We're off to Canada

This January we're moving to Canada. Let me get this out of the way right now. It's not because of that moral bankruptcy of an election. That's a legitimate coincidence. Now that that's out of the way, lets talk about something else:

Just shy of two years ago my workplace, PDI Dreamworks, shut down. I assumed we'd be moving to Vancouver BC for my next gig, which was just fine with us. But then I got a cold call from Apple requesting an interview. This was unexpected. I wasn't sure what a guy who makes cartoon characters could offer Apple but I did the interview and before I knew it I was an Apple employee.

If you know anything about apple, you probably know they value secrecy, so I'll go light on the details. But, if I had to describe the job it would be this: 

Come in on a Monday to a problem you don't know how to solve in a program you don't know how to use, and hopefully, get it sorted by Friday. 

It was profoundly difficult, but thankfully, I was surrounded by titans of the industry that I could lean on for support. It's the first time I've ever had a job that has actually changed me at a fundamental level. At the very least I learned some damn humility. I'd like to say I had a good time, but change doesn't come from comfort. It was Awful. And euphoric. And miserable. And the best experience of my life. 

A few months ago I got another cold call, this time from Sony Imageworks. Every time they contacted me over the past few years I'd send a reply along the lines of,"...not right now, but please let me know when a position opens up in Vancouver." Well, they finally offered me a Sr position in Vancouver to work on both animated films and live action VFX. I couldn't pass it up. Vancouver is stunning and LITERALLY 15 minutes from snowboarding. My wife's twin sister and my daughter's cousins live in the area. Most importantly, we can afford to live there. The San Francisco Bay area boasts the most expensive housing in America. We live in the school district the documentary "Waiting for Superman" featured as an example of the problem with the American Public school system. Unfortunately a 2 bedroom apartment in a good school district in the bay area will run you 5k a month. Even the run-down place we live in right now is heading out of our price range. The last time my mother visited I made a sweeping gesture at our half of a musty duplex with its cracked, canary yellow tile kitchen, water stained, sagging ceiling and matted carpet with iron burns and said,"Bet you never thought your son would live in a million dollar home!" So, add us to the list of people priced out of San Francisco.

Here we have a stunning 2.5 million dollar one bed, one bath in charming East Palo Alto.

Since I gave notice at Apple I've not been able to shake the horrible feeling that I'm making a massive mistake. It's a quality-of-life over career decision, and it's not easy to make. Apple is an incredible company and I work with amazing people. Some of the things my team has accomplished over the past few years have been remarkable. I hope I can talk about them some day. Most importantly, the project is the most important thing I've ever been involved with. It eats away at me knowing that I'll have to watch it succeed from a distance rather than it being something that I contributed to.

I can only hope that regret will be balanced out with all the snowboarding and poutine. 

The hair of a Rick James giraffe and the danger of complacency

It was my first day back at work at Dreamworks after a mind-bending week at burningman. My boss called me into his office and said,"Listen, Trolls is ramping up. It's the most hair-heavy show we've ever done, so we're building a dedicated team to re-work our hair pipeline. I want you on it." I might have had a mini panic attack.

For some reference, in our film pipeline modelers would make the geometry for a character and, at best, create some geometry that represented hair masses, then send into the ether of the pipeline. The actual hair itself was a whole 'nother complicated beast that would be handled by people who specialized in that discipline. So, to be asked to tackle hair, how it looks, moves and renders is like asking a plumber to "...redo the electrical wiring while you're in there". I'd been doing the same, specific task for a decade, so to be suddenly asked to do something so dramatically and technically different was daunting, especially considering the fact that I was just back from burningman and re-familiarizing myself with the idea that clothing was a requirement in the real world.

I'd just finished modeling the character Cooper who is best described as a "pink Rick James giraffe". I had a surreal moment where the model was approved, so I published him into the pipeline, then walked upstairs to my new desk in Character Effects and downloaded the character I'd just published to be handed off to myself. From there I got a crash course in Houdini, simulation, hair styling and the DW rendering pipeline. It was tough.

...but, with the help of the other talented people on the hair team I pulled it off. It made my brain hurt, and I put in a lot of long hours, but I did it. Cooper was a challenge because he had multiple different styles and simulations- His Dreadlocks, his neck fur and his body fur. I kept getting the note,"Make him feel softer". It's a tough note to address because you intuitively know what soft is, but when you're charged with making something "soft" what do you do? What makes a kitten look soft? how thick or thin is soft hair? How does soft hair move? I looked up tons of reference, but the best execution of soft I found were the trees in the movie "The Lorax".

