41st Annie Awards

The Annie Awards are awards for accomplishments in animation. Animation across both animated and live action feature film, television/broadcast, shorts, and games. The 41st Annie Awards happened last night, Saturday, February 1st, and for those of us who couldn't be there in person, the awards ceremony was streamed live on their website www.annieawards.org.Congratulations to all the winners! I really wish that I could have watched the entire ceremony but unfortunately it started while I was still at school working in the labs and I had to leave part way through as it was getting late and I wanted to go home, especially since I hadn't even eaten dinner yet. I left partway through Phil Tippett's acceptance speech and did not get home until the end where I saw Frozen winning the category for best animated feature. PRODUCTION CATEGORIES Best Animated Feature Frozen – Walt Disney Animation Studios Best Animated Special Production Chipotle Scarecrow – Moonbot Studios Best Animated Short Subject Get A Horse! – Walt Disney Animation Studios Best Animated TV/Broadcast Commercial Despicable Me 2 – Cinemark – Universal Pictures Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production For Preschool Children Disney Sofia the First – Disney Television Animation Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production For Children’s Audience Adventure Time – Cartoon Network Studios Best General Audience Animated TV/Broadcast Production Futurama – 20th Century Fox Television Best Animated Video Game The Last of Us – Naughty Dog Best Student Film Wedding Cake – Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT CATEGORIES Animated Effects in an Animated Production Jeff Budsberg, Andre Le Blanc, Louis Flores, Jason Mayer – The Croods – DreamWorks Animation Animated Effects in a Live Action Production Michael Balog, Ryan Hopkins, Patrick Conran, Florian Witzel – Pacific Rim – Industrial Light & Magic Character Animation in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production Kureha Yokoo – Toy Story OF TERROR! – Pixar Animation Studios Character Character Animation in an Animated Feature Production Jakob Jensen – The Croods – DreamWorks Animation Character Animation in a Live Action Production Jeff Capogreco, Jedrzej Wojtowicz, Kevin Estey, Alessandro Bonora, Gino Acevedo – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Gollum – Weta Digital Character Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Paul Rudish – Disney Mickey Mouse – Disney Television Animation Character Design in an Animated Feature Production Carter Goodrich, Takao Noguchi, Shane Prigmore – The Croods – DreamWorks Animation Directing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Angus MacLane – Toy Story OF TERROR! – Pixar Animation Studios Directing in an Animated Feature Production Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee – Frozen – Walt Disney Animation Studios Music in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Christopher Willis – Disney Mickey Mouse – Disney Television Animation Music in an Animated Feature Production Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez, Christophe Beck – Frozen – Walt Disney Animation Studios Production Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Angela Sung, William Niu, Christine Bian, Emily Tetri, Frederic Stewart – The Legend of Korra – Nickelodeon Animation Studio Production Design in an Animated Feature Production Michael Giaimo, Lisa Keene, David Womersley – Frozen – Walt Disney Animation Studios Storyboarding in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Daniel Chong – Toy Story of TERROR! – Pixar Animation Studios Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production Dean Kelly – Monsters University – Pixar Animation Studios Voice Acting in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Tom Kenny as the voice of Ice King – Adventure Time – Cartoon Network Studios Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production Josh Gad as the voice of Olaf – Frozen
 – Walt Disney Animation Studios Writing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Lewis Morton – Futurama – 20th Century Fox Television Writing in an Animated Feature Production Miyazaki Hayao – The Wind Rises – The Walt Disney Studios Editorial in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production Illya Owens – Disney Mickey Mouse – Disney Television Animation Editorial in an Animated Feature Production Greg Snyder, Gregory Amundson, Steve Bloom – Monsters University – Pixar Animation Studios

JURIED AWARDS Winsor McCay Award – Katsuhiro Otomo, Steven Spielberg, and Phil Tippett June Foray – Alice Davis Certificate of Merit – I Know That Voice Ub Iwerks —DZED Systems for Dragonframe stop-motion animation software Special Achievement Award — The CTN animation Expo

Reel Feedback - Reel Talk Webinar

Tomorrow! Join a panel of industry professionals on December 7th at 4 PM PST for a free webinar on demo reels. The panel will cover what studios are looking for and what you should do to prepare your reel after you graduate. It will be streamed live, MC'd by Lana Bachynski from Tea Time Animation. The panel consists of animators from Pixar, ILM, and Tippett, and they are Will Groebe, Miko Coedel, Tom Gibbons, Michal Makarewicz, Jim Brown, Jean-Denis Haas, and Hans G. Brekke. The webinar will be streamed at http://www.reelfeedback.com/reel-talk/ and if you have any questions, email info@reelfeedback.com and they will cover it in the webinar!

