My Animation Reel So Far and New Mentor!

Here is my animation reel so far:



OMG, I can't believe I'm starting class 5. I've come up with a couple of story ideas but I need 3 more by the end of the week. I'll be sharing my ideas in my next posts.

But once again I got a new mentor. So exciting... I'll tell you some about him. His name is Dean Wellins and is currently working at Disnew with Glen Keane on the new upcoming short Rapunzel! He also worked with Brad Bird on Iron Giant, one of my favorite animated films.

This is from his profile in AM: "I was enrolled into the CalArts Character Animation Program from 1990 to 1992. In May of 92’ I was recruited into an internship on Turner Feature Animation’s The Pagemaster. I moved up from intern to breakdown artist on the Pagemaster, and during that time, got a chance to do my first production animation under Bruce Smith. In 1994 I left Turner to work in commercials, where I became a supervising animator at Renegade Animation. In 1996, I left Renegade to work with Brad Bird as a story artist/animator on Warner Bros’ The Iron Giant. I received Annie Award nominations in story and character animation for my work on The Iron Giant. From there, I rolled onto Warner Bros.’ Osmosis Jones in 1999, where I supervised three separate characters including the villain, Thrax, and once again received an Annie Award nomination for character animation. In august of 2000, I left Warner Bros to work at Disney with Glen Keane on Treasure Planet specifically on “Long John Silver”. After TP, I moved into development and story at Disney, where I gypsied around for a few years before finally landing a job as Head of Story on American Dog."

In the next few weeks I will be coming up with animation short ideas and will be needing help so any feedback you could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Kenny