Effects

I have been doing a lot of CGI effects animation as of late. I started my career in effects but the slasher flick / blood pump / foam latex kind of effects.



I therefore tend to be more physical in my CGI effects. Never use a Partial System when a Object can do the job. The sky is a Sphere with the Normals flipped, a bitmap attached and a slow rotation animated on the sphere. The Lightening Bolds (seen for only 1/30th of a second twice with an Omni Light Washout in between) are Splines with a Video Post Len Effect Glow.

Here is the animation file if you want to view it:



Nothing wrong with Partial Systems and I use them when needed. The Grass is Hair and Fur with a animated Wind Bound. The Rain is Spray with Motion Blur and Wind. The main Cloud is a Fire Effect.

The thing I love about Effect, CGI and Real World, is that they are a puzzle. I know what I want them to look like but getting there is the trick or lots of tricks. Higher Level problem solving for fun and profit.

Panda Screening Announced:

Just got my invite to Kung Fu Panda screening on Tuesday, June 3rd at the AMC City Walk Imax followed by a Q&A with directors John Stevenson and Mark Osborne. ASIFA-Hollywood members look to your mailbox.

Good Will Losing:

Wall Street Journal 5-20-08

It seems that Disney can`t get a break between their rabid fans and the Southern Baptists. Back when I was teaching animation to high school and adult ed students I taught a class in PowerPoint that dealt heavy on the animation features of this presentation software.

One of my students was this cool lady whose ex had been a Disney Park executive in the 60s and 70s. Knowing my fascination with all things animation she told me some outrageous stories about the early days of the park. She also told me why Disney lost their bulletproof charm with the press.

It use to be that the press got free tickets to Disneyland and Disney got lots of puff pieces in the papers. Quite a while after Walt died someone decided that giving out free stuff was bad for business in the short run bottom line kind of bean counter way. I wonder just how much that savings has cost them over the years?

Good will is priceless. Walt knew that. Disney has been fair game in the press ever since. Now Disney is doing the same thing with their free Virtual Disneyland web site. They opened it up during their 50th Anniversary Celebration. They have over a million registered users, most of them kids and all of them fans. And now they are closing down the site because it does not directly generate revenue.

Hey, Disney bean counters, good will is priceless.

AEF Meeting

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Educators` Forum met last night at the Art Institute of Orange County. Present were teachers from Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Fullerton, Art Institute of Orange County and Laguna College of Art & Design.





The Festival deadline for submitting titles has been pushed back to June 27th. Because many Colleges and Universities are out of session, film titles can be submitted directly to me by sending an email to festival (at) agni-animation (dot) com. But filmmakers will still need a school representative to submit the judging material before the August 29th deadline.

New Animation Festival Sponsor:

The Animation Educators` Forum wishes to welcome CVIS Autodesk Academic Solutions http://www.cvis.com/edu/ as a sponsor for the ASIFA-Hollywood Student Animation Festival. I have dealt with CVIS in the past and know them a good company. They cover most of the Southland with software sales and training for educational institutions. I have been to they Train the Trainer events and have been very, very happy with their service.

I had talked to them a few months back about becoming a sponsor of the festival and yesterday they signed on to the tune of about $4,000 worth of software prizes for our winners ($3,690).

Best Visual Storytelling
+ Choice of Maya or 3D Studio Max Educational ($500 Value)
Best Character
+ Choice of Maya or 3D Studio Max Educational ($500 Value)
Best Technical Achievement
+ Choice of Maya or 3D Studio Max Educational ($500 Value)
Judges’ Choice
+ Choice of Maya or 3D Studio Max Educational ($500 Value)
+ Choice of Motion Builder ($295 Value) or Combustion ($100 Value)
The Emile Cohl Award for the Best Animated Short
+ Maya, 3D Studio Max, Motion Builder & Combustion Educational ($1395 value)

This brings the total prizes for the festival up to $7305. A big thanks to Ralph Jones and crew for their generosity. And welcome aboard CVIS.