AAU Fall Festival - Nickelodeon Panel

On the second night of the Fall Festival, we have a Nickelodeon panel where Amber Beard, manager of the writing and artist program, and Veronica Esquivel, the talent acquisition manager, come talk about the Nickelodeon studio and their internship and writing and artist programs.Unfortunately I found Nickelodeon to be disappointing, at least pertaining to me, as they consider themselves a preproduction studio. For their shows they do all the scripts and designs in their Burbank studio but the actual production of their shows is outsourced to other countries. For those who wish to be producers, script writers, or character/environment/prop designers, Nickelodeon would be more appealing to you.

A little about the Nickelodeon studio first. They have a "kids first" philosophy that drives their work and how they interact with the community. Nickelodeon gives back with things such as a philanthropy project that is done by the interns. Art books are created and inspired by the interns which are then donated to children and schools that have been affected by budget cuts. Nickelodeon creates both 2D and 3D animated cartoons. Of their 3D animated cartoons, Nickelodeon has series such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Kungfu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness and Monsters vs Aliens were on their list but as the shows are wrapping up as Nickelodeon's contract with Dreamworks comes to a close. Of their 2D animated cartoons, while T.U.F.F Puppy and The Fairly Odd Parents have wrapped up, Nickelodeon has Spongebob, Dora the Explorer (which is now getting a spin off series called Dora and Friends where Dora is older), and Legend of Korra. Nickelodeon is picking up three new shows, Shimmer and Shine, Breadwinners, and Pig Goat Banana Cricket, so they are definitely looking for new talent! Nickelodeon splits their studio by department. Each show is their own department and all the artists and crew of that show sits together rather than having all artists in one corner, writers in another, and producers somewhere else. As I've mentioned before, Nickelodeon considers itself to be a preproduction studio and most of production is done in other countries. Other areas that Nickelodeon is involved in are post production, animation development and current series, casting for animation, writing and artist program, business and legal affairs, finance, MTS, and special events and human resources.

The internship program, or Nicktern as Nickelodeon likes to call it, is open to junior and seniors. it is a ten week long internship that is open in the fall, spring, and summer. It is a paid internship program and interns are expected to work 16-30 hours a week, Monday to Friday 9am - 6pm. It is a great way to get a job at Nickelodeon due to exposure of meeting all the producers and talent that are there. As an intern, you won't be contributing anything artistic to the shows but it is rather more of a producer assistant type of role with the main objective of exposure and easier access to become hired afterward. An artistic portfolio is not required for the application, instead what Nickelodeon is mainly looking for is passion, excitement, and a strong, clean, and organized resume.

The Artist Program is available to students after they have graduated. NAP (Nickelodeon Artist Program) seeks to nurture the development of emerging and diverse artist for positions within Nickelodeon. NAP is a six month long paid internship that follows the Animation Guild's trainee/apprentice payrate. There are two available tracks, the general design track (character, background, prop, and color design) and a new storyboard track. The interns are assigned to a production and mentored by a lead artist who will guide the interns to advance their portfolio and develop professional skill sets. NAP has a three phase structure. The first phase, Welcome to Nick, is where the interns are introduced to the studio and the NAP department sits down with the design and storyboard department to determine which artists is more suited for which productions. The second phase, Are You Tired Yet?, is where the interns are placed on a production and assigned a mentor who will give projects that will need to be completed. The intern will spend three months on one production and then the last three months switch to another. The last phase, So You Think You Can Draw, is when the intern can take a art test for available position to attempt to be hired as a full employee. The NAP uses an online application system. For the general track, Nickelodeon is looking for a portfolio that shows a diversity in skill. There should be 5 to 25 images that may contain things such as character design, environment, props, color, life drawing, animal drawing, and even works in progress; an animation reel is optional. For the storyboard tracker, have a short film or multiple sequences boarded which showcases your ability in storytelling, staging, clarity, and acting ability; a portfolio or animatic is optional. Only a total of four artists are chosen for the program, two for the general track, and two for the storyboard track.

