Summer of Transition

Hard to believe it's August already. The days are flying by faster than I'd like, but I'm enjoying every one of them. The last few months I've been experiencing a time of transition that I imagine every student anticipates with anxiety and excitement; graduating and going out into the world. Back in April I pretty much only thought about my fourth year film. Summer plans would have to wait until summer. What I did know was that even though I love my hometown, that was not where I wanted to go back to. 

Fortunately, myself and eight other students and recent grads were invited to be interns at the amazing internet media studio, JibJab. More specifically, I've been an animator for several of the new iPad children's books they are producing through JibJab Jr. These people are some of the nicest, most talented people I've ever met! It's been a joy to work there and I've been learning TONS every week! 

It's also been a task just finding some time to draw for myself. I've always worked better with deadlines--sometimes even made-up deadlines--so I made use of the Disney talent development deadline to pull together a new story portfolio. At the end of this school year I actually didn't have a story portfolio made; only a tiny dime-store photo album in which I put some fun little drawings. So, through June and July I stayed after work a couple nights a week to try compiling something new. I enjoyed creating some new stories, and now that that's done and turned in, I can relax and socialize a bit more!

A thumbnail and sketch page

from Steve Anderson's story class -- improv gesture drawing

a beat board from my film

CalArts is over...hard to believe it! But I'm so happy to be moving forward.

animating

A screenshot of the shot I'm working on right now.

Working on the Film

Here's a "movie poster" assignment we had for illustration class. Watercolor and Photoshop. I'm looking forward to getting back into watercolor backgrounds and learning more about digital 2D animation using TVpaint. My plan is to animate half my film in TVpaint and the other half on good old paper. Fun!

january again

here's a deleted storyboard panel from my current film

Happy New year everyone!

2011 was an incredibly memorable year for me; I'm so glad it happened. I'm really looking forward to this year too. It's such a trip to be graduating this May. It feels like just last year I was preparing my portfolio to get into calarts. And now I gotta prepare to say goodbye. :(

catching up on summer

Finally an update. :)

This year has been one of the most amazing in my life so far. It feels strange to say it now, but several dreams have come true this year.

Having my most recent film, "The Funny Thing About Lois," (on vimeo: http://vimeo.com/amelialorenz/lois) play in the Producer's Show earlier this year was really an honor; my second time in the show. And in case you're wondering, it doesn't get any less scary to have to watch it with hundreds of talented professional animators surrounding you in the dark. ;)

Several weeks before the end of school there was the annual Portfolio Day, where I was asked to meet up with some folks from Pixar to talk about art and animation, and with a nice guy from Disney about my story portfolio. The next day I got the call from Pixar, asking if I'd be interested in their animation internship.
Of course, I said yes, and the summer flew by in a day. Or, at least it felt like it.

"As few avars as possible!!!"

A sketching field trip to the Ferry Building in SF.
Being there was very surreal. I wasn't sure what to expect, so I tried not to imagine what it would be like. In a way it was like a very long, wonderfully geeky daydream. I met really talented interns there who taught me a lot. And of course I owe most everything else to Adam Burke and Gini Santos, our creative supervisors, for their incredible support and encouragement. My mentor, Jamie Landes, was also great. The assignments they gave us not only challenged my animation skills (like, a lot--and this is going to sound cheesy), but they also helped me grow as a person.

Really! I learned a lot about myself this summer. I can't say what career I'm set on yet--becoming an animator is certainly top of the list--but there are still a lot of questions I'm left with, now that summer is over and my fourth year at CalArts has begun.

For example, what will my film be this year? It's the first time in a few years when I've come to school with a completely blank slate. And what kind of portfolio(s) will I want to showcase next year? Animation and story have always been neck-in-neck vying for my attention, and I love them both. Last year I set my goal to animation, but I put together a story portfolio too. I got to spend a lot of time with CG animation this summer, and I learned a lot about it. Do I want to pursue it? Yes...but I also want to pursue hand-drawn animation and story. At the moment I'll just worry about school. But for after graduation, I just want a creatively stimulating job somewhere with awesome coworkers; hopefully with some classmates of mine now.

Here's a stitched-together look at where I'll be spending a lot of time doing animation homework this semester:
Just an end note... Another summer highlight was going to see one of my favorite bands, "Tally Hall," at the Bottom of the Hill music club in San Francisco. Pictured below: the band, in all their blurry glory, and below that: Meghan, Avner and Uri, three of my animation intern buddies. Uri apparently wasn't finished moving his face when the camera clicked...
That's it for now! Maybe next post I'll have something film-related to share...

saturday sketches

Here are a few rusty sketches from last Saturday's SketchCrawl in Berkeley. Lots of fun hangin with the girls. We started at a tea place on Shattuck and moved across the street to Cheeseboard pizza for lunch. That pizza place is the best. Delish.
All summer I've just been clicking and not sketching! I want to draw more. Looking forward to starting up school again in about another month or so. The pixar internship has been incredible so far and I'll update later with how it ends. We only have 4 more weeks left. Where did the time go?!

the funny thing about lois

My most recent film has been on Vimeo for a little while, but now I finally managed to upload it here! This is my 3rd year film made at CalArts, with music by composer Ivan Carames Bohigas and voices by Catalina Sonnenburg, P.T. Plew, and Stephen Herczeg (along with many other talented friends). Many thanks to my friends and classmates who helped me through the crazy process of making a film from scratch.



It's been a week and a half of summer break and already my "summer" is almost over... Starting Monday I'll be an animation intern at Pixar animation studios for the next three months! It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I can't be thankful enough to have the honor of taking part in. I feel like years from now I can look back at me right now and say, "You have no idea..."

At the moment I'm just glad it didn't start this week, since I was hit with an unusual summer cold! I'm just hoping I'm back to my regular self by next week. I'm going to need all the energy I can get. :)