Tag Archives: Maya

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Benjamin Norcross

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Benjamin Norcross, Character Animator for games.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Ski bum/lift operator, Medic/Corpsman in the U.S. Military, Veterinarian Assistant

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Free Realms: for the kid demographic but the characters were fun and I was never told to tone it down a bit.  I could literally do what ever came to mind and for animation, nothing is better than having total creative freedom.  I made a duck-billed dinosaur do yoga!

How did you become interested in animation?
I love art and I was very seriously considering graphic design for marketing and I found a school that looked good.  When I got out of the Military the school had been bought out by the Art Institute.  Not only did they

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Sergio Paez

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Sergio Paez, and I’m a director and Story Supervisor working on film and television projects. I cofounded www.StoryboardArt.org, which is an online community for visual storytellers and storyboard artists. In addition to my professional work, I also do many lectures and workshops to help younger artists get into the business.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
When I was in high school, I used to make fake IDs back when California driver’s licenses didn’t have a hologram. I made a lot of money under the table, and I was such a good student that no one ever suspected that I was making forgeries. One day I was at my friend’s house and we were all watching TV when a commercial for a local art school came on the television. It flashed titles on screen that went something like, “You are the yearbook photographer extraordinaire” or “Drawing caricatures is easy for you”. Finally a title flashed on the screen that said,”You’ve mastered the art of making fake IDs.” All my friends turned me and started calling me out.  The commercial was for the Academy of Art University art school, and ironically I ended up going to that school. The fake ID part had nothing to do with it, but it’s a true story nonetheless.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Strangely enough, one of my first animation jobs is the one I remember the fondest. I worked on a Spanish /French co-production called The Three Wise Men in Spain. It was the first time I really sunk my teeth into doing animation and storyboards on a big production. It was a small team but the talent level was really high and I had to hustle to keep up. I loved every minute of it. It was the first time I Continue reading

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Luis Zúñiga

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Luis Zúñiga, and I’m an artist at Fair Play Labs, what I do there is concept art, illustration, background art,

What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Luis Zúñiga, and I’m an artist at Fair Play Labs, what I do there is concept art, illustration, background art, UI design, UI animation, UI integration, 3d animation, modelling, rigging, texturing and unity 3d integration.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Well, I’m not the craziest person, but I’ve done handicraft, I worked at a couple of shops, I’ve been a pizza making/delivery guy, a guitarist for tips, and I’ve done some construction work before going to college at age 18, since I began to study digital animation, all work I’ve done has been in the animation/illustration area.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I loved to be part of Poster Punch’s second and fourth exhibition, The Pin-up Drink and Poster Punch Open MMXIII, I also loved to be part of El Obsequio, my graduation project, I’m glad we were able to get the work done and to create something we felt and still feel very proud of, that graduation project was under my name only, but I am really grateful to the +20 people that was by my side working on it. At Fair Play I’ve been part of +12 video games and I liked the team dynamics in most of them, but there’s one that I totally loved being part of, mostly because it is till now our most ambitious project of them all, Color Guardians, and its almost done, I love to work on my solo and team projects, all of them have been great and have taught me a lot, but those I mentioned are the ones that comes first to my mind.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from Costa Rica, and my insertion to the animation/illustration business came naturally, I was Continue reading

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James Wood

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is James Wood.  I am currently employed as a freelance animator under contract with a major Canadian animation studio creating character animation for a tv show.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
One summer I got a job working in a hospital as a photographer’s assistant.  One of the duties required me to take photos in the operating room during surgeries – usually done on Fridays.  On the day when I was “indoctrinated” into that task, I was assured the surgeon was doing “just a little operation on someone’s hand.  It shouldn’t be very extensive” he said.  Little did I know, they were doing an elbow reconstruction.  When I walked in, I thought the patient was lying on their stomach with their elbow bent out behind them.  Then I realized the patient was lying on his back, and their elbow was opened up and bent (urp) the wrong way.  I didn’t hurl, but I was mighty shaky – not a good state for taking pictures.  Every Friday for the rest of the summer… I hid out in the darkroom!

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I was fortunate enough to work with the highly-skilled, very clever, fun, very hard-working people at Weta Workshop animating Dragon and other animals on the tv show “Jane and the Dragon”.  It meant I got to spend a year in New Zealand which was pretty interesting.  The work was quite demanding, but I think the end product was pretty darn good.  Also, in the summer of 2012 I did a  short for an animation contest.  We were given sound tracks and six weeks to animate whatever we wanted.  Just a few weeks before the contest I’d finished programming an autorigger, so I whipped up a character model, rigged it, modeled and rigged props and created a location, animated like crazy, added sound effects to the audio and posted the thing about two and a half weeks after starting it.  Sure the model is crude, and the animation is far from wonderful, and even though I didn’t win the contest (no comment) I feel very proud of my work.  The autorigger worked great (it took about an hour to fully rig the character), the animation is serviceable, and the whole thing tells more story than what was conveyed by the audio.  I realized how do-able it was to create a reasonably good short and it was great to hear how well it was received.  I’m eager to do more.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business? 
I’m from London, Ontario in Canada.  When I was a kid, I was always drawing and making Continue reading

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Izabela Bzymek

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Izabela Bzymek, currently i am animating on the feature” the nut job” Warner bros.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I was a knife seller..cutco knives, a dollarama teller, a Licks ice scream scooper…

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Directing and Animating on an NFB film “Oma’s Quilt”, animating on “Escape from Planet Earth”.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I was born in Poland.. in my arts `Canterbury arts“ high school two Disney guys came and made a

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Nichole Ceinos

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Nichole Ceinos. Graphic Designer / Animator.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
Nothing crazy. I was a customer service rep at AT&T, finance department. Not fun.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I participated on the 2012 august competition for 11 second club. I love subtle animation and dialogues, so I took advantage of the opportunity and did a close up of the characters face and went for it. Everything fell into place and I made the deadline. I’m really happy with it and I think it’s the best I’ve done so far even though it’s not my most recent.  I’m also proud of my 2011 university Demo Reel. Not because of the animation because it was not my best, at all. But because it reminds me that I accomplished something that was very important to me.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I’m from Caguas, Puerto Rico. I moved to Florida to study computer animation at Full Sail University. I would watch Pixar movies and they would always Continue reading