The Writing Program is very similar to the Artist Program in that it also seeks to attract, develop, and staff writers, has a three phase structure, is salaried, and up to 4 writers are chosen. The writing program lasts for one year and is for both live action and animation. For submission, write a spec script that is comedic, either live action or animation, and is based on a half hour television series that is currently on air and produced for network or cable. Veronica suggests not to submit a script for a Nickelodeon show as you may cause yourself disadvantages if the judge reading over your work is involved with the particular show and thus may view it with a more critical eye. If you make it to the second round of interviews, the phone interview, if you don't have a second spec script, you will automatically be disqualified. As a writer, you love writing and will always be writing so by not having more work to show would be strange and makes you appear to lack passion and interest.

Supernova

I was planning on writing a post about gamma correcting Mental Ray so it renders out in correct linear color space but that post would be more involved and I am currently swamped with lighting a full trailer by myself with the due date coming up fast. Thus, here is another story.After giving up on Tiger Tails, this was the story that I had decided on doing. Inspired by La Luna and Le Maison en Petits Cubes. One small environment, one main character and one sub character. While in the character design class, I took advantage of the assignments and refined my main character further and even ended up building a maquette. In the end I decided against doing my own project as I preferred to work on multiple collaboratives and as a texturing and lighting artist I would have long breaks inbetween as I wait for modeling, rigging, animation, and dynamics to be done. I still do love the story and maybe I can make this short film in the future.

The main character, Reo, is an old star miner who has lost his wife, Vera, and is now nearing the end of his own. Reo has a small house on a small planet where large geodes grow. His work consists of hitting his hammer at the geodes which forms stars and the impact causes the stars to fly off into space, thus shooting stars. As Reo comes home from his work he recalls his past with his wife. Before going in the house, Reo makes sure to wipe his boots on the doormat first to remove the stardust so as not to track it through the house. After Reo hangs up his vest, he wipes clean the stardust on the hairclip that he has attached to his vest, a present he had once given to Vera and she had worn on a daily basis. Reo makes his way to his chair and sits down to take a smoke. As he puffs away he recalls his last moments beside his wife as she laid on her bed with her last words of always being together in each others’ hearts. Reo gradually turns white and glows and goes supernova. As the particles of Reo float and swirl around in space, joining into a stream of other star particles, another series of particles twirls around Reo’s particles. They are Vera’s particles and as they gradually gain form, Reo and Vera gradually consolidate back into physical beings and once again land on a little planet with a little house. They take each others’ hands and walk towards their new life together again.

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Tiger Tails

As a graduate student at the Academy of Art I have to do a thesis project as part of degree. Starting back while I was taking a story development class at the University of Washington I began thinking some ideas and thought I finally hit one that I liked over the summer before I started at AAU. Unfortunately I this story has currently been abandoned since I found myself creating something that did not seem to be feasible to create and finish within my time at the Academy. I had way too many characters, a giant forest environment, and I wanted to have dynamic hair and fluid dynamics.  I drew character designs and even had "storyboards". Storyboard in quotes because they weren't really storyboards in the traditional sense. Around that time I was looking into how and why comic artist chose the shape and size of their panels and loved how it was specific to the composition that helps lead the readers' eyes through the pages. I tried trimming down my story and it became about how the tiger was good friends with a rabbit and the rabbit kept on trying to set the tiger up on blind dates but I just really wasn't loving it. Here is to share and document it and maybe one day I can come back to it.

Armature: Home is where your heart is and your heart is with your loved one.

[Once upon a time] There was a tiger that lived in a cave in a forest.  However, he wasn't happy with his living quarters. As he looks around his cave, all he sees is a cold and barren space. The cave was spacious with only a small pile of bones strewn on the side and a mat of leaves and sticks serving as his bed.

[Until] Later at night, while it was raining, and the tiger was lying down read to go to sleep, lightning flashed and there was a large crack of thunder which, shortly after, was accompanied by a large thud; looking up startled from the sudden sounds, the tiger saw that a portion of the ceiling of his cave had fallen in.  As there was nothing he could do about it currently as it was dark and raining, he laid back down exasperated and resolved to look for possible new quarter in the morning.