This and That

I stopped in on LCAD (Laguna College of Art & Design) Industry Open House yesterday. Lots of very good work by a lot of very talented young artists.








One of the Industry Pros from Obsidian Games was Jim Rivers, head of recruitment. Jim was a student of mine about 10 or 12 years ago. I love to see former students doing well. Makes me feel good.

Another one for the feedback department, one of my current students was all excited because I put together a studio tour for her with maybe a possibility of an internship. It was one phone call on my part but she was overjoyed. That too makes me feel good. She is a good kid and an excellent artist with a good work ethic. That is the real joys of teaching a smaller class, the ability to get to know the strengths of each student so I can refer them to my friends. I am not a big fan of giant classes even if I do have to teach them sometimes.

For other Animation Educators out there, the next ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Educators` Forum meeting is this Friday night at 8 PM at:

The Art Institute of Orange County
building C, room 208
3601 West Sunflower Avenue
Santa Ana, CA 92704

(The school is located in a business park made up of 3 separate buildings. The meeting location is actually located at 3511 West Sunflower Avenue but you can ask at the receptionist at 3601 if you need directions)

Tale of Two Advisory Committees:

It is that session again, the time of year when school programs feed industry pros and ask for input on their curriculum. I have been a member of two such advisory boards in the last week or so. One was for a Community College that shall remain nameless and the other was for the new LCAD (Laguna College of Art & Design) Videogame Art program. (The reason for keeping the name of one of these programs secret is because of the poor light in which they showed themselves – Sorry but those are the facts)

Programs have to have Advisory Meetings. It is the way that education game is set up. Just like you can always tell a good restaurant by the salad they serve you can tell an academic program by the Advisory Meeting they hold.

Too many institutions go through the form because they have to but the meeting has little or no impact on the program or plans of the group. The meeting is orchestrated with a firm hand of the rains and an eye to the hidden agenda.

The Community College Advisory Meeting was of this type with thinly veiled territorial snipping going on between the computer department and the art department and the cherry picking of industry suggestions that support their current plans the rule of the day. They will have the same meeting every year and then get on with their life. The food was okay.

LCAD, new program, the head of the department is hungry to get it right. The caliber of industry professionals is first rate with people high up in the gaming industry. Art Directors, Recruiters, people who hire the artist that this program wants to turn out.

The note taking is meticulous, opinions are solicited in all areas not just areas needed to support current plans. Changes are made to the curriculum right there in the Advisory Meeting because the ideas are valid and make sense and will change the program for the better.

One of these ideas that was put forth and adopted was the gating concept. There is a portfolio review to get into the program. But that is it. Once you are in you are in. If you pass all of your classes then you graduate. No matter how good your artwork.

The Gating concept is for an end of second year review. You have to pass the review to continue in the program. If you don`t pass the Gate you go on probation with a program designed to deal with the weak areas of the portfolio. Some students may be told to rethink their career plan because they just don`t have the chops.

It is a very bold move for any school. It is a long-term strategy for program excellence that most college do not dare to adopt. Schools run on tuition, money in the bank to pay the bills and salaries. Lots of schools live on people with big dreams who do not have the talent to back them up.

To have industry and instruction judge fitness of the student`s work at the half way mark before the school has gotten 4 year`s tuition out of each and every student can be harmful to the cash flow in the short run.

In the long run the Gate Review creates a higher standard for the program and will increase the value of the degree over time thus increasing the quality and quantity of students seeking enrollment. The Gate Review also improves the work of the student because they know they have to do their best to get past the review.

The first Gate Review meeting for the LCAD Game Art program was scheduled to be held at next year`s Advisory Board Meeting. More than just the food was good that this Advisory Meeting. I am impressed, I am proud to be part of this board and this program. These students are going to be so employable. This program is going to be so hot. This degree is going to mean something. I can tell just by the salad what this restaurant serves.

