Nathan’s Animation Chronicles

I finally got around to upgrading this blog to the latest version of wordpress.  I’ve been meaning to do it for years. I also have plans to add some kind of photo viewer to display photos of my family and maybe some videos too.

We’ve had a good holiday season and my son, Noah, has had surgery to correct his problem.  He has been the happiest baby I’ve ever known.  He recovered quickly and has only had a few problems since.  His surgeon says he should get better as he grows bigger.  We are hoping he’s right and that we’ll soon have a happy healthy baby.

As for my animation aspirations, I’ve been rather lax in my training.  My projects have been set aside and my desk has been such a mess.  I am trying to get myself organized but I fear as soon as I do we will be moving again.  This apartment is just not working out for us.

Anyway, I hope to get some pictures up soon and maybe some artwork as well.  Like some of the illustrations I did recently for a book.

Here’s my little cowboy. Growing bigger everyday.

It has been a rough couple of weeks for my wife and I. Little Noah was born on Friday August 1 after 3 days of my wife being induced. He was a big healthy looking baby.

But by Sunday morning he still had not pooped. This was a problem that had to be diagnosed at the Children’s Medical Center. After a week of being separated and my wife being totally stressed out. We were finally told that he has Hirschsprung’s disease like I do. He did finally poop that Sunday afternoon and he seems to be normal and healthy now. They will likely do the surgery when he is a bit older. Hopefully it all goes well and he can live a normal life like I have.

It has been awhile since I posted. I was going through some of my old emails and found a link to some of our wedding photos that my wife posted online. For those who haven’t seen them, please enjoy.

Having a great time on our honeymoon. I decided to post a little update while Leah, my wife!, watches some TV to relax.

We just got back to Rome from Florence. It had a great view and lots of great sculpture and art. We found this great place to eat that sold kabob burritos. We ate there twice. We saw so much art some it seemed to blur past us. Seeing Michaelangelo’s David was amazing and seeing some of the reliqueries was great too. Such as the Saint Peters chains.

I also enjoyed all the great art here in Rome. Well, in the Vatican really. The Vatican museum had some awesome paintings. And seeing all the art which they put into the chapels and the tombs built under and throughout them is great.

But anyway, the wedding went perfectly. We had alot of fun and our families seemed to enjoy themselves as well. I’ll try to get a few good pictures on here soon after we get home to the states. Maybe then I’ll finally get some time to animate and start living my wonderful new life with my favorite person, my wife.

Here’s a fun little film from a little French studio.

Nazi Robot Attack

My Little Obsessive Compulsive Friend

le animateur by Nick Hilligoss

Otafuku Rex is a band kinda doing the Gorillaz thing with characters for members.

Here’s a couple community sites for stop motion animators:
StopMotionAnimation
StopMoShorts

I’ve been really hard at work creating this short film.  You may remember my many ideas from previous posts.  Well, I eventually settled on “Go Ahead” and have been working on fleshing it out since then.  After pitching my favorite ideas to my classmates and mentors I began the first pre-visualization step of creating storyboards to study different framing compositions and camera angles.  After getting these storyboards to a place I liked, I scanned them into my computer. Then I set away to creating an animatic to get that first look at timing for my short. 

Then, after the animatic was looking as best as it could, though still rough to save on time, I began the wonderful transition to 3D.  As the 3D layout progressed I began to build on the framing from my animatic by adjusting the camera and positioning the characters appropriately. This is the stage I am currently at.  I found a  nice tune from magnatune.com  I think it fits very well.