Out of school, I got hired by DNA Productions, Inc. for a 9 week job working on the second and third installments of the cross-over between Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and My Fairly OddParents. The team that normally would have worked on the Jimmy Neutron show had been transitioned over to work on The Ant Bully so I was among a group of 14 animators brought on to finish it up. Of those 14, 9 of us were new to DNA. It was an insanely steep learning curve to go from a school schedule to a full-on tv production but I was in a pretty good routine by the 5th week or so. My slowest week i animated 210 frames and that’s because I was gone for 3 days. I peaked at 680 frames/week. During the first season of the show, the animators were hitting 12-1400 frames/week, so I guess I didn’t have it too bad :p

Fortunately, when my contract ended, they were in need of more people to work on the film, so they extended my contract for another 4 months. Then they extended it again…and again…and again…and again, so I’m still here working on a great film :) I started off on the background animation team where I worked on making cycles for use in massive. It was a very interesting experience working on more technically oriented, cyclical animation. During that time, I also had the chance to work on our teaser trailer animating the logo and I worked on five production shots after I had finished up some of my crowd work.

Most recently I was brought onto the hero team in the middle of January. In this role, I’ve been animating shot after shot after shot. It started off somewhat slowly with small reaction and transition shots but recently I have been receiving nice little acting shots which are obviously super duper fun. It’s also really fun to be a green animator as I don’t really have a niche quite yet. I’ve gotten to animate everything from super subtle to super cartoony, from realistic to exaggerated.

When I was in school, Mike Venturini said during one class that we will learn more in the first year of work than we will our entire college career. He was right. Though I was blind to it the first few months, I’ve learned so much that relates directly to my art and about everything surrounding it that it’s ridiculous. Although at the end of this production, the entire animation team will be sent their merry way, I don’t think I’ll ever look back and do anything but smile. I’ve made some really great friends and I can’t wait to work with them all again sometime soon.

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.