New Demo Reel!

Here's my new demo reel, with my collaboration work on it. I still need to ink my pencil tests (which I am currently doing) but otherwise it's done. AND I'm done with my semester! One more to go, and then I'll be out in the real world!

Updated Advanced Animation

It is the last week of the semester (and the last class of advanced) and this is what I have to show for my semester's work! I'm pretty proud, it's all keyed out. I'm changing the beginning scene when I introduce the Becca and the Phil though. Basically when I zoom down and you see his eyes, instead of cutting back to Elliot, I'll show the monster start crawling out from under the bed. And then when I cut back to the wide shot of Becca sleeping, Phil will be half way out, but stuck under the bed. That's about the only change I have, otherwise it's all about in-betweening and some timing stuff.

Last Illustration Projects

Here are the last 3 projects I have done for my concepts and metaphors class. The first one is Paula Deen's kitchen, the second one is "Lost in a Magical Garden", and the last is "Bird Watching in Minneapolis". The last two are paper cut outs (something new I've been trying). I really enjoyed the process! This was my last illustration class at MCAD. I really enjoyed it, and I think it helped me explore some new techniques.

A work in progress

This is something that I did for my concepts and metaphors class, and also for my senior project. It's my character, Becca, doing some every day activities. I was given 8 words, "animals", "pattern", "it's cold", "food", "water", "smell", "transportation", and "sound". See witch ones you get! (Cut out paper, acrylic, and a little bit of digital. Still a work in progress).

A rough animation

Here is a rough version of my senior project so far! I haven't done the ending yet, so I'm kind of leaving you on a cliff hanger..sorry. I just realized that after watching it. Anyways, it's not all key framed out yet, or lyp synced for that matter, but the movements and timing is pretty much where I want them.

Some school stuff!

This is my first assignment for Concepts and Metaphors. I got "raining spectacles" as my theme, so this is it! I did it with color pencil.
Assignment number 2! My theme...telling secrets! This is the first version of that assignment.The second version of that same assignment, was to add a word to telling secrets. I chose "intensify". So...more secrets! Oh, and both of these were done in acrylics.
This was my third assignment, a small boat in a sea of fish. Also done in acrylics.

I'll put these on my website soon. I just want to capture them better first. My little digital camera isn't the best at capturing things.

Otherwise, my animatic for my senior animation is ALL done! Sound and everything, and I've even started animating some scenes. I'm just happy the sound is done. My actors were awesome. This semester hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be. Which is good. But I feel a cold coming on, so that amazing.

Emma and Phil

Here are two of the characters from my senior project. It's Emma and Phil. This is the scene where she discovers him, and Elliot bursts into her room. It's the first colored version that I have for this whole project so far. I started school yesterday, and my teacher is having us work out or schedule on how we think we'll get our projects done. So I just need to go through my animatic and see what I feel are "easy" and hard scenes, separate them, do one of each, and then from there decide how long it will take me. How fun!

NEW Demo Reel...sorta

I updated my demo reel again. I still want to tweek some of the animations, but I'm pretty happy with this version of it. I also realize that I have not uploaded anything from this summer. So. I have one thing that I actually did on my computer. Otherwise everything was in a sketch book. AND I just found out that I have a week to get the CS4 package for school. Crap. Well, I'll only be getting photoshop, flash, dreamweaver, aftereffects (hopefully this version will work for me), final cut, and possibly illustrator. Yayyy. School starts in about 10 days, and I'm actually pretty pumped for it. I'm sick of working everyday. It gets a little old. I'm just a little nervous about my senior project. I have this part that I want to animate with crayon (it's a really small part) I just worry it will look to messy. We'll find out I guess!!

Oh, and this wolf drawing is for an animation for my friend Joe. It's the only thing I did on photoshop, but I'm doing the wolf animation for a project of his.

Senior Project

Here are some of my character designs for my senior project. His name is Elliot. I'm working on his room right now, and then I'll move onto his sister, Becca and his friend, Phil.

Demo Reel

So here it is. A month of work and here is my demo reel. I still have to re-do some of my animations, but that's okay. School is out, and now I have a summer to work on everything. Woot!

Cluster Crew

So today was really random. I woke up at midnight to help out the Cluster Crew fill up a bunch of helium balloons to create a promotional event for the upcoming Disney Pixar film, Up. It was so much fun! There was a chair attached to over 60 HUGE balloons that lifted you up about 120 feet in the air. We would go to the top to the top of the Metrodome and just float there. Awesome. It was a long day (12 hours) but so much fun!! We would let get people situated on the chair and slowly float them to the top, and then pull them down. A huge arm work out!
This is me!! I think I'm being lifted up, and thinking "what the hell? I hate heights!" Johnathan, the professional balloonsit, left the volunteers up there for a while. I didn't move at ALL but I loved it!
This is Johnathan and Kirk. They decided they wanted to see how high they could get without any ropes holding them down. So Kirk was just floating around, while Johnathan would push him. Hah, he got pretty high! It was hillarious to watch.

Look!

I just wanted to say, look at my website.

www.ambermaki.com

I finally have everything up there that I want.

Finished!!!

