I have an Idea!

Bishop 2.0

2010-07-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.carlosbaena.com/2010/07/bishop-2-0/

Go check out what the new Bishop can do! I was fortunate to be able to animate him already! I did all the animation at the end.

Click on the pic above to download the video.

Close to done.........but don't know if I'll get a chance to finish this

2010-06-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

Gorgeous..............W.I.P. from Brandon Beckstead on Vimeo.

Introducing playable ZURG!

2010-05-12T07:42:00.000-07:00

This is the game I have been working for quite a while, and this video introduces a PS3 exclusive.....playable Zurg! I did that small bit of animation at the beginning with Zurg laughing. Fun to work with Rob Thompson from Pixar on it, I'm learning alot!

So EXCITED for this!

2010-02-25T15:34:00.001-08:00

Dragon Training!

2010-02-17T13:55:00.001-08:00

This is amazing! Stunning animation. Before I left DW, I thought this was shaping up to be as good or better than Kung Fu Panda. But since, they have changed directors and who knows what that will Bring. GOOD THING I hope. Please, please be good!

Geeeeeeez!

2009-08-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

How does one person know how to do everything related to making an animated CG short film? Well, you should ask Malcon because it appears that he's got a grasp on all of it! Animation,story,lighting,layout,textures,cameras......the only thing he didn't do is create his own character. Anyway you slice it, I think this is very well done! Thanks for the inspiration Malcon!

Bale animation contest

2009-04-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

The Splinedoctors put on an animtion contest. I had a blast with it! Here is my entry.

Bale Animation Challenge from Brandon Beckstead on Vimeo.

Wow, I love this Bee commercial!

2009-01-29T05:51:00.000-08:00

Amazing animation! I don't actually think the cough drop would float..............but wow that bee is fun to watch!

Idiota

2008-09-06T12:13:00.000-07:00

Ok so I had a blast with this one! On purpose I didn't read the english translation for this. It was fun to try to come up with something based only on the energy of the audio clip.

Fighter.............!

2008-08-06T07:05:00.000-07:00

Had some down time at work, so.........I did this. I would love to hear comments and suggestions, Thanks! (The above pic is a link to a bigger .mov H.264)

My first demo reel..........ouch.

2008-06-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

Someone on the AM forums posted their first reel and so I had to dig mine up to take a look. I haven't seen this in about six years, and when I watched it I almost died of laughter. This was my very first reel coming out of school. Yeah ouch......seriously......amazingly.....awful! But I thought this was fantastic at the time! I wish they had animation mentor back then.....

Go ahead, have a laugh on me!

B-O-D-Y-----------s?

2008-06-08T15:08:00.000-07:00

Ok so this is certainly not the best animation I have done but I had alot of fun with what time I had to do it. I really liked the line of dialogue and I wanted to test out a new workflow idea. Well, the workflow idea didn't pan out so well but I thought the 11 second club was a great place to test it out. At work I get to see so many different workflows from different animators that my workflow is constantly evolving a bit. Some things work, some things don't but I think it's important to try new things and always be learning. This one just happened to teach me what DOESN'T work for me, ha ha. But it's always worth a shot......

Lovin Dreamworks!

2007-12-28T16:25:00.000-08:00

Man Dreamworks is such an amazing place! The Glendale campus is amazingly beautiful and the projects going on right now are really fun to work on. This is my first foray into feature film animation and it's even better than I thought it would be! The animation software is harder to learn than I expected, I didn't know how dependant on Maya my workflow was. But I think I am over the hump with the software and now I can just focus on animating. Anyway I hope everyone has seen this already but if not, go check out Kung-fu Panda!

Kung Fu Panda is going to be the best animated feature that Dreamworks has ever done....in my opinion.

I am working on Monsters VS. Aliens which is a really fun film to work on, lots of fun character designs and a pretty humorous script. I hope it's going to be good!

Actually gonna do it!

2007-10-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how things can change. A co-worker at Avalanche, Hyrum Osmond left to work at Disney feature and it really got the old "want to work on feature films" itch going for me. My family is in a much better situation to move this time and I just wanted to test the waters and ended up with a job at Dreamworks!

I know.....I can't believe it either.

Revision......

2007-03-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

ok so here is the revised version of "Seen Him".

LINK

I am still polishing a few things but I think it is much improved with the help of alot of input from various animators. thanks!

Feel free to comment, I am still fixing things.

Seen Him?

2007-03-02T15:36:00.000-08:00

I had some down time at work so I started a new dialogue shot. I don't know if anyone reads this but if they do, tell me what I could do better. Pretty please...

LINK

Now you see the cheese, now you don't!

2007-02-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

I just love this piece! I have been studying it closely, I would love to be able to create that subtle yet somehow zippy feeling in my work if need be. Kudos to whoever animated this. Wow am I excited for this film!

New Job!

2006-12-14T11:15:00.000-08:00

So I started a new job last week at Avalanche/Disney/Buena Vista Games! They are local AND I get to Disney characters! Lovin it so far! Check out some of the amazingly talented people that I work with.

Avalanche Blog

NO words to describe this.........

2006-11-13T07:30:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Seward Street for this Milt Kahl piece.

Bittersweet.....

