Our first trailer!

Today the first trailer for our movie came was released!  I can't tell you how thrilling it is to see it fully lit, shaded, rendered and out for everyone to see!  I remembered , back at Arena Net, when the very first trailer for Guild Wars came out and how excited we all were for the public to finally see our work for the first time.  Such a gratifying feeling.

The voice for Blu ( the bird who can't fly) is Jessie Eisenberg (Zombieland) , who is awesome.  He brings so much appeal to the character, and I love listening to his reads.  I did have small quick shot in the trailer, so don't blink or you'll miss it.  It's around the 1:28 mark and looks like this:

Haha. Yeah!  Super simple shot but I worked like the dickens to even get it working right.  When I animated it I was thinking about a story workwife-Joe told me at lunch about the first time he went bungie jumping.  He was all super casual about the whole ordeal , even up on the platform he was chill, until he actually jumped and it suddenly hit him that he was free-falling, and he let out the loudest, balls-dropped, shriek and (when he told the story) he made this crazy, panic-stricken face.  That's that face right there.

Anyway,  the trailer, everyone at the studio is super excited about it.  For me, seeing it out there, that same gratifying feeling I talked about , gave me a huge boost.  I'm in the middle of a shot right now which I'm really wrestling with.  It's a big shot for me so naturally I've put a lot of pressure on myself, too much pressure.  There is so much amazing work being done around that I can't help but be tough on myself.  To the point where  it starts to become detrimental.  It's the kind of thing where you feel like you've had a pretty good grasp on this artform,  and then you come in and are suddenly are surrounded by superior talent.  Immediately you feel like you don't know sh*t.  And then you feel like a teenager, all awkward and unsure.  It's just growing pains man, like animation puberty or something.  Every time I start a shot I try my best to make it awesome, and by the end  I'm just trying to get to a point where it's, like, not terrible.  And trust me I'm not fishing for compliments, if you've seen the work being done here, you'll see that I've got a ways to go.   All of this is all something  I should write more about later, when I come out on the other side =).  

Anyway, off my soapbox, we're getting to make films here for crying out loud.  We're all stoked!  Check out the trailer HERE!

Some of the crew when our trailer went out earlier today.