I Return-- Wiser-- and with the Promise of New Animation

The holiday buzz has calmed down around the house, and the halls are sufficiently decked. My holiday season began with me earning my degree in animation from SCAD, almost a year early (hooray high school credits!). While I will always be grateful to the university for all that I learned, I have to say I'm happy for the (temporary) free time to really focus on personal projects that I want to work on-- not to mention the chance to get a full night's sleep...

My senior year in a nutshell.

That being said, I am not thrilled with any of the dialogue tests I have done, and don't deem them "reel-worthy" so I decided to challenge myself to a new dialogue piece with two characters (my first time attempting this). It's relatively poignant, with the holidays right around the corner, but-- more importantly-- offers up some really nice opportunities for subtle animation-- which I really enjoy.

Enough rambling-- Here's the clip:

I am currently testing out a new workflow, and am animating lip sync in passes (similar to the method outlined in Stop Staring). I will post the completed lip sync later on today and blocking one/thumbnails tomorrow.

Stay tuned,

-Scott

A New Day, A New Film

Having somewhat settled back into a working routine in regards to film-making. The remainder of my summer will be spent working on my undergraduate thesis film "Do Not Disturb

As a result of an overlap in the productions of both of my films, I feel that the quality of this film suffered a bit, as I consciously set it aside because the deadline was much further away. Now is the time for me to bridge the gap in quality and ensure that the film lives up to my original vision.

Head on over to the production blog, where I will be documenting the entire process. As I am doing the bulk of the work myself, documenting the process will show me where my weaknesses lie. In the meantime, this blog will continue to be updated sparingly, as I focus on the film.

Cheers,

-Scott

Edit: my failure to update even one blog made my "goal" of staying up to date on two blogs laughable. I hope to get to a breakdown of my film process later on, but for now will simply post the trailer once it is complete.

Pretty Dead Trailer

As alluded to by the last post, my near-six-month absence from the internet has been a result of the work I have put into my directorial debut-- Pretty Dead. Myself and a team of 7 SCAD undergrads managed to complete a 3 minute film with four characters in just over 10 weeks.

Though complete, the film is not quite to the point where we would like it to be for festival submissions. We will be spending the next few months polishing it and prepping it for a winter festival run.

At some point I will have to post on here a write-up documenting the process of making the film, but for now I will stick with the trailer:



In the meantime, feel free to check out the Production Blog to follow our progress and view iterations and in-process work.

Cheers,

-Scott

New Site, "New" Look, No Promises

Hello again,

I resume my laughable attempt at maintaining this blog after a near-six-month hiatus. I have spent that time directing two different animated shorts. Pretty Dead -- a SCAD collaboration; and-- Do Not Disturb --my own senior thesis. I have also developed a look, or "brand" with which to market myself as an animator to potential employers. The blog had been briefly updated to reflect the look, but has now been completely overhauled to be cohesive with my personal portfolio site; which I will now shamelessly plug.


Head on over to www.scottkennell.com to see a collection of my work, resume, and all of my reels. In the meantime, I will continue to work on my films and possibly update this blog to be a more accurate reflection of what I am currently working on.

No Promises....

I will, however, attempt to keep my site clean and professional-- serving solely as a collection of best work-- and be more candid with my blog; revealing my individual thought processes and workflow behind projects.

Stay tuned,

-Scott

Stylizing Characters, 3

Our third character design was to be based on Mark Twain. Having not yet designed an anthropomorphic animal yet, I chose to base the design on an owl (specifically an eagle owl). Though I believe it is the most derivative of the three characters I have designed thus far, I am fairly happy with the amount of personality I managed to give him, and how much he reflects Twain's persona.

Back to work...

-Scott

Stylizing Characters, Take Two

As promised, here is the second installment of my character design class. We had less time than this one, and overall I'm not as happy with it, but it isn't bad. There are a couple issues in the mouth/nose, as I got a little too focused on inventive ways to create a mouth (opting for a suggestion of one in the jagged cupcake wrapper). I feel that the design would be strengthened overall had I just not attempted to justify a mouth, and just kept the eyes. This time we had to pick either an object or an animal, write a new bio, and pick a new celebrity inspiration.

Next week: Mark Twain as a yet-to-be-determined animal.

Cheers,

-Scott

Stylizing characters, 1

In the first post of what will be eventually be a four post series, I have included a little packet that I had to put together for my Stylizing Characters in 3D class. The assignment was to write a short biography of a character from a given image (the bully) and then collect reference images to develop a character based on any celebrity (Tom Hanks).

The idea was to attempt to characterize both images, while defining and realizing our characters on more of an emotional level before the design process begins. I have also added a couple pages of my development of the character which mostly consist of doodles and thumbnails.

Cheers,

-Scott