Jason F Maurer

Five Guys Coffee Spoof commercial from Jason Maurer on Vimeo.

Put this together as a class assignment. Wanted to re learn how to match to live action again with new software tools. I’m pretty happy with the second shot, but the track on the first shot is definitely off.

Sound is waaaaay scratch. The actor is Jim Reed and the DP was Arnold Lee.

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Record Makers Promo from CreativeApplications.Net on Vimeo.

Really nice piece here. by Mrzyck & Moriceau for the Record Makers promo. Just goes to show you that you don’t have to be all sexy with the camera work and editing to do a really stunning piece of work. Nice job guys. I love the simplicity of it!

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Nuit Blannche is a touching short film piece. What it really does successfully is Visual FX – almost everything is done through CG and compositing. My VFX peeps out there should watch this one for sure. I really enjoy the music and the use of slow motion – very inspiring.

Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

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Line – Directed by
Laurianne PROUD’HON and Ludovic RAMISANDRAINA

Nice student piece. I especially like the little black figures throughout the piece. Their use of focus and the J.J. Abrams lens flare is well chosen. I do think the dusting of the orchid in the end is a bit over the top and feels forced. All in all really nice piece guys… can’t wait to see more from you!

Line- Movie from Ludo Rami on Vimeo.

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Really very stunning piece of experimental CG animation. His sense of timing and editing are very top notch. It makes me strangely happy to watch this piece – which is refreshing. No one ever said that all experimental animation has to be grungy and dark and moody…

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This film is absolutely stunning. Alex’s choice of camera composition and movement is sublime. Not to mention the simply stunning visuals – its hard to believe that this is NOT live action but CG. A really great film to study for lighting, composition and use of music. His choice of renderer… VRAY.  Nice work Alex. I hope you take this to festivals and win some accolades. I’ve also included his compositing breakdown for you tech heads out there…

Here’s the film -

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Here’s the breakdown -

Compositing Breakdown (T&S) from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

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With the upcoming winter quarter starting the much heated topic of grading has been stirring up in my mind. Grading is one of those things that with objective based things is pretty straight forward – but with art – well talk about a subjective area of study. Without going down the slippery slope of what defines art or makes art good I want to talk about my feelings on grading, how I approach it and finally a list of guidelines.

Grading in general I feel hampers the learning process and can in a lot of cases force students to develop strong senses of elitism or  entitlement- the well I got a 4.0 so I deserve that nice cushy job. Society often looks at and praises this sense of achievement rather than the process or the knowledge that is exhibited or learned from mistakes. All that seems to matter to the student is achieving that “A” and not what was been learned or gained in the experimenting process. So we have hordes of students whom did well on their SATs but couldn’t problem solve their way out of a paper bag. Our sense of grading, I believe, is helping to support a cultural system that is teaching our children to be drones and not independent thinkers.

I believe in order to define an “A” student we must look at how we define failure. Dictionary.com defines failure in part as “The condition or fact of not achieving the desired end or ends: the failure of an experiment.” This part of the definition I believe is crucial to grading art. The key word here is experiment – all art is an experiment. Sure there are formal processes and techniques and sure just like any craft there are known dos and don’ts to achieve the desired recipe of art but what is missing here is the passion for experimentation in that process. When one is so focused on the end result, the grade, you often loose sight of the true learning and growth.

I often use this analogy in reference to being an animator verses a film maker. It is the same between a line cook and a chef. The line cook knows how to cook a very specific set of recipes, and a good one does it good every time. He follows the recipes and learns them by heart, he cooks and fast. He is about getting consistent good orders out every time on time or his customers will not return. Where as the chef (our film maker) he writes the recipes of his heart. Sure he can cook and often does but he is after something different. He experiments, he is not afraid of trying bizarre things, going off recipe because his gut tells him too. He enjoys the process of cooking, the creation of elements, the mixing, the blending, the smells. He will offer up things that are good, sometimes mediocre, but depending on the quality of the chef sometimes- life changing.

The pressure that the customers place on the line cook prevent him from this process of experimenting and thus it prevents him from growing outside of the proscribed recipes. Grades are the students customers, and as we all know the customer is always right – right?

Wrong. When trying to grade something as subjective as art you can break it down into two very vast areas for review – Craft and Idea. By looking at what the intent of the artist is/was you can then measure his/her use of craft against it. How well does it in fact communicate to the viewer? How strong were the technical aspects of his/her craft? etc. But wait isn’t the viewer subjective? My reaction to film is vastly different to my fathers or brothers reaction. And what if you don’t know the intent of the artist?

