Brett Davis Animation

It's really been over a year ..... criminy

2009-06-17T23:01:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a year since I've updated this blog. Nothing much really to tell. I was a QA tester at EA for almost 10 months. Then my contract expired (thank you California for assinine laws that cause people to lose their jobs instead of keep them). Anyway, I've been on downtime since the first of May. I've been working on my portfolio, or at least trying to. A collapsing desk can really take a week out of your time. Especially when you have to build the new one yourself. Anyway, I'm getting some new work together for my reel. I've got some blocking I've done on one shot I didn't get to finish last year before I started at EA, and I've got animatics up for a couple of other shots I have ideas for. Check em out (for whoever reads this, and let me know what you think. My email is on my website. And the shots can be found here .... http://www.brettdavisanimator.com/BD_Anim_Portfolio_Anim_WIP.html ... and take a look around at the rest of my site and also let me know what you think. I'm going to get some more drawings up here soon. And by soon, after I get the animation done which will hopefully be towards the end of July.

Job .... FOUND!

2008-06-23T18:47:00.000-07:00

Well, people's, since it's been a while since I last posted, but I finally found myself a job. It's not the dream animation job yet, but hopefully it will open some doors that way.

Last monday I started training as a QA Tester at EA. And this week I started my first week as a tester. I was put on the Sims 3 project for PC, but was quickly moved an hour later to My Sims: Kingdom on the Wii. HA HA.

Anyhoo, I'm looking forward to it. I think it will be tons of fun. It's cool to get to be a part of something big. To be part of it's creation. Cool stuff.

And like I said, hopefully it opens up that door to animation. If I have to do a little prying I will. Not be annoying though.

Later

Job hunting ...

2008-05-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

So, for those that do drop by and read stuff about me every once in a while. I'm doing the job hunt thing right now. That's the gist of it. I've applied at several places. Actually I've applied for several positions at EA. Which they just changed their Job board page and none of the positions I have applied for are on the new page. That may change though, because there's a lot of stuff from the old EA Job board that didn't translate over to the new board yet. Who knows. Basically I've applied for like 6 positions at EA. 4 Animator positions, Assistant Designer, and QA Tester. The last one is an in the meantime job. Hopefully that pans out if nothing else does because at least I'm around what I love doing.

I also applied for Pixar's summer internship, I submitted my resume to Dreamworks, Crystal Dynamics, The Orphanage and accidentally applied for a Character Artists at LuscasArts ... that one was accidental as I was just trying to create a profile on their job board page and clicked the wrong button without realizing it. So, that's where I'm at right now.

I've not heard from anyone really at the moment. Which seems normal and yet, in some way is still discouraging. Even though some positions I applied for about a week ago. And I'm saying this to myself as much as others. Keep your chin up cause it will happen. It may take awhile. Because we're the fortunate/unfortunate ones of wanting to work when stuff is much more specialized. Fortunate because then we get to focus on what we love doing and we really don't have to "know" it all. We don't have to be able to model, texture, rig, animate and tweak renders. And that's a good thing, because it allows us to focus on what we want to do. It's also unfortunate because so do 35,000 other people.

As I've been told it's a small community, and close knit. So make friends. Anyone I've made friends with so far are good guys and they lay it to you straight. But it's small. And hopefully it continues to grow. Because as it remains small the more competitive it is. Which is a good thing, it's not bad that it's competitive because it keeps us all on our toes trying to do our best.

So again, as I type this to myself and others. Keep going. If this is truly your dream, then you'll succeed at it at some point. The best animators and storytellers all started in the same place.

So NOW I'm really up and running ... crosses fingers

2008-04-22T01:24:00.000-07:00

Alright, so if you're reading my post, you've probably clicked on the link and saw a bright white page that said domain name for sale $246 ... contact me.

Well, obviously, the guy I tapped to design my website decided to pull my site down. It's a long story, and to paraphrase it ... moral of the story, be very careful about working with friends of friends or their siblings. It often does not work out. And in my case it didn't. I'm not going to broadcast all the details, but I feel I got the short end of the stick on this deal.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, NOW ... I am up and running. Links and everything seem to be working on my end. If you visit my blog please check out my site and let me know what you think. Thanks.

The NEW address is .... www.brettdavisanimator.com ... that's animator ... not animation.

Thanks again. :)

Well now we're starting to cook with some gas

2008-04-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, so my new and improved website is finally up and runng. Check it out and let me know what you think. Those of you that read this blog. Hopefully someone out there in the wide world of animation or just the wide world period reads it. HA HA HA

Anyway, I basically redid the site myself. I'd not used Dreamweaver before and was suprised at how easily I picked it up. For those of you animators out there, I strongly recommend, if you are in school, get an educational version of Dreamweaver or Studio MX .... it will save you many hassles in the long run, especially having someone other than you design your website, and then decide it's not all that important to have it up and running when you need it up and running. It's easy. Work in design view, and make use of layers.

