My blog post comes early this week. By at least an hour as I have been relieved of a duty. The office cleaning duties I would normally be performing at this time are being completed by the new intern Chris.
Chris joined us this week at Mighty Fudge, and will be with us for one more week learning more than he probably ever wanted to know about a small up and coming animation business. It's been nice having someone else in the office who I can chat with and can't boss me around. He also does all…
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Added by Andy Linke on June 6, 2008 at 3:53pm —
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Seems that with everything that's going on these days I only get a chance to blog at the end of the week. That being said this week has been awesome. The week was short, always a good thing, and busy, but my hard work is starting to pay off. At the beginning of the week I learned that I would no longer be at the bottom of the Mighty Fudge food chain, at least for a couple of weeks, as we are getting a new intern starting next week. What does this mean for at least two weeks I don't have to take…
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Added by Andy Linke on May 30, 2008 at 4:44pm —
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Well, I just finished vacuuming, taking out the trash, and cracked open a beer, which means the week is over and a long weekend is upon us. Another busy week at Mighty Fudge, but probably one of the calmer ones considering what's ahead. Exciting time to be an intern and be a part of the process. Obviously I can't say much here about what we're working on, but hopefully soon enough you'll all be able to see all the hard work we've been putting in, from both an animation stand point and a design s…
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Added by Andy Linke on May 23, 2008 at 5:58pm —
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My boss brought the dog into work today, and just sitting here and observing it, because that's what we animators do is observe stuff, thought about how many little things go into making a dog a dog. This got me thinking about successful animation of dogs in cartoons today. One of my favorites is Brian from "Family Guy" though not your typical dog, I think it's great the jokes they use referring to real dog tendencies. From the tail wagging, to the sniffing I think these characteristics help rem…
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Added by Andy Linke on May 22, 2008 at 5:57pm —
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Had someone walk into the studio today asking what we did here at Mighty Fudge. We told him we did animation and design work. He was kind of surprised when he found out we didn't make fudge or candy. We do however make eye Candy. And like candy that rots your teeth, some of the stuff we do here could certainly rot your brain. But no we're not your typical Candy Shop. Though I should talk to someone around here about keeping a constant supply of fudge around.
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Added by Andy Linke on May 21, 2008 at 4:44pm —
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This past weekend I finished my 5th semester at the Academy of Art University. What a relief. 5 down just 3 to go. Overall it was a good semester. Haven't received my grades yet, but I know i did well, but I know that I also could have done better if it wasn't for all the life changes I made during the semester. The biggest of which was moving back to Boulder and getting an internship here at Mighty Fudge Studios. This change was great for me as an animator and for my future career, as it is tea…
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Added by Andy Linke on May 20, 2008 at 3:55pm —
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As my internship at Mighty Fudge continues this week I will be learning some basics of Action script. I'm excited to add another tool to my belt. Especially such a valuable tool such as Action Script since many flash animation jobs posted these days ask for this skill. However I'm also a little nervous, as from what I've seen, read, and heard about action script it seems like it's going to take the visual creativity out of animating. One of the things I love about animation and illustration is s…
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Added by Andy Linke on May 19, 2008 at 2:41pm —
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My semester at AAU is winding down, and with that means finals are being due and professors are giving there last little bits of advice, and it's our last chance to pick our professors brains for that last little bit of information that will get us ahead in our future careers.
This is what I attempted to do the other day after a post from my professor discussing how studios see stacks and stacks of demo reels with walk cycles, lipsynch and knowledge of weight on the film, and that we as student…
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Added by Andy Linke on May 9, 2008 at 4:03pm —
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Do you ever have those breakthrough moments in drawing? You know you've been trying to draw something for hours, you have 20 different versions and after all that time and all those drawings there's still something wrong with your drawing. Then after doing one more drawing and trying something different you realize what you've been doing wrong and why all those other drawings didn't work. You know what I'm talking about the Breakthrough drawing. Well I had one of those the other day and I feel t…
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Added by Andy Linke on May 6, 2008 at 3:29pm —
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As a student and an intern at Mighty Fudge Studios, I have spent alot of time learning. Learning how to draw, learning new software and programs on the computer, learning different techniques like stop motion and cg, and learning how to animate. Though far from an expert in any of the aforementioned subjects I feel I do have a good grasp on most. All except the hand drawn animating. Don't get me wrong I understand the process well, using keyframes and then inbetweening them etc, making sure to a…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 30, 2008 at 3:23pm —
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Being in art school, and just knowing the riggors of the professional art field, I've tried to limited success to practice my drawing on a daily basis. I know I need alot of improvement in areas like figure drawing, drawing the hand, an foot, really I feel like I could use alot of help in just about every area. However I've found it hard to practice drawing. First of all drawing takes time, if your going to practice drawing you have to dedicate some time to sit down and think about what your doi…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 23, 2008 at 1:52pm —
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As I sit here learning Adobe Illustrator at work, and learning Maya at home, I can't help but wonder if animators don't have the biggest tool belt of any artistic profession. Animators are asked and required to do so many things and even things that aren't required, the thing is they often are on opposite sides of the spectrum. Let's run down the list of what an animator needs in their tool belt in order to succeed.
