End of the line

So tonight is my last night in NY. My last day at Blue Sky was Friday , and after a full weekend of saying some pretty heartfelt goodbyes , I'm driving back across country,home to Seattle. The exact opposite if what I did two years ago ! Man time flies! I'll be taking October off, spending some time with friends and family, and after that I start at Disney on Nov 7th ! I feel really lucky to have had this experience at Blue Sky. I met some amazing people, made some really fantastic friends and I really grew to love the area, especially NYC. I'm going to miss it so much.  Best of luck to everyone on finishing up Ice Age 4.

It was awesome to get to share some experiences with you guys and gals, thanks for following along and I hope to do the same when I get to Los Angeles!

See you then and
Take care everyone !!
Bobby's LA Journal

Jeff Gabor

RIO demo reel (password: education )

'NUFF SAID!

Joe Lee

Talented bloke who early on became one of my best friends in NY.

Pete Paquette

Continuing with the "Awesome people I got to work with" series,  Today's is Pete Paquette.

Pete Paquette's blog

Pete's Rio Reel

Garrett Shikuma

As my time at Blue Sky & in NY comes to an end, so will the entries in this blog.  But before it concludes, I wanted to introduce you to some of the super talented artists/animators I have had the pleasure to learn from during my time here! 

First up : Garrett Shikuma !

Garrett's Art Blog!

Shikuma's caricatures

Design Presentation

A few weeks ago I was asked to give a presentation on Character Design to the Animation team here at work!

Let me first say that I don't, by any means, consider myself an expert in the field, and approaches/opinions on design vary wildly. So this was , essentially, just my humble outlook on the artform, and is based on my personal design aesthetic (what I like.)  So here are the images I went through during my talk.

If I have some time I hope to give these images some actual context with what I was saying, but I just wanted to post these images us,  hopefully they mostly speak for themselves.

"Personality usually dictates design,  so I consider Silhouette, Shape , Proportion, and Pose."

-Joe Moshier, Dreamworks Character Designer

Art by Shannon Tindle

Art by Daniel Lopez Munoz

More examples of circles vs squares (straights vs curves):

Art by Ricky Nierva

Art by Jay Shuster

A lot of times Nico Marlet works with one broad shape and the details are subservient .

Art by Nico Marlet

Art by Nico Marlet

Art by Carter Goodrich

Art by Joe Moshier

Art by Nico Marlet

Art by Norman Rockwell

Art by Bobby Chiu

Art by Milt Kahl,  Breakdown by Mark Kennedy

Art by Chuck Jones

Art by Nico Marlet

Art by Shane Prigmore

Breakdown by Xavier Ramonede

-----The Way I work.  Well, one of the ways.-----

Subject research

What I want to emphasize

Thumbnail , done tiny tiny

Thumbnail blown-up

Shape Breakdown

Flow Breakdown

Clean Line

Flat Color

Simple Render

And that's all I had!  Feel free to drop me a  line you wanna talk shop if some of this doesn't make sense!

Bobbypontillas (at) Gmail (dot) com

AnimSchool

Check out this promotional video for AnimSchool,  a new online animation school started up by Dave Gallagher, an amazing animator and rigger who used to work with us here at Blue Sky.  The clip has a lot of AMAZING animation done by friends here, some of whom will also be mentoring at the school.  My only contribution was the "Milt, Frank, and Ollie" portrait at : 048.

On DVD

Our adventure with Rio has finally concluded.  The film came out on DVD/Blue-Ray yesterday!

I am extremely proud & thankful to have been a part of this project.  It was a fantastic first film experience.

Meet Nick Bruno

Here's a inspiring interview with Nick Bruno, now one of the lead animators on our next project.  I always love hearing about  the things or events that inspire someone to begin to chase their passion.

Meet Nick Bruno

The Spanish Armada

If you can understand Spanish, check out this interview with some of the animators from Spain workin here at Blue Sky.

Top:  Isaak Fernandez, Julen Santiago, Qcho Sanz

Bottom: Elena Ortega, Pako Bagur

Personal Behind-the-Scenes-y stuff

*Warning: Potential spoilers I guess!*

My first feature film shot!  This was right before the security guard gets "chloroformed" by Nigel, the bird villain.  I think this was a 2nd pass on blocking.  I showed to the director, Carlos, and he gave his initial feedback.  Something he mentioned for the feeling of it was "...Y'know, kind of like a Paul Blart Mall Cop".  Since I had never seen the movie, I took that quite literally and swiped this funny expression from the trailer on You Tube.  I just remember the shot doubling, almost tripling in length, which happens alot.

Since we had a bulldog in our movie, another Blue Sky-er was nice enough bring in her French Bulldog for the day.  We let him loose in one of the screening rooms and played with him for a while.  Here he is with one of the character leads for the Bulldog, Pete Paquette, and Dave Gallagher.  I wish I could remember that dog's name.  He was super outgoing/ active/ weezy.

My first Blu shot!  Also my first dialogue shot.   Though it's pretty simple, I actually couldn't believe they gave me this, (remember, I was pretty scared to even be here.)  Here it is along with my vid ref (which was, pretty bad).  Blu says "What?  Why?  This cage is awesome!" in response to Jewel trying to break out of their bird sanctuary.  I briefly got to work with Blu's lead, Nick Bruno, on this one before he had to jump onto another project.  Fun times.

My first Jewel shot!  When Blu first sees Jewel in the sanctuary and shes flying in slow motion.  Initially I thought I had something good going on here, but looking back at my initial pose on the left, it's pretty 

terrible.  She looks kind of dumpy.  Luckily for me , after feedback from my lead, this is how it turned out in the final film.

 SOOOO much better right?!  He basically wanted to me to try to get an overall stronger graphic, triangle shape, flowing from the wings down to the tail.  Totally made sense.  Since this was going to be the first time we see her, I wanted to make this image as iconic as possible, like it would've made a rad tattoo or something.  And lighting did an amazing job,  since Blu's offscreen comment was "She's like an angel."

The shot, even if they picked a different frame, was even made into a toy!  Cool!