Back on my Feet

3-D Bird Walk Cycle from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

Being able to walk has never hurt this much while simultaneously feeling this good.
(that is NOT an S&M comment)

Clipped Wings

Been wishing I could hurry up and just get to this point:

Flight Pencil Test from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

(That's a little animation I did my senior year of college)

Updates -- Overworked and Tired

So its managed to happen again; I've managed to get myself booked for way to many things. Recently I've submitted my film "哥哥“ to the "San Diego Asian American Film Festival" as well as "Sundance Film Festival," so now I'm just waiting on confirmation that they've received my screeners -- which they should have since I sent them out about a week ago, but Withoutabox still tells me no (which perturbs me because San Diego's deadline was postmarked by the 11th, which was last week... and so if USPS sends me my package back instead of delivering it I'm going to have to go to the post office and raise some hell) so USPS just might be being retarded... as they often can be.

Aside from that I'm trying to find a bar for my friend Nick Feitel's film, which he hopes to shoot next week... (great Nick, just great, you ask me to find you a bar to shoot in in the middle of the World Cup... I see this going really well...) meanwhile I'm trying to get the materials I need to shoot my Interpretations Film as well as, as of last week, am now trying to make a short stop-motion spot for a coffee house called Coffee Foundry -- and yes, this is pro-bono work.

Today I woke up really early in the morning to go to the city to pick up a camera I dropped off/stashed in one of my boss's offices in PBS Friday night for a shoot up in Cooperstown New York -- which is a 4 hour drive from Manhattan. This was for a shoot for Picturing America which is that series being headed by Gail Levin -- who I've mentioned in previous posts. My plan for that was to go to sleep at 10PM and wake up at 5AM to catch a 6:17AM train into the city since I was supposed to meet up with the director of this episode at 7:45AM at 43rd between 2nd and 3rd (just a note, PBS is at 33rd between 9th and 10th) -- the go to sleep early plan was good -- in theory. I just ended waking up at 1AM and couldn't get back to sleep. I went to the shoot, passed out in the car for the 4 hour drive up, did the shoot, drove a good part of the way back and then got done with everything relating to that shoot at 10:30PM and then went to work until 12:30AM and then ran to catch my train home. Back home I ate a little bit and then, once my parents went to sleep, went to working on that coffee commercial -- which I'm trying to get done by the end of the week... I finished with the stadium. (I'm trying to make coffee beans play soccer... should be interesting, I'll post the final product up here) Tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to try some animation tests... something tells me I'm going to have to try to make a ghetto lens bellows system to get close enough to the coffee beans, but I guess I'll figure that out as I come to it. Right now it's 5AM and I'm tired and I need to be up at 8AM so that I can catch a 9:17 train in for another shoot (A Steve Brodner shoot for Need To Know.)

More later.

Commercials and Walk it Out

This past weekend (meaning Friday) I worked on a commercial for Bowlmor Lanes directed by fellow recent NYU graduate Todd Wiseman, shot by also fellow recent NYU graduate Milos Silber and produced/AD'd by last fellow recent NYU graduate Richard Gionotti. Together they make Hayden 5 Media Productions, a company they put together themselves and through which they, among many other things, take on clients and do commercials. For this particular production I was PA-ing. It was a last minute spur-of-the-moment decision that was made partially in part because I was doing nothing else with my time, partially in part because it paid a little bit (which was better than nothing), but mostly because I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet and get to know these guys. Networking is always an important thing to do (especially now that our greatest social lubricant i.e. college is done and over with) and if you have the opportunity to network with people while demonstrating your competency on set, all the better.

On Friday we were shooting at previously mentioned friend and rapper Nyle Emerson's apartment in Brooklyn. There I also seized the opportunity to talk with him about the upcoming preliminary shoot for the doc on him we had talked about earlier last month as well as took the chance to show him a little of what I've been doing since I last saw him for any significant amount of time.

Among what I showed him [my two trailers and a bunch of pencil/animation tests I had done] was my 3-D walk cycle from this summer, to which he was thoroughly entertained and insisted that I put it to Unk's "Walk it Out" so I could get a million hits on Youtube. Anyway, below is the result. Perhaps I'll go back and make some changes one of these days to make it a little more interesting, but eh, at the moment I am without the means to do so.

Walk It Out from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

Old Pencil Test Pt. 1

I found an old pencil test I did in Action Analysis 2 this past spring and uploaded it to Vimeo and thought I'd post it here.

I'm considering making my way over to Tisch and sneaking into the Action Analysis classes to audit them and sharpen my dulling animation skills. If I do that, however, I have to make sure that I keep going and do all the work otherwise I'll just be disrespecting my teachers and I wouldn't wanna do that.

Anyway, here's an injured bird taking flight.

Flight Pencil Test from Matthew Chao on Vimeo.

Browsing other Blogs

So as I was browsing other people's blogs, more specifically Keith Lango's blog, a blog introduced to me by a friend of mine who was a senior at NYU when I was a freshmen; Stewart Shaw, I came upon some really good stuff, one of which is this below:

selected animated scenes from Beauty and the Beast in their early stages.


This video has reminded me just how much there is to learn from old-school Disney. It also makes me say wow a little bit because occasionally I get to hear Robby talk about what it was like to be the voice of the beast.

As someone that knows next to no computer animation, any sort of animation I do/have done (with the exception of the bit that I had done for assignments in intro to 3-D) is hand drawn, yet at the same time I have never really gotten past the rough stage of animating to the clean-up and coloring and I would really like to get to there at some point, so I guess it's time for me to start thinking up ideas that I can animate and following through on them. Seeing this video on the Beauty and the Beast is very intimidating yet I'm still motivated by another thing I found on his blog:

I found this post on Bill Plympton and was especially motivated by the note he made for himself:

"(note to self: never accept what somebody else defines as 'impossible'),".