[And] When morning came and the tiger strode out of his cave, looking back as he had no real attachment to his bland cave, he shrugged and went off on his journey. The tiger wanted somewhere to belong to.  He searched high, up in a tree along with birds. (The chicks in a nearby nest started chirping frantically when they saw him up on the branch. This brought the mother bird flying speedily back to chase him away with repeated jabs and peckings on his head.) He did not belong there as it was difficult to stay on a branch and he quickly fell off and landed hard on the ground, dazed.

[And] He searched low, underground in burrows with the rabbits. (He stuck his head inside the burrow, surprising a family of rabbits inside. The rabbits quickly scampered out through the back leaving him alone with nothing but a face full of dirt.) He did not belong there as it was small and cramped and he could not fit inside. His head became stuck in the opening of the burrow and he had to struggle to free himself.

[And] (He searched in the river with the fishes. Unfortunately the fish all quickly swam away. He tried to catch up to them but he was not as fast. Soon he was out of breath and unable to continue staying under water. Coming out of the water and gasping for air, he dragged himself out of the river.)

[Until] Sunset came and the day was coming to an end but the tiger still had not found a new place that he could call home. Having no choice, disappointingly, he heads back to his original cave to stay another night. As he neared the entrance of his cave, he suddenly noticed something was different as there was a presence from within the cave. As he saw the tail of another tiger suddenly flick into sight, he leapt backwards and began growling and snarling at the intruder upon his territory. Another tiger appeared from the cave, and she was the most beautiful tiger he has ever seen, with fluttering lashes and exquisite stripes. He quickly snatched up a mouthful of flowers that have grown on the side and bounded over to the female tiger’s side, offering the flowers. The female tiger looked bashful but graciously accepted the flowers and gestured him to follow her inside the cave. Inside, while it was the same cave that he lived in previously, the tiger saw everything differently. The cave looked brighter and warmer. The fallen portion of the ceiling has become a flowering shrub that decorated the cave and the bed has become soft and fragrant, made from grass and thistles. It now felt like a home, and the tiger knew that this is where he belongs.

[Ever since] The two tigers lived together in the cave happily.

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Wacom Cintiq Companion Tablet

My body is ready but my wallet is not. Story of my life! Previously I had bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and I was loving it. I was taking all my notes for class on it, watching videos, drawing on the go, and getting back into reading. Unfortunately I was mugged back in April while coming home from the labs late one night so my poor tablet, along with a few other things, are now gone and never to be seen again. Since then I have heard Wacom whispering about creating an actual Windows 8 tablet and I was so excited. It was suppose to come out mid-summer but was delayed and the news about the tablet has been finally released this Monday!

This thing is absolutely beautiful. 13.3in 1920x1080px HD resolution; a full Pro Pen, which means tilt and rotation for brushes which is lacking on my poor Bamboo's stylus; the only tablet that I currently know of with a full 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity which is drool worthy; Intel Corei-7-3517U processor and Intel HD Graphics 4000 which are powerful to run Windows 8 as a full computer and to fluidly run programs fluidly which is what I found lacking in the Kupa Ultranote. Unfortunately this tablet comes at a $2000 price tag for the 256GB version and $2500 for the 526GB version. The price is comparable to the their full Cintiq tablets but is unfortunately not something everyone, especially me, would just have lying around ready to drop. I was really bummed out when I saw the price tag; $2000 is ridiculously expensive. If the tablet was at $1500 I would grimace and be indecisive about it, particularly as the Microsoft Surface Pro is $1000, and then ultimately sadly give up, but at $2000 I would just have to despair right from the beginning and hope that maybe someday in the future, after I get a job, I would gather enough money to buy one. I can also see why the price is at $2000. Wacom wasn't really making a tablet, what they made instead is a mobile version of their Cintiqs. Wacom does offer a Companion Hybrid but those are Android based systems and at $1500 I don't find them particularly worth it, as what I really want is a tablet to replace my now 9 year old desktop. If I was just going to get another Android Tablet I would just buy another Galaxy Tab, which last I checked, has it's price decreased down to $380.

