Lee Unkrich auction for Haiti Relief

Lee Unkrich, the director of the upcoming Toy Story 3, has an auction on ebay to help the people of Haiti.

There's an incredible amount of material and I'm sure that all the Pixar fan around the world will help as well.

Just click here to jump to the auction


Well done!

A must see

As an animator, I'm also interested a lot in character design. My drawing skills are not that good, but I know that as any other type of art, I really need to focus on it and do it every day. It's tough, but I'm getting there hopefully, and anyway the desire to create and give life to my own characters is always driving me.

A immense part of this difficult journey is also played by inspiration. Inspiration is always around you, but also in a lot of art books. I really like flipping through all those pages and be amazed by the brilliant work of every artist. The choice out there of art books is really wide and finding the right one can be difficult. Fortunately there's a blog that is specialized in art book reviews:

http://parkablogs.com/

There are hundreds of books reviewed in there, but the best thing is that every review includes not only pictures of the book but also a brief video in which the author flips through the entire book, so that you can get the feeling of it.

It is great. It is a must have for every artist.

Bookmark it!

It's finally out!

It has been a hell of a ride. I really enjoyed working on this game, my first one. The team is really amazing and the game is a lot of fun (plus I have the record on Ski Jump!)

The events I've worked on are Luge, Ski Aerials and a bit of Snowboard (mostly fall and reaction animations). A lot of it is mo-cap, but there's also a lot of keyframe animation in there, especially on Ski Aerials where all the routine are hand animated. Now that I mention it, I had to go through a lot of study to understand the mechanic of the air routine. It's fun, but I'll never do it myself.

Enjoy a little bit of adrenaline!

Xbox 360 Games - E3 2010 - Vancouver 2010 - The Official Game of the Olympic Winter Games

Official website here:

http://www.olympicvideogames.com/vancouver2010/

The story so far...

I'll try to keep it short, but I just wanted to give a little heads up on what happened in the last few years.

After a lot of time spent as a ballroom dancer (almost 20 years), I decided to stop due to personal reasons. I switched to the computer world, my other passion, only to find out that I enjoyed more the right side of the brain. The artist in me didn't want to give up yet!

At that time I was really passionate about computer graphics and animation, but studying something like that in Italy was almost impossible. I tried to teach myself, but I also had to pay the bills and so everything remained just an hobby.

Fortunately for me a group of crazy animators from major studios started a new adventure in 2005: Animation Mentor. My soul clicked! I had the opportunity to finally study animation (online via webcam, which at that time was a miracle!) while still being able to work.

I decided to invest one more time into myself. After all I've been doing it for a life already :D

So at 32 years old I started school again. The course lasted 18 months. It was really difficult, especially at the end, when my health started to suffer. I had to work for 8 hours and study for at least 4 hours during the day and all the weekends. It was hard, but it paid off.

One of my piece was chosen for the school showreel. I couldn't believe it! I still remember clearly that day.

After graduating I found a job in Pisa, on two television series: Birds Band and Taratabong! It was an amazing experience. I really loved the job, the place, the people. At the end of the production (almost 2 years) I had an interview with a videogame company in Derby, UK.

I'm still working in that company, and living in Derby. After 10 months I've been promoted to Lead Animator, and once again a new adventure starts...

...TO BE CONTINUED.

1st Post

Finally the blog is set up. I still need to play a little bit with the layout and the template, especially colors and images.

Stay tuned for more!