Street Smart

While mostly solving production design problems with drawing and digital paintings these days, there's still the side of my resume where I once pursued the art of animation, both hand drawn and digital. I'm not entirely sure where my student film from Sheridan college lives at this moment, might be tucked away at my mother's place somewhere? (If I find it I'll update) However, I do have an digital copy of Street Smart, an animated short I made in 2002-2003 during my studies in digital animation at Vancouver Film School. Below are a few concept sketches, production stills, and 3D model turn arounds that survived from the project.

The movie below is a story board reel used to time out my scenes and animation keys. I remember spending a good chunk of my time tweaking and figuring this out before any 3D animation was touched. Ultimately it made the 3D production a lot easier to manage and execute on with a solid plan done cheap with pencil and paper. No duh sort of speak :)

Ultimately, I ended up with a short film titled Street Smart after months of scratching my head trying to get the software problems solved on top of artistic issues. At the time, it was shown in the 2004 Hiroshima film festival for best student film! Was very flattered to say the least. Here's the demo reel version that was packaged for employers. I ended up taking the first job I got offered and never got a chance to shop around. I sometimes wonder where I could have ended up if I kept my options opened and sent out demo reels. Regardless, I could'nt be any happier than I am today, working professionally doing what I love :)

Cheers to the VFS faculty and classmates for the experience, and a special thanks to William Bates, Paul Tanner, and Diego Bergia "the animation bandit" for getting me through towards the end of the project.