Tag Archives: Wacom Cintiq

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Dan Forgione

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Dan Forgione, and I am an Animation Director at Titmouse,Inc, working on Season 1 of Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
My first job ever was as a caddy at a local country club, and in HS I worked in the food service dept at a local hospital where I was part of an assembly line putting together patient meals. I later went on to wait tables, bar tend, and even manage a restaurant during my first few years of college. Also I originally went to college to become a Phys Ed teacher, but transferred after a year an a half to art school.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
I’m proud of all the work I have done both past and present, but there are a few that stand out in particular. Most recently would definitely be the work I’m doing at Titmouse, as well as the work I’ve done at Six Point Harness, where I was able to work on a number of projects with great crews of artists, some of whom have become my closest friends since moving to LA two years ago. I also got to work on a very unique project back in NY with Flickerlab, where I got to traditionally animate an entire 2- min piece for BNY Melon on paper napkins which was then shot as stop motion.  Before that, there were numerous projects that I did with Dancing Diablo, including several spots for the Bronx Zoo .  And of course, the pencil test I did as my proposal to my beautiful wife, Amanda.
How did you become interested in animation?
I always tell people I consider animation my “astronaut dream.” You know when kids are asked what they want to be when they grow up, and they respond with “firefighter,” or “superhero,” or “astronaut,” mine was “Disney animator.” As a child I loved to draw and by the time I was old enough to Continue reading

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Aminder Dhaliwal

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What is your name and your current occupation? 
 My name’s Aminder Dhaliwal and I’m a storyboard revisionist at Nickelodeon .
What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I wish I could say I did something crazy like ‘My first job was digging graves’ or something, but I’d be lying. I’m lucky enough to have skipped working retail, while everyone around me was working at the mall in highschool I got into painting and designing murals, I’ve never even had the chance to checkout half the murals I designed, I had the chance to hand paint two of my creations. I hope they’re still around 🙂 or at the very least i hope the graffiti over them is funny!

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
My first job at Nickelodeon was on Robot and Monster – which was awesome, the crew was amazing and so supportive! Working on Fairly Odd Parents has been surreal, considering I used to watch it back when it first premiered! I’m also really proud to have interned in Beijing as an undergraduate on some commercials for the AniWow festival – that was an amazing experience.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business? 
I was born and raised in England, at 12 years old my family packed up and moved to Canada where I finished highschool and went to Sheridan College. After graduating from Sheridan I was lucky enough to Continue reading
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Syd M Fini

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​What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Syd M Fini ,and I’m storyboard Artist at SO! animation,Fictionville Studio and Brave man Media,I worked on two Animation shows at SO! Animation : LEARN OUR HISTORY and MONEY BRIGHT KIDS and We are going to start a new show soon . At Fictionville Studio I’m working on character designing and storyboards for a shadow play based on a Persian mythology .  And some Live action Commercials at Brave Man Media.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I started with a feature film . I got lucky and I did a test for a director who needed storyboard artist .I was 20.I got the job and I dropped out college. The craziest part was he wanted me to be on the set everyday which is weird for a storyboard artist .It was a big production movie Called : Farzand-e-Sobh( and the Director was Behrooz Afkhami. He planted to get just one shot every day at Dawn or golden hour in the sun set . So I spent almost 3 years on that project . when the production was over I was 23 and it was 2006 and it was IRAN . The movie was banned because of political reasons and never saw the light of the screen but I learned a lot from Mr Afkhami and that 3 years was my college .After Farzand-e-Sobh I worked on another 3 feature Live action movies .CHE ,TODAY,The Child and the Angel and So many TV Commercials .Until I get the chance to Direct Animations and show what I learned how to Visually tell stories by doing storyboards for real movie directors.

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
“Back From The Other Side” was the first big production animation that I directed and I’m so proud to be a part of the team and the shadow play that I’m working on now is so exciting .The director Hamid Rahmanian,He is such an amazing artist and he is so out of the box.

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
 Im from IRAN and as I said before I have almost ten years of experience in the field of visual story telling and I was Continue reading

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Aaron Sowd

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What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Aaron Sowd. I’m currently the president and art director at Aaron Sowd Productions, Inc. We specialize in storyboards and animatics for feature films. We also do some 3-D and previs work. Right now, we work exclusively for Will Smith and Overbrook Entertainment, doing development work. It’s a dream job, and they keep us very busy.

