Deja Vu trailer

Click on the green text link above that says "Deja Vu trailer" to view, guess what?

The trailer for "Deja Vu"!

Deja Vu sweeps across the country in festival!

TWO MORE MAKES SEVEN!

{This post has been modified to add new festival info!}

My film "Deja Vu" is playing coast to coast, and has been chosen to play at seven festivals so far! It is such an honor to see my film selected in so many fine festivals. Here is where you will find it playing:

California International Film Festival - Sunday, September 27 (screen schedule TBA)

Galaxy 12 Theater Complex

Riverbank, CA

Info and directions: http://www.calanifest.com/

Louisville International Film Festival - Saturday, October 4 - 2:30p

Galt #2 The Dogwood

Louisville, Kentucky

Info and directions: http://www.louisvillefilmfestival.org/

The New Jersey Film Festival - Sunday, October 25 and Friday October 30 - 7pm

Scott Hall #123, Rutgers University

New Brunswick, NJ

Info and directions: http://www.njfilmfest.com/

Ojai Ventura International Film Festival - November 5 thru 8 (screen sched TBA)

Ojai, CA

Info and directions: http://www.ojaifilmfestival.com/

Animazing Spotlight Festival - Saturday, November 8 and Sunday, November 9 - (screen sched TBA)

The Egyptian Theater, Hollywood, CA

Info and directions: http://www.animazspot.com/animazspot/Home.html

Asheville Film Festival - Thursday, November 12 thru Sunday, November 15 - (screen sched TBA)

Asheville, North Carolina

Info and directions: http://www.ashevillefilmfestival.com/

Santa Fe Film Festival - Wednesday, December 2 thru Sunday, December 6 - (screen sched TBA)

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Info and directions: http://www.santafefilmfestival.com/

"Déjà Vu" premieres in NYC!

My senior thesis animation is complete. It had its premiere screening at the new SVA Theater on April 10th, 2009, and it was a delight to see it on the second largest screen in NYC!

Starting to render...

A composite of the characters in the theatre environment.

Early credits

I have been extraordinarily blessed to have had the support of two amazing cg artists. Rogelio Olguin (co-creator with Chris Haniszewski on their thesis "Abyssus" (http://thesisabyssus.blogspot.com/) has produced this wonderful theatre for "Deja Vu". He modeled, textured and lit the environment.




The matte painting of Central Park was created by Jesse Flores (http://jesseflores.blogspot.com/), and it is equally spectacular in scope and execution. This small version does not do it justice.

Awesome work.

seq2shot6

This is one of the longer shots in the project. 35 shots total. Lots more to go.

MacAlistair & Chester

The thesis is in the home stretch! The two characters are nearly finished with texturing and animation. The theater sequence is jaw-droppingly gorgeous (pictures to come soon). The sound track is almost done. The park environment is still a challenge to complete, and the last truly big dragon left to slay is the rendering of this huge project. This is going to be a BUSY, crazy month. But what a trial by fire! If this doesn't get one ready for the demands of professional cg production, I don't know what does.

From concept to 3D render

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the early concept sketch of MacAlistair, and how he is presently looking.

seq2shots1-2-3

This little section really flowed for me. The dog running to get under the hat was fun to time. Hard, but fun.

(once again, as new people are showing up to view the blog, scroll to the bottom of the page and work your way up)

seq1shots6-7-8

Here are three more consecutive shots I've been tweaking the last few days.

Seq6_shots1-2-3

For those of you just visiting this blog for the first time, if you want to view the postings in order (and view the storyboard and 3D previz of the whole animation), you must scroll down to the BOTTOM and work your way up. Just the way blogs are.

I worked over this weekend on these shots, as well as some shots for "Abyssus", the thesis by Chris Haniszewski and Rogelio Olguin.

For those who aren't savvy to the process, the characters movements in the shots are roughly blocked in at first with keyframes, then movements are refined and smoothed with each pass for more detail, much like a sculpter will approach a slab of marble. It's a slow process, that gets ever more rewarding the closer to the end you get.

My 3D Portfolio Website

You can see some of my earlier SVA work here on this site:

http://www.stardial.net

Click on the title of this post to go there now.

Contributing artists

As my main focus will be on the animation, I have enlisted the aid of two other student artists who are developing the environments for the Central Park and the vaudeville theater locales. Jesse Flores is a matte background painter doing the opening mural and textures for the middle section, and Rogelio Olguin is modeling and texturing the theater space. Here are some samples of their works-in-progress:

Previz / WorkComp Jan11

Jumping to the present, this is the current previz/workcomp for the project. Most of the shots are still in a preliminary blocked stage, and some shots are more refined. It's like a sculpture that keeps getting chipped away at and detailed. While this is going on, I also am working on textures for the characters, and art directing the creation of the environments which are being modeled and painted by two amazing artists at the school, Jesse Flores and Rogelio Olguin. Here is the previz, broken up into two parts due to file size upload constraints...

The Storyboard Animatic

April 2008... I presented my storyboard animatic. This is the early form of the story with a slightly different ending than the current version. There is dialogue and music, so put on your earphones...

Deja Vu... the Thesis begins!

Truth in advertising, this thesis began quite some time ago (and yet it only seems like yesterday...) The development began in the Fall 2007 semester at SVA, School of Visual Arts, in NYC. It is now January 2009, and I am now in the final ten weeks of this project's completion. It has been an amazing journey. My blog posts from here on will include work-in-progress, as well as some samples of earlier milestones in the project's development.