We've seen the decline of desktops as people move to laptops and I would love to see the rise of tablets used in heavy computing. One such area that I am interested to see the development of is games. Mobile games have become a big hit in the market but they have mostly consisted of idle games for people to play as they pass time while on a bus or such. However, with tablets functioning as full computers I would love to see how the video game industry will change as games may be modified to fit the alternate usage of screen interaction. Just as a starting point, I am, or at least was back when I had time, an avid MMORPG gamer and one day I realized how nice it would be to instead of sitting at a desk, hunched over a keyboard and mouse, to play my MMO on a tablet. It is an easy enough concept as they can already be basically played with just a mouse. With that same system, just tap on the screen where you would like your character to move and then the player could directly tap on the icons in the hotkey bar to use any skills.  I have already seen some mobile games become extravagant with full 3D models interacting in a 3D world so I could see full video games on tablets become a new method of interacting and playing.

ANM 633 - Character Design for Animators

The semester has finally started coming to a close and I just finished my final for Character Design, taught by Nicholas Villarreal, who was a great teacher. While this was probably the hardest class ever so far for me, it was a lot of fun and I have learned a lot. The class was structured around having models come in with costumes each week to pose and we would mainly do 5 or 10 minute poses, sometimes some 20 minutes and 2 minutes, and this would go on for 6 hours. Nicholas let us draw in any style that we wish, as long as we keep the fundamentals of a good drawing and designing a character. We had to have structure, a strong line of action, and asymmetrical shapes. I felt like I have learned more about drawing in this one semester than the four years while I was at UW studying fine art. It's not that I didn't learn anything at UW or that the school or professors were bad, but rather the foci between the two are vastly different. While the major at UW was called "Drawing and Painting" the main focus was on painting and all the professors I had were primarily oil painters. Thus, even when I took drawing classes, we used vine charcoal and did extended poses with full composition to focus on light and value. Additionally, any sketches, thumbnails, or under paintings that I did were done very loosely as I mainly just use them to jot down ideas and to find the layout of my composition, particularly since I will be painting over everything anyway. However, in character design it was all about line work and so I was struggling a lot. Other students in the class were in illustration and visual development so when I looked around the room at their drawings I felt like the weakest one there. Even though Ollie Johnston says to draw clear, not clean, I see all those illustrators with their nice, sharp, crisp, and clean lines which made me really jealous. I can't really just draw a single line and leave it; I have a habit of going back over my lines to build my drawings and even if I draw lightly, it builds up over time. I also have to draw in the basic geometric shapes underneath first to build up the figure so that causes more lines that I would have to clean up at the end.

Even though my grades are probably abysmal in that class, I like to think, and hopefully Nicholas would agree, that I got better. I did learn a lot and came out of the class with a lot more drawing knowledge which is what is more important than a letter grade for a class that I took as an elective.

For one of the assignments we got to create characters of a family and so I took the chance to further develop the characters for the short 3D animated film that I had planned, "Supernova". The characters in "Supernova" are stars that are people and Reo, the main male character, is an old star miner. He has lost his wife and his long life is now coming to a close. As he sits down in his armchair, lights his pipe, and reminisced about his wife, he goes supernova. As when stars die they don't just disappear so as all the star particles of Reo drift out into vast galaxy he finds himself reunited with his wife. Unfortunately I have decided against producing my own film for my thesis and instead work more on collaborative projects. While I already had a grasp of what my main character, the father character in this assignment, will look like, it was great developing his wife and then the children. I even got to make a maquette! The final project of the class was also really fun. It was a Good vs Evil assignment and so we had to come up with a story and design 4 character, the hero/heroine, a guy/girl (normal person, love interest, damsel), a sidekick, and a villain. The story is called Fera Silva (Wild Forest), and so I have a Tree of Decay that goes around kidnapping the little forest animals, in this particular case a bunny, and so the guardian of the forest, a weretiger, has to come save the bunny with his quippish friend, an owl. The process involved first doing ten thumbnails for each character for one week and then doing a final drawing the next. I didn't think that the thumbnails had to be shown for the final so my first set were pretty basic, just trying to draw up some ideas and create a story. When I realized I had to show them, I ended up redoing the majority of my thumbnails, while extremely tiring, was good in that it helped me solidify my characters.

Learning how to draw anything!

