Carol of the Elves

Carol of the Elves from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

Well, I finished the film last friday, so here it is. I may be tweaking a few things here and there over the next couple weeks, but this is pretty much it. I had a lot of fun making it, and I hope you have fun watching it!

P.S. I recommend Vimeo for uploading videos. The file was almost 300 megs and Vimeo took it like a champ. I think most video uploading sites limit it to 100megs, so if you want to keep good quality, Vimeo's the way to go

The First 30

The First 30 from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

The first 30 seconds is now DONE. Although since its mostly just a zoom in to a background its not that much work. I've still got a ways to go before the rest will be complete.

Another 24 Hour Film

24 Hour Film from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

Decided to take a break from the film by making another one. This time the word of the day was: curiosity.

Rough Animation Reel

Rough Animation Reel from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

The rough animation for the film is essentially complete. I'm kind of refining things a bit during cleanup, so hopefully it will look a bit better in the end.

Feb 8 Reel

A few more additions. Still need to update the sound fx.

EDIT: I've been told the videos aren't loading for some people. I think it has something to do with blogger's video uploader. Here's another version that should work:

Carol of the Elves, Feb 8th Rough Cut from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

Feb 3 Reel

More progress...

Scene 026

The first "finished" scene from the film. I'll probably be tweaking a few things, and I think the BG needs work. I don't know if I mentioned this but I am drawing it all on paper, not tradigitally as I had previously said I would. I kind of like the scratchier lines, not that normal people would even notice the difference. It was coloured digitally in Digicel Filpbook, with two tone, and a slight gradient over the whole character which I think looks cool.

There's a better quality version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWX21Jiy_jw

Electropolis Online (for real this time)

Electropolis from Kevin McCullough on Vimeo.

This was our 3rd Year Group Film that we made last year. My group members included: myself, Adam Trout, Allison Neil, Amanda Stocker, Dan Seddon, Dawnson Chen, Debbie Yu, Dimas Mohammad, Giorgio Mavrigianakis, Hank Choi, Jason Walmsley, Kevin McCullough, and Ki Eun Suh.

Rough Cut With Some Animation

The most recent rough cut of the film so far. Mostly layouts with really rough poses, with a few scenes rough animated. Some of the sound effects are out of sync as I haven't updated them in a while

Animation Test for the Ol' Film

A little animation test I did before starting any animating on the actual film. This was done completely digitally in Digicel Flipbook. I was planning on doing my entire film in it, rough animation, clean up animation, colouring, etc, but after doing a cleanup test today I'm beginning to have doubts. The perfect laser line you get from cleaning up the flipbook way sounded good in theory, but it really drained the life out of the drawing. I'll give it another shot tomorrow, but if it doesn't look good I might be doing it all on paper after all.

Mr Mittens' Big Day

This past sunday was the first annual Sheridan Animation 24hour Filmmakingathon. Basically, you come in at noon, they pick a theme from a hat, and either individually or in a group you make a very short film in 24 hours.
Me and Nathan partnered up. The theme was 'revenge.' And, our first idea ended in failure after about 12 hours. It was about a chef in a restaurant who gets pissed off when a picky customer keeps sending food back. It was bordering a minute and a half long, had 3 or 4 main characters, plus crowdshots. It was more complicated than most 4th year films. Oh, and after assembling a leica reel, we realized that it sucked horribly. So around midnight we started over with a completely different idea and went nuts with it.
All in all, I'm glad we were able to come up with a story and characters and animate the whole thing in just 12 hours. Actually, it was more like 10, cause we finished 2 hours early (if there is such a thing as finished).
So, enough with the excuses. here it is:

11 Second Club September 09

I guess I didn't have enough to do this month, so I entered the 11 Second Club September 09 competition. They give you an 11 second long sound clip and then you have the month to animate to it. At the end of the month you submit it to the website and then everyone votes on the entries. Voting should be open for the next 5 days I think.

