Super reference!

Milt Kahl (Mowgli) from Victor Ens on Vimeo.

Short film animatic
This is one iteration of the animatic for my short at AnimationMentor. I am now moving into the layout stage. I'll post that when it is more complete.

Animation Mentor: Class 5
A couple classes have passed since I've updated about my time at Animation Mentor. It's just been busy. It's hard to focus on anything but the deadline most of the time. Basically I have one more class before graduation. (if all goes well)
I thought I'd start posting my concept art for my short film. This is "The Janitor". He's my lead character. The working title of the short is Head Over Heels...at least until I come up with something better.

Quick turn around
These were some characters I was asked to come up with...with a couple hours to spare. They were used as art to promote four personality quizzes for USA TODAY's Better Life section online.

Class 3 begins...
...or I should say began. I am now 3 weeks into Class 3 (Intro to Acting) at AnimationMentor.com. This class is where I start to put all the basics to use. The last 6 months have been devoted to the fundamentals of animation. Now it's on to telling stories convincingly. To help me get a handle on how to do this I have Greg Kyle as my mentor. He spent 7 years with ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) working on the 3 most recent Star Wars films. He now works for Laika, a smaller feature film company, located in Portland, Oregon. I am excited to be working with him especially since I have been following Laika's progress over the last year or so.

Project 3 final
This is how I finished up the 2nd term at Animation Mentor. As I said in a previous post. This was a very challenging term. I learned so much and realized that there is much more to absorb. Technical aspects of MAYA set me back to a degree. My 3rd term begins this coming Sunday evening. I am anxious to see who my next mentor will be.

Project 2 Final
This was the final render of the box jump exercise. I am a complete novice at lighting scenes so it may be a bit over lit.

Project 3 planning
Well it's been almost a full month since my last post. I did not plan for that much time to past. And in that time— another term at Animation Mentor has come to an end. The last couple of weeks was incredibly challenging. More so than I could have ever expected. Not only creatively but personally as well. The birth of our daughter and the responsibilities of fatherhood introduced a completely new set of challenges. But ones I would never trade for the world. It has been a blast! So, here are the sketches of the last assignment as I promised.