This and That

I am off to a videogame advisory meeting over at Laguna later today. Also getting the database together on the ASIFA Student Film Festival. Will post stuff on it later.



I just re-read the first Doc Savage book, Man of Bronze. It has been years since I first read the starting episode of this classic pulp. As always, nobody can paint a ripped shirt like James Bama. Bama is the reason Doc Savage had a 60s revival. His paintings are why I first bought the books. The mindless Pulp adventure is why I keep buying the reprints.

I first read this book in my high school years long before I had spent 2 years teaching myself to read the hieroglyphs of the Maya. Once I could read what was behind the strange glyphs I give up the whole subject because basically I could not stand the content of their literature.

The Egyptians drank a lot of beer and built pyramids. The Maya did a whole lot of hallucinogens and built pyramids. The Egyptians buried their royal dead in their pyramids and the Maya ripped the living skin off of their victims at the top of their blood coated pyramids. Maybe Nancy Reagan was right about drugs?

The Maya in this 1933 first issue of Doc Savage saintly. So this book has some giant cultural and history holes about the size of Chichen Itza. Add to this a benevolent Latin American President being threatened by greedy revolutionaries out to use the treasure of the Maya to finance the overthrow of the nation of Hidalgo and you have gone as far away from reality as you can get. Overlooking all of star eyes stupidity of the 30s newsstand this is still a fun but mindless read.

Puppetoon Animation great turned live action director, George Pal, directed this book as his last project. Sadly it started out strong by following the the action of the book and then after the Maya assassin kills himself the plot went into Batman TV camp and was a great disappointment. It is a shame that Pal`s last film was such a disaster. But gods, James Bama can sure paint a ripped shirt.

Thoughts on Teaching

Yesterday was the last day of my semester at Laguna College of Art & Design. History of Animation is history. I started the semester with 26 students. That is a very large class for LCAD. (LCAD has a total student body of about 300 so we are talking about 12% of the whole student body in my classroom)

I finished the class with 24 students and all but one passed the class. I lost 2 students. One just stopped coming to all of his classes so he failed, and one dropped the class in the second week.

8 = A
9 = B
6 = C
2 = F



Only 1 of these F students took the final but just did not pass the class. That was because he did not hand in work or handed it in late and he did very poorly on a number of the tests. I tried with him. I really did. But there is only so much you can do. I set up the requirements of the class and then it is up to the student to meet those requirements. A good curriculum, a fair curriculum, has very little wiggle room in the grading.

When I was teaching Animation to high school students I had a girl come up to me after the semester. Mr. Loc, you gave me a D! She was all pissed off. Like I was out to get her. Like I gave you that grade and she had nothing to do with the grade she earned. The fact was she was right in a way. I did give her that grade. She had earned an F but it was early in my teaching career and she was close enough to a D- that I fudged it in an upward direction.

I have learned over the years. My curriculum for most of my classes is so tight now that what I think about a student has nothing to do with the final grade. The fudge factor just isn`t there anymore. And that is the way it should be.

Let`s look at the students who passed my class. In the classic bell curve sense I am a complete failure because too many of my students passed the class. That is okay, I hate grading to a curve. In the classic curve 20% of any class is going to fail no matter what they do because the deck is stacked that way. The bottom 20% are written off, flunked, thrown away no matter how good they are. In a bell curve you can have as little as 15 points between an A and an F and the bottom 20% is still trashed. That is not teaching, that is evaluation/elimination.

I have had teachers who brag that nobody gets an A in my class. This is not a teacher, somebody whose goal is to teacher, to impart knowledge. This is somebody feeding their ego at the expense of the students in their care.

Eight A`s, nine B`s and six C`s. Very flat curve. Kind of heavy on the A`s and B`s. Well, it should be. These are students who have made the cut to get into the school. That means that they are all top performers to start with. Top performers, perform at the top. Their grades should reflect that fact.

