Portfolio Review with Nelvana this Thursday

Artists from Nelvana will be at the College on Thursday April 2 to offer advice on student portfolios in preparation for Industry Day. They are especially interested in reviewing ToonBoom animation and design work.

The Nelvana reps will be in the 4th Year Studio from 2 pm to 3:30. If you would like to get some feedback on your work, email me (bruno.degazio@sheridancollege.ca) as soon as possible, as the number of spaces is limited.

The portfolio reviews will be followed by a lecture in J102 at 5 pm.

Are You an Artist, or are you the 'Smartist'?

Career self-management for artists. That's what Ben McEvoy's "The Smartist" is about.  It's not something that most of us think about much. But Ben has thought about it a lot and has put together this inspirational lecture and workshop to help you think about it a little more.

Ben McEvoy is a modern Renaissance man. He is among other things a business entrepreneur and  animation producer; a graduate of Sheridan's Classical animation program; an educator; and co-founder of the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (TAFFI) and The Smartist.  Here he is speaking about himself:

You can find me at the intersection of creativity, technology and commerce, where I facilitate opportunity for creators, entrepreneurs and brands in film, television and digital. It is here that I have successfully produced and provided creative strategy on projects for clients in film, television, education, finance, consumer brands and startups, managing a range of projects throughout Canada and internationally in India, Singapore and China.

Be sure to attend this inspirational lecture and workshop, tomorrow at 11 am and 2 pm.

For more info:  https://about.me/BenMcEvoy

Animator Randolph Lizarda to Tour 4th Year Studio Today

Animator Randolph Lizarda will be on hand in the 4th Year Studio today (Monday March 23) after 4 pm, to speak about his experience as an animator since he graduated from the Sheridan BAA in 2010.

Randolph started his post-Sheridan life with a stint at Pixar, then moved to Vancouver and has had extensive experience with using Maya and other software for pre-visualzation.  Randolph's senior project film, Lucian, has been shown extensively and has been a staple of Sheridan's "best-of"  reels for years. You can take a look at it here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y41c79tbg8ufn9q/Lucian.mp4?dl=0

PRIORITIES

Well, it's that time of year again and the time-crunch  will be hitting you all hard very soon.  So with that in mind, Prof. Nancy Beiman has prepared this handy summary of some "best practices" for handling serious deadlines:


PRIORITIES (pdf)


Although it's predominantly humorous in tone, the presentation has a lot of serious and important ideas to help you through the next weeks.  Enjoy.

A Boy and His Kite: Here's What The Unreal Engine Is Capable Of Rendering In Real Time

Amazing demonstration of the real-time rendering power of game engine software, Unreal Engine 4. It's actually a rather good short film as well.

I'd be interested to know if the video title is literally true, i.e. was this entire film rendered in real time? Or was each shot separately rendered and then the complete film assembled in a video editor? I suspect the latter but I'm open to hearing from anyone who knows the software or the background to this video.

▶ A Boy and His Kite: An Animated Short - YouTube

Multicultural Art Exhibition :The Carousel of Nations in Oakville

This item about an art exhibition in Oakville  came to me yesterday from a graduate of the BAA program. It's too late for the reception , which took place yesterday, but the exhibition itself might be of interest to you: 

-----------------------------------------------------------

Dear Supporters and art enthusiasts,

We are pleased to invite you to the 1st Carousel of Nations Art Exhibition, The Light of Diversity. The showcase will be held inside the Main Gallery of Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre, from March 13th until April 13th, 2015.

The aim of this exhibition is to educate, share and appreciate unique perspectives on the multicultural values in Ontario. It will be a great opportunity to discover and directly communicate with our talented artists. This exhibition will be acting as an instrument to draw attention to the Halton region and beyond. 

Media from Oakville.com, Beaver Oakville are cordially invited to attend.

The reception will be starting at 7pm on Monday March 17, 2015. Light refreshments will be served.

We look forward to seeing you at the art show.

