Animation on the Fly:

This year is the second year that we have held an animation jam at the ASIFA-Hollywood Comic Con booth (5434). By we, I mean ASIFA- Hollywood. Last year we had Eric Goldberg and Dave Burgess among other working on DreamWorks proprietary software package, Drawtools. This year we are using Flipbook kindly loaned to us by Kent Braun, founder of DigiCel, who will be in the booth for the whole convention.

Kent and I go back a long ways. I use to put interns into AXA over in Yorba Linda when Kent ran their animation software division.

In fact I gave the first public demo of Kent`s new animation package, FlipBook, back at Comic Con 2000. (Kent was called away to work on changes for a Don Bluth project and I had about a half-hour to learn the package before showing it) The joys of a user-friendly interface created by people who listen to animators was made very clear to me when I was easily able to carry off the demo at such short notice.

As for animators for this year`s jam, we already have Tom Sito signed up. Flipbook, one of my former student`s who animated last year has jumped on board, and I`m going to animate again. The rest of the schedule is wide open with a number of interested people who have not comitted to a time slot.

I like traditional 2-D animation a lot but I don`t get to do it much, a little bit while teaching. I love smear inbetweens. There is an energy and joy to the whole board animation form. But then there is a real joy to all the forms of animation. Each animation style has its own strengths.

The plan is to create a DVD after this year`s jam, working title ASIFA Jams, using the 3 ani jams that we have held over the year, the Comic Con 2006, the Stop Mo Expo and this upcoming Comic Con 2007 jam. This is your chance to be part of this project.

Here is a link to the Animation Jam page: http://asifa-hollywood.org/blog/con2007/table.html there are easy steps on the page showing how to pick a time slot and sign up to be part of this event.