APSU Student Work at SIGGRAPH 2019

Some Austin Peay student work from animation and visual effects was chosen to be shown at this years SIGGRAPH conference in LA. APSU joins a list of 34 other schools who's student projects were chosen to be screened all conference long at the Education Committee Booth.  Soon after the conference it will be made available on the website for other educators to view and be inspired from.

You can find the press release HERE

UNL Alumni Award

With Charles O'Conner - photo credit Justin Mohlin

I was honored to get to spend the weekend at my Alma Mater - University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where I was the first Film & New Media student to be awarded the Alumni Achievement Award. I was able to visit campus and give a talk to some of the current students, as well as catch up with the Film and Theatre faculty that I had as professors myself 15 years ago.  The program has grown tremendously and is about to take another huge leap next year where it morphs into the new Emerging Media program.  It was very exciting to see everyone again and I am truly honored to be in such good company.

With Oscar winning editor Mike Hill and Dean Charles O'Connor

My kids enjoying the awards dinner

UNL Alumni Board Awards Announced

I've been selected to receive The Alumni Achievement Award in Theatre and Film from University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Hixon-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts!  You can read the full press release HERE

Here's an excerpt from the article:

The Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts Alumni Board has selected the recipients of this year’s Alumni Board Awards. The awards will be presented at the College’s Honors Day Dinner on Saturday, April 27. The dinner is by invitation only. 

The Alumni Achievement Awards honor alumni from each academic area of the college who have demonstrated outstanding achievement and overall professional excellence.  

The Alumni Achievement Award in Theatre and Film will be presented to Scott Raymond (B.F.A. 2003). Fifteen years ago, Raymond was a member of the first graduating class of the new film and new media program in the Carson School. He received a second Bachelor of Fine Arts in theatre design and technical production. 

Following graduation, he earned is Master of Fine Arts cum laude in animation and visual effects from the Academy of Art University. He did post-graduate work at Animation Mentor, where he received a certificate in advanced studies in character animation. 

He then worked at elementFX and ultimately worked as a crowd artist at PDI/DreamWorks, one of the most prestigious animation studios in the world. He spent nearly eight years at DreamWorks on such well-known projects as “Trolls,” “Kung Fu Panda 3,” “The Penguins of Madagascar,” “Madagascar 3” and “Shrek Forever After.” 

In 2015, he began teaching at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Although a full-time instructor, Raymond continues his work as a freelance animator. His recent freelance clients include “The Highway Rat” for BBC, the Racing Legends ride at PortAventura Theme Park, and the Kid’s Choice Awards for Nickelodeon. 

Additional faculty, staff and student achievement will be celebrated at the Honors Day celebration. 

Student Work - Fall 18

Another semester has wrapped up here at APSU.  This was a big semester, as we had several new classes joining the Animation & Visual Effects focus area.  This is the result of several years effort to move away from a strictly "animation" course progression to one that is more generalist in nature and sets students up for a wider array of future paths.  This included adding several classes in Visual Effects, and a new class just focusing on 3d software (this year it included Maya, Mudbox, and Medium in Oculus Rift VR).  So behold the latest and greatest from Austin Peay animation students!

Visual Effects Class - Green Screen

This semester we are offering several new classes in Animation + Visual Effects - it's part of an effort to make the program more of a generalist approach.  So half the classes will focus on animation, and half will focus on visual effects.  I'm really excited to expand our focus!

So today in Visual Effects I, we brought out for the first time the green screen.  Student Myles Johnson was a good sport and stood in while we talked about lighting for green screen, and about how to match lighting to the shot from the film "Paul" you see in the background.   Over the next week we'll learn how to composite Myles into the shot.

Presenting at SECAC Conference

I had the chance to present a paper and give a talk at the SECAC Conference this week.  It was part of the "Graphic Design Beyond" panel, and the talk was co-presented with my colleague Patrick Gosnell.

Our presentation was titled "Making Design Active: Fusing Principles of Animation and Graphic Design Through Student Collaboration" - which details a collaborative project between Patrick's design students and my animation students.  The students were put into groups and had three weeks to develop and create an animated gif for a Motion Poster.  It was fun to get to present our experience to everyone else at the conference.

Of course, the conference ends at 5pm each day, so one is required to check out the local tiki bar...

Some Educated Thoughts

So...I love college.  I loved being a student and I love being a professor.  I see a great many advantages to getting a degree in art and animation - it is an amazingly rare opportunity to grow and develop and discover in an energetic atmosphere.  That being said, it's a path that's not for everyone.  While it's true that a "degree" is not needed to get a job in the industry - I do believe that an "education" is necessary to become a viable (and hire-able) artist.  

