My Last Day at MPC

I've had such a blast working at Media Partners. They're like a second family today, so while today won't be goodbye, it will be kinda like moving out of home and going out on my own, while visiting now and then to do laundry. Except I'll do design instead of laundry which is infinately more fun.

On the other hand, maybe I'll stay caught up on laundry now that I'll be working from home.

I will miss the day to day banter with my coworkers though. I'll miss having spontaneous lunches together, I'll miss going to movies during the day, I'll miss saying Hi to everyone as they go by my workspace. I won't miss always making the new pot of coffee. I will miss Jim's smiling face each morning, I'll miss hearing Bob's contagious laugh echo down the halls. I'll miss Maureen and her song bombs and Elvis mornings. I already miss Nathan and our lunchtime rounds of Wii Golf or baseball - I still don't think I ever beat him.

I'll miss Susan and Paul and Ghazal and Sion and Nat and Phil and Amy and Gail and Sharon and Michael and Kristie and Kevin and Donna and Sue and Laurie... but it's all good, because I have my first customer already. I'll still do work WITH Media Partners, just not FOR Media Partners - so I'll be in now and then, and now that Google has video chat, I could even see them from home!

It's sad but I'm happy and it's exciting but it's scary but I have faith that God will be in this and will lead me day by day. I need to remember that Media Partners or freelance clients or Jennifer's job are not my provider. God is. Those jobs are just the pipes he uses to send his blessings down... and they get here one way or another, regardless of where the paycheck comes from. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

So thanks MPC for teaching me video and animation and allowing me to design DVD menus and illustrate a book and to concept and design full systems of DVD packaging, labels, booklets, etc. I've grown in my career so much since coming to work with you, but I've grown even more as a person. Thanks again, and I'll see ya on the other side!

The END of the ROAD...

Enough Boyz II Men... looks like this may be one of my lasts posts on this here blog. Today the guys let me know that I'll be laid off after this weekend, but ya know what? I know God's gonna take care of everything. I'll still work WITH Media Partners, just not FOR Media Partners.

And the doors are opening for other freelance opportunities as well. It's a scary time, but it's also a time to really trust the one who knows what's gonna happen long before it does happen. Like Jennifer said yesterday, "To everything there's a season".

I pray that this will be a good move for my career, a good thing for my relationships with God (to trust), to my wife (to grow closer together), and my kids (i wont be gone so early and won't be coming home so late).

It may just be a TOTAL blessing in disguise. If I can stay motivated and keep working and not get distracted, I could be more successful as a freelancer than I have been as an employee, and that has been one of my biggest dreams since leaving my first design job back in 1999.

I wish Bob and Jim all the best with this company, and look forward to working together in a different capacity (and in my PJs!) starting next week. =)

Intro Sequence v2

Here's my lastest version of my 8 second intro for this new training video.



I'm going to add a few small dust clouds getting kicked up when the first 3 brains run by... otherwise, Jim loves it! Woo-hoo!

It's no "Catch Me If You Can" intro, but that's my dream... =) Your thoughts?

My boss told to look at a few animated intros to get my brain going:







And the best ending credits ever:

very very preliminary

a sample video of the intro sequence...

Pirate Scene...

For this little bit, Sweeney is telling his story, floating in the middle of the sea. The 2 pirate ships come in from each side and cross pointy bow things. Then each pirate swings his arm down, one with sword, one with hook. Awesome!

As you can tell, since my last post, I've opted for a more "treasure map" looking Sepia tone look for this sequence. I think it's totally gonna work great.

Oh, the waves should animate a bit too.

Caribbean Pirate!

YAAAAARRR!
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Ahoy there, Fancy-Pants!!

Savvy geeks will regonize that as a reference to the awesome 90's computer game from LucasArts, The Curse of Monkey Island... which just so happens to be a major inspiration for this segment of our video I'm drawing now, "an accurate depiction of Indian Ocean vs. Caribbean Piracy". I'm even listening to MP3s from the game as I work, to set the mood!

i draw pictures all day!

Doing all these drawings for this video is really teaching me a lesson in patience. The show is about 50% hand drawn illustrations and animation... My process goes like this:

1. I sketch out the drawing in pencil, usually on the back of a print-out to save paper.
2. I'll go over the sketch on a piece of tracing paper with these nice office pens... Staples OptiFlow. They work great but they take a while to dry on the tracing paper. (this is whats teaching me patience)
3. I'll scan the drawing into Photoshop as a 300dpi grayscale image - then "select all" (cmd-A) and float that to a new layer (cmd-shift-j). Using the magic wand, I'll select the white of the new layer and then delete the selection. Finally, I'll set the layer mode to Multiply, which hides white edges.  Now I duplicate that lineart layer to darken the lines, then merge the 2 lineart layers (select both layers, cmd-E)
   

For colored illustrations, I'll create a new layer underneath the lineart layer, change the color mode to RGB (don't merge layers), and then use that new layer to apply color to.

Once the drawing is done, since it's big (300 dpi) then I'll copy the image into a widescreen screenshot of the video screen which I use as a template. The background layer is set to the bg color of the video, it has "action safe" and "title safe" guidelines on it, and it's the correct proportions (1280 x 720).

That image makes it easy to either give it to my director who puts everything together in Final Cut Pro, or I can load that PSD into After Effects if I'm animating the sequence myself.

It's a lot of work for a quick little show, but as they say, patience is a virtue!

I'm Sailing AAA-WAAAAYYY...

My town is about to flood...

I had to leave early today, because the two rivers around our town are each at flood stage - prob 6-8 feet higher than normal already, and aren't expected to crest until tomorrow. This sucks.

Oh well... whatever God lets happen will happen. At least my family's safe. So today, i'm animating in exile. That has a cool ring to it...