I wanna frolic in that

I studied what they did- how the hairs clumped, tapered off and wafted at the tips. It wasn't easy since they had some rendering tech we didn't, but we made do. The groom was finally approved and I moved on. I worked on several of the character's grooms in some respect but the 3 characters that I worked on most were Cooper, the large blue troll and the fuzzy caterpillar. Check out the final product!

I love this clip because I'm intimately familiar with each of the troll's grooms and what the specific challenges were for the artist in charge. How does the main character Poppy's hair move differently at the base than the drooping tips? How do you simulate hair that is 3 times taller than the character himself? How do a clump of dreadlocks behave below a hair-tie vs above? Each of these things is something an amazing artist spent months figuring out, so a huge shout-out to those peeps!

It was an amazing experience because it taught me the danger of complacency. Over my career I've seen artists lose work because they were unable or unwilling to learn new skillsets. In film it's easy to get pigeonholed into a narrow skillset and get comfortable. If that skillset becomes obsolete, the artist is out of a job. In retrospect, I was getting dangerously close to that precipice. Since the hair team I've been fortunate enough to learn new skills constantly. Just outside my comfort zone is a great place to be.

Touch A Truck

My daughter's preschool is doing a fundraiser called Touch a Truck. They gather a bunch of vehicles like dump trucks and police cars along with their operators for kids to check out. They sell shirts, so they needed a design. I offered to make a vehicle mascot for the shirts.

The challenge with designing a car character is trying to avoid iconic car designs like:

Putting eyes in the windshield instead of the headlights was genius.

I decided on a dumptruck and made a sketch.

I modeled it up. The windshield wipers were too distracting so I swapped them for rear-view mirrors. Render in Keyshot.

The song I wrote while I lived behind a couch

Me completely terrified

I spent 3 months living behind a couch while I was in Australia. A couple of friends let me put a small bedroll behind the couch in their living room and that was my "room" for 3 months straight. One of my roommates, Thomas Price, had a keyboard in his room and we'd often jam in the evenings. One night while I was playing he fell asleep. When I noticed him sleeping I stopped playing but he instantly woke up. "Keep playing" he said,"I hear it in my dreams.". So, I kept playing. I wrote the foundation of a song while he slept that night. I later added ragtime elements and wrote lyrics about Tom sleeping.

A few years ago I gathered my courage and played the song at an open mic. I've skydived and, on two separate occasions, I've been jumped by groups of strangers looking for a street fight. None of those were even close to as terrifying as an open mic. I have crazy respect for people who can perform in public. The open mic was recorded so, here it is. My first time ever playing music in public.

Moongirl

I spent most of my career as a modeler, so most people aren't aware that I started my career as an animator. I joined the studio Laika as an intern animating on the short film Moongirl directed by Henry Sellick (Nighmare before christmas, Coraline). I was a "secondary animator" which meant I animated non-character elements. Specifically, I animated most of the fishing line in the short, along with rope, chains, and anything else the characters interacted with. It wasn't glamorous, but it was a foot in the door.

I still get a nostalgia high from this short...

It was an inspirational time in my life. I sat next to Travis Knight, the current head of the studio and son of Nike founder Phil Knight. Travis is an incredible animator and he mentored me on the short. In addition to his help, Sellick was incredibly generous with his time, to the point that he would literally draw string poses with frame numbers to help me nail the animation. I often worked late and sometimes, after everyone else had left, Henry would bring a small amp out of his office. He'd plug it in next to me, sit on top of it and play the blues on an electric guitar while he closed his eyes and plotted the script to Coraline.

Baba. Or, Baby birds are idiots.

As a followup to Butt, I made another Sesame Street character based on drawings for Cammi. Big Bird, whom Cammi referred to as "Baba". Model in maya, feathers in Xgen, render in Keyshot.

On a side note, baby birds have idiot faces. Have you ever noticed? They're like an emoticon for stupid. And, I know what you're thinking,"No they're not! They're cute and fluffy and they peep!" Well, they do eventually. But when they start out, they have ugly, cranky, dumb faces. I mean, just look at this guy!

He ain't going to college...

Or this guy.

He doesn't even have a nice personalty!

Or check out these dummies!

Mom tells them they're beautiful, but even she has doubts.

I wanted to get a little bit of idiot baby bird into my Baba model, so I based him on one of my old drawings but added a baby bird face.