Sincerely,

Veronica Tyrrel
President, The Canadian Caribbean Association of Halton
http://ccah.ca/Default.asp?id=1&l=1
The Carousel of Nations

Sayaka Yamanouchi
Assistant Secretary,
The Carousel of Nations
http://carouselofnations.ca/

Business Practices in Animation

The observant among you might have noticed that the official title of this course is "Senior Project Film and Business Practices."  So far this year we've addressed the business part of the title only with  James Caswell's introductory talk on small business issues and Chris Walsh's survey of the Festival scene.

But over the next few weeks were going to remedy that with a series of talks focusing specifically on the business side of animation, including managing your career (The Smartist with Ben McEvoy of TAAFI) and the process of developing a creative asset into an ongoing series (Guru's James' Nadler)  and first up, for tomorrow's lecture and workshop, our own Peter Bilicki, who will talk to us about "Managing Creativity" - the challenges of organizing and executing a creative project in a small production studio.

As usual, the lecture begins at 11 am in S235; the workshop follows at 2 pm in A151.


LECTURE (11 am) : Managing Creativity - Peter Bilicki

WORKSHOP (2 pm) : Peter Bilicki

Rough Animation Reel Screening Tomorrow at 10 AM!

This is a reminder that our class screening of the Senior Project Film rough animation reels will take place tomorrow, Wednesday March 10,  at 10 am in SCAET Theatre, S235.  Note that this is one hour earlier than our usual lecture time . The screening will last approximately 2 1/2 hours. There will be no workshop tomorrow.

This screening is an important opportunity to see your film the way that the Industry Day attendees will see it at the end of April - screen size, brightness and colour accuracy are all important image factors which are difficult to judge on a computer monitor.

With the soundtrack, tonal balance and overall loudness are notoriously hard to judge using headphones or cheap computer speakers. The sound system in S235 will give you a true impression of the state of your soundtrack, and will let you hear it the way it will sound on Industry Day.

The third reason to be at this screening is perhaps the most important -  to see your film through the eyes of a large audience. It's amazing how small issues that you have overlooked for months will sometimes jump out immediately when you view your film with an audience. And conversely, you may discover that things you thought were big problems are actually working just fine.

So make sure to take advantage of this screening - it's our last one before the "Final' screening in Week 13. So see you tomorrow!

Bruno

Monday, March 9, 2015

There has been a change of plans for the visit from Ubisoft Animation Director Kristjan Zadziuk. His talk will take place TODAY at 5 pm in J102, not Tuesday at 6:30 pm as stated in the previous post. 

Tuesday March 10 - Visit from Animation Director of Ubisoft

Max Piesner, co-ordinator of the Bachelor of Game Design program, has arranged a visit from the Animation Director of Ubisoft Toronto.  Max has generously invited 4th Year BA Animation students  to the lecture.  Here is the text of Max's email: 

Kristjan Zadziuk, Animation Director at Ubisoft Toronto, will be speaking at Sheridan on Tuesday March 10th in Room S235 at 6:30pm.  All 3D Animation students and senior BA Animation students are welcome to attend. 

Cheers,

Max Piesner
Program Coordinator: BA Game Design

Professor: Game Writing and Narrative Design

100% ROUGH ANIMATION - SCREENING DEADLINE

This is a reminder that our class screening of the Senior Project Film will take place next week.  The deadline for handing in the screening copy is Monday March 9 at 9 am.

Note that there is a Hand In Folder specifically for the screening. Do not assume that because you handed in a file for the Milestone that it will automatically be used for the screening.

The screening itself will take place in S235 at 10 am on Wednesday March 11.  Note that this is one hour earlier than our usual starting time for the Lecture. There will be no workshop that day.

There is a grade penalty of 50% of the Milestone Grade for not screening your film. Since the Milestone is worth 15% of your final grade, the penalty is actually worth nearly a whole letter grade. In other words, not screening your film can cause your final grade for the course to drop from an A to B, or from B to C, or from... well, you get the idea.  If you don't like the idea of a penalty, think of it as a substantial bonus simply for screening your film.

Here's a quick summary of what should be the state of your film for this screening:

PICTURE: 
2D projects:  Rough Animation 100% completed and composited against layouts or bg paintings.

3D projects: Playblast output with all character poses, sets & props. One test shot fully lit and rendered.

