can check out the full release HERE

The Department of Art + Design, with support from The Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts, is pleased to welcome award-winning senior matte painter & environment designer, Heather Abels, to Austin Peay State University.  

“Abels is a Clarksville resident and friend of the Department of Art + Design who works with major film, TV and animation studios such as Walt Disney Animation Studios, Rhythm and Hues and Nemesis Collective,” Michael Dickins, chair of the Visiting Artist Speaker Committee, said. “She is credited on such films and TV series as ‘Frozen II,’ ‘Deadpool,’ ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events,’ ‘Zootopia,’ ‘Django Unchained,’ ‘300: Rise of an Empire’ and ‘Moana.’ We are really excited for her visit as she will give an artist lecture on her creative practice and her life and career as a sought after, award-winning, Hollywood matte painter.”  

Abels’ lecture – which is free and open to the public – is at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 26, in the Trahern Theatre, located in the Trahern building at Austin Peay. All ages are welcome. 

Abels has contributed to multiple Academy Award winners 

Abels is a senior matte painter with over 12 years of experience in the visual effects industry. Her work encompasses live-action blockbusters, animated feature films, national advertising campaigns, cutting-edge VR and concept work. She also has taught at several universities and has an ongoing workshop at CGSociety.She has worked at top studios including Walt Disney Animation, Blur Studios, Weta Digital, Matte World Digital, The Orphanage and Rhythm & Hues. During her time at Rhythm & Hues, she became matte department supervisor. In doing so, she was able to cross the divide between artists and technicians in order to build and adapt the department to meet new demands, as seen in the Academy Award-winning film “Life of Pi.” 

She worked on other Academy Award winners in best animated feature or visual effects include “Zootopia,” “Big Hero 6,” “Avatar” and “The Golden Compass.” Abels was mentored and inspired early in her career by the legendary matte painters who made the leap from traditional painting to digital. She has focused on mentoring the new generation of artists to take the next leap and evolve from digital 2D to digital 3D matte painting techniques.

Heather giving talk at APSU!

I'm so excited to have Heather come talk to APSU students as part of the VASE speaker series put on by our own Michael Dickins with support from the Center of Excellence in the Creative Arts.

VFX2 Class Shoot

Today we took advantage of the overcast skies to shoot outside for our VFX2 class project. We've made a clean plate from a frame of Jurassic Park, and we're going to insert ourselves into the footage. We figured out the perspective and horizon line of the shot camera, and thanks to IMDB we know that Sam Neil (aka Dr. Grant) is 6 feet tall exactly, we were able to figure out what angles we needed to film to get the correct perspective.

Not having to set up lighting equipment was a bonus.

UNL Alumni Magazine - Interview

UNL Alumni Magazine - Honors Day

Animation 3 - Short Film

In Animation 3 this semester, we took a vote what students most wanted to take on over the next 15 weeks.  Overwhelmingly they wanted to create a short film...so create a short film we did.  Student each pitched 1 rough ideas, of which one they went ahead and fully storyboarded. Then we voted on a class which idea we thought was the most creative, interesting, and doable in our short timeframe.

So today we premiered that short during the class Final.  Thirteen students spent almost exactly two months to create the minute long short you see above!

Art + Design Open House

 

Last night Art + Design held it's first ever "Open House" event to conclude the end of the semester.  It was great seeing all the work produced over the last 15 weeks all at once.  For us Anim/VFX folk, I created a new reel of the semesters work and we had a few of the 3D prints sitting out in the hallway.

The Creators Society Leadership

I'm proud to have been voted as the Chief of the Associates Branch of The Creators Society.  I'm excited to be a part of this amazing group of professionals and excited to see where the next year takes us.  Learn more (and join) at The Creators Society website HERE

3D Printing time in Digital 3D Class

In Digital 3D class we've spent all semester designing and building "Helper Bots" in Maya.  This week we started printing them out on the school's MakerBots.  After the tedious months of getting past modeling, textures/UVs, and rigging - it's really rewarding to see and hold these prints.  A tangible result and gratification after all that time just getting it into existence.

We also have a new larger MakerBot Replicator+  that makes awesomely bigger prints...like this guy in the photo below!