The strange thing is that there were no D students in this class. When I teach this same class over at Cal State Fullerton as a lecture only class to 80 plus students the curve falls into a more classic bell curve pattern with the bell skewed toward a B. With large number and no chance for 1 on 1 teaching that makes sense.

My job is not to fail students. They can do that on their own if they really want to. My job is not to make students learn a lot of useless stuff that they are going to forget as soon as the test is over. What is the use of that? What value does that have in the long run?

My job is to get the information to the student in a way that they will have it for a lifetime. And since a lot of my students keep in touch with me over the years and they still show knowledge of my subject, maybe I am going about it kind of the right way? Hope so.

Movie Review

I watched 2 movies Sunday. The best of the group by far was the little appreciated Spiderwich Chronicales. Okay, it did $70 Million box office and that is not shabby but it kicks the butts of all the Harry Potter movies except the first and still does not get the respect.

The story was dead on, the effects breathtaking without being flashy, the look of the picture was lush (thanks in part to my friend Jim Aupperle doing lighting at Tippet), the camera work was refreshingly slasher flick horror with low shaky cam POV shots through the woods and low angle bursting floorboards during the Goblin attack. But the gore factor never even approaching Jason. All and all an enjoyable film. Nick Nolte was killer at the villain Goblin.



The other movie I watched was the Assassination of Jesse James. As my daughter so aptly stated the length of Lord of the Rings but nothing happened. I was praying for Bob Ford to pull the trigger thinking that would be the end and then they went on another 25 minutes. By the end I was almost hoping somebody would shoot me.

Two Birds

Here is a question from the email bag about the ASIFA-Hollywood Student Animaition Festival http://www.asifa-hollywood.org/aef/fest.html . I thought the answer might be of use to others.

Hi Larry,

my name is Guen G_ _, I am a senior at NYU wishing to submit my film to the ASIFA Hollywood festival. (I am moving to L.A. as soon as I graduate) I am a bit confused about the submission process - our films must be submitted to our school on may 8th, and the selections not mailed to ASIFA Hollywood until august 29th?

Thank you for your help,
Guen

Guen,

Yes, the idea is that the school needs to submit the film. Ask John Canemaker, he is a member of ASIFA and should be glad to do so. All he has to do is drop an email to me at this address. We are aimed at student programs. Most students get their film kind of finished in time to submit to the school program. We are giving students the Summer to clean them up and complete post production. The way it is most student films never really get finished. We want to give students a reason to complete their films the way they envisioned them.


Any questions, give me a call ***-***-****
and say hi to John for me

Larry Loc

When Does Incompetence Become Fraud?

{rant}A bit pissed off today so you don`t need to read this. I just need to write it. Way back in December I changed webhosts because on years of crappy service and incompetence above and beyond the call of stupidity http://www.agni-animation.com/blog/2007/12/moving.html http://www.agni-animation.com/blog/2007/12/moving-catch-up.html.

AIT kept screwing up my web email so it only worked half the time and when I finally went through phone hell and got a hold of the service tech to get it fixed they kind of fixed it but then 5 days after the service ticket was closed they decides to delete all my stored emails. Then they had the gall to offer to charge me $100 for them to try to fix their mistake and get my emails back.

I called, I cursed, I left phone messages that were never returned and finally I sent a certified letter canceling. Come to find out they are still taking money out of my credit card. Two more days of phone hell . . . no we can not help you, you need to talk to . . . ending with Super Bitch, don`t raise you voice to me, I will hang up on you. Sir I can not cancel your account you need to talk to Q.A. and they are not answering their phone. Would you like to leave a message?

Can I sue? This is Interstate Credit Card Fraud, right? How can they refuse to cancel a contract with a certified letter? If there is only one way they will let you cancel service don`t they have to post that? And if the only people who can cancel service never answer their phones. Why aren`t these people in jail? Waiting for my Credit Card Company to take action.{/rant}