Although I have never written a yearly write-up post on this blog, 2018 was a banner year for me in terms of projects, so I thought I would take a moment to briefly mention them here:
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May: Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2, Solo mashup poster
August: The Predator
October: Venom
December: Aquaman, Season Two of "The Orville" (I began work on this show starting with the fourth episode, which airs 1/17/19)

Avengers: Infinity War was a great way to reconnect with the franchise that kicked off my film career, and the team I joined was remarkably talented. It was a humbling reminder that if you don't feel at least a little self-doubt every day at your job, you might not be trying hard enough to do great things. The mix of hard work, fun, and fitness that the team achieved on the project was possibly its most impressive aspect, and the fact that it was incredibly successful at the box office was the icing on the cake. It and Deadpool 2 remain the gold standard for me in terms of the right balance to strike for overall team harmony. 

Deadpool 2 had a very similar team spirit to Avengers: Infinity War, but with a smaller, more intimate team. Our output was enormous by the end, and I attribute the calm and light-hearded mood of our workdays to the great job our previs/postvis supervisor did with setting a low-stress tone from day one. Seeing the footage come in for our postvis made us laugh every day, and it was the first time I've animated a body ripping apart in a slow-motion explosion, so there's that.

I completed my months-long pet project of a Big Trouble in Little Corellia mashup poster a few weeks after Solo: A Star Wars Story hit theaters, and the level of support it received was very nice to experience. Due to copyright law, I am not allowed to sell copies of it, but it will forever be on the internet for people to enjoy.

The Predator was a great experience with Shane Black and his team at the Fox Studios lot, but I switched off the project early on once production left the country, and many revisions were made after that, resulting in a finished product that I nearly didn't recognize. Despite this, there's still nothing like working on a film lot to me, and I regained a new respect for the original Predator as we watched, and rewatched the original to analyze what made it the classic it remains today.

Venom and Aquaman were brief stints for me, but I enjoyed animating these comic book characters. The level of commercial success each enjoyed in theaters was a big surprise to me, but it serves as even more evidence that passionate comic fans remain a box office force to be reckoned with.

Finally, "The Orville" had its season two premiere on December 30th, and as of this writing I am still working on layout for upcoming episodes. I am very excited to hear how next week's episode is received, because that was the one where my time on the series as Previsualization and Layout Lead began. The episode airs next Thursday, January 17th, at 9PM PST on Fox. It airs the same night as the Season Two premiere of "Star Trek: Discovery," which I also did previs on, but that write-up is yet to come...

Here's to making 2019 a year filled with valuable experiences, useful skills, exciting projects, and lots of joy.

Thanks for reading.

Last night the long-awated trailer was released for The Fate of the Furious, a project for which I was the lead previsualization artist at Proof, inc. Reception to it has been amazing, with many positive reaction videos, as well as over twenty-four million Facebook views alone for the trailer video. At this point, I think it's clear that people have accepted that "yes, they are making another one" and that they occupy their own space in the market for people wanting over-the-top action movies that know when to blow people's minds and when to poke fun at themselves.  You can learn more about my involvement on the Fate of the Furious project page.

Also released last night was the "Toycracker" mini-musical my team prevised for Target's holiday campaign. Our work was needed mainly for shots incorporating the various digital characters. For more details on how we did this, visit the Target project page.

Recently I supervised a series of holiday commercials for Target, in addition to  a short musical (called "The Toycracker") that will air during the ABC broadcast of Frozen on December 11th. The team that I helped assemble did a great job handling four commercials and the seven minute short within a very swifly-moving six weeks. Hats off to them for their great work. You can find more info about this on my project page for Target. 

At the end of last year, I worked on several commercials at Proof, inc. Two of these commercials, one for TurboTax and one for Pepsi, aired on television yesterday during the Super Bowl. A new trailer for the upcoming Furious 7 feature film aired as well, which contained shots I did previs and techvis for back in 2013.

TurboTax: "Boston Tea Party"

I did previs for the first few shots of the Sons of Liberty storming the HMS Surprise (one of the replica ships in the collection of the Maritime Museum of San Diego), and modeled previs characters for the other sequences. Read more on this here.

Pepsi: "Halftime Touches Down"

Continuing with their recurring U.F.O. theme that they've done for decades, Pepsi's halftime commercial featured previs by our Proof, inc. team. The segment I previsualized involved teenagers playing music in their garage with a nearby dog. Read more on this here.

Furious 7  Movie Trailer

Coming to theaters April 3, Furious 7 has a new movie trailer to get people excited about the upcoming film. I helped previs and techvis the sequence of a Lykan Hypersport crashing through the Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi, and did previs for the cargo drop skydiving sequence. Read more on this here.