Boop

http://hnovotny.tumblr.com/ New portfolio website! I'm still trying to figure out getting a domain name, but it has all my updated works and a bit about my animation process.

Did a summer internship with Professor Valentine teaching Intro to 3d, where I mostly helped the undergraduate freshmen learn maya for the first time. It was a really good experience I think, working with students. Teaching is something I want to do some day, and it was good to get a feel for the other side of the classroom haha.

A few good things have happened! I was commissioned by University of Georgia to animate a logo for their movie theater. I worked pretty hard on it, and it came out fairly well for my first real animation gig! It's kind of odd to think that my work is now being shown in an actual movie theater, and will continue to do so for at least another few years.





More good news: I was approached to do an actual TV commercial for a local construction company here in savannah, and it pays pretty well! I haven't done much work on it yet, but once the pre-production is done, it should be fairly quick to get done.

As far as SCAD life goes... it's been an incredibly quiet quarter so far, mostly due to the fact that I'm only taking extended thesis right now. Basically I can work from home on my thesis, but it's been so nice to just work my part time jobs and actually make a little bit of money that it's been hard to work on anything at all. I'm thinking I will continue through next quarter and finish up in March. I hate postponing graduation, but as long as I'm not paying oodles of $ for classes, I'll be ok.

I have, however, spent a lot of time on doing game animations for my reel after I get home from work. It feels good to have something solid to show people instead of all this conceptual stuff or other things that have nothing to do with what kind of job I want to go for.

Gonna see Book of Life and Big Hero 6 soon! Hope it's as good as everyone says it is. There was a dinner get-together tonight at Wangs II since Mirror is going home in the next few days. :( It was a lot of fun hanging out with all my grad friends, though I'm sad this will be the last time most of us will be together most likely. Everyone has new exciting careers they're starting soon and for me too, it feels like this chapter of my life is fast coming to a close.

Long Update

Long update this time.

So finals came and went. I got an A in World Cinema and a B in Sequential. I wrote a cool piece on Persepolis and Iranian cinema, which was a lot of fun. Finished my comic for sequential a bit late but the whole class book is put together and ready to be published! If you want to buy a copy, just check here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2113857818/game-boss-the-final-form-anthology Mines the one about Luchadors :)

Spring break came and went. I got to meet my boyfriend (Carter)'s mom, who was really cool. We had a great weekend. I feel so happy when I think about him and all the time we've been together. I can't wait to see him again~

Right at the beginning of this quarter was the Career Fair and I'll be honest, I wasn't too interested this year. I had hoped to meet ReelFX there but they didn't come, so I ended up just going home. There wasn't much for 3d animation there.

That evening my grandma had went into cardiac arrest and collapsed, so this past week I flew back out to texas and spent pretty much the whole time in the hospital. She wasn't really expected to make it but she  managed to pull through. She is still in a really fragile state though. I feel so exhausted though after it all. I can only hope to continue to do well in school now and make her proud when she recovers. I feel brief in talking about it now because I've had to tell so many people the story already lol


Anyway this quarter is Character Look Development which turned out to be a 3d texturing class (which is a lot more interesting that what I thought it was going to be- a character development course). By interesting I mean it being something I dont know much about. The prof is really cool and has been a professional in the movie industry and is really strict. I'm doing the old lion model from last year's 3d Collab Course (which was a big failure for me as i spectacularly burned out like a bag of garbage entering earth's orbit. ...Long story.)

My other class is Animation Studio II which is basically continuing working on my thesis. Mrs. Moorshead is super nice, and is probably one of my favorite professors here. She's really friendly and approachable. I hope I can get this insane paper done by the end of this quarter so I can focus on animation over the summer.



5 more months till graduation!

new job, rainy days

I went in to work at the resale place for about 3 hours today just to kind of train a little before my first shift Sunday. I had about an hour to be briefed before the grand opening at 10am and there was a line of like 30 people outside but after a month of helping every granny in savannah put on shoes, I literally did not even give a fuck. I spent the entire time putting away clothes that people tried on and trying to get to know everybody (lots more coworkers than the 4 at the shoe place). I like it when things are busy though so it was fun. Can't wait to buy some cute shoes


Unfortunately the weather sucked today and I had to run to 3 blocks in the freezing rain to cinema studies, but a classmate did his presentation on Russian animation, which I don't know much about, so there was a nice little dialogue on animation in class today. It always surprises me how my whole class will know this super obscure cinema stuff but like... Has never heard of French Animation or Triplettes of Belleville. I've found, taking both cinema and sequential arts this quarter, that sequential artists really look up to animation for inspiration, and even though animation looks up to cinematography and film history, cinema people generally don't know anything about animation. I just find that terribly sad... It's all movies and storytelling, we should all be a little more interested in things outside our little worlds.