Heather Frozen II Interview

Heather was interviewed about her work on Frozen II (which comes out today!) for this press release from APSU.  Check out the full article HERE

What was your experience working on “Frozen II” with Disney?I worked at Disney years ago on “Big Hero 6,” a little bit of “Zootopia,” “Moana” and some other projects. After that, we moved to Clarksville. All my friends that are still there are really great artists and a really fun collaborative environment, so when I got the opportunity to go back for a couple months, I was like, “We can go to Disneyland all summer and work on a movie and hang out with my friends? Heck, yeah! I want to do that! That sounds great!”  The first big thing was going back to Disney and seeing how much things had changed. The whole building has transformed, the people are reinvigorated. Seeing the familiar faces was nice. But every team on every movie is different, but for me, getting to meet and work with the art directors is always thrilling. When you’re working remotely, it can be very isolating, you don’t have any colleagues to work with, you don’t have anybody to go have coffee with. So just getting to be around all these people is really exciting. Everybody there gets along incredibly well. Getting to see the movie ahead of time is always exciting because you don’t just see the movie, you’re seeing it as a work in progress. The versions of the movie I’ve gotten to see are part storyboard, part rough animatic, part completely finished. Even the last version I saw is not the last version of the movie. I can’t wait to see the final product because I’ve had the songs stuck in my head since June, but I can’t sing them out loud! Even if I’m humming a tune to myself, nobody’s going to know what’s going on. It’ll be nice for the rest of the world to see it. 

How is matte painting different when working on a live action film vs an animated film? Fundamentally they’re similar. With live action you always have a plate. You always have a reference to real life. The goal is to make it as photoreal as possible. That can be quite easy with all the photographic references. You know what that target is right away. With animated movies, the target is always different. The style changes on every movie and even on every sequence. While you want it to look real, it’s also very stylized. Everything has to fit the style of the world. You have to have very strong painting skills in addition to being able to do a bunch of generalist work. With animated movies, it’s trickier to fit matte painting into the schedule and find reference for what you’re making. 

Does there ever come a point where you can be picky about the projects you take on?Since I’ve moved here and decided to only freelance, I have been able to pick and choose whichever jobs I’m interested in. But more importantly than the jobs is that I get to pick my colleagues or the companies I work with. I choose the companies that are easiest to work with and the most friendly as opposed to working with another company with a cooler project. At this point in my career I have enough cool titles and shots that I’m not worried about building my reel. I’ve already led teams. I’ve helped companies build their departments. Now I just want to have a good working relationship with my colleagues. 

Is there a dream project for you?Not really. Everybody used to want to work on “Star Wars” or “Avatar” or “Harry Potter,” and I got a chance to work on all of those. Part of the problem is, if you love a franchise, working on it is like seeing behind the curtain. Then you have all these different memories that changes the movie for you. There’s not a whole lot I would choose over my family now. The whole reason we moved here was that we chose family over fame.  

What are you up to now?Now I’ve got my own office at home. I work on a lot of different projects. I don’t get as much feature film work now. I get a lot of commercials and game cinematics. I got to work on “Game of Thrones” and “Lemony Snicket’s” series on Netflix. I get to help companies train their matte painters. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work for a company that does all the park shows that use projections at Disney World. 

Are you teaching or doing any mentoring?I had been teaching online at CG Spectrum and a class through Pluralsight. I also taught electronic imaging here at Austin Peay when we first moved here. That was really fun. I was just really excited to teach people. I still have hundreds of students that I have taught in the past that keep in contact letting me know if that they got a job interview or asking to use me as a reference. It’s really exciting to see your students successful. 

What is your opinion on what the animation department is doing here at Austin Peay?I think it’s really exciting that students have a place to go that isn’t too far from home. I had to go five hours away when I was going to school to get something even close to what I wanted to do. But now students have so many opportunities so much earlier in life. With any education, it’s all about the effort you put in. If you put in the work, you can go anywhere and do whatever you want. Everything we do online is something that has been designed by artists. There’s so much to do out there. It would be very difficult to design some web pages without animation knowledge. What’s great about Austin Peay is how much students get to dabble in everything.

New Animation Club

One of the new Animation + Visual Effects majors has decided to start a new Animation Club here at APSU!

Animax Visit

Last night Heather and I had an amazing opportunity to go visit Animax Designs here in Nashville.  The meeting was set up by a former student of mine, Henry Kiltpatrick, who works there now.  They are working on some super amazing stuff, of which almost nothing I can talk about - but they have announced recent work includes the T-Rex from Jurassic World Live and creating Hagrid and the Screwt for the new Harry Potter attraction at Universal Orlando.

We met some awesome people and saw some incredible things. Pretty great to have a place like this in our backyard...