To often I see people (often those initially trying to get into the industry, but others too) say they are going to be taking time off to "work on their portfolio for a bit" - words that strike my soul cold.  So I would like to offer a few thoughts on “portfolio development” based on what I’ve seen others go through over the years…

Even if you’re not pursuing a traditional education, I highly recommend taking some online classes.  Some of the most talented artists I know are now also doing online classes – many include personal feedback sessions and are I think the best education you can get right now if the goal is to get “into the industry”.  A bonus result is also the start of networking.  I know my wife and I have recommended students we had in online classes for entry-level jobs (or work too busy to take on).  These workshops are almost always shorter than a usually University semester (4 to 8 weeks) and can be a more affordable option.  

Why I recommend these is so that you aren’t developing your work in a bubble (even sharing among your friends and online peers is still a bubble).  An industry pro (who doesn’t have time or patience for B.S. work) is a great mentor and forces you to A) work outside your comfort zone B) have hard deadlines and C) have to share your work with a new set of peers who have different backgrounds/expectations.  I’ve seen too many people who spend years working (or worse, endlessly “revising") their portfolios with no deadlines or honestly any real improvement.  Don’t get trapped into an endless spiral of just “portfolio development” - get out and get some experience too!

My ideal world for someone would be to get out to a city with some industry jobs (Vancouver, LA, NYC) and get some job in the industry (ANY job..even a production assistant busy getting overtime dinners ordered) while you take some online workshops.  Get feedback from artists at the job/internship you can land – THEY are your best chance at a full-time job.  A great portfolio can  sneak a foot in the door – to have it open wide you need job experience and a hearty couple of recommendations from current employees.  

All that being said, a few online places I recommend (depending what you want to build your portfolio on):

CONCEPT & ART

http://www.cgsociety.org/training/

http://2d.cgmasteracademy.com/

3D

https://www.animschool.com/

https://www.ianimate.net/

http://www.animationmentor.com/

2D

http://taughtbyapro.com/courses/all/

https://creatureartteacher.com/

2D/3D mix

http://www.cgtarian.com/
http://www.jasonryananimation.com/

Heather's Pluralsight Course is Live

Yay for Heather!  She had a busy summer creating a stunning online course for Pluralsight.  There's seriously so much info packed into this well-crafted class.  I'm very proud of Heather.  You can check it out by following this LINK

Description from the site:

Learning how to you matte painting effectively and efficiently can elevate your work to the next level. In this course, Matte Painting Basics and the Static Camera Shot, you will begin by gaining a solid understanding of foundational techniques by learning about resolution, static grain, distorted plates, bit depth, and software settings. 

Next, you'll learn how matte paintings should be organized, what painting techniques will break your shot, and even small details like how to name your files and layers. Once you understand how to properly setup and build your file, you will learn how to match your plates perspective, and alter the perspective of some architecture to fit into your shot. During the blocking phase you'll also learn how to build your own personal reference library, and then how to extract and clean up your painting after you've finished blocking. You will then take your painting from photoshop to nuke to composite and add life and movement to your static shot. 

Finally, you'll learn a bit about how matte painting fits into a vfx pipeline, how to hand off your shots to another artist or department, and the process of revision in the visual effects world. By the end of this course, you'll have a beautiful shot and be more confident in setting up your own static matte paintings. Software required: Photoshop-CC-2015.5, NukeX-10.5v2.

New Semester + New Animation Lab + New Building!

There's a lot going on today!  It's the first day of class for the academic year, but more importantly it's our official start in the new Art + Design Building!  It's been a long time coming and it's been worth it - it's a damn fine looking building.  It's really exciting starting to see all the studio spaces get moved in, furniture in the hallways, and students starting to walk through.

What's been really exciting is in just the last several weeks, the decision was made to swap computer labs - so now the Animation Studio has the larger second floor room.  Lots of natural light, a large open space in the center of the room (for our mo-cap when it arrives), and tons of storage for all the fun animation tech we've been getting in all summer.

 

You can see it's a great space.  I love the setup.  Gone are projectors and instead students are clustered around HD TVs that will pick up the feed from the teachers station.  There's no bad seats, no one has to have their back to the screen.  There's still a lot to do with the room, and some more computers and tech we have to find homes for in the room.  But it's an amazing space and I'm very fortunate to get to teach in some an awesome space!

Figure Drawing Workshop

Today I taught my first class/workshop in the new Art + Design building...and it was for Figure Drawing!  Jennifer Snyder put together the Art Teacher Professional Development Day up at APSU and I was able to jump in and help lead the drawing workshop today.  It was great to get the chance to draw again - it's easy to get so lost in doing digital art that you don't take the time to do some longer life drawing.

