Farewell to Blogger
Well, I did this a little while ago but haven't had the time to even let anyone know. About fifteen people have stumbled across it by accident, but here is my new and improved site. Right now it's pretty much a direct import from Blogger. I'll get around to finishing up all the catagorizing and whatnot. We just finished up our latest video.
Ryan has a post on it, but I'm still a little out of sorts. We don't move into our new place until the first of July. Try being pregnant and homeless and then talk to me about my lack of posts. Anyway, the official address is simply:
http://www.drewblom.wordpress.com I still have a lot to do on it and I'll keep my blogger account, but please point any live bookmarks to this site. Take care and you'll be hearing more from me soon.
-Drew
Thinking about a Switch...
Hey, still on hiatus, but I'm thinking about switching to Wordpress for my blog. I've been using it for another blog and really like some of the features. Anyone have any opinions? I've found blogger to just be a little tedious in comparison. As an aside, work is going well and I'm finally starting to get the hang of Lightwave even tho I'm not yet a believer.
-Drew
Posting Hiatus
Due to moving, changing jobs, and having a baby in the next months, I most likely will be a little light on the posting. I'll pick it up again when things settle down a bit. Thanks and stay tooned...
-Drew
Got a Job!
Image copyright 20th Century Fox
So blessings come in all shapes and sizes. One of ours, namely our first child, will be arriving at the end of July. Another is the fact that I will be starting at
Wet Cement Productions at the beginning of May. I'll be working on the
Roach Approach series as well as other various projects. We're very excited and looking forward to moving back to Minnesota and back to family.
-Drew
Nekkid!
Just messing around.
-Drew
Gaaahh!!!
As many of you know, I'm graduating from college in three weeks. As much as I would have liked, I will not be showing a finished film at the grad show. That was largely the reason that I wanted to put the project on hold. I didn't want to rush it. At the same time, I'm not abandoning it at all. To give a more realistic timeline on the project, I hope to have it finished over the summer. In fact, I'm currently making some improvements on the character that I really think will make it a better film. Here's a quick peek at what's changing.
There is also another reason I wanted to wait on the film for the time being. I have spent a huge amount of effort in trying to learn character animation in my time at school. This pursuit has largely been self-motivated and self-sustained. I've scraped thru my dynamics and video production classes by shear luck, carving out as much time in them to really hammer on learning character. I've relied on other resources like people I've met in the industry,
Keith's VTS and the profound generosity and critiques of one
Kevan Shorey. Not to say that I'm an expert at all, but I think I'm
starting to understand it a little. Call it spite, but I feel that allowing the school to take credit for the film being accomplished during my time there is a little dishonest. While I've been greatful for the time that school has given me to pursue this film, I'm still a little annoyed that there hasn't been more instruction on how to make a film, how to work out a story, how to define a character, how to make things move convincingly etc... You know, animaiton stuff. I don't know if this is clear at all, but since this was such a personal endeavor, releasing it after I'm out of school seems to be the only honest way to do so.
-Drew
Shelved...
I've given this much thought and as for where I am in my film (simultaneously where I am in my understanding of animation) I am officially shelving
Buzz'd for the time being. I realized in listening to
Carlos talk about animation and filmmaking that I really have a long way to go. Given that there are still some basic principles of animation in general that I have yet to address, I cannot justify throwing together a half-baked idea just for the sake of my grad-show. I feel the work that I have put into the project, as primitive as it may look, deserves the time to finish it properly.
This is not to say that I am giving up on the film. In fact, I've just recently been re-working the main character to have a more readable face and have made significant changes to the overall story for the sake of clarity. But I just don't feel that I have the story or the animation where I want them to be in order to call it done. I am for-going finishing this project for the sake of doing more animation tests as well as finishing up some dialogue pieces that I started a long time ago. These will be focused learning exercises and should prove to be better pieces for a final demo reel than a work-in-progress student film.
Quite frankly, after my experience here at school, I don't want to call this a "student film." Not from this school anyway.I appreciate all of the help and input I've gotten from various people over the past few months. Everyone has been encouraging and supportive. This has been a definite learning experience and I don't at all want to discount that. I've learned about rigging, file management and more than I ever cared to about shaders;) I finally feel like I have the ability to make a second run at this thing in the future and have something that will be more successful than if I were to push the current underdeveloped project out of the nest.
-Drew