Here is a great exercise in learning how to draw anything! I learned this while at Tea Time, courtesy of Lana Bachynski. The exercise is simple with only five steps and each only takes three to five minutes. A fun way to time each step would be to play a song and however long that song lasts is how much time you have. Pick something that you want to learn how to draw.

1. Just draw. Don't look up what it looks like; draw what you think it looks like either from what you know or guessing.

2. Now go find an image and trace over it. Tracing helps you learn the details, structure, and proportions of what you are trying to draw.

3. Next draw your item based off of the image that you looked up to trace. While doing so you will be thinking about things such as basic shapes and form.

4. Draw it again but this time in a different pose or perspective. This helps you understand the physical structure and form of what you are trying to draw.

5. Now that you have a basic understanding, take everything that you learned and draw your item without looking at any pictures or previous drawings.

You're done here but another great extra step that you can add in is to do 10 small thumbnails where you play with stylization of drawing your item. Push the shapes, poses, proportions, weight, and so on!

This is the toucan that I did while at Tea Time!

Internships!

With March coming to an end, many summer internship deadlines are looming close. I hope you have your resumes and reels ready!Laika has some great opportunities listed and they don't have an exact deadline for their internships, but rather it depends on the volume and quality that they get, so get your work in fast! I don't know if it is my love for their recent film, Paranorman, or missing the Northwest, but I am looking forward quite a bit, hoping to be accepted, to this internship Pixar unfortunately does not seem to be looking for any technical artist interns. There's a listing for animation and art (the description seems like it means visual development) but there is nothing for texture artists and lighters. Sad face.

Blue Sky internship, Acorn Academy, is due April 12th. They're a bit out away from California, all the way over in Connecticut, but would still be a great opportunity. They do require two letter of recommendations though so it might be somewhat awkward to ask for one this late as it is usually proper to ask for letters at least 1 or 2 months in advance.

Disney's internship is right after on April 16th and they have lots of great opportunities! Look dev, layout, lighting, producing, rigging, both 2D and 3D animation, vis dev, modeling, effects, TD, and story. I will be looking to apply for the look development internship and maybe also lighting.

Dreamworks unfortunately has no summer internships available at either their Glendale or Redwood location.

Bright Ideas Design (頑石創意), for any international students is the Taiwan company that made Katz Fun and made their name creating an animated scroll depicting the life and culture of ancient China for the Taiwan National Palace Museum. Unfortunately when I asked, they are not offering any internships in the animation department but they are looking for interns to help at an event at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. The internship lasts from July 4th to September 30th and is unpaid.

These are just some of the big names that I know of and that everybody applies to. There are plenty of small studios that are still great opportunities. As I don't know a lot of them, please contact me, or leave a reply and I would love to learn more about them! If there are companies out there that you would also be interested in but nothing specific is listed on their website, don't be afraid to e-mail then and ask! There's no harm in asking and at worst they say they don't have anything but you get to make a contact with someone in the industry.

If the application involves an interview process, here are 7 questions you should ask in any interview, courtesy of Jessica Dickinson Goodman. Hopefully most of these questions will be answered as part of the introduction of the internship, so you would only have to ask a couple of them. Number 4, 5, and 6 seem to stand out the most to me and I will definitely be sure to keep them in mind.

1. What is the best project you’ve seen an intern complete?
2. How are conflicts resolved on your team?
3. What is the approval process for new ideas?
4. What are last term’s interns doing now?
5. What skills do you expect me to have coming in?
6. What skills could I expect to leave with?
7. What project do you think I would spend my most time on?

Get working and good luck on your applications!

Jobs in the Industry

The animation industry has been in quite a turmoil with the loss of jobs occurring all over the place; Digital Domain Florida failing to start up, Dreamworks layoffs, the bankruptcy of Rhythm and Hues, and now, due to the cancellation of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, layoffs are happening at LucasFilm Animation. It must be remembered that this is somewhat just part of the hazards of the industry, with many hires being project based, but with all these sudden loss of jobs it can be very tough and disheartening to hear about. There is a great post by Chris Oatley on the current situation that he writes to encourage and gives hope to artists in the industry and those aspiring to be.

To summarize, for artists in the industry, you are awesome. You got to be where you were because you were awesome and talented. There might be some struggle ahead but you will pull through.

For aspiring artists, "when in doubt, draw". The industry rewards hard work and persistence so don't give up and continue pursuing mastery