The website is ... http://www.brettdavisanimation.com/ .... check it out. Let me know what you think. Thanks alot.

... P.S. .... I know I changed my image up top and it's huge and obnoxious. Bear with me while I change it. :)

Though no one is really reading this.....

2008-02-20T18:56:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a week since I last posted. Right now, I'm pretty much posting here to remind myself that I'm still alive. No, that's not pity party or depression talking. That's just the realization that I'm probably the only person that really reads this right now. But, I'm still posting on the off chance that someone somewhere is reading this and being at least mildly entertained.

Sickness

2008-02-12T16:58:00.001-08:00

So I thought it would be fun to get sick yesterday. Fever, cold, crap, all that jazz. What sucks is when you sit down for any length of time to try and do something like this or work, then you just kind of fall apart. But hey, watching more movies is ok. More acting and shot inspriation.

RiP by Bruno Collet

2008-02-11T16:27:00.001-08:00

I may be the only one who reads this, cause only about three people I know, know my blog exists right now. Oh well. Anyway, I found these on another website I frequent. These are great. They're stop motion shorts by Bruno Collet, and the riff on the classic monster movie. I may be coming late to this party, but they're hilarious. They can be found here. The link opens to Evil Eye, but there's about 10 of them. My favorite is 3DiveMensional

http://www.findinternettv.com/Video,item,4014497000.aspx

Sorry, I'm not up to date with the embedding video thing.

Plain Jane

2008-02-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

I know it's a little plain right now ... but once I get another shot done, then I'm gonna spruce up my area a bit here. Make it look more interesting. Or try to anyway.

Test run post ...

2008-02-08T14:41:00.000-08:00

Well, I've just started this blog. And that opening sounds extremely retarded. But I wanted to start one to go along with my new animation website that you can find here ... http://www.brettdavisanimation.com/ ... the website as of right now is not 100% complete. There are some changes that need to be made. Some work that I need to add ... I just completed a shot that will go up here within a week.

Also, I have another shot which I need to start animating on. The scene and character modifications on the Norman rig have been done for a while, I just need to get started on the shot now.

Which leads me to gettinga little personal. Do you other animators ever feel blocked? Not necessarily burnt out, but blocked. I don't feel burnt out, though I have been pursuing this animation eduction for the past 3 1/2 years. And it's really more like 8 years if you think about it ... the prior 4 1/2 years was spent teaching myself. Reading books. Going through tutorials, a Masters Thesis .. still all self taught stuff, and to think of what I didn't know when I came to the AAU in SF (I just finished up last Dec by the way.) It was exciting and I'm still excited about being able to work in the industry.

But back to feeling blocked. It's different from burn out ... I certainly hope not the precursor to it. But like I said, I graduated last December. My final semester I learned probably the most about animation than I did in other semesters, aside from Character Development .. that was another great semester. Thank you Shaun. But JD Haas was my instructor and I learned a ton. No, I'm not trying to brown nose. (Check his site out http://www.jeandenis.net/)

But over the past year, I felt blocked. I had a very hard time working. I would sit down and stare blankly at the computer screen. Feel very overwhelmed and worried about my shot. How it would be recieved. Too much worry basically. Other things that needed to get done also presented themselves throughout the week. The house has to be cleaned. Dinner has to be cooked. Someone decided to take off my sideview mirror one morning (still hasn't been fixed), the bank statement needs to be balanced. And it has somewhat spilled over to the new year. At a point I would have hoped to have a complete second shot finished. I haven't even started animating on it yet.

I know animation is not a fast or easy process. I'm not looking for that, that's not why I got into animation. I got into animation because I love stories. I love well told stories. And I've always loved cartoons. I love what the medium has done to give life to our imaginations. Look at all the wonderful films and with effects and video games that have only recently been made possible because of the available technology. It's fantastic stuff.

But you know may or may not know what I'm talking about feeling blocked. It's worse when you have the whole day (or night which is moreso my case) ahead of you to work and pour yourself into it .. and you end up working about 3 hours because you just can't get your brain to function. It just goes dead. And I hate it.

Hopefully this will clear up soon. The upside to it is the writer's strike. Nobody is really hiring so I've got the time. I would just rather, when the strike lifted and the studios started hiring that I have quite a few shots done and not just two or three.

Thanks for reading my first Blog ... and sorry, I'm a verbose mofo.