Yankee Gal: Amazing short film

Produced at Supinfocom Aniamtion School in France. Beautiful work all around! The art direction and style of this piece along with the precise story telling and stunning visuals make it very unique. Check it out!

Best. Acceptance Speech. EVARRR!!

Kunio Kato For Best Animated Short - La Maison en Petits Cubes

This one definitely deserved the oscar. Great film! Watch it if you haven't yet:


See the full list of winners here.

Updates: Band Together

I've been pushing through the rigging phase of the short lately. 3 of the characters have body rigs and 2 have face rigs as of right now. I was hoping to get all 4 main characters done by the new year, but that seems like it might not happen now. I am happy with my progress overall though. I finally have some animation to show! Check it out:

And.. if you hadn't noticed already, the film has a logo! Its about time it had one of those..

Gobelins Student Films

The latest batch of student films from French animation school Gobelins is online now. As usual, its awesome stuff!

Character Model Progress: Elder

I have been working pretty hard on Band Together lately. I actually finished this model a few weeks ago, but decided to keep working on some details. I think its pretty close now. This guy is the Tiwi tribe Elder, and calls the shots for the group. Hence the sweet hat. The textures on him are very preliminary, but the color should be similar in the final version. I have a few more details to add to the rest of the models, (teeth, mouth interiors, ect.) but they are all done. I've moved on to the rigging process and I am currently looking for a good modeler to help with the sets. Then its on to story reels and tweaking. I cant wait!

The original concept art for the Elder

Radiohead Animation Contest Finalists

Animboom has narrowed the field of contestants down to 13 entries in the Radiohead music video contest. Go check them out and vote until June 30. There are some really nice creative entries in there!

Big Buck Bunny: Open source aniamtion

*I posted this video a couple weeks ago, but it turned out that it hadn't been officially released yet, so now that it has, I am re-posting. Enjoy!

Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

This project was created completely with software available for free on the internet. Pretty amazing. The story animation and rendering are top notch. It shows money does not create good movies. For more information about the film, go here.

Presto, a Pixar article

There is an awesome article over on awn.com about the new Pixar short "Presto", which will play in front of Wall-E in June. It details the creative process that was utilized to bring this slap-stick comedy to life. Its a good read.

*EDIT*
Just saw this clip on cartoon brew from Presto. Looks awesome!

Environment Concept art

Here is the first in a series of concept work for Band Together, my short animated film. The story takes place in a jungle gripped by a deep freeze. I have a few more drawings done that I ned to paint up in photoshop, and I will have more time when Hulk finishes next week, so expect to see more soon.

Character Concepts

These are some of the first concepts I did for Band Together. The look of the Golath character is still evolving a bit, but its almost done. Some of the models are already started and the concepts for the environment are being developed as well.

Anouncing: Band Together

Over the Christmas break this year I had a lot of stories running through my head. Traveling across the country always seems to stoke my imagination. I always get the urge to do a short film and since the time is never going to be just right, I decided to go for it.

The story I wrote during the vacation became "Band Together". This will be the basis for my short. It follows the story of Chi, the smallest in a tribe of tiny little forest creatures. They are being starved by a giant beast which guards the source of their food. Chi has to find the strength to unite the tribe in their quest for food. Their fate depends on trusting one another and to defeat the larger, stronger, hungrier beast.

The drawing above was the first one I did as the story developed in my head. The look I am going for is kind of a "Dr. Seuss" meets "Where the Wild Things Are". I have some concept drawings done for the characters and I will post them once I get the color versions done. I've been really busy at work but I've stayed motivated and will continue to work on this as much as I can.

If there is anyone interested in getting involved with this project, get in contact with me - jvass@jvportfolio.com. I could use some modelers and environment artists to get this project moving.

Father and Daughter

I've been looking at alot of short animated films in my free time lately. This one stood out to me. It has good animation, great style and a touching story. Thats a hard combination to accomplish.