I have finally finished my stop motion! I'm super happy about that. We've got a week left, and I won't have to be in that black studio panicking. Sweet! I'd show some, but..ugh. I've got some editing to do! And, I start work at Forever 21 on Friday. Yep. Finally got me a job. It was a nice month and a half with no job, but I've got to get back on that working train. Or something like that.

Set set set

I'm pretty much ready to animate (finally). The set is done, so I can animate some scenes, but I still have to make a spoon and a facet. Random, yes, but that's that. Anywho's, I took some pictures of my set last night. I was on a little bit of a sugar high (the last month of school always makes me buy bags of candy) and I got a lot done! To explain the signs in the last one, someone (who is not in animation) decided to use my set as a table for his camera equipment. Our studios are in the schools black studio, who everyone has access to, so we basically have no privacy what so ever. I walked in one day and found this kid taking pictures, and for some reason felt the need to put a huge camera case on my set. Needless to say, I was not to happy with him. I decided that since everyone in class is having the same issue that I had (lights being stolen, etc) that I would tape off my set, because apparently just putting a sign next to your set is not enough. Oh, and I was mature about it. My friend Hannah was with me and told me to make the second sign. After I took the picture I took the sign down, and added a "thank you" to the other one. You got to be poliet to the people that don't have the curtesy to leave your set alone you know!

Baked goods

I love me some baked goods! For DI we were to make an illustration about food. So yeah, I did some baked goods. I'm not too happy about the cookies, or the girl for some reason. It's okay though. I really love the cupcakes, cake, and breads. Maybe I should have just made it with them. Then again this morning I was thinking about deleting the whole thing and making it about peanut butter crackers. I've done too many things on peanut butter though. I already did a illustration on PB&J's, and I gave a speech on peanut butter for my speech class when I was still at Inver. That's too much peanut butter, even for me. Baked goods, you're good to go!

Strata strata!

This kids, is my first attempt (and probably my last time) doing a strata cut animation. I did it at the end of class when everyone started to clean up, so my lighting changes like 3 times. Plus side though is that I felt like a little kid again and got to play with tons of clay and do whatever I felt like. I'm sure my teacher didn't really want everyone doing some type of abstract thing, but that's what he got from me. He was talking about making eye balls, and faces, and that all just went over my head. Especially once I got started and realized that I had no idea what I was doing. You have to start from the middle...so yeah.

Currently I'm like having a panic attack. I have about 3 weeks left of school, and way too many projects to get done. Good lord. One drawing, one stop motion (2 minutes long) and a story board that I haven't gotten the story figured out for yet. Oh, and a demo reel! Oy.

Some Story Boards

The story board above is for a commercial about bran cereal and marsh mellows. It could only be 30 seconds long so I ended up having to cut a lot towards the end. My story was about a little girl on a farm enjoying her morning breakfast. Anyway, this is my most recent story board for my class.



This story board is just the second half of the story, the ending. I worked with a partner and she has the other half. The story was given to us from a student from the script writing class. Her story was about to animals, a dog and a cat, finding a new baby in their home. In the end the baby pulls on the cats tail and he leaves, and the dog cuddles up with the baby in her crib.











This was the 3rd story board I did for class. It was the first one that we did were we got to come up with the story. We were told to have a place, a character, and an item. My place was a bee hive, my item was a flower, and my character was a Queen Bee and her royal subjects. She basically tells them that they have to travel across the forest to get her flower for her to eat because it's the only thing that she eats.


So yeah, those are the 3 story boards that I have done so far. We did 2 more in the beginning, but these are the ones that I am most proud of. Right now we're working on our final project that our teacher wants us to eventually animate in the future. I'm going to do my senior project, and I've come up with an idea to have a little boy rescuing his little sister from the monster in her bedroom, who is actually a very terrified monster. The boy comes to her rescue when he hears her screams, and makes his own sound effects.

Update

I'm on spring break. My boyfriend left me here in Minnesota for NYC, so I've been spending most of my time with the cat. She really doesn't want me to be alone, and sleeps near my head every night. As for my junior review, thankfully MCAD was nice enough to tell us how we did before we left for a week, and I passed. Yayyyy. I can now take advanced animation classes. And I'm signing up for classes sometime this month, which always gets me really excited. There's no reason really, I just like random bits of change. Also, it has recently hit me that I only have a month left of school, and then what? That's the big question on my mind. I need a job. I want an internship. I would like to go outside of Minnesota.
*On a side note, I'm watching Robin Williams on "Inside the Actors Studio". Hahahaaaa*
I'm working on a portriat for a school competition. I don't really know what I want to do, so currently I'm just putting paint on a mesonite board. I haven't painted in so long that I'm just loving the experince. It's super relaxing, I don't know why I stopped. But yeah, so far I've just sitting on the living room floor with the window open enjoying the beautiful Minnesota spring weather, and listening to the Temptations while plopping huge amounts of white, blue, and yellow paint on the board and trying to figure out what I'm doing. I think I know where I'm going with it. Hah, thankfully it's acrylic paint!
Well, my cat just woke up after a very eventful dream that had her running on the couch. I think I'll go back to my work.

Tangle

We were given a word, Tangle, and told to illustrate it by 4 and use textures. I used a lemon.

By the way, Elton John and Billy Joel are coming to Minnesota. I really just want to see Elton, and I'm pretty sure it's sold out. Ugh, my life is so tragic.