I was lucky enough to sit on on some amazing figure drawing workshops back at DreamWorks.  They were held over lunchtime and when I decided to make the leap to becoming an Animator I started attending - and it was intimidating as hell at first.  Everyone was nice and welcoming...but the amount of talent in that room was staggering.  It was out of my comfort zone, really pushed me, and I learned so much.

Most of the sessions were lead by Karl Gnass - who everyone should check out and is just an amazing talent and teacher.  He's taught figure drawing at DreamWorks and Disney for decades.  Gesture drawing was led by Dave Pimentel who was a great story artist that went on to becoming the Story Lead on Moana over at Disney.  It was great going back and remembering what I learned from these sessions and lead one of my own!

And it has cemented my decision that this semester my animation students are going to be doing LOTS more drawing homework :)

Bournemouth/UK Trip

Bournemouth hotel by the sea

I had an amazing opportunity last month to visit Bournemouth in England, and travel around a great deal of the U.K. as well.  My University wanted to send me to visit with a potential study abroad/exchange school - and it's just a few months away from Heather and I's 10th anniversary, so we made a 10 day trip out of it!

First and foremost was to travel to Bournemouth, a wonderful town on the southern coast of England. I spent some time at Arts University Bournemouth and met some great colleagues and see how their programs are structured.  It was the last week of their "student show" so I got to see a lot of the amazing work their students produce there.  Having backgrounds in art, film, theatre, and animation myself it was really great seeing how much collaboration goes on there!

Of course, if you're on the south coast, you have to do some day trips to Stonehenge, Salisbury (where I found a centuries old pub), New Forest, and the Jurassic Coast.  In fact, I seem to have found lots of centuries old pubs.

Part I matinee and Part II evening show

London was the next stop.  We got to meet up with our old college friends Bryon and Tiffany, who just moved to London with their daughter.  We only had time for a quick run through the National Gallery because we managed to get last minute tickets to the two part (i.e. all day) production of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child on the West End.  It was amazing and I could have gone back the very next day to watch it all over again.

With Buckbeak

Keeping with the Harry Potter theme, we visited the Warner Bros Studio tour of the sets and props from the films.  It was great to spend the day looking at all the craftsmanship that went into every single aspect of these films.  

Glencoe, Scotland

And if you've come this far, why not take a scenic 5 hour train ride up to Scotland!  Our flights meant we spent most of the time in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but we did get a 12 hour tour up into the Highlands to see Glencoe and Loch Ness.

Loch Ness.  Not pictured: Nessie

It was an amazing 10 days.  England and Scotland were just wonderful.  We already have a to-do list for a future visit.  I was impressed with AUB and Bournemouth in general, so hopefully there will also be an opportunity to return there as well!

End of the Semester and 2nd Year

Well, another semester (and year) at APSU has wrapped.  I'm still getting used to the idea of having months off of work in the summer!  It was quite the transition year - literally transitioning to our new building.  I think we all had a form of senior-itis trying to wrap up the semester in the old building knowing this awesome facility is empty and waiting just a few yards away. The last week of finals and the following week consisted of moving the equipment from the old Mac labs to the new ones.  My sons came with me one day and we played frisbee outside the new building - the quintessential college activity.

One last thing to share - something I ran across while cleaning out the old computer lab.  Drawn on the white board was this cartoon (yes, that character is me). As you can see, my students first semester diving into Maya was met with....a few technical hurdles and learning curve.

CTNx Conference Weekend

The artists booths in the giant (and not waterproof) tent

This weekend I was able to attend my first CTN Animation Expo conference back in Burbank.  It was my first time going back to visit since we left California 16 months ago.  The conference was a lot of fun - about half the conference was panels and speakers and the other half was a big artist floor where people had tables selling their arts (alongside studio recruiting booths).  I got the chance to talk to artists like Brittany Lee, Goro Fujita, Bobby Chiu, and The Bancroft Brothers.  It was a last minute trip, so I wasn't able to get into the big panels, but was still able to hear Ian McCraig, the ASIFA-Animation Educators forum with Tom Sito, and even our friend Shannon Thomas.

The best part was being able to catch up once more with friends and co-workers that I haven't seen for over a year.  That's the toughest part about leaving California was leaving a decade of amazing friends behind.  So it was wonderful to see everyone.  I even had the chance to meet my old mentor from college Tad!

The ol' crew meeting up for drinks

Floyd Norman live demo

Tad!  It's Tad!

Nashville Animation & Graphic Design Show

With the help of Professor Paul Collins, the three new faculty at Austin Peay have assembled a gallery show featuring our respective areas.  It's going up during the monthly "Art Crawl" in downtown Nashville and should get a lot of traffic!  My students worked on a collaborative piece about the 12 Principles of Animation, to which I contributed several scenes to as well.

