Sunday, January 4, 2015

New Year ----- New ADVENTURE

Hey guys,

    I am happy to say that I am re- joining LAIKA for another Amazing Film.

KUBO and the 2 Strings-

    2 days Driving and I just pulled into foggy wet Portland tonight. After unpacking and feeling the Head cold my son gave me take the last of my energy I sit to blog.

It was another BIG decision to join this project due to leaving family - LA and a great CG job....but It was time again to tackle a HUGE film and tell An EPIC story as only LAIKA can!!

My CG job is very rewarding but since I lead a team of animators I spend way more time organizing and directing than I ever get to animate. It can be very frustrating to my animator heart but that's why I try to keep animation balance at home when I don't animate at work.

I was also talking to LAIKA way before the project was announced so we knew the project was brewing and that they would like me to animate on it........me and shel had lots of time to consider and talk about the situation.

In the end Shel and Aedon were very excited again for me to join and be a part of the MAGIC!! And completely supported my return .

We have a very clear schedule of visits set and I am missing them already.

     so ..... as Monday-First Day-  approaches

 I am feeling TERRIFIED and THRILLED.....all together....Living LIFE.

       I will be working with the most talented Stopmo artists on the planet!! lucky me.....

                       more to come....

also....in preparation for coming back to LAIKA and getting some practice I created some animation with my Dirk Puppet....

I sculpted the puppet a while back after meeting a child hood animation Idle Don Bluth at CTN .
 Don Bluth was KEY to my entering the arts and animation specifically- In our talking I told him I was an animator and that he was a HUGE influence. I am sure that he heard that a million times over the weekend....and I was just another face to forget. I wanted to change that by sending him an animation of DIRK in stop motion.

NOW I had a clear reason to finish the fabrication. Shel foamed and painted the puppet and we both made some simple wire armatures to get them moving.

here are some of the tests-
Grab and slam-
Grab and Slam WIRE from jriggity on Vimeo.
Sword Fight test-
Sword Fight1 test from jriggity on Vimeo.
Here a Noise-
NOise Test from jriggity on Vimeo.
Walk-
Walk Strutsm from jriggity on Vimeo.
Run-
Run Test from jriggity on Vimeo.

Now that I feel comfortable with the puppet I am ready to create the counterpart which will blow peoples minds  over the next few months as a side project.

    I will post the progress here

                talk soon.

                           justin
         


7 comments:

Shelley Noble said...

2nd try

Awesome news, Justin. I've never seen a better animator than yourself. In my mind, you are among the finest on the planet to have ever lived.

The only good news about your being up at LAIKA is that it means there's a small chance that Shel and A. might come for a little visit one day while you're away.

Feel better soon and take exceptionally good care of yourself.

Joel Fletcher said...

Wow. A big announcement indeed. Congratulations! No need to be terrified, you are more than capable for this mission. To me, the only reason for concern would be the company culture, which I have heard about personally from former employees and via glassdoor.com, is pretty bad. However, Laika does create the best stop-motion in the world. So ya gotta live with that dichotomy if you want to work on their cool movies. You must be held in high esteem by the company, and have worked there before… it should be awesome!

Thanks for the explanation about the Dragon's Lair Dirk tests. Don Bluth should now realize that your are no ordinary fan, and should be blown away.

gl. said...

Wow, welcome back to Portland, Justin! :D LAIKA is lucky to have you.

Alonso said...

Kick Some ASS!!

Good luck with the family, that sounds super hard to be apart.

That Dirk stuff looks awesome, super fun.

you gotta mention the podcast you were on :) http://www.toontalkspodcast.com/?p=318

amoebaboy said...

welcome back, it seems to be the time to resurrect dusty long abandoned blogs, used to visit regularly when things were in full swing with dogonauts.

the LAIKA gig is great news ! top man.
world class animation requires a world class animator end of story.

all the best mate :)

pkbrooks said...

Justin,

I was beginning to think you had lost interest in the blog. I keep coming back here checking to see if you have posted. Over a year. Glad you got the rest, but glad your back, missed seeing your work.

- Tim Sormin - said...

Whatever it takes to get us more stop-mo brilliance here on your blog!

Oh, but you're not truly "bad" unless you have one of these: http://vimeo.com/116585007