StopMo projects: Finished shots for 20% of running time;  edited into your existing Animatic reel. 


SOUND (all projects): 
All sound elements (Dialogue, Music, Sound Effects) should be represented, either as final materials (dialogue, most sound effects) or demo/temp versions (music.)  All elements should be combined in acceptable balance at the standard playback level of -12 db as shown on the output level meters in Adobe Audition or Premiere. 

More free help! - Music and voices

As your films  near completion it seems there are many people out there who would like to help with the soundtrack. The latest offers are from Leeran Raphaely, an award winning young composer, who has just finished a score for one of our 4th Year films and is so pleased with the way it turned out that he would like to do another. You can contact him at:

leeran.raphaely@gmail.com


The other offer comes from Prof.  Mark Melymick, co-ordinator of Sheridan's Theatre Performance Program, who is offering the services of his acting students for doing character voice recordings for your film. If you would like to try them out, send Prof. Melymick an email with a brief description of the type of character voice you need (e.g. "nerdy young male") and he will attempt to connect you with an appropriate student from his program.

mark.melymick@sheridaninstitute.ca

Offer to help with Sound Design

I recently received this email from a student in Media Fundamentals. Please contact him directly if you would like some help with your sound effects and sound-mixing side of your film.

My name is Jonathan Woodburn, and I was a student in Tony Tosti's sound design class last semester. He mentioned to me that one of the ways I could continue getting experience would be to volunteer as a Sound Designer for Sheridan's animation department. If I could help in anyway, please let me know.

​

Sincerely,

Jonathan Woodburn

woodburj@sheridancollege.ca

The Independent Animator

Lecture: Festivals and Distribution for the Independent Animator - Chris Walsh, S235 11 am

Life in animation is not all Pixar and Dreamworks. (Just ask the 500 artists and technical crew who recently got laid off from the latter.)

Some artists just want to make art in whatever medium is available to them. We call them "independent" and it's a viable strategy for many. In the past,  production and distribution were both major obstacles to independent work in animation, but powerful, inexpensive computers have largely eliminated the first as an obstacle, and the world-wide-interweb is in the process of eliminating the second.  Chris Walsh will be our guest speaker at this week's lecture to fill you in on recent developments along these lines.


Workshop: Demo Music Track Assessment & Discussion - Bruno Degazio, A151 - 2 pm

This week is the delivery deadline for the demo version of your music score from the U of T musicians. Sometimes questions arise at his point about the suitability of the music, and now is the time to address the problem with your composer.  This drop-in session is for you to bring in your demo track recording for review and discussion with myself and your colleagues. 

50 Awesome Resumés

"50 Inspiring Resumé Designs: And What You Can Learn From Them"

Check out this website (link below courtesy of James Caswell) regarding Resumé design and how to make your Resumé stand out from the pack.  This will come in handy when you submit the final Milestone in Week 14, which requires a resumé, and of course at Industry Day and in the weeks following.

https://designschool.canva.com/blog/50-inspiring-resume-designs/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=facebook_page&utm_medium=Canva&utm_content=50%20Inspiring%20Resume%20Designs:%20And%20What%20You%20Can%20Learn%20From%20Them

Inspired Acting, Mindful Animating

LECTURE:  Stephen Barnes: Inspired Acting, Mindful Animating: A Study of Great Moments From Animated Films 
SCAET 235, 11 am - 1 pm

With the big animation Milestone due this week (100% of rough animation completed), it's appropriate that tomorrow's lecture is on the subject of acting in animation. Stephen Barnes extends his previous study of acting (Inspired Acting: Great Moments from Great Actors) to include acting in animated feature films. Steve livens up the talk with discussion of the bad animation in the old Roger Ramjet TV series, and outtakes  from his days as an animator at Pixar.


WORKSHOP: Amir Avni: Flash Animation Workshop
A151, 2 pm - 4 pm 

The workshop is also dedicated to the craft of animation with BAA graduate and Flash animator Amir Avni giving a lesson on traditional animation techniques in Flash, and providing a Q&A to resolve any issues you may be having while using Flash in your Senior Project Film.

