New puppy

Running on little sleep lately, but I am definitely enjoying life... might have to do with the fact that my new black pug is such an entertainer! I love when he sits like a human.

perfection

my love... makes me so happy :)

We won... again! :)

We won the Visual Effects Society (VES) award for Best Pre-Rendered Visuals in a Video Game over the weekend. So far we have won every year since this award was created! Of course it has only been two years, but it's fun to say it like that...
Complete VES winner list
Pictured from left to right: Jeff Chamberlain (Director), Phillip Hillenbrand Jr (Producer)

Real-Time Animating...

Dance and animation are essentially the same thing -- just different means of creating aesthetic movement through a visual medium. Watching this video of Tony Tran just made me think about how much work this guy must have put in to get to this level of mastery. This guy gets it. He's an animator in my book... with insane musicality!

appearances can be deceiving...

This photo is taken from a dutch news website. The kid dressed up as The Joker with white make-up and all, and murdered several babies in a nursery with a knife. Weird because he doesn't look that crazy or stupid to me. I'll admit I am guilty of being judgmental based on appearance a little too often (aren't we all?). Some of the best friends I ever had in my life came as a surprise through time. Some of my worst enemies seemed like great people at first. Blah blah blah, never judge a book by its cover! :)

Follow your gut

Over the winter break I started to think about one of my dance classes and decided I should probably drop it because it was starting to get a little dangerous. It's a hip hop class, but the teacher is a breakdancer, and a lot of the moves have been getting more and more difficult and gymnastic. I'm more of a popper than a breaker anyway, and I just started having bad feelings about that class. However, when I called to cancel, they told me I had already signed a contract for the next six months and the deadline to cancel was January 1st. Sigh... I figured no big deal, the class is pretty fun -- I'll just keep going. So what happens in the very first class of 2009? I tear my meniscus of course! Landed on my left foot completely bent underneath me and twisted inwards. Felt two small pops and right away knew it was probably not a good injury. I had flashbacks of Booby Miles in the movie Friday Night Lights. My short-lived dancing career was suddenly over. Haha, well, not completely, I'm being a little dramatic, but it is really unfortunate and frustrating that I had a feeling something bad was going to happen but just ignored it because of the money. I'll find out on Monday whether or not I'll need surgery... I'm really hoping I don't.
The moral of the story: Follow your gut instincts even if it costs you $50/month!

Edit: turns out it was a gastroc tear, not a meniscus tear, so no surgery needed! What a relief.

Added my old reel to YouTube :)

I made this demo reel at the end of 2005 and got a job to work on Pirates of the Carribean 2 and then a Cinematics position at Blizzard Entertainment immediately after. Please note contact information is out of date.

starting!

Inspired to start blogging for some reason. I go through many "phases" in life and try to reinvent myself all the time, so I thought it might be interesting to portray bits and pieces of myself on a website. I guess I'll start with work. I am a Senior Cinematics Animator at Blizzard Entertainment, and here are some of the projects we have completed. Currently I am working on cinematics for Starcraft 2.