Keane, Koch and... K..adobe?

• Glen Keane is my hero - The title has little to do with this vid, but just thought you should know. Watch it anyway - great stuff. A buddy at work pointed it out. It's Glen talking about Ollie -
  
  
  
• Another great animation blog - Kevin Koch has some great experience working in both traditional and cg animation. He also has a great animation blog. Thanks to Kyle for my finding it.
  
  
• More flash goodness - Here's a great little piece done for some sort of Adobe competition. The animation in particular is a good example of seemingly simple design handled exceptionally well. Oh, and here's some behind the scenes stuff on it.
  
  
  

Out of this world pictures...

...get it? :)

Here are some absolutely amazing pictures of and from our little sister planet- Check em out!

Grats Scott!

A buddy of mine from college, Scott Spencer, apparently wrote a book on Zbrush. He's a gifted sculptor and instructor and I imagine it's a good book so give it a look:)

This one's for Matt...

Man, I keep getting called out by my friends. Gotta work on being more on top of things. And speaking of things...

Things are going well, been adjusting to working from home which can be a challenge. I have to say I miss working with folk face to face. For now, this will be just fine. Mainly working on The Wheelman now for work which is coming along well and the short film project is a lot of fun in what spare time I can carve out. Need to shoot some video reference of a "flowery dance" as Dave called it. Worked on a little number this weekend and need to get his approval before spending time in the computer. Been trying to plan shots better to work most efficiently with the little animating time I have.

Houston is warming up as is the box office - ton of promising movies coming out. The soonest being Iron Man which I'm hoping to catch in the next week.

What else...

• Orphaned Works Act - I've been reading about this bill for awhile on different sites with differing opinions. If you're an artist and don't know about it. Educate yourself.
  
  
• Mac jump - I'm pretty sure now that I'm gonna make the shift to macs for my personal work. I just can't seem to decide whether a desktop or a laptop. It doesn't help that I'm such a scrooge that the idea of spending that amount of money causes me to hide my wallet from myself - quite a feat mind you - made possible by my horrible memory.
  
  
• Work flow- Yet another informative animation work flow article.
  
  
• Animation notes - From a seminal with John Lasseter. Where have I heard that name before...it's on the tip of my renderman rendered mind...
  
  
• Wall-e Stuff! - Four minute featurette! Wow...
  
  
• Avatar is back - Again...they really need to be able to schedule their shows so they can show more than a couple of new episodes every few months...
  

Don't forget Mother's day, peeps!

Gallerific Update

Found a cool little flash content management system for images and vids. So I updated the Gallerific section of my site. Added a bunch of Potter concept images and all the boards as well which I don't know if if I've put up before come to think of it. It's HIGHLY customizable. Neato.

Can't wait to play with the vid feature once I have some time to export some movies to put in there. It'll have to wait till after the wedding/move/vacation.

Gotta run and get an oil change before work. Lata!

Books Beautified by Buddies

So my friends at Portland have once again let loose their talent infused digital brushes. First comes a book illustrated by Justin Gerard.


Not to be outdone, Cory has one already out written (and sung) by one of my absolute favorite musicians - the infamously talented Andrew Peterson. If my nephews were on the internet, they'd know one of their presents.


What else is new.....hmmm...

• 5k's - I'm running a 5k tomorrow with my beautiful fiance in Houston. Should be fun. Hopefully the Houston humidity takes a day off...
  
• It's Fall - The Office, Heroes and Avatar are back...nough said...:)
  
• Halo 3 - Lots of fun fraggin it up with my cousins, brother and buddies from Chitown

That is all.

Portland Studios releases some more fantastic shirts...

My buddies over at Portland are some fantastic artists and they just opened their new store. I already had two of their shirts from their last release a while back in my closet and three more will be joining their brethren shortly. Buy one and support some talented artists (and nice folk to boot) :)

Radomlings...

• FANTASTIC "simple" animation - I love this thing. Makes me wanna get back to "traditional" animation even more.
  
