One more thing...

Stocks down? Go see UP!

Pixar had the honor of ringing the bell to close the New York Stock Exchange today, while celebrating the opening of our latest feature, Up. You can see info and a clip of the event here (look for me near the back row - I'm one of the greenish pixels). You can't do any more trading, so why not go see the film? Right now. I'll wait.

Meet the Spy

Here's another brilliant cinematic sequence from the guys at Valve. It was about a year ago that I posted some other Team Fortress 2 Character Trailers, and I'm glad to see they're still making them! Great writing, design and animation, and a healthy dose of sex and violence.

And in case you missed this one (like I did) here's Meet the Sniper. Enjoy!

UPDATE: You can see all the character movies in high quality here.

Some old stuff

Enough of all this new stuff, let's jump in the Way-Back Machine! It's the summer of 1999, I've been hired as an animator at Pixar and I'm working on "Monsters, Inc." - the other Pete Docter film. I have no feature film animation experience (or much of any animation experience at all), I'm still getting the hang of Pixar's software and I'm worried that I'll get canned as soon as they find out I'm winging it! These are the memories that returned to me as I was thumbing through a stack of old planning drawings I did for Monsters. For posterity I've uploaded a few to my Animation Thumbs Gallery. It's nice to see that my drawing has gotten better, and I'm pretty confident that my animation has, too. They haven't fired my yet, so I must be doing something right!

Up at the Cannes Film Festival

In case you weren't aware, "Up" had the honor of being the opening selection at this year's Festival de Cannes. It was screened in 3D with subtitles to rave reviews. Here's a video of an ensuing press conference with Director Pete Docter, Co-Director Bob Peterson, Producer Jonas Rivera and Executive Producer John Lasseter.

This One Time...

This one time... from nelson boles on Vimeo.

Here's a great animated short by CalArts student Nelson Boles. I really love the look of it and the whimsical style and storytelling.

Let's Do Nothing!

I hate to recycle other people's blog posts, but I wanted to spread the word on this. Jim Capobianco's Leonardo blog mentions a new children's book by animator Tony Fucile (Incredibles, Iron Giant, etc.) coming out this week. It's called "Let's Do Nothing", and there's even a trailer animated by Fucile himself! The book's publisher has posted an interview with Fucile here, in PDF format.