Thine Festival Approacheth!

There's just a few more short weeks until 2 and 1/2 evenings/mornings of animation related hoopla ensues that is this year's SoDak Animation Festival.  There's a decent, though concentrated li neup of indie shorts - some fun stuff from MAKE studios of Minneapolis (semi-local?), the good ol' stock of NYC indie animations and some international entries that were a welcome surpise to get  thanks to Chris B. for calling on those folks.  Sita Sings the Blues, a groundbreaking feature-length animation by independent animator Nina Paley screens on Friday the 9th at 6 at the PAC.  And be there on Friday eve after the shows for the awards presentation, where one lucky SDSU student will be awarded a cash prize and a most coveted Golden Cowbell!

Check out the website for a rough schedule to date - more coming soon as we hammer down playlists.  Tell yourselves and your pals to plan on coming.  Free for SDSU students, faculty and staff and door prizes will be awarded including cool stuff from the art museum and gift cards from The Cottonwood Bistro.  So for crying out loud, go there and stay there!  Thanks for reading.

Troika to appear at SoDak!

Now it's official. Reid Thompson, creative director at Troika Design Group in Hollywood, CA will be the keynote speaker at this year's SoDak Animation Festival. Troika Design Group specializes in major network rebranding for broadcast and some pretty amazing motion graphics and animation. A must-see for students of animation, design, film and anyone interested in cool stuff on tv and how it gets made. Check out Troika's gloriousness at www.troika.tv.

Thompson will speak on the evening of October 8 at SDSU's Studio Theatre at the Performing Arts Center. More details to come at www.sodakanimation.com.

Summer Animation Complete

With much success, the hearty band of 10 students survived the intense 4-week course. As a teacher, I was hesitant to spend so much time focusing on "not animating yet" the first week, but as the projects developed, I was reassured that emphasizing the basic foundations - DRAWING, drawing , drawing- does indeed help - a lot! For future students, this'll be reincorporated into the regular semester. Who wouldn't want to go to the zoo to draw for a day for class??

Here's a highlight reel from some of the projects from the summer courses. The reel includes work from three levels - some of the student had never animated before, but will be sure to continue doing so in the future.

ANIMATION BOOT CAMP!

It's called Boot Camp for a reason. If they don't suffer irreparable damage during, they'll be stronger and better trained animators. Only 20 four hour sessions to learn and explore much of those 12 Principles of Animation. Stacked classes allow for basic students to look over the shoulders of those who've been there already - and the advanced folks can appreciate the foundations - and some choose to continue to draw on paper-which still looks great and it's refreshing as a teacher to hear from those who prefer paper and don't like the look of Flash -although 2D vector animation is the staple of my freelance work. It doesn't look like much to walk past the animation lab, but there is a lot of effort and concentration going on-maybe more so than during the full semesters. It'll be interesting to see the final projects and compare them to those made with 10 times the calendar space. "No pain , no gain" sometimes works for animation too - except for low back pain. Don't forget to get up and move around every now and then.


The "lab" - a former dining hall now reeks of concentration instead of rhubarb and potatoes. Summer animation classes keep the room busy and the old G5s whirring.

Kristin Hill works out the mechanics of a super fast run cycle and tumble.

Nick Sabol puts some frames on the pencil tester. The abacus in the Trusty G4 still works!
Dave Narang gets a kick out of his character in between watching YouTube prank videos.What's this? Stop-motion. How refreshingly analog. No one's done this for class here for thirty years. Trisha Naig and Autumn DeBoer roll out the fun for a festival signal film.

Is this The Infamous SoDak??

Nope. It's not. But it is a really cool painted textural monster character from Johnny Quest - a notoriously "efficient" limited animated series from 1960's era Hanna-Barbara. This was a integral part of tv watching when I was a wee lad. Watching them for educational and nostalgic purposes, I noticed how simple the writing was - plot? sort of. I don't think it would stand up to contemporary market audiences. Psycologists would have a field day with the cast though, as would PC-sticklers. For students, there's a great mummy-walk cycle in the opening credits - it can be found on youtube, of course. Check it.

As for the SoDak, more study is needed to locate the elusive beast. Reported to appear in Brookings, SD October 8-10 this Fall!

SDSU at KAFI 2009!

From left to right, Award Girl?, Cable Hardin-Advisor, Eric Say, Chris Biewer, Isaac Windham, Lynette Lobien.
A mere four semesters after the animation courses were retooled in the Department of Visual Arts at South Dakota State University, a team of students was able to enter the Cartoon Challenge and get accepted. It was very exciting to say the least. And a bit intimidating to be amongst very well-known schools with very well-established fully developed Animation majors. San Jose State form Cali and SCAD from Savannah, GA were among the top contenders and those expected to garner top prizes. San Jose did fantstically and did get both awards - and they were nice fellows all - our hero David Chai i heard crooned away at karaoke later in downtown kalamazoo, MI. However, the Jackrabbits from SDSU held our own. I think we were the first to turn in the project with a team of only four - the nine other teams had 5 members. Well done and success!

See the :30 PSA on "Innovative Educational Methods for 21st Century Learners" - finished in three and half days and fueled by cased of Red Bull and fart smells.

Up and Up

Not too fancy, but the website for animation at SDSU and related events is up. http://www.sodakanimation.com

Tell your friends, tell your enemies. Stay tuned for developments. One of the KAFI animators, Eric Say has pledged to help develop some media for the SoDak Animation Festival, which incidentally is held October 8-10 at the Performing Arts Center and the South Dakota Art Museum.

Volunteers needed. Looks good on yer resume and is a good way to meet folks.