  
• Great animation blogs - I've stumbled across some great animation relate blogs recently I need to add to the side of my site, in the meantime, here's some of them:
• Animation Treasures
• Uncle Eddie's Theory Corner
• The Cartoon Cave
• The Art of Glen Keane
  
  
• Free Dog Rig to good home - The guy who did package man (a rig I cut some animation teeth on) just released a free dog rig. One of the guy's blogs I follow did a test animation with it along with a little write up on it. Fun stuff!
  
  
• Great Dialogue - Keith Lango puts better into words much of what I've been thinking about the last year along with some great insights - part 1, part 2, part 3.
  

George Lucas in Love...

Been a little bit and there's TONS going on, but as there's so much going on, I really don't have time to tell it. Life is good, very good.

And busy...:)

In the meantime, enjoy this fun little film (if you're a Star Wars fan).

Edit - I got the link from a blog a peruse from time to time.

Talk about your interesting jobs...

I've never heard nor imagined such a job a this. Be thankful for cubicles :)

French Filmtastic..ness...

Well worth the viewing. The style reminds me of Team Fortress 2 (which I'm very much looking forward to checking out...whenever it comes out). I'd love to animate those guys :)

Google Reader...

I know I'm probably late to the party on this but I have a new favorite toy and its name is Google Reader. No longer do I have go to 33 1/2 sites every morning to see if there's updates. I go to one and can see all of the updates from news, blogs, articles, everything... Not only that, but I can share (plug) articles I like and they show up on the side of my blog here. Sweet!

Google freakin' rocks - I now use them for my blog, email, maps, web photo albums for fam and friends, and now my rss aggregtor (Reader). How is it possible they don't charge for any of this?

No, that's not a suggestion, Google.

Avatarholic

Hello, my name is Josh. I will be 29 on Friday and I love cartoons...

...my current vices being Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends and Avatar. The latter of the two is hands down the best cartoon currently airing in the U.S. Fantastic story, epic battles, comedic characters...it has it all. So yeah, my munchkin nephews and their uncle watch the same show and yes, I got them Avatar toys for Christmas. Fans of the show - namely 6-12 year old boys (and animators) are eagerly awaiting season three to begin.

In the meantime, my fellow fans, I stumbled across this little parody cartoon that will probably not make much sense if you don't watch the show. So, for any fans out there, enjoy.

Click here
"koh"

In case you hadn't noticed...

...my new website design is up!

After far, far too long, I have a new website design that is up and working. I've not fleshed out quite all the content yet, but it's a start. Projects has been updated with some recent projects, so give it a look see. The Gallerific section is done sans the animation and photography areas and I'll be getting to my reel update in the next month or so (the one I had up here is way old anyway.

Also, I updated the awards won by my buddy David Bokser's Le Vieil Homme et les Poissons which I had the pleasure of working on.

For people who care how some things were done...

• Gallery script - Simple viewer
• Cool Image pop up for blog and any images for that matter - LightBox
  
• Implementing new blogger in template -
• Some info here
• More here

Interview with Brad Bird AND Ratatouille clips!

Check it out!

Great behind the scenes stuff and dailies stuff. Sweetness!

Disney's Rapunzel Unbraided Footage!

Been dying to see this in motion for some time. Thanks to Ray for the find.

Final(ish) design...

Thanks for the comments. I've gotten some feedback from some other friends too. So without further ado- two very slight variations of a theme...

#6

#7

The header image will rotate randomly much like my current site. Also, for those of you looking for cool tools for sites, I think I'm going to use this flash portfolio thingy which I learned of from my very talented friend's portfolio.

Now, to just find some time to actaully make a site...

Great Cg Look and Fun Animation:)

This guy (Manu Jarvinen) has some talent. Check out his work.

Need to waste some time?

Lots of fun opportunities here from the gang at Aardman:) Click the vid to go to youTube to see googles more.

...pun intended.

Ratatouille Clip

Take a look before it gets yanked offline!