Well luckily when training artists, specifically animators, by setting up assignments and giving them specific goals and outcomes (what they need to communicate and how they need to communicate it) you can then begin to measure their progress- but even still this sense of quantification is risking formula. We must be careful to not fall into the trap of objectifying the art into something so much that it then ceases to be art. You have to allow for the “wow” factor.  I have often heard my fellow professors say – man you know its an “A” when it makes you go wow. When you ask them how do you define “wow” their first reaction is point to existing imagery that instilled wow and say that. There is a natural sense of what works – the more engrossed, trained, aged the artist the more intrinsic this sense or feeling of what works or doesn’t work becomes. There is/was a reason for the mentor/apprentice system for artisans. Students lack this sense or have the inklings of it. Through repetition, experimentation, discussion and time it grows and strengthens.

By using rubrics and setting up specific goals to each assignment so that the student knows what he/she is supposed to be learning and experimenting with we help the student polish that inner sense. This allows for them to mature as artists and eventually launch into the stage of self evaluation where they begin to evaluate themselves as artists, and set up their goals for expression and success.

My mentor and good friend Edward Kinney shared with me about a year ago a list that he has been compiling and refining in his 20 years of teaching. I have added only one thing to it to make what I believe to be a very comprehensive top 10 list of what defines an “A” student.

Characteristics of an “A” Student

1. An “A” student never thinks of their grade as they work on projects. They are creating artwork.

2. An ”A” student never tells me how hard they worked on a project. They were unaware of how much time they spent on a project. For the “A” student the activity was not work…it was joy in the art making process.

3. An ”A” student never misses class…NEVER. Not because they are trying to please the teacher but because they enjoy the course content and the class dynamic. They would rather be in class than elsewhere.

4. An ”A” student is totally involved from the first class to the last. Their effort is even and steady and comes from a love for exploration, creating and learning.

5. An ”A” student never works to please the teacher but rather to explore and refine the expression of their artistic impulses.

6. An “A” student hands in work on time even when equipment fails.

7. An ”A” student knows of all the gods that affect our lives the art god is far more significant than the grade god.

8. An ”A” student is learning to welcome the Muses. Seeking an “A”, by comparison, is a trivial endeavor.

9. An “A” student is self-motivated and focused on problem solving.

10. An “A” student never whines, complains, or offers excuses.

Tags: A student, grading, teaching
Posted in Animation, Daily Post | 5 Comments »

Well animation fans – I liked it. Yep. Not only was it a Wes Anderson film but it was a stop-motion animated Wes Anderson film. Talk about a perfect merger of Anderson’s typical quirky, yet cathartic storytelling with the deliberately static, and jerky motion of stop motion. He could not have picked a better medium to do this film. It had all the things you would expect from a Wes Anderson film – the witty dialogue, off beat humor and complicated family dynamics that we all can relate too. I mean who doesn’t have a cousin that out shines them at one thing or another.

One of the things I most enjoyed with this film was Anderson’s choices regarding the camera and camera movement. There was A LOT of it. Particularly chase cameras. Several times the camera ended up behind the character as they moved through the scene – while in live action this is really a no brainer – pulling this off in stop motion is bloody hard and they made it look easy. They also played a lot with flattening out shots by taking a very platform gamesk style of shooting which made for nice sense of visual texture and contrast. They were very mindful of the quality of texture in this film, maybe not as much as coraline, but very very similar. They also did a surprising number of extreme close ups on faces and eyes, where the puppets were very still, but they appeared to deliberately by accident move small hairs here and there to keep it alive.

Over all I was extremely impressed by the production value, style choices, writing and quality of film making. It was definitely worth seeing in theater. While it might be too sophisticated of humor for some of the younger audience members, I do feel that even they will enjoy the dynamic theatrics and quirky character designs to make it worth taking them.

Way to go Mr. Anderson – and thank you for re-affirming to me why we make animated films.  Because unlike Mr. Zemeckis’s Christmas carol, the Fantastic Mr. Fox truly brings life to the screen in a believable and inspiring way.

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Here is the first major roto test for my next film The Ripening. The background is just placeholder and it is missing the 3D element. I animated it in 3D and then rotoscoped the 3D in Photoshop. It was taking me about 3 min a frame on my tiny tablet – hoping that the cintiq will speed this up a bit. Enjoy!

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So I hit a technical snag which I have been diligently avoiding for some time now, how was I to move all the leaves on my tree for my next short. Well I couldn’t put it off any longer and with some help from two of my co-workers Ken and Brian I got her figured out. It is a combination of a mel script and an expression.

The mel script is run to put custom attrs on each leaf to get information of the current rotation values and to attach a unique seed number to each leaf – most of the leaves are instances so I was unable to zero out their transforms.