First and foremost in importance (in my opinion, others may disagree) Animators…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 18, 2008 at 3:12pm —
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How is one supposed to learn different programs at the same time and have both become second nature to them when their commands are completely different. This has been my dilema for the past few days, as I try to learn Adobe Illustrator at and for work, and learn Maya at home for school and work in the future. Anybody who has worked on the two in the past know that the commands are slightly different. When working in Illustrator I keep finding myself wanting to move about the GUI with the Maya c…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 14, 2008 at 4:54pm —
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Went to the BIFF (Boulder International Film Festival) Smoozer last night with the boss. Good chance to get some food and beer and meet some other people in the Film industry from around the area. I didn't really know what to expect going into it but it was a very laid back atmosphere, and having the drinks flow helped conversation (for some more than others). Unfortunately for myself there wasn't any other animation people at the event, but I did get the chance to talk to alot of people invovle…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 10, 2008 at 3:54pm —
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Today I started my training at becoming a black belt Jedi master in Adobe Illustrator. I think I'm more nervous about this than I would be breaking a board with my head, and I hope I don't become frustrated enough to do so. Fortunately I have the perfect Master to teach me the ways of Illustrator in my boss Patrick Mallek. If they gave out belts for this kind of stuff his belt would be the blackest of black.
My first lesson OBSERVATION.
I spent a couple of hours observing Pat weild his mighty…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 9, 2008 at 4:01pm —
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Brought in my homework assignment this week for the big boss man to review. My video "I'm Drivin" can be seen on my page, and was a lip synch test based off of some old Daffy Duck dialogue. I used paper cut outs and shot under a camera for this assignment. All the sound but the dialogue I added to the soundtrack. It was a fun assignment that I'm obviously pretty proud of, I posted it on frederator for everyone to see right, so I thought I would show the boss and get his opinion.
I figured this…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 8, 2008 at 3:41pm —
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Mighy Fudge internship week 5. Today I learned that animation really is a business. Well duh right. Kinda. To me animation is fun, and up until now I have never gotten paid to do animation, in fact I've been paying to do animation in school. But it doesn't matter to me I love it, and I love seeing the look on people's faces when they see my animation, or the stories they tell when they let me know that they showed someone else my animation. Animation is fun, it takes alot of work, and is time co…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 7, 2008 at 3:13pm —
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April Fools day, a day for the rest of the world to see how much fun they can have and take everything a little bit less seriously. Isn't great as animators that we can always look at the world in this way. We're always looking for ways to turn normal situations into funny predicaments for our cartoons. Always looking for funny ways of doing things and laughing at the guy walking down the street that looks like a gorilla. Now i'm not for a minute trying to say that what we as animators and carto…
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Added by Andy Linke on April 1, 2008 at 3:50pm —
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I've been interning at Mighty Fudge for about a month now, while still attending the Academy of Art University full time, and pushing through the everday life of having a girlfriend, a dog, and social obligations. I'm not going to lie there's been times where it has been tough. Whether it be giving up my weekends to turn in my school assignments or staying up late to spend time with the ones I love, I have definetely had to make sacrifices. All I can hope for is that those sacrifices pay off in…
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Added by Andy Linke on March 31, 2008 at 3:56pm —
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Believe it or not i've been at Mighty Fudge for an entire month now, and I have neither been fired, or quit, surprise surprise. The past month has been great and hectic all at the same time. Between moving studios and starting new projects I've learned more in the first month then I ever would have imagined. Pat and Kim, have been awesome to me (thanks guys), being supportive, helpful, and making me feel like an important part in the Mighty Fudge family.
As I sit here after a month and look at…
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Added by Andy Linke on March 28, 2008 at 4:36pm —
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