Do you guys remember the crazy-deadline animation project I worked on earlier this year?  (Like, at the beginning of the year, to be precise?)  Well, the client company posted it to YouTube, so I can finally show it off.


It wound up being about two months from concept to completion, two animators (Mr S and me), three cleanup leads with a bunch of cleanup assists on the easy shots, everyone else in the office (i.e., all three of 'em) compositing...  Ah, good times.

Almost forgot to add: the company who produced the animation did not produce the live-action footage as well.

Super-tired, but omg you guys, if there is an IMAX theatre near you, you must see The Dark Knight there.  We went this evening and asgjkhlgdsfgoipjgfdlawesome.  The overhead city shots are stunning in a "holy crap I'm about to fall out of the helicopter" kind of way, the Hong Kong skydiving sequence was enough to make strong men weep, the armored car chase sequence ... I could go on and on, but it would be boring.  Not all of it was shot for IMAX, of course, but the sequences that were ... holy lord.  Also the picture and sound quality (even on the non-IMAX-y bits) were about a jillion times better than even the great big large huge schmancy theatre where we saw it on opening night.

Aha, and now my super-last minute rush-job for one of my clients has finished uploading.  Time to sleeeeeeeeeeep.  G'night.

(P.S. Watchmen trailer on super-huge screen?  Ohhhhh yes.)

Sketchcards progress: 27/50 = 54%

Not bad, considering I started on Thursday.

Even better?  Some of 'em don't suck.

I'll be showing off my favorites once they're all sent off and approved, and after that happens I will have a number (five? ten? don't remember) of "artist proof" cards that I get to dispose of as I will.  I'm meditating on what to do with them; EBay is a bad plan, as I am a nobody and no one's ever heard of me.  Deviant art pimpage, maybe.  We'll see.

Anyhoo, happy Monday, all!  It's raining here!

Teatime.

I got five sketchcards drawn yesterday!  Five!  Hahaha, take that, demons of paralysing procrastination!  I am 10% done!

Also read Twilight this week.  Found it thoroughly readable, although the middle bit (Bella: "Oh, Edward!  You're so beautiful!"  Edward: "Oh, Bella!  So are you!") love love section was a bit tedious.  I was kind of hoping Bella would date that nice, ordinary boy Mike instead.  Or Jacob.  He seemed like a pleasant lad.  But that's because I'm old and crotchety and less impressed with gorgeous pallid youths than I was in my salad days, haha.

Also also, do any of you have a copy of the opening theme from Casino Royale?  I have watched that movie five times this week.  I think I'm a bit obsessed.

Also the third, I will have more pictures of Tiny as soon as I can figure out how to get them off my phone.

Happy weekend, everybody!

Disney said no.

"Unfortunately your skills and experience do not meet our current studio requirements. We recognize your artistic capabilities and encourage you to continue developing your artistic skills."

Damn, damn, damn.

Blargh.

One of the things that has been mercilessly engaging my time over the past ... er, while ... is doing the pencils for a new comic book, Shadow of the Stars. I am happy to announce that a preview of the first several pages is available at the publisher's site, here.

We're really proud and really excited about this project. Please go take a look, and if you like it, please spread the word. Cheers!

Just got the following e-mail:

Dear Katherine (Kat) Laurange

Thank you for submitting your resume and/or demo reel regarding the Character Designer position with Pixar. We have reviewed your application and while everyone was impressed with your work, we are unable to utilize your skill set at this time. Please feel free to check our website periodically and apply to future positions of interest.

We sincerely appreciate your interest in Pixar and wish you the best in future career endeavors.

Thanks,
Pixar Recruiting

I note with interest my shaking hands and elevated heart-rate.  Emotional state: nonplussed, with a side of HOLY $#&@* they actually emailed me back! and a healthy dash of "everyone was impressed with your work"--woo-hoo!

You can bet your sweet bippy I'll be trying again.

Also, everyone else in the world is hiring.  Maybe I'll go do storyboards for Laika for a while.  Once more into the breach, dear friends!

As part of my continuing efforts to have a real career as an artist, I fired off a submission to do Marvel Sketch cards a couple of weeks ago ... and lo and behold, I got in!  So I'll be churning out a ton of Marvel sketches here in the next little while.  Woo!  The pay's not great, but who cares?  It's the cachet (if that's the word I want) (yes it is) of having done work for Marvel comics, of all people!

Now I've just gotta finish drawing some comic pages, polish up my demo reel, apply for some more jobs, cross my fingers, and ... guys, I'm excited about where things are going!

I sort-of got to animate today.  (Yay?)  We're trying out a program called Magpie for the lip-synch on the current production (it's a 3D animated children's show; direct-to-DVD, I think), and the Animation Lead asked me, if I didn't have anything else to do (I've mostly finished all the drawings we need for the production, at least for the time being) to lend a hand with that.  So ... it was moving "A" "E" "OH" and "OO" sliders up and down, but ... I guess it counts as animation?

(P.S. This is my first time doing lip-synch animation; none of the other productions I've ever worked on have needed it.  Not even in school.)

I met today with the director (of the new project I am working on) to go over the storyboards I did this week.

Just got the following e-mail from him:

"Hey Kat - I wanted to tell you again how impressed I was with your boards today. Awesome job! Have a great weekend!"

Woo-hoo!  *does the happy dance*