The head of story for Kung Fu Panda 2 came to my sequential arts class and talked about storyboarding for dreamworks the other day. He later gave a lecture that night about it, but it was so cool to randomly have him show up unannounced in class. I love it when that happens (last time, the CEOs from Jib Jab came to a class, an before that, a Disney animator randomly came in and critiqued some student work). It's cool stuff like that that makes me so grateful to be here.

Bleh

Had a great valentine's weekend with my boyfriend and work has been going really well. I'm struggling to be motivated to animate in my spare time lately, or to do any school related stuff in general haha. I finished editing together a video for our comic class' anthology kick starter, which I'll post here as soon as I am allowed to. 7 months and 1 week till my projected graduation if all goes well. I can hardly wait.

Delicious Valentina's dinner at Sakura on waters ave! First time trying sake and I love it haha.

Commission for a friend!

This has been a pretty great week! I took my reel to have it reviewed by some of my profs and Professor Wright really liked the videogame animations I had done. He said that was my strong suit and that I should do more and to apply for a game company like Blizzard! I'm still feeling really happy about it days later haha. My post school career is FINALLY materializing... I'm really glad I took a relaxed semester to spend more free time working on animations. 

Here's a photo of the really cool 4th floor professors' offices.

Dreamworks also came by this week and I snagged a front row seat. They mostly talked about their internship and post grad program, but I found the reels and portfolios of the recent grad hires they presented to be very informative. Maybe one day...!

Career fair is on the horizon... Gotta keep animating!!

This quarter

So this quarter I'm taking Drawing for Sequential Art and World Cinema History. Getting a few electives out of the way and giving myself a little more time to think about my thesis project. I was told when researching scad to take at least one comics class while I'm here, and it's really been great so far! Everyone here is sickeningly good at drawing. At the end of the class all our comics are going to be published in a book, so that's really cool. The alumni list of comic artist pros that even *i* know is a mile long, and the building is really cool too. Right around the corner from the Pirate House!

World Cinema is very thought provoking too. It's cool to see how other countries make films in response to the European/American styles. It's a little bit dryer that Cinema History from last quarter, but the prof and film students are very nice and Arnold hall is a great change from Monty hall. I literally had every class for a full year in Monty! Arnold hall has windows too, which is really nice. Also the Butterhead Cafe and Foxy Loxy are right next door. Foxy Loxy is a great artsy cafe that every student should visit, and their coffee is, in my opinion, the best coffee in savannah!!

Dreamworks is coming for a visit next week. Pixar was supposed to come a week ago, but got cancelled because of the weather. Total bummer! Hopefully they'll try to reschedule 

Arnold hall windows!!

Coffee fox!

Well that certainly was a year!

So it's been about a year since my last real update. Not exactly how I wanted to run this blog haha, but I have 3 quarters (9 months) left to go before my graduation from the SCAD mfa animation program. I start production on my thesis film soon, and so I've been working hard to refine my storyboard and animatic. It's internship season now, and so my prime focus has been on animating things for my reel.

Gosh where did the year go? It seems like last week I was posting about riding the scad buses for the first time. I worked at Utrecht art supplies for a whole year and a half but finally decided it was time to move on this month, so I've been working at a new place much closer to my apartment. 

School has been... Intense. Perhaps the best class I've taken here was by Scott Wright over the summer who worked as an animator for dreamworks. To be honest, I didn't think I could be an animator because all my work before that was so bad, but he really worked with us from the ground up. Totally turned my doubt into hope and I came back to school last fall with a renewed zeal to work. I've also had some fantastic classes by Mrs. Mooreshead and professor Silva. 

I should also mention I've been taking some cinema history classes as well to round out my knowledge on filmmaking. Replacing my required art history course with cinema history was probably the greatest idea I've had here at scad. Seriously recommend it to any animation students out there. There's so much to be learned from live action filmmaking. 

Also I made a trip to LA last November to attend ctneXpo, the animation convention. Had a fantastic time and got my reel reviewed by some pros! The Ted Ty talks were all incredible.

So that's kind of been my year. I'll try to update more and more often, and ill try to post some of my recent work next week. I'll leave you with a few photos!

Savannah's hidden mural! Never would have found it if it wasn't next to Utrecht.

My apartment trees at night

A pretty sunset by the tracks next to Monty hall

My first time in the green screen room! My goofy friend heather here with her roommate. :)

A relaxing summer day at tybee island

Awesome bluesky presentation!