Reindeer, sans antlers

My mother wanted to do cut out hand turkeys, but missed thanksgiving, so my Pa suggested the cut out hands become reindeer antlers. I drew this up for her to attach the hands too.

Emmany Makonga sketchbook page

Doing a sketchbook check in my animation class a few weeks back, I was flattered to see myself as gestures in a student's sketchbook. He captured my tiny head, poky hair, humpback, the way I twist my arm when I sit, how I write and gesture at the whiteboard. Being the subject of the drawings and knowing how I "feel." I put these up as example of good gesture drawing because they go beyond getting the likeness to capturing that "feeling." Emmany Makonga is already an accomplished artist. Check out his finished works at his website.

CTN Animation Expo

I was privileged to attend the CTN animation expo this last November. I really enjoyed the panels and speakers. All the presentation were doubled up so if you chose one you couldn't be at the other. It wasn't Sophie's Choice but it was hard to choose between them sometimes. I just finished typing up my notes, If you went to one of the ones I couldn't attend, please share your notes and I'll add them. There was lots of good education talk as well. I would stare over peoples shoulders as the got portfolio reviews. I hope I get to go again.

Bigg Mixx

I used to love this cereal till it disappeared. I think I liked the mascot and the animation more than the cereal. I still have the poster I mailed away for as one of the promotions. I wish I could have gotten the plush toy.

Days of 47 Youth Parade Float

It's been a busy summer, and one of the biggest things was being chairman of the committee to build a float for the Days of 47 Youth Parade on behalf of the Midvale Utah Stake. We've haven't been able to park in our garage since the beginning of June. And i thinks there's more glitter in my yard then there is on the float. I really enjoyed being able to make something tangible. All my favorite parts of the float you can't see because it's tall the engineering underneath that holds everything together. We had a great committee and they offered tons of help. Lots of donated time and materials. I'm very grateful for all the help, Here are some of the folks at work, this is only some of the people who helped. If anyone has pictures of the primary activities where the kids helped paint please send them to me.

At the end of April, we had a good first meeting and a great brain storm session to generate our idea, and there were a ton of ideas. We settled on a garden since it brought together a lot of them. I made a bunch of quick sketches, but in the end I designed the float to scale in Maya. It was a super help, everyone could see what we were building, and fly around it in 3d. We were able to take all the measurements off the it, and even save off parts for to be cut on a CNC machine used for foam, which was amazing (thanks Dave and Dennis). I'm surprised how much it resembles the finished product.

Being a garden we were able to build each part individually then assemble all together near the end. Which was helpful since we really didn't have a place to store it till near the end. Here's a progression of the peas from sketch to finish.

Here are a few photos of the work in progress from beginning to end.

The kids had fun

We were able to get straw hats and bandannas for all the kids. The primary did a great job of getting the kids involved and out to the parade. Here's the group that showed up to walk.

The icing on the cake was the great tractor that pulled the float in the parade.

We are going to all march again in the Midvale Harvest Days Parade on August 8th, if you'd like to see it in person.

8 lbs 22inches

J. Dan Erekson

born May 1st, 10:04am

Teaching

Classes just wrapped again. I really enjoyed the finals and seeing the compilations of all their work from the semester. Since we are a community college they all leave just as they are getting interesting and go on to university or jobs. Here's an in class demo I did working sporadically during a week.

IMDB

I know a lot of my BYU friend have already reached this career milesstone, but looks like I have finally been recognized by IMDB.

Pumpkin Carving 2008

Here is this years pumpkin, I try not to get political on the blog here so I will leave it to the viewer to decide if this is support for a McCain/Palin presidency or if I'm saying she is a pumpkin head.

Batman

George Lucas at Disneyland 1990

My brothers have been bugging me for a copy of this picture. So I finally scanned it. In 1990 my family took a trip to Disneyland. Star Tours had opened 3 years earlier and we were excited to try the new ride. With 7 more years till there was a "Special Edition" and, 5 more years till there would be any new action figures, there was a drought of Star Wars items for hungry fans. This allowed George Lucas to enjoy a bit of anonymity and walk openly around Tomorrowland with out people swarming him. His VIP tour guide was enough to keep crowds back I guess. Not wanting to ruin his vacation I was satisfied to snap this photo from a distance.
Did you see him? Here's a closer look.