Check out the press release below or at:  http://www.apsu.edu/news/new-exhibit-nashville-showcases-apsu-graphic-design-and-animation-students-and-faculty

The Austin Peay State University Department of Art and Design will showcase the work of its students and faculty during April’s First Saturday Art Crawl in Nashville. The Department of Art and Design will present the exhibition, “Where the Wild Things Are,” on April 2 in Nashville’s L Gallery, in the heart of Nashville’s art district.

The exhibition will highlight the contributions of first year faculty Patrick Gosnell (graphic design), Rachel Bush (graphic design) and Scott Raymond (animation). The presentation will feature a variety of graphic design installations, including new work by APSU graphic design students. The exhibit will also present multi-projection animations featuring creature explorations and a celebration of the guiding principles of animation by current APSU animation students.

The reception and viewing hours for the exhibition will be from 6-9 p.m. on Saturday, April 2, in Suite 73 of Nashville’s Arcade, located between 4th and 5th avenues, off Church Street in Downtown Nashville.

This show is made possible through generous support of APSU’s Faculty Senate Student Academic Success Initiative Award program.

For more information on this exhibition, which is free and open to the public, contact Paul Collins, APSU associate professor of art, at collinsp@apsu.edu.

Student Animations - Fall 2015

I was putting together some student examples from my Animation class this semester, and I thought it'd be nice to post them.  It was a face paced semester, as my students had to learn how to be animators, directors, writers, editors and actors in 15 weeks.  All while trying to learn to animate in Flash.  I am happy to no longer have to teach Flash - we just got Toon Boom Harmony purchased for next semester!

End of First Semester

I took this picture walking to my car after my last finals of the semester. I remember walking up to this building in August not sure what to expect. I have to say it was as fun, exhausting, exciting, stressful, and fulfilling as I had hoped.

Workshop Black Friday Sale!

My Animation for Non-Animators workshop is taking part in CGSociety's Black Friday sale this year!  A nice chance to take these workshops at a pretty nice discount. Offer is valid through Monday.

Click HERE for more details!

New Animation Workshop Goes Live!

I can't wait to get started on this class!  I approached CG Society about a class teaching animation fundamentals (and tips & tricks) geared towards professionals or students from other CG disciplines that could benefit from better animation knowledge.  Cameras, props, fx, dynamics, layout - everyone can benefit from either more polished animation or a more efficient workflow and approach to animation.

I learned this first hand as a crowds simulation artist at DreamWorks.  Just a few animation tips from my mentor, Kevin Vassey, and immediately my crowds were more polished, believable, and just "felt" more properly animated.  I think this will help fill a huge gap in animation education - a whole demographic that is truly interested in animation, but doesn't want to spend 9 months learning how to make a flour-sack jump.  Class starts at the first of the year!

http://www.cgsociety.org/training/course/animation-for-non-animators

High School Visits

Kenwood High School

Northeast High School

This Fall I talked to three Clarksville high schools.  While this was partly a recruiting effort, I approached it as a chance to talk about making a living as an artist. My lecture was titled “Art & Animation: Visual Storytelling” and was geared to appeal and inform a very general audience. So whether a student was interested in computer science or traditional art, they would find something inspiring to take away. After each visit, several students would approach after the presentation to talk further. Often they would share their own character designs and even personal animation. This is a good reminder that the technical hurdle (and obstacle of access) that I remember at that age no longer exists. These kids are already creating animations on their Nintendo DS, posting it to YouTube, and getting feedback from around the world. It’s a whole new game out there, and it’s always helpful to be reminded of that. 

Flyer at Northwest High School

Conference Panel at ETSU

Today I had a wonderful chance to speak at a panel as part of the iDMAa conference at Eastern State Tennessee University.  The panel was "Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice: What They Don't Teach You in School" - and was I believe a very valuable discussion.

Having just made the transition from the Professional World to Academics, I see the difference between the perceived job environment out there and the reality.  So it was a great chance to share some insights and give some pragmatic viewpoints.  I've always felt that schools are very concerned with teaching students how to get jobs, but not necessarily how to be great employees and keep those jobs.  One of the most helpful classes I had back in undergrad at UNL was a "Business of Theatre" class that William Kenyon, the lighting professor taught one semester.  It covered freelance strategies, taxes for artists, getting covered by insurance, contracts, etc.  Talking to others at this conference, I think a "professional practices" class is essential for any arts program in this day and age.

Conference web site:  http://idmaa.org/conferences/east-tennesseee-state-2015/

I have to add that I was only able to attend because my amazing wife, Heather Abels, stayed home with our two sick kids that day.  You'll notice that her name is on the panel poster as well.  One of us had to cancel, and she graciously as bowed out so that I could attend.