Over the summer as well, I had worked on a short freelance project to create an intro video to the company ‘Good e-Reader’. They wanted to follow a similar Pixar style intro, so I came up with this. I finished the modeling, shading, rigging, animation, lighting, and dust fx compositing within a month of work. The foley sound design just finished. Here is the final product!

At the beginning of summer, we finished the bulk of animation for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. I was fortunate enough to have 2 months off over the summer.

As soon as I finished Cloudy2, after several years of waiting and deciding, I took the opportunity to do laser eye surgery with my time off.  It turned out to be a very successful procedure with vision better than 20/20 and a fast recovery time.

Following the 2 weeks of recovery, I went to Comic-Con for my first time with free industry professional badges. It was quite an event, a place where you end up walking a lot! We even found the cloudy 2 crew walking around outside of the convention centre.

Over the summer I also shot a few weddings, an engagement shoot, and a couple maternity shoots.

At the end of August and a busy summer, I am back at work at Sony working on the upcoming movie Amazing Spiderman 2.

In the midst of trying to finish the new movie Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, we did a 5 km obstacle race!  It was a good way to keep a little bit active during our 12 hours a day work schedule!  Here is a little video I compiled of the event featuring some of the Sony crew who participated!

Sony Imageworks Spartan Race 2013 from Wesley Calista Chandler on Vimeo.

Since the start of April of 2012, I have been on this project for 8 months it has been a pretty crazy and difficult roller coaster ride. By the time we reached the end leg of the project, we were working from 70 – 85 hours a week, getting up to 7 days a week! Now that I have come to the last day on this project, I look back and realize how much of a ‘family’ we have become! With all my co-workers, co-ordinators, leads, and anim director, we stuck to it together for more time then we did at home. And in the end I think we were able to bring together a movie worth watching!

I’d also like to thank Sony Pictures Image works for giving us the morale support we needed. Getting us breakfast and lunch and dinners, as well as those occasional coffee from JJ Bean and other coffee shops, and the masseuse at the end of the project so that our backs don’t break! It really helped to keep us going… especially the coffee =)

I for one will be looking forward to seeing Oz: The Great and Powerful on the big screen!
What a great team to work with!

During this month, the Art Institute of Vancouver hosted their first Alumni Reception & Exibihition Evening which they will make an annual event out of it. My former classmates and I have been contacted to be featured on the alumni wall at the school with our post graduate achievements in the industry. Here is my interview:

You can check out more about the event here at http://celebr8ai.com/vancouver/#

In the beginning of this year, a couple of my co-workers started a Youtube channel called “Late Chow”. Broadcasting their own show about the 4th and best meal of the day! This past halloween, since I have been collecting more and more video gear and wanted to start using it more, I had the chance to help them shoot some of it. We had a big group of our co-workers come out dressed up as zombies. It was a lot of fun to help film it. Josh Riley and Phan Wiantrakoon (the creators of the show) put a lot of work in this, and I totally recommend checking it out! Especially if you love food =)

They air a show every 2 weeks or so, so subscribe if you like to see more coming!
http://www.youtube.com/user/LateChow

Over the past several months, we’ve been working on a 3D project describing the new patented design of a golfball!  All of the visual elements in the footage was created by us and the audio voice over was done by our good friend Jason Simpson. Check it out here.

After finishing production on Men in black 3 in April, I finally got a chance to update my demo reel with some new shots.  Its been a busy summer, starting Wizard of Oz, going on vacation to Indonesia for 3 weeks, and moving down town next week!  But finally, I was motivated to finish my reel when Art Institute of Vancouver contacted my wife and I for an ‘alumni success’ story.

Even though I finished around 30 shots on this movie, most of the work was motorcycle wheel replacement and environment replacement.  I did get a chance to animate a few cool creatures.  Such as the alien fish and the weasel (insect creature).  I even got a chance to animate a couple CG digital double where Boris grabs Griffin onto his motorcycle and rides off the stadium.  The video is posted on my homepage at the top, check it out!

Or click the link here

It has been almost 3 months since I started working on the new Wizard of Oz movie! The best part about working on this film is that we get to animate monkeys. But not just any monkeys, flying monkeys! This is pretty much new territory for me as I have not animated much of any bird/flying shots. I am learning lots and its been pretty interesting! Just recently, Sony released the first trailer of Oz at Comic-con:

Scheduled to release on March 8th of next year, and with reshoots scheduled in the next few weeks, we have another 5 months of intense work set out for us!

More pictures here.

For the last couple years, I have been helping out at church with the video slides and lighting cues during service. First at Willingdon Church and now at our new CrossRidge Church. I have always sat beside the person controlling the audio mixer the whole time. Every time I looked at that thing, it always scares me with all the little buttons and dials and channels. I never understood any of it, and it looks like something you can easily just mess up with one touch of a dial! Last weekend I had the opportunity to help out with the sound mixing at our church service for the first time. Pastor Andy (who leads our music team) gave me a quick run-down on how the equipment worked. Tony, who is well versed with these equipments (as he does repair for audio equipment as his profession) also showed me how the system works. And with a half an hour quick tutorial, I was on my way to doing the service.

I was always worried about doing anything with audio, since my wife thinks I might possibly be tone deaf (especially when it comes to me singing). But I found it, if I had concentrated hard on listening to levels on each instrument, I can decipher what was too loud or too soft and if anything was causing strange feedback.. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the service last Sunday! I’ve learnt a lot and now I’m not as afraid of using the sound board!

Thanks again Andy and Tony for showing me how to use it!