Here is the script – feel free to use what you can – along with avery simple movie. Looks easy right? HA… for a mel novice this was quite a challenge, but hey with a little manual reading, some internet searching, and some good ole friend power she works!

Movie - 

Script and Expression  -

//Mel script to set up custom attribute and store rotations in vector

for($i=21; $i<=198;$i++)

{

select (“appleLeaf”+$i);

$lf = (“appleLeaf” +$i);

addAttr -ln “OrgRot”  -at double3  $lf;

addAttr -ln “OrgRotX”  -at double -p OrgRot  $lf;

addAttr -ln “OrgRotY”  -at double -p OrgRot  $lf;

addAttr -ln “OrgRotZ”  -at double -p OrgRot  $lf;

addAttr -ln “seed”  -at double  -min 0 -max 10 -dv 1 $lf;

float $rx = `getAttr ($lf + “.rotateX”)`;

float $ry = `getAttr ($lf + “.rotateY”)`;

float $rz = `getAttr ($lf + “.rotateZ”)`;

setAttr -type double3 ($lf+”.OrgRot”) $rx $ry $rz;

setAttr -e-keyable true ($lf+”.OrgRot”);

setAttr -e-keyable true ($lf+”.OrgRotX”);

setAttr -e-keyable true ($lf+”.OrgRotY”);

setAttr -e-keyable true ($lf+”.OrgRotZ”);

$rand = rand(0,10);

setAttr ($lf+”.seed”) $rand;

setAttr -e-keyable true ($lf+”.seed”);

}

//Expression for querying attr and rand noise

for($i=21; $i<=198;$i++)

{

select (“appleLeaf”+$i);

$lf = (“appleLeaf” +$i);

float $sd = `getAttr ($lf + “.OrgRotX”)` + `getAttr ($lf + “.OrgRotZ”)`/ 30;

float $rx = `getAttr ($lf + “.OrgRotX”)`;

float $ry = `getAttr ($lf + “.OrgRotY”)`;

float $rz = `getAttr ($lf + “.OrgRotZ”)`;

float $seed = `getAttr ($lf + “.seed”)`;

$x=noise(time +$seed)*4;

$y=noise(time+$seed)*4;

$z=noise(time+$seed)*4; 

rotate ($rx + $x)  ($ry+$y) ($rz+$z);

select -d;

}

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Hey I thought I’d link you to David’s short but excellent post on the film making process – some great thoughts on making mistakes.

But he also shoots us a link to this amazing music video by Tiny Inventions for They Might Be Giants. I’ve embedded it for your connivence. I really enjoy the textural qualities and the overall just general happiness of this piece. It has a really great old school feel while utilizing new school tech. Really nice job guys!!

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Here is a really stunning piece of work by artists in france called “Baidir”. They are currently seeking funding for a 26 episode tv run – each being 26 min. I hope they get the funding and we in the states get to see it. This piece really looks like it has some serious potential in the aesthetic realm – lets hope their story is as strong. Good luck guys!

BAIDIR from slimane aniss on Vimeo.

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One of my students shot me this link to this animation. Great way to explain what Google street view is doing! Really great production design and execution. Just a cute fun way to hide the fact that Google is stalking us all. : ) Enjoy!!!

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Well technophobes and geeks out there – this guy has got it going on. I was really impressed with this process and really how simple it seems. Gonna give it a try in Maya soon… check it!

Painting with Polygons from Outside Hollywood on Vimeo.

Posted in Animation, Daily Post | 1 Comment »

Here’s the commercial…

NEOsitrin 20″ from 23lunes on Vimeo.

Here’s the Making of…

NEOsitrin Making-Of from 23lunes on Vimeo.

I really like the making of piece. It is especially nice to see the breakdown of the production and how nicely the layout matches the CG. Notice that the level of quality in the drawings is top notch – even in the boards and the layout – so much so that they were able to use some of the painting to make their jobs easier by mapping them on planes.

Nice work.

Posted in Animation | 1 Comment »

This is a real solid piece of work by filmmaker and artist Gabe Askew. This is a really good reason to use CG. Check it…

Two Weeks – Grizzly Bear from Gabe Askew on Vimeo.

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Posted in Animation, Daily Post | 1 Comment »

Check this out peeps… this has some serious possibilities for timelapse and animation…

Posted in Animation, Daily Post, Photography | No Comments »

I saw this posted on Drawn.ca and thought I would share it with everyone as well. I particularly like the use of the camera in this piece. It really uses camera movement and framing to create an nice sense of mood and depth. The use of the “final gather” lighting style is strong here as well. The whole piece is all about color so using this style forces us to look at the colors and not get too lost in an overly textured or modeled background while still maintaining our attention on the performance of the characters driving the story.