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I’ve worked as a professional artist more or less full time since I was 18. I spent about six years in comics before working on the Anastasia and Titan A.E. style guides for Fox. I was the art director at Stan Lee Media. I’ve been freelancing in just about every media since: film, TV, advertising and video games.

[video src="http://www.aaronsowd.com/Videos/Target_Race_Skeeta_1_2.mp4" /]

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
After Earth comes out this summer, and that was a blast to work on. I got to storyboard some of the additional scenes and meet M. Night. My favorite project is the one I’m working on right now — which is top secret, of course. Working on the first Transformers film, Solaris, the Transformers and The Simpsons rides at Universal, and the God of War and Rage video games were all career highlights for me.

How did you become interested in animation?
As a kid I grew up with no TV, so I got interested in comic books first, then animation. Our local library used to carry the Tintin and Asterix collections, and later I got into Marvel and DC. The first animation I can remember seeing was Continue reading

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Sam Ellis

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What is your name and your current occupation?
Sam Ellis, Creative Director at Never Say Die Studios LLC.  I also teach Animation, Story Art, and Concept Design to college students, 2 days a week at the Art Institute of Washington.

 

What are some of the crazier jobs you had before getting into animation?
I was a supervisor at a quick service chicken restaurant, a Mormon missionary in Arizona, a house framer in historic Williamsburg, a pizza delivery driver, a burger cashier, I built curbs all over Virginia Beach, an off-ice hockey linesman, as well as quite a few more freelance art jobs.

 

What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of?
Well, the one project that really helped launch my career and that is going into its 5th season is Archer. I was Lead Designer on Archer Season one and left at the end to go work on personal projects, but we were wrapping up an episode of the short lived Xtacles on adult swim and Adam Reed was getting ready to pitch a new show around called Duchess, Neal Holman was too busy with his other duties so Matt Thompson passed off the majority of the work over to me and Chad Hurd. I was to draw Duchess (later to be known as Archer), his mother, and his father, while Chad drew Archer’s love interest, his foil, and his car.  After his pitch was successful and a pilot was green-lit, I got to do quite a bit more designing, Chad and I were pretty delighted to start making some changes to the designs when we got hold of them, there was some great stuff already done by Neal Holman and Eric Simms, but with Neal working on creating backgrounds before we found Trinity Animation and Eric taking some heavy animation duties, Chad and I were like kids in a candy shoppe. We had a blast on that first episode, it came together real fast and we came up with some interesting solutions.  Even though I left Archer I still love the crew and am tickled when I see some of the art I did show up all the time, also I get a kick out of seeing my son every time I see young Archer as he was the model for it, Although he has never seen or probably will see Archer.  Outside of Archer I have been able to work on Cory Edward’s Krogzilla with the fine folks at GreenShoe Animation, Jason Shwartz’s company–man totally forgot, working with those guys let me work with Disney and Marvel I am heck’a proud of that I also got to foray into gaming and got to do some designs for that Avengers ultimate alliance game–that was fun.

 

Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business?
I currently live in Spotsylvania VA, and I grew up on the east coast, most of my life was spent in Virginia Beach, VA.  I always wanted to be an animator and a comic artist, I love telling stories and find that using pictures and being able to draw was another great skill set in being able to Continue reading

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Cintiq Alternative: Ugee 1910B 19″ Monitor Drawing Tablet review

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MpTHZa6eP8

If you remember a while back we reported on a Cintiq alternative called the Ugee 1910B 19″ Monitor Drawing Tablet which you can currently purchase on Amazon for only $429 and users really seemed to like. Today I was alerted to a fantastic and very lengthy in depth review of  the device itself by an artist named Holly. The review points to an unboxing video as well as two other demos of using the tablet monitor and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the results. If I needed a new Cintiq I might actually drop the cash for this one.

You can read the full review here.

Of course you REALLY don’t need a huge tablet like this when you can still buy an LE 1600 for LESS THAN $100 at Gainsaver which works perfectly well for a cheap digital sketchbook. Also recently I purchased a J3400 from eBay also made by Motion which I’ll put through it’s paces and hopefully do a review.

If the Ugee makers want to send us a demo unit we’d LOVE to take the tablet monitor through it’s paces.