Help Japan, Animated Buzz, and some story panels

I know it's a bit late in coming, but I'd like to take the opportunity here on my blog to urge anyone that hasn't yet done so to consider making a donation to help Japan. What is now known as the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami which occurred on March 11, 2011 has claimed almost 14,000 lives as well as causing thousands to be injured. The destruction has left over 300,000 people as refugees without homes, and over 14,000 are still reported missing. All of this based just on the reports so far.

There's a lot I could write about Japan, it's people, and it's culture that have affected my life in so many important and special ways. I've been fortunate to visit there several times since my early twenties and I've written a small bit about that here as well as on my other blog here. Anything I could write about Japan now however, would all be in effect to say that, while seeing any country dealing with this level of destruction would be terrible, it's been especially hard for me to witness this crisis due to my personal attachments and experiences with the wonderful country and people of Japan. Luckily the people I know who live there have remained safe so far.

The links I've posted below have a great list of options on how to help Japan. The bottom most link specifically lists charities and what their commitments are in regarding the use of all their designated funds for relief efforts in Japan.

http://www.refinery29.com/5-ways-to-help-japan-disaster-victims

http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1221

Art Director Dice Tsutsumi from Pixar Animation Studios has also initiated a charity movement called Artists Help Japan. He has created a nice, comprehensive blog where you can find a link to directly donate to the Artists Help Japan group's trusted organizations as well as find out about some art based charity events to help Japan as well. The site is here:

http://artistshelpjapan.blogspot.com/

In other news a very talented animator, fellow CalArts classmate, and friend of mine, Mario Furmanczyk has recently transformed his Animatedbuzz.com site into a new, animation based social network. Click on the graphic here to visit the site:


Mario has done a really spectacular job with the updated version of his site. Animatedbuzz still has the same great forum that many have used to seek advice for getting into the CalArts Character Animation Program, along with some exciting new added features as well. There are Portfolio and Film sections on the network for members to exhibit their artwork and animation, as well as various Art School and Animation Studio networking groups, and a brand new Mentor service too. For a small fee, interested members of the site can receive a direct, in-depth critique on their work by a mentor of their choice. Many of the mentors on Animatedbuzz have either previously worked or are currently working at many of the major feature animation studios in the United States including Walt Disney Feature Animation, Pixar, and DreamWorks.

Which now brings me to the final part of my posting. I don't plan on being a mentor on Animatedbuzz anytime soon, but I wanted to start putting together some examples of some things I've done to possibly post in the portfolio section there. I've assembled a few pages of storyboards I've done from "How to Train Your Dragon" and "Shrek Forever After". These are just a few samples of what I thought were some of the better story panels I drew. These are not in continuity, although there are some A and B poses from the same shot set ups shown. None of the sequences presented here for "How to Train Your Dragon" are in the final film, but they are from a very early screening of Chris and Dean's version of it . If you've seen "Shrek Forever After" you might recognize some of the things I boarded that actually did make it into the final film. Some of the boards towards the end on the last page however are drawings from moments that aren't in the final version of that film either, but I thought they'd be fun to show.

As for my work on "Ratatouille" and "Up", it will take me a bit of time to put those together because I can only scan or take screen captures of the boards from the media that has been publicly released by Pixar.

I hope you'll find these interesting to see. Some of these boards are pretty rough, and some are more refined. The more refined boards were tied down for the purpose of public audience test screenings, so that the test audience could read the boards better as well as to soften the impact of things as they switched from the completed CG imagery back into the story reels .