Calm Before the Storm

Back to the blog! I've been rather consumed by lots of projects for the past little while, but I'm happie to say that my ANM 382 Stop Motion Level II course and my animation for the latest BigFott film is now complete! I now officially have very few major things to do, outside of work, relaxing, family time, and anticipation for the arrival of little Xander in just a matter of weeks! I'm hoping to catch up on lots of movies and other things I've been putting off.

Here's some totally random bloggie goodness of neat things and what's been on my mind...

We had a beautiful thunderstorm last weekend, which unfortunately doesn't happen very often here, so I was very excited. Got some neat pictures of the show.




Yesterday we had a Lilo & Stitch Luau for Ariel's 3rd birthday party, in honor of the day she was supposed to be born! It was really nice and a very good time spent with friends and family. Part of the party was the annual "storytime" reading of this year's children's book we wrote & illustrated for Ariel, which can be viewed online here: ARIEL'S MAGIC DANCE SHOES




MORE PARTY PHOTOS ON FACEBOOK

My little "twitchy witchy girl" (as I now call her, based off the song Coraline's father sings to her) is growing into such a fun, intelligent and delightful little person. It's been nice having my projects finished so I can spend more quality time with her these days, which is important for us to bond before she has a sibling in the mix.


"Don't mess with me or Stitch will kill you."
I have some other project ideas brewing and some thoughts about my future involvement with animation teaching. My Saturday courses have really dried up in the past couple of years, and I've rather gotten used to having full weekends for a change. At this stage of my life, I've decided I really need to quit teaching part-time animation courses at VanArts on Saturdays. I want to be able to spend more time with Jay and both of our kids, have the freedom to do more family outings together, and possibly start some more creative projects. I'm thinking of passing along the 2D course to someone else and finding a way to continue my stop-motion course as an evening class during the week. I'll also be teaching my online courses for AAU, so that's plenty to keep me in the teaching fold. I'd also really like to start some animation workshops for kids, as a way to start moving more in that direction as an additional career path. I think this is extremely important, especially as I continue to see the declining quality in a good number of the portfolios that show up at work. Art isn't being taught properly in schools, and neither is animation, so anything I can do to fill the void with some better creativity is a pretty worthy investment. There's a hell of a lot more things in this world to draw than Anime characters, Spiderman, and people carrying big guns.

Storytime with Nigel of course is still on the back burner and I hope to get some more scenes farmed out as the dust settles this month, to try and make some more progress on it. I have an idea for a very short stop-motion film which I may also try and find time to throw together. My hope is that I can whip it up, post it around and enter it into some festivals, as a way to possibly drum up interest in getting some support to finish Nigel off. It's just a thought, or a hope...

I'm also hoping to bring my "Breath of Life" presentation 'on the road' at some point, and sharing it in some Vancouver churches.

And I'm really looking forward to seeing this movie...