Indiegogo!

Hello bloggers! In an attempt to balance work and life (a very important cause to me), I am starting a business that will free me up to paint full-time, raise my future family, and fuel my love of music, festivals, and ice cream!

I'm giving away great swag including ORIGINAL PAINTINGS! Check it out, and please share, share, share the campaign! Thanks guys!

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ice-cream-addiction-creates-stay-at-home-moms

The Pixar Reel

The good, the bad, and the ugly from my Pixar Animation internship. Hopefully you can see some progress between the newer and older pieces. Also, note that a couple of the pieces are IP (in-progress) or blocking. Naturally, I had the most fun with Linguini in the last few days of the internship, but there just wasn't enough time to finish it. C'est la vie.



The internship experience was as great as you would hope it would be. Pixar is awesome. The people are so supportive and encouraging. Go work at Pixar!

The Demo Reel

some oldies and some newbies.

Paso Doble teaser

Busy, busy, busy. That is how I would describe my days lately. If it's not the film, it's the demo reel. If it's not the demo reel, it's the portfolio. The end of school is just a few weeks away, so it's time to really buckle down & get things done.

People have been asking to see something from my film, so here is a little teaser. It's the opening dance , which is my twist on a Paso Doble. I don't want to give too much away, so you'll have to wait until graduation to see more!

***Thank you to Dan Sprogis for helping me paint this beast.

Quadrupeds 101

While working on the film I've also been juggling CG animation. Realistically, how many hand-drawn films are being made today? Yeah, so I've recently taken an interest in Maya, and guess what? I actually like it!

I'm almost done my first scene, but already moving onto my second; a dog walk to run to jump. Taking the Jason Ryan approach, I've drawn thumbnails in Flipbook first. If you're a 2D animator wanting to branch off into CG, this method is very logical.

Anyway, I'll post both of the rendered scenes when they're ready to be seen. For now, chicken scratched keys...

Quadrupeds 101 from Jamie Metzger on Vimeo.

la película, pero no la película

The film, but not the film.

the animation that almost was, but may be again

Part of my apprenticeship with Charlie this past summer was animating a two-person scene. I'd roughed in the keys, he'd given amazing feedback, and then the monster that is fourth year took over my life. I might find time to come back to this, but it will have to wait until after grad. Nonetheless, here are a few snippets.

The Sculptor

After a long haul, our 3rd year group film was finished last April 2010. It feels far, far in the past by now (after two internships and a semester of fourth year having come and gone), plus I think we've all made significant artistic growth since third year. Nonetheless, we did it, we learned a lot, and hopefully it was a good dress rehearsal for this year's independent films.

I suggest watching it full screen & in a dark room.

website

I'm alive. Barely, but I am alive. Thanks to those who continue to visit the blog despite my absence. School has gotten incredibly busy, but we're in the home stretch now, so I'm just trying to push forward until the end.

In the meantime, I'm also working towards being one of those professional animator peoples, so I've made a website! jamiemetzger.com is my first website, so please give me any feedback you want to.

(click on the image to go to the site)

I'll be constantly updating it as my demo reel evolves, and there's some new life drawing posted. Still feelin' like a rookie, but jumping in nonetheless!

Charlie B . 02 . The Wine Lover

The Wine Lover from Jamie Metzger on Vimeo.

Coming up for air. It has been a crazy two months here in the Philippines, and things are just winding down. I'm off to India in a few days, and will take a short break before continuing on with the summer internships. The amount of knowledge and skill I've acquired is more than an entire year at school. Of course, I couldn't have even started these placements without the prior learning done at Sheridan.

Here is the second test I've been working on with Charlie. Again, only keys for now. It needs some fixing, but we're running out of time, so it's on to the next assignment. This was a long one (almost 30 seconds), but the character was so much fun to work with. Thanks also to Robin for the design loan, and to Charlie for helping me modify it for animation. Now moving forward to the next and final assignment!

Paso Doble . 02

More sketches for my film. For those who asked...

Charlie B . 01 . The Sultan

The Sultan from Jamie Metzger on Vimeo.

Here are the keys for my first assignment with my animation mentor, Charlie Bonifacio. Working on this piece was like an animation boot camp. Think about fitting two years of education into 4 weeks. It was pretty great. There are tweaks to be made, and in-betweens to fill in, but that will have to wait because it's on to the next assignment.

