The movie I worked on at Animal Logic, down in Sydney will be coming out around the holiday season this year. Here are some advanced clips, enjoy!

and here is a trailer that was released a few months ago:

and finally, it appears that there will be a video game too:

Some exciting news, management at Dreamworks has given me the green light for a transfer to our sister company, PDI/Dreamworks, in San Francisco. There I’ll continue on in my same role as a modeler for upcoming feature films. At present time I’m on “Puss In Boots”, due out in 2011. Last year I worked about six months on “Guardians of Childhood”, which will be done in 2012. Lots of other exciting projects in the works too… that I can’t mention. At any rate, we should be in SF by August. I hope to have some other interesting blog posts once we get settled in.

Just finished this up today. You can find higher resolution images in the gallery. This is actually my friend and modeling supervisor Matt, at Animal Logic. I’ve got a few more weeks of free time, so hopefully you’ll see at least one more head model from me soon.

Some great news today, I’ve just accepted a modeling position at worlds most successful animation studio: Dreamworks! I’ll be starting at the end of June, working on future DW blockbusters. We’ve had a great time in Sydney, but I must say it will be nice to be close to family again. And to drive on the right hand side of the road!

Knowing had it’s opening weekend and pulled up as No. 1 with $24.8 million! This film was directed by Alex Proyas (I Robot, The Crow) and stars Nic Cage. In it, Cage plays an astrophysicist, (you won me over already with that move) and, after discovering a cryptic numerological note left in a time capsule (won me over again), discovers that he has a road map to all the major disasters of the last 50 years… (again!) and the numbers haven’t run out yet. (!!!)

Animal Logic was the main VFX vendor for this film, responsible for over 95% of them. Well, I won’t sing the praises of my own studio too loudly. Well ok yes I will, the effects were awesome! I hope you can go see them for yourself (theater experience is a must on this one). A lot of good friends spent many a weekend doing overtime to get them done. I was supposed to work on this project when I first arrived at Animal Logic- but the producers shuffled some cards so I went straight on to our animated feature ‘Guardians of Ga’Hoole’ instead. Didn’t know what I was missing until I went to a special screening a few weeks ago. (Guardians will be great also, by the way)

Once you’ve seen the movie (and I do recommend seeing it first), come back here and read this for a good write up on the VFX process: http://vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=3941&page=1

Coraline has been running in theaters for about six weeks now, and so far has brought in $70.7 million domestically (at the time of this writing) and worldwide at $7.6 million. The movie hasn’t even been released in all the corners of the world yet (ahem, such as Australia), so we can expect that figure to rise. Opening weekend came in at $16.8 million, which is about $7 million more than anticipated. With DVD sales coming up, not to mention video game and other merchandise sales, it looks like this little project of Henry Selick’s has proved it’s worth to Laika. I think we can expect more great work like this from the studio in the future.

In similar news, Travis Knight who worked as lead animator on Coraline, serves on Laika’s board of directors and also happens to be Laika owner Phil Knight’s son, has been promoted to president of the studio. More info here.

Things haven’t been all peachy however. Last December, the day after the company Christmas party, Laika laid off around 65 artists (and some good friends) from it’s CG division, and canceled the long troubled project ‘Jack and Ben’. Here is the full scoop from the Oregonian. Jack and Ben had been in the works since mid-2005, and was one of the first things I worked on when I joined the studio that October. I’m sad it got tossed, it had a really innovative visual style that I think audiences would have appreciated. The good news is, Laika is still planning to create CG movies.

LAIKA has just released a second trailer that, I feel, is much truer to the film. Here it is:

You can also watch the first trailer which is a bit more flashy / in your face:

Then there’s also the teaser trailer that came out in the spring of ‘08 which is also good:

What can I say? It’s going to be a great movie. Selick did an amazing job adapting it to the silver screen and has added his own creepy twists. Neil Gaiman wrote the original book. Really a match made in heaven. I was fortunate enough to be able to work on the movie as a CG modeler for roughly a year and a half. It was quite an experience. And I should mention that we played A LOT of ping pong on our lunch breaks.

Well, everything is pretty much done right now. I’m probably going to be replacing the header / banner graphic with something more pleasing in a few days, and I will eventually add a section for tutorials and MEL scripts that I’ve come up with, but otherwise this is it. I’ll post something on this blog every time I add a new portfolio piece, and of course will keep things updated with the Coraline movie and other projects that I’ve worked on as they come up.

Just about finishing up the site now. Added slimbox / lightbox plug in for the gallery.

Hi there! I’m currently setting things up here. Check back again soon, thanks!