2006-11-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

Well I posted this on the Animation Mentor Forum a little while ago. I thought I might as well post it here too.

Hey everyone, this week has been the biggest emotional roller coaster I’ve ever experienced. I was fortunate enough to get 2 fantastic job offers. One from Dreamworks to work on “Bee Movie” and one from Sony to work on “Surfs Up”. To get those job offers was the greatest high. Either of them would have been my dream job. But then it came time to make the decision to move my family or not. This has been the hardest decision of my life. All through AM, my wife and I have been saying that we would worry about crossing that bridge if we ever got to it. Well here we are, ready to cross and I just can’t do it. I think it took getting to this point, for me to understand what I really wanted. I have a 2 year old and a 4 year old. They are extremely close to both of their grandparents. All of my family and my wife’s family live pretty close to us here in Utah. We have a beautiful new 5 bedroom house in a neighborhood that seems perfect. About 80% of the people that live by us are young families that have kids about the same age as mine. And I think this is what’s best for my family. If I was just choosing what is best for me, I would be at Dreamworks on Nov. 13. But I have decided that this is where I want to raise my kids. And there are some good game studios around here where I can make a great living. When it got right down to it, I realized that my dream job was more about my family than about my career. Some of you will understand this and others will think I am nuts. But I wanted to thank all of you for all of your support throughout AM. It has been one of the best experiences of my life, WAY more than just an animation school. Thanks Bobby, Shawn, and Carlos, you guys have something really special here. Keep it up. I hope everyone out there gets their dream job, you all deserve it.

Where the Wild Things Are......old Lasseter test

2006-11-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

New Scrat!

2006-10-20T11:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.veoh.com/videoDetails.html?v=e136723Bh2PpAJH

As long as they keep makin em, I'll keep watchin em! I love this and I don't think I would ever get tired of that squirrel with acorns on the brain. Reminds me a bit of the roadrunner cartoons. That poor coyote never gets what he wants but it sure is entertaining every single time.

Phew!

2006-10-11T07:21:00.001-07:00

Taking a bit of a breather now. I finished Animation Mentor and sent out demo reels. Now I wait and see if anything happens. Just wait for a while and catch my breath and some much needed sleep.

Phew!

2006-10-11T07:21:00.000-07:00

Taking a bit of a breather now. I finished Animation Mentor and sent out demo reels. Now I wait and see if anything happens. Just wait for a while and catch my breath and some much needed sleep.

2006-09-26T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well....................Done! I wish I could say well done, but there is so much that could be improved. But I have worked really hard on this and I am proud of it. I wish I could make the audience care more about the bug using some additions to the story and I wish the ending was a bigger punchline. The lighting leaves alot to be desired and both of the shots with the human character make me cringe but........it is done! At least I am calling it done. I will have to move on to other things, the learning animation journey goes on.

Link to final

Victors new tutorial

2006-09-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

Ok animators and wanna be's like myself. Prepare to be humbled by only 10 frames of "NAVONIMATION". Victor did an amazing tutorial on how he did a "take" for Dash in one of his shots on the Incredibles.

http://www.navone.org/blogger/

A MUST see!

Starting to Render

2006-09-17T08:40:00.000-07:00

So how do you like the new music? It is easy to change it back if I want to. I found a guy who custom wrote it for my short(actually thanks goes to Kenshi). It is very different but it dynamically changes with the emotions of the characters which is cool.

ALMOST DONE(link)

Also check out my glass! I am really happy with it, I haven't done much rendereing before but I had fun with this.

One more week!

2006-09-09T19:53:00.000-07:00

Wahoo, one more week! Getting close to being done. I moved the cut of the termit's "take" after the guy sets down the bottle. I think I like it better. What do you think? It's easy to put it back if I need to. I don't know why the bottle looks weird in some shots. Next week I plan on fixing just a few minor animation tweaks and then I am going to Light it and hopefully render during week 12(glass and all). Then.....done!

Week 10

Wow, Richard Williams Vids

2006-08-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen these, YOU NEED TO! Richard Williams being Richard Williams!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VpT5Xa2cDk&feature=PlayList&p=891352C001351C66&index=0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukGV5uuRcZI&feature=PlayList&p=891352C001351C66&index=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7M32m_aTDwU&feature=PlayList&p=891352C001351C66&index=2

2nd Pass!

2006-08-28T04:25:00.000-07:00

Ok so the music and some of the sound effects are not matching up, but I will fix that later. The important thing is that everything is out of blocking and fairly smoothed out. Now I will be looking at every shot and writing down every little thing to fix until I can't see anything else to write down. Fixing and polishing for about two more weeks then I will start lighting and rendering. Aaaaaaaahhhh, I am gonna have to try to learn how to render glass!! I don't have any idea how that stuff works.

2nd Pass

Second Pass is coming soon

2006-08-22T20:33:00.000-07:00

Ok I will have my whole film out of stepped mode and splined by sunday. I will get a new version up then, hopefully I can get a couple comments on it.

I am creating a short film

2006-08-22T19:17:00.000-07:00

Well this is a few weeks old now but check out the first pass of animation for my short film.................Ahoy Ship-Mite! This is pretty much just blocking but hopefully you can tell what is supposed to be happening.

FinalBlocking

Well here we go

2006-04-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

Testin out bloggin...