Proud Teacher Moments

When I started formally teaching about 5 years ago, I couldn't have known that part of the satisfaction of that job would be seeing the success former students go on to achieve.

So here's another "proud teacher moment."

Annecy is a huge festival, VERY hard to get into, and a student I worked very closely with has made it in. I'm so proud!

Read all about Carla Veldman's accomplishment here.

Stay Inspired

I'm finding it really hard to post on my blog lately. Life has sort of moved me into the direction of living in the world, but not blogging about it.

I've got lots of exciting stuff happening in terms of animation projects, but it's hard to find time to tend to everything (this blog being one of those things that is suffering a bit).

And life stuff (non-animation) is throwing massive stuff my way, as well...

If you follow this, or if you check in semi-regularly, I really do thank you. I'll keep trying to update things.

In the meantime, go learn more about and/or watch more of this guy's stuff, preferably with a little kid:




No matter what, go out and make something you love, with your own two hands, and show it to someone. Preferably someone you love.

Kevin Parry and Tim Burton

I had a super proud teacher moment last week.

Tim Burton has a major show (of his art in general) opening in Toronto. He was in town to promote it.

Kevin Parry graduated from Sheridan's Animation program last year, with his short film The Arctic Circle.

Kevin and his film were selected (along with other student films from around the Toronto area) to show his film to Burton and have a conversation around it.

Burton honestly digs his film, it's really nice to see.

Tim Burton on The Arctic Circle and Stop-Motion Animation from Kevin Parry on Vimeo.

More Exposure For My Zombie Flick

Happy to discover that Canadian Animation Resources has profiled my 30 seconds of zombie-ness.

You can read the wee article (and watch the movie again) here.

"Medium Hard Puppet Making"

Today I did a lecture on "medium hard puppet making".

"Easy puppet making" is taking a bit of epoxy and mixing it with armature wire.

"Medium hard puppet making" is still pretty easy (with practice), doesn't require any power tools, and gives you quite nice results.

"Hard"- cutting your own aluminum armatures (need a few power tools, and quite a bit of precision)

"Silly Hard"- making stainless steel ball-and-socket armatures (good ones). Why bother unless you're planning to be a pro puppet maker? Or are just really into metal work. If you need a ball and socket armature, buy it.

Anyway, here's a few pics of a semi-finished puppet:






And here's two images of the how-to: drawing him to scale, then on another piece of paper "light box" him around his edges, and then use that to draw in your armature of wire and epoxy, and make that armature (always working to scale)...