So I worked on this for a few hours here and there throughout the month. It was my first time entering, and it was pretty fun. I wasn't planning on entering the October competition, what with the film and all, but the sound clip is too good to pass up. We'll see if I can do it in time.

As for this one, there really isn't much going on story wise. I didn't plan it out much. It was mostly just a test in paperless animating. It was done entirely in Digicel Flipbook using the Cintiq Tablets at school. This is how I plan on animating for my film, so it was good practice.

EDIT:
Turns out it placed 11th out of 141 entries. A lot higher than I was expecting. Thanks to everyone who voted and commented. Although I doubt I'll be revisiting this piece, its all good advice that I can be sure to be wary of next time

Animation Test

Didn't have much to do today so I did my first animation test for my film. Just an elf running. It took a few tries to get it to look like a run, it's been a while since I did one of those. It is kind of on the fast side, though, could use a few more drawings.... This was done entirely in Flash. I'm planning on doing my whole film tradigitally (that is, drawn frame by frame, but on the computer). As much as I like the tactile feel of drawing on paper, this way is a lot more efficient. Immediate feedback without having to waste time at a line tester, not to mention not having to scan anything. I'll probably do it in Flipbook rather than Flash as it has a pretty good pencil tool. It's a good thing I'm getting all this practice drawing with a tablet at my co-op.

Demoreel Take 2

2009 Animation Demoreel Revised from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

Version 2. Basically the same thing, just with different music (no lyrics this time) and the frame blending on the stop mo stuff fixed.

Also check out my online portfolio at: http://adampockajportfolio.blogspot.com/

Or the official Sheridan College Internship Portfolio Site at: http://animation.sheridanc.on.ca/portfolio/2010/pockaj/

Demo Reel 2009

Animation Demoreel 2009 from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

My 2009 Demo real as it is. There are some things I would have liked to have gone back and fixed, but time is short I'm afraid. Gotta keep moving forward...

A "Reel Breakdown" should be posted sometime within the next few days.

Dialogue in the 3rd dimention

3D Dialogue Animation from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

Semester Six is off and rolling. Having spent half of the Christmas break working on our beloved leica reel for our film, I have neglected to post recently. Here's something from last semester that I added a bit to during the break. A dialogue scene in 3D. It's still looking pretty mechanical and there's some weird lighting stuff going on near the end, but its probably as finished as its going to get for the time being.

"Andy Rig" by John Doublestein, One Eyed Green Guy rig by Mike Watters.

Audio, of course, from 'Dumb and Dumber'.

Action Analysis

Finally finished my Action Analysis. A 30 second leica reel with one seen (precisely 5 seconds in length) fully animated, cleaned up, coloured, etc. It took ages to finalize everything buts it's nice to finally have something that's finished. Now we have to do it 80 more times for our film next semester...


This is the 30 second leica reel version with the 5 seconds intercut into it.


Action Analysis Animation from Adam Pockaj on Vimeo.

And this is just the animated 5 seconds.

Blogger and Youtube were being weird and making it 7 or 8 seconds, and in slo mo for some reason, so I tried using Vimeo to upload it. I think I will be doing that from now on (although it did cut off the last few frames).

Semi-Almost-Complete-Rough-Clean-Action-Analysis-Animation-Thing

This is what I've been working on all semester. I mean, plus the whole group film thing. These 5 seconds will be brought to finished colour in a week or two, so check back soon.

Mo Stop Mo

robots in disguise

Stopmo

Stop Motion assignment. I guess my inner animator decided that this assignment wasn't hard enough so it bumped the camera and broke the puppets arm off 2/3rds of the way through. After that it was being held on by will alone.

I thought it turned out pretty good, until I saw Dei's version of the same assignment and realised that I might as well quit now.



Here's an older assignment of cars bumping into eachother. It was kinda tough cause they had to follow a very specific path and crash at an exact frame number.




Also some Stop mo tests.

Puppets were made by Cuppa Coffee Studios in Toronto.