Special Screening Tomorrow

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

LECTURE - 11 AM, S235 
The Lecture is dedicated to a special screening of short animated films  - I can't give details here but I'm sure you'll all be pleased and interested in the program. And you get to vote on your favourite film of the batch!

The screening will be fairly short (less than an hour) and will be followed by the annual KPI survey, where you get to voice your opinion of the BA Animation program.


WORKSHOP - 2 PM, A151
In the afternoon we have scheduled Barnabas Wornoff, our resident ToonBoom expert, for a Q&A period on TB character rigging and general usage. Barney will focus on cleanup and in-betweening  for those of you using ToonBoon in  a traditional way, and puppet rigging for those using TB's symbol capabilities.  Bring your ToonBoom work-in-progress files!




 

Quick Read: How Do Directors Pick their Composers?

Quick and to-the-point reposnse from director Michael Mann:


http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/02/09/michael_mann_how_do_directors_pick_composers_to_score_their_movies.html


Answer by Michael Mann, director, producer, Blackhat, Heat, The Insider, Collateral, Last of the Mohicans, Thief:

Composing is kind of like casting. On a given picture with a standout composer, like Elliot Goldenthal, who I think is one of the more extraordinary composers working today, I will use only his score because I want the picture to have a unified sensibility, like in Heat or Public Enemies. It was the same with Trevor Jones on the main themes of Last of the Mohicans. Randy Edelman did some additional work that was excellent.

In other films, I'll use more than one composer because I want to rotate among different emotional perspectives. That could be character-driven or something totally different about the circumstances, such as the ending of Ali when we're in Africa for the Rumble in the Jungle and the music is almost wall-to-wall Salif Keita. One composer may be able to evoke certain emotions, and another composer is better for different passages. I did that in Collateral as well as in Blackhat.

For Blackhat, Atticus Ross probably makes the greatest impression in the first half, which isn't about counting the minutes of music. I also used Harry Gregson-Williams. There’s a young guy named Ryan Amon, whose outstanding, haunting themes are somewhat surreal. Atticus Ross’ brother, Leo, co-composed with Atticus and played guitar. And there are excellent cues by Mike Dean, who is Kanye West’s producer and a great keyboardist. Everybody was working in parallel. In the end, it's the film and my vision that dictate which music is used and how. If a composer wants to have his music stand alone, he should be a recording artist and let his work contest itself in that arena. 

When it comes to the process, I'm very involved, and it’s purely creative and highly intuitive.

Music Spotting Session Visit from U of T composers tomorrow!

Remember - Tomorrow's Lecture and Workshop are both dedicated to the Music Spotting Session visit from the U of T film music composition class.

If you are not involved in a partnership with one of the U of T composers then you do not have to attend the lecture. However, you are still welcome to come and watch the screening of a "Best Of"  selection  of animations scored by this program in years past.

The plan for the day is as follows:

11:00 AM - noon;  SCAET 235
We will collect here for some opening remarks and the screening of a "Best Of"  selection of animations.


noon - 3 pm;  4th Year STUDIO, A361
We will use the open area at the south end of the studio and the workstations nearby to schedule one-on-one meetings between the various composers and animators.

Plan on meeting with your composer for 20-30 minutes to discuss the musical requirements of your film.

Have an up-to-date version of your Animatic ready, including the recent Workflow Test shot! Also be sure to bring along a pair of headphones, as the listening environment in the Studio is not ideal.


Here is a quick summary of the main procedures and purposes  of a Spotting Session:


1. View the Film
- Leica-Reel, Pose-Reel, or Rough-cut.
- include your temp music, sound fx, scratch voices
- decide where music is needed, what style, mood, instruments, accents, etc.
- make a sequential list of music cues (M1, M2, M3, etc.) with starting times!

2. Try Out New Musical Ideas
- play recordings with the picture! It's extremely important to hear the music while looking at your pciture.

3. Wait for the new Score
- discuss delivery dates, file formats & other tech

Superman and Batman should be in the Public Domain.

A good short article on how the public loses when copyright terms are extended.

http://theconversation.com/why-batman-and-rhapsody-in-blue-should-be-in-the-public-domain-but-arent-36389