Workshop on colour and light by Pixar’s Director of Photography Sharon Calahan @ VIEW Conference 2011, Italy

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Sep 102011

Ciao everyone!

I’ve just been told about the VIEW Conference, which is an international event in Italy on Computer Graphics, Digital Cinema, 3D Animation, Gaming, VFX and Interactive Techniques. It will take place in Turin from 25th to 28th, preceded by the VIEWFest, the Computer Animation Festival (from 21st to 23rd October 2011). It looks really interesting and definitely worth a look, I wish I could go myself! In particular there will be a workshop on colour and light by Pixar’s Director of Photography Sharon Calahan.

www.viewconference.it
www.viewfest.it

Pixar’s Director of Photography/Lighting Sharon Calahan
Workshop on color and light at VIEW Conference

Sharon Calahan joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1994 as lighting supervisor on the studio’s first feature film, Toy Story. She then served as director of photography on Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and Cars 2. 
Sharon knew at the age of three that she wanted to be an artist for Disney. She went on to study graphic design, illustration and photography. Following art school, she began her career as an art director for broadcast television and video production.
Prior to joining Pixar, she was a lighting director at Pacific Data Images completing commercial work, longer format television, and graphics packages.

Some of the international special guests of VIEW2011 will be: Randy Thom, multiple Academy-Award winning director of sound design for Skywalker Sound; Tom Wujec, the visual thinking guru and award-winning innovator @Autodesk; Glenn Entis, Academy Award Winner, Co-Founder and General Partner @ Vanedge Capital; Scott Farrar, Academy Award Winner and VFX Supervisor for Transformers 3, @ ILM; Roger Guyett, VFX Supervisor for Cowboys & Aliens, @ ILM; Lucia Modesto, Character Technical Director Supervisor for Kung Fu Panda 2, @ PDI/Dreamworks Animation; Peter Nofz, CG Supervisor for Green Lantern, @ Sony Imageworks; Erminio Pinque, Artistic Director at BIG NAZO LAB; Joshua Grow, 2011 Siggraph Computer Animation Festival Chair; Roger Gould, Creative Director @ Pixar’s Theme Park Group; David Revoy, Digital Painter and Art Director.

Tree Fu Tom – Cast Announcement

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Jul 282011

The BBC have recently announced the cast of Tree Fu Tom, the landmark show for CBeebies which I am currently animating on. You can read the press release here.

And you can also read the previous press release here.

Simon

John Carter Teaser Trailer

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Jul 142011

Disney recently released the teaser trailer for “John Carter”, the film I worked on earlier this year.

Castle Farm

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Mar 042010

I thought I would take this opportunity to mention a new series that started airing this week, which I worked on last year and was in fact my first job as an animator!

The series is “Castle Farm”, a pre school show created by Corrina Askin and produced by Impossible TV for Five’s Milkshake show. It’s such a brilliant series and has been great fun to work on and I learned a lot. One of the most important bits of knowledge I came away with definitely has to be animating at speed to a TV schedule (roughly a minute a week) whilst still keeping up the quality. My biggest tip for any animators out there going into TV animation for the first time has to be even if you’ve got a daunting number of shots to get done, take time out to plan. Even if it’s just a couple of minutes in your head. It will save you a huge amount of time in the long run and will minimise trial and error.

I’m still working at Impossible TV and having a great time on a new series for Chorion (whose brands include Mr. Men & Little Miss, Noddy and Paddington Bear to name but a few) as well as finishing off my studies at Animation Mentor (only a few weeks left to go!). I’ll be posting some videos of my most recent work soon!

Best be off now and in the meantime, you can see Castle Farm weekdays on Five (in the UK) at 8.50am!

Simon