Its got a lot of potential. Way to got Sean and Ben, great work. Hope we get to see more from you guys at the Irish School of Animation. 

Here’s Blip -

Blip from Sean Mullen on Vimeo.

Posted in Animation, Daily Post | 2 Comments »

Here is a really brilliant lecture by Randy Nelson on collaboration and what it means to them at Pixar. This kind of philosophy is an absolute must if you want to make it in new media.

Posted in Animation, Daily Post, Notes | 1 Comment »

Haven’t really posted in a bit. Mainly because I’ve been super slammed with my newest short film – The Ripening, which involves 3D, 2D, and stop motion. I hoping to have it wrapped up before summer hits so I can pursue some more experimental ideas.

Along that vien I have also been doing a good bit of research into the art of pixilation, time-lapse photography, light graffiti and something else called pixel-lapse for use in developing my next film.  

pixel-lapse is a technique I discovered through Steven Silberg’s site http://www.pixel-lapse.com/ that as he describes it – “”Pixel-lapse” combines the temporal nature of long exposure photography and the precise organization of the digital matrix. By creating an image one pixel at a time, each part of the image shows different captured moments. In the end, each image not only has dimension but also gains duration and velocity. He has a free ware app on his site for playing with the idea that uses my laptop’s imbedded camera here’s an image of me at my desk taken over 45 minutes of time.

I’ve been meaning to write Steven and see about attaining a way to attach this to an external camera for use in time-lapse work I think it could provide some interesting artistic avenues for exploration in time based work. 

Along those lines I’ve discovered a time-lapse app for my iPhone and did a test the other day while enjoying my coffee. Check it…

chippewa

While these are but early discoveries, I’m extremely excited about their potential and plan on further developments using my DSLR in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for some light graffiti and long exposure work.

J

Posted in Animation, Photography | 1 Comment »

Well folks here is the first composite image for my next short – it is rough, but the look is there. The white figures are there simply for scale purposes – eventually they will be removed and the characterized figure of myself will be walking into this shot.

I’m pretty pleased with the overall look and welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

J

Posted in Animation, Daily Post | 4 Comments »

Well so the daily drawings have come to a slow miserable end. After much hard work, and thought I have moved past them onto a new short film, which I must say was inspired by them. I’m keeping it pretty quiet for now still in the boarding and design stages-but I do have some cool test imagery to show… 

Check out this apple texture – 100% procedural nodes in Maya, rendered in Mental ray.

the apple

You see inside the apple because we are gonna do a pull back from the core and as we pull back the layers fill in – like we are really moving through it. I’m still wrestling with the edge where the cut happens, attempting to give it thickness, without displacement. Also not happy with the core shader just yet -needs a bit more wetness to it, but the spec is tricky since it is a dead flat plane.

More to come… stay tuned!!

J

Posted in Animation, Daily Post, Notes | 1 Comment »

Well Delgo fans – there is a new trailer online at…

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/delgo/

It is really well put together, makes me want to see the film all over again. : )  There is one major typo on the page that we are aware of and hoping that Apple fixes immediately  - my name is not listed along side Marcs as Director.

It is not a conspiracy. No-one deliberately dropped off my name – we are having constant problems with companies dropping off the second name as director. Marc gets lucky because we did the credits alphabetically – Adler comes before Maurer…

So the world is clear Delgo was Co-Directed by Marc Adler and Jason Maurer and Animation Direction was done by Warren Grubb. Also we are all listed with proper credits on www.imdb.com.

If anyone out there whom reads this has a direct contact or knows someone who has a direct contact at Apple for the individual who makes the changes to the trailers sites -please shoot me their contact info. I’ve emailed trailers@mac.com and I know that Marc has contacted whom he knows there – but we want this changed immediately.

Thanks again for all your support and help! Take a look and shoot me your thoughts!

J

*!!!! UPDATED!!!! Thank you Apple for your amazingly quick response to our inquiry!! I emailed them and less than 2 hours later, the site is changed! Way to go customer service! Love me some Apple!

Posted in Animation, Delgo, Notes | 4 Comments »

So here are some quick black and white lighting tests I’ve been playing with for a class I’m taking. Was going for the Lincoln Memorial. Using like 4 spots and Maya software rendering (which were limitations of the assignment). I’m happy with the moodiness and the contrast of them. I think that I could use some more bounce here and there – but overall I’m happy with the output especially considering each one took probably 1/2 hour to an hour to light. : )

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