Good Ol' Flour Sack

Here's another one from last semester. Probably just an hour on this one. I can animate so much faster like this. I think probably spend too much time scrubbing the timeline, or checking my email when I use the computer.

Teaching Animation

Another reason I've been slow to post is I was teaching Animation II at the community college last semester and I'm teaching Animation I & III right now. Along with my full time job it takes up most of my free time. It's been really fun to get the students excited and see them grasp concepts. I sometimes do the assignments along with them if there's a moment in class where everyone is working. So this was done in a weeks worth of in-class time in spurts with lots of interruptions.

Thanks to Animation Backgrounds for supplying my class with good backgrounds to work from.

9lbs14oz 22inches

One reason posts are few and far between. We welcomed a son to our family on Dec 12.

"I will name him George, and I will hug him and squeeze him and love him and kiss him..."

Pumpkin Carving 2007

Here is this years pumpkin.

I wasn't going to do one this year until I saw this image on Jeff Pidgeon's blog. Where he shares his well photographed toy collection.

Last year's pumpkin had a Pixar subject also.

More Sketchbook Faces

Here is a sampling of fellow commuters I've drawn since the last post. We bought a house a while back and with my day equally divided between fixing up the house, work, and sleep, it seems my commute is the only time to draw. If you ride the train maybe you can spot yourself in there.

Making TRAX

It's been a long time. Thanks to all you who keep visiting. Since I posted last, I have a new job, and moved across the country. I'm back in Salt Lake. One of the benefits is I get to commute by train. If you ever need reference of people with white ear buds , or a person looking down as they read, you'd be hard pressed to find a place better then TRAX. Besides that, it is a nice diversified mix of people.

The Bumble

This huge sculpture was out in front of a pet groomers here in town during the holidays. I think they did a nice job.

Merry Christmas

ToonClub

Absolute Electric

Frederator

I recently found that this blog has been linked as a “Site of Interest” on the Frederator Cartoon Blog. Welcome to anyone visiting from there. Some of the best projects that I worked on with my previous employer were contracts from Frederator, and since one of the purposes of this blog is shameless self promotion I’ll take you on an illustrated tour of the some work I have done for them.

Random Cartoons Opening.

We were presented with the logo for this series which will be a collection of various animated shorts which will show on Nickelodeon some time in 2007. The Frederator Cartoon Blog is a collection of production blogs for creators of the shorts that will appear on this program. You can see the animation for this sequence on its production blog. With this project I conceived and storyboarded the opening based on the given logo.I designed a bunch of contraptions for them to choose from. The designs were greatly inspired by the kinetic sculptures of Andrew SmithThese are the drawings for the final contraption with some of the reference pasted in.I personally prefer the original color scheme before it was made more “bright and playfull.”

FredEx-FartRobot

I talked about this before. You may have seen when we were front paged on CG Talk. This was a 10 second animation for part of a compilation film celebrating the anniversary of Channel Frederator. Different animators were asked to conceive how a robot would do a particular thing. Our topic was a fart. For those that choose to view it I'll give you a warning that some of the topics given to varying animators took on a very ADULT tone. For this project I conceived the idea of old pot bellied stove robot, and did the design. I also did the final audio and helped with the final composite.Six Monsters

This one is currently in production. You can see its current status at its production blog. We were given 1 minute of the 7 minute short which will play like a Variety/Sketch Comedy Show. I wrote the story for our minute with input from the rest of studio, and rewrites by Fred Seibert & Alan Goodman, I then storyboarded our segment.The original character designs were by Alex Kirwan, and each of the segments will have the style of the animator doing that 1 minute gag. I wasn’t given a lot of leeway in my direction to change the designs around; my instructions were to just make Alex’s drawings translate to 3D.I designed the set with old sketch comedies in mind. I looked at Hee Haw, and SNL, and Sonny and Cher, and tried to keep simplicity in the set, but make it complex enough to go with the detail of rendered fur on the main character. The sets of the film Pleasantville seemed to meet those requirements, being based on old TV sets themselves. They were big influences. I tried to make areas in the set to stage the characters so hopefully, in the final, the light character will be against dark and the dark character against light. I was able to set all the models up in the set with cameras before I left, so it appears to be working. Sadly I didn't get to animate my shots. As the production goes forward without me I hope it will come close to what I’ve imagined in my mind for the last few months while creating it