*character design by Robin Joseph, and revised by Charlie.

Paso Doble

Now that my final year at Sheridan is creeping up, I can finally talk about my thesis film! Paso Doble is a Spanish dance between a matador and his cape. I am using this inspiration to metaphorically compare the discovery of marital infidelity to a bull fight. That all sounds very technical, but it's really heated, passionate, and aggressive. I am hoping to marry my musical theatre and animation passions in this fantasia-type piece.

When I first came to Hans, I had nailed down the storyboards after many revisions, but he felt that I was playing it too safe with the style. (I was.) This month he had me explore many abstract and modern artists, and to my surprise a style was actually emerging. Being more of an animator, I've never developed a style for a film before, but I now see that the story and the style must inform each other.

Above is a one of my very quick explorations of a potential style. It most likely will differ from this look, but it's one idea along the way...

show me the light

Hans showing us a sliver of his personal
animation archives.

The summer of the internships are upon us, and everyone says it's the best summer of your Sheridan career. I believe that's true, but I have my whole life to work in a studio. I figured since I'm not going to get paid anyway then I might as do something that money can't buy. I am spending my summer in the Philippines apprenticing under Hans Bacher and Charlie Bonifacio.

Both Disney vets, Hans will be helping San and I develop our visual aesthetic while Charlie will be working on animation with me via Skype. Needless to say, I am pretty freakin' stoked about the summer. As requested by many classmates, here is a photo of us getting a tour of Hans' personal archives. I will be posting some work soon, as doing two internship should produce something worth sharing...if I can live up to their standards. Wish me luck!

knight in shining armour

Third year has ended, and I have to admit I am glad to see it go. Although I learned a lot, it was quite a headache and much too stressful. I am grateful that I had hard-working groupmates on our film. We finished on time, so there should be a clip to post here sometime soon. For now, here are my last two life drawings of the year.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that Mitch (my fiancé), San, and I are going to Asia for the summer. San and I are completing our apprenticeships for Sheridan, so this will be another challenge and a fantastic learning opportunity. Stay tuned for more on that!

Portraits

Sooooo, it's been a while. Thanks for checking back. The group film at Sheridan has taken over my life, and doing extra art on the side has been postponed for a while. I have, however, managed to get in a little bit of life drawing. I am really liking portraits. So much so that I am neglecting the rest of the body. Ha. Will get back to that shortly.

I would like to promise to post again soon, but the moment school ends I am on a plane to South East Asia for the summer. Things will be busy for a while, but with any luck I will have lots of stuff to post from that working holiday. As for now, wish me and my group members luck getting through the last few weeks of this film!

AA...in progress

It's aaaaalmost done. I have to fix some of the painting and the rim lighting, but essentially this is what my completed Action Analysis assignment looks like. Short, but hopefully sweet. :) Huge thanks to Chris for helping me composite and to San for the painting feedback.

Next semester there'll be about 30 of these to take care of while making our film. Phew. Wish me luck!

AA Background

Well, hopefully this is a step up from box in a room. This is my background for the Action Analysis assignment this semester. We are finally making a completed scene with fully coloured background and animation. I will be sure to post the finished scene as soon as possible, but I wanted to show the bg first because as soon as you add a moving character to a composition that's all you watch.

The piece isn't entirely finished, but with the hectic schedule I've had recently, it might be as far as I get with it for a while. Anyway, enjoy for now.

paintin' a cardboard box

So, San's been teaching me some fancy-schmancy digital painting techniques, and what you see here is the result of one lesson. This is my first real digital painting. A simple cardboard box in a room. San said, "Make the sexiest box in a room you can." Or something like that. It's been good practice for my Action Analysis project, which has a similar feel and colour scheme. Hopefully, I'll have more dynamic compositions to show soon.

Royal Winter Fair '09

It's that time of year again...

You gotta love the Royal Winter Fair. There's tons to draw, and there are characters everywhere in both the animals and the people. You don't even have to TRY! I wish I could spend the whole week there.

These three birds were a result of a strutting turkey and gossiping, Victorian-type geese. The mallard isn't as impressed by the turkey's assets as his girlfriend is.

The intention was to gouache these guys up, but I didn't like how it was turning out. Here's the line work nonetheless.