With Charles Spencer A.W.O.L., Tom and myself decided to get this one going.
So, let’s get down to business.
Podcast #8 | A conversation with ILM's Charles Alleneck about life and all things Rango[ 1:22:05 ]Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
Charles Alleneck has been an animator at ILM for the last 12 years. Only from Colorado, he went to CalArts to study tranditional animation and after graduation from the CalArts character animation program, joined ILM as an animator and has been there ever since. He’s worked on such projects as Transformers 1, 2 & 3, Ang Lee’s Hulk, Star Wars Episodes 2 & 3, Iron Man and the Avengers and as an animation lead on Rango.
By the way, the picture above is a picture of his cube at ILM.
8 months is a while. Quite a while. We’ve all been busy with our respective lives but we’ve been wanting to get to doing regular podcasts to talk about more things.
In this podcast, we talk about life in the last few months for us, 2012 as a great year for movies and choices for online animation schools.
It’s about four months since our last podcast. Way too long. I took a break for Animation Mentor, Charles has been busy with getting a reel together and Tom has been finishing up the Animals & Creatures Masterclass at Animation Mentor.
Oh yeah, Thomas Qui Nguyen is now officially a part of the Force Versus Form podcast. So a big welcome to Tom from both Charles and myself. You can visit the About link up top to read his saucy bio.
Now, let’s get down to business.
Podcast #6 | A conversation with Wayne Gilbert, Head of Animation at VanArts[ 1:26:55 ]Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
I’ve been trying to find a way to get an interview with our special guest, Wayne Gilbert, for a while now. Charles was actually a student of his and I asked him to contact him. He did and no contact was made.
Fast forward to beginning of August. I was in Vancouver, BC. to attend the annual Siggraph expo. I remembered that he worked at VanArts. I met him and his fellow colleague and former Disney animator Mark Pudliener at the VanArts booth at the Siggraph expo. We talked about a few things and without me resorting to any begging and pleading he agreed to do the podcast. So here we are.
I could taked about his background here but we’ll let the podcast take care of that. I can mention in brief what we all talked about. We talked about his career, his education, his views on animation formats, does mocap suck or not or is it a tool. Lots of insight. her background, offers a lot of insight on his work process and his role as an educator in the field of animation and his views of educating the animators of tomorrow.
You can find out more about his excellent book “Simplified Drawing For Planning Animation” and watch his short films on his website at www.anamie.com.
You can also view more about him on the following two links:
We decided to go balls out for this one. Just got fellow Animation Mentor Alumnus Thomas Qui Nguyen and talked about a whole host of things. We decided to chat about how we all deal with checklists, roadblocks and procrastination.
We also talked very briefly at the end abou the amazing project started by our fellow Animation Mentor student Willie Downs called “The Animator Letters Project”. If you’re a professional animator and would like to contribute to this inspirational project or just a passerby that wants more information on what exactly Willie is doing and the reasoning behind it, please do visit the project blog at http://animatorlettersproject.blogspot.com/. You can also follow the project via it’s Facebook page here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Animator-Letters-Project/203732639665920
Trailers
Source Code starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Michele Monaghan, Vera Farmiga and the amazing Jeffrey Wright. Directed by Duncan Jones, the director of the Moon.
Meek’s Cutoff, starring Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood. Directed by Indie director Kelly Reichardt, who also directed Michelle Williams in Wendy and Lucy.
Bill Plympton’s Idiots and Angels.
X-Men: First Class
Tranformers 3: Dark Side of the Moon
Music on today’s podcast:
Intro – Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb
Outro – The Crystal Method’s Down in the Now (featuring Matisyahu)
We were priviliged to have a conversation with Senior Freelance Animator, Nicole Herr, who’s worked everywhere from Cinesite LA to Sony Pictures Imageworks to most recently at Animal Logic, Rhythm & Hues and Digital Domain. She’s served capacities ranging from compositor to matchmover to creature animator to character animator.
She talks about her training, her background, offers a lot of insight on her process and the processes in the studios she’s worked in and offers advice to those are training to get in the industry as well as a brief discussion on the ever expanding role of women in the field of animation.
You can find out more about her experience, work history and view her reel on her website at www.nicoleherr.com.
Today we talked about in depth about feedback and it’s necessity to animators and how it helps you grow as a student and how it helps you build your eye.
Rosalie and Truffel – a stop-mo short from German sto-mo shop Trikk17:
While I have no desire to watch Priest in the theatres, I had no idea that the movie starring Paul Bettany was based on a graphic novel. Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of Dexter’s Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Samuarai Jack and now, Sym-Bionic Titan, created it’s opening prologue sequence. And it’s now online. link:
Topics included in this podcast are a word of thanks, a bit of news, talk about long talk planning and why feedback, both to and from others, is so damn important and helps you grow by leaps and bounds as an animator.
Books
Wayne Gilbert’s book Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation is available from www.animae.com
As students of animation, one who has already trained in it and one who is currently in training, we are trying to do something new.
Not from a professional’s perspective, but a student’s. Yes, there are plenty of blogs out there, but not a lot of student-based podcasts for animation.
We’re in awe of the crew behind Splinedoctors.com and Speaking Of Animation and Clay Kaytis of The Animation Podcast. But while they bring you information from the perspective of a professional animator, we’ll try to bring you a different one, one of a student who’s still trying to figure it out. A student that is still fumbling around with the principles of animation. One who’s yet to work professional as an animator.
Our aims are simple…
We’ll talk with our friends
We’ll talk with our mentors
We’ll take with those who inspire us
We’ll try to cover all we can without it blowing our head to smithereens and then deliver them to you at the least every two weeks in an audio-format.
In the end, all we can hope is that you’ll find it enjoyable to listen to and this site a small resource in the big field of animation.
Thank you.
- Charles & Fes
P.S. We’d like to start by posting the trailer of one of our most favorite CG animated movies of all time… Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs
Podcast #8 | A conversation with ILM's Charles Alleneck about life and all things Rango [ 1:22:05 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
I’ve been trying to find a way to get an interview with our special guest, Wayne Gilbert, for a while now. Charles was actually a student of his and I asked him to contact him. He did and no contact was made.