The Team

From 2009 48 Hour Film Project

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Man... we have got one helluva team assembled for this project. Below are some brief introductions...

Team Richmond

These are the folks who will actually be in town for the weekend of the event.

Jason van Gumster (Fweeb/Monkey)

Producer/Director: Production Monkey for Hand Turkey Studios. The dolt who had the bright idea to register a team for this project and try to do a 4-7 minute animation in 48 hours.

He readily admits to not being able to do funny, but excels at doing stupid.

Warren Belfield

Writer/Illustrator/Designer: Hand Turkey's "Belligerent Internet Nomad". Warren occasionally takes the mindset of punching things he doesn't understand until they begin to make sense. Fortunately for us, he understands quite a bit. Warren is an excellent traditional illustrator with a great mind for concept and story development. He will be handling the screenwriting process during the weekend, based on any brainstorming we get done here. He's also a great storyboard artist, but I'm not sure we'll have a lot of time for "polished" storyboards over the weekend... but his drawings will certainly help to communicate with Team International.

Roberto Rubet

Modeler/Voice Talent: The Hand Turkey Studios Speeling Bee Champion. Even though Roberto often types like he's wearing socks on his hands, he's brilliant at concept development and possesses a naturally strong artistic eye. His input during the storytelling process will be invaluable and his talent for voices is unmateched. Have a gander at some of his work at idodont.com.

Chris Hoyer (Horrorshow)

Voice Talent/Story Designer/Production Assistant: Chris is kind of an Honorary Hand Turkey. He's a professional photographer with a great eye for light and composition. He comes to our weekly meetings, gives us feedback, and insults us to our faces. And unlike the rest of the Turkeys, Chris is still an active pro wrestler with the Richmond Lucha Libre. His skills with a camera could come in handy for generating textures we might need as well as documentation of the project as it progresses... and we'll likely be leaning heavily on his talents as a performer and story architect... and we'll probably send him out for coffee and donuts. Have a look at his photography work at chrishoyer.com.

Heather Rogowsky

Production Manager/Editor: Heather has a talent for timing and storytelling that is both artful and meticulous. And on top of that, she understands what it means to work under a tight schedule. She's very, very skilled at the art of getting things done. Her eyes, ears, and insight are a great addition to the team. Have a look at her work on heatherrogowsky.com.

Althea Georgelas

Sound Editor: Althea is a badass creative demon and the first Master's degree holder to come out of Virginia Commonwealth University's Kinetic Imaging program. She teaches there now, covering animation and sound design. Her strong sense of timing and composition are accompanied by her excellent ear for sound. Last year, she headed up the Sound Group to make sure the final mix of voice, sound effects, and music all works together with the visuals of the animation. This year her primary focus will be on recording dialogue and voice overs for our short, as well as arranging the final mix. You can familiarize yourself with her work by visiting her site at iamegon.com.

Jennida Chase

Filmmaker/Voice Talent: Many of you might not know this, but Jennida was actually in our 2008 project. She stepped in and helped us with voice talent when we had a dire dearth of female voices. A strong filmmaker inher own right, Jennida is sure to be a big help to us again this year.

Hal Dowdy (brokenjack)

Render farmhand/Motion graphics: Hal actually participated on a competing team last year... in fact he directed the film and it got Honorable Mention for Best Film. You can check it out here. Hal is a relatively recent convert to the awesomeness of Blender (over a year now, though... so not too recent) and he's agreed to help us with modeling and motion graphics in Blender and he'll also be working with Bob to wrangle data to and from our render farms.

Bob Holcomb - Suffolk, Virginia

Data Wrangler/Underestimated Talent: Bob is totally awesome. Not only is he skilled at using Blender, but he has also written quite a bit of code for it, including various importing/exporting scripts and he's the maintainer for Blender's Compositor Nodes. Fortunately for us, he's been given a "kitchen pass" to come to Richmond for the event... so not only will we be relying on him as an on-site Blenderhead, but his technical expertise is going to play a big part in making sure this animation gets rendered by the deadline on Sunday.

Reportedly one hell of a dancer.

Dave Kline (American Dave) - Alexandria, Virginia

Voice Talent/Musician/IT Mastermind: Dave is quite possibly the coolest human being in existence. Not only is he incredibly creative and a natural performer, but he's also a *very* skillful Linux/Unix system administrator. Sadly, Dave will be out of town during the dates of the events, but his brains should be helpful leading up to it.

Team International

These are all of the team members who, even though they won't physically be in Richmond for the event, will be lending their talents to this project (alphabetical order). And even cooler, we've got some new faces on the team!

Andy Goralczyk - Karlsruhe, Germany

3D Badass/Compositor: Andy is well known in the Blender community as a supercool 3D artist. He was the Artistic Director for both Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny and can give an inspiring 30-minute presentation on Blender without saying a single word. Andy is a huge asset to our team and I hope he'll have the time to help out during the weekend of the event. His knowledge and skill with lighting and compositing will be particularly helpful... not to mention his modeling speed. Check out his work at artificial3d.com.

Bassam Kurdali (slikdigit) - Northampton, Massachusetts

Animator/Rigger/Modeler: Bassam is a fleshy bag of talent. He was the director for Elephants Dream, the world's first Open Movie (which, incidentally, was produced with Blender), so he certainly has experience in large successful projects. We will certainly be taking advantage of Bassam's talents in animation and, if his schedule allows, rigging.

Claudio Andaur (malefico) - Buenos Aires, Argentina

Rigger/Animator/Modeler: It's incredible to have Claudio on the team. He is a masterful rigging guru and a very skilled animator. He was one of the original co-founders of Manos Digitales, the studio behind the first feature-length animation produced with Blender, Plumiferos (still in production). Recently, he parted ways with Manos Digitales, but he is still actively producing work and we will definitely benefit from his awesome skill and experience. You can see some Claudio's work and experiments at his website, malefico3d.org.

Derek McTavish Mounce - Navarre, Florida

Composer: Derek is a very talented (and perhaps more importantly for this project, QUICK) composer. He also has a graphic design and motion graphics background, so he has a good understanding of the things we'll need in a project like this one. He's done work with another member of Team International, Ecks, and comes highly recommended.

Dolf Veenvliet (macouno) - The Hague, Netherlands

3D Generalist/Evil Mastermind: Dolf is an incredibly well-rounded digital artist with a great sense of motion and timing. He also has the least Dutch-sounding accent of anyone I've met from the Netherlands. When it comes to Blender, he can literally do just about anything: animating, modeling, rigging, compositing, and scripting in python. Never believe him if he tries to tell you "I'm just an artist; I don't know anything about code." It's an honor to have him and his talents on the team. He has a website at macouno.com, but some of his more interesting work can be seen at alienhelpdesk.com.

Jarred de Beer (Jarrhead) - Cape Town, South Africa (by way of Northampton, Massachusetts)

Animator: Jarred is one of the two 'interns' that Bassam has working with him on his Tube project. He's got a passion for animation and at least a passing interest in rigging. It's awesome to have him on board. Have a gander at his work over at jarred.co.za.

Jeff Hipolito - New York City, New York

Render Farm Wrangler/3D Modeler: Jeff is totally awesome. Not only is he an aspiring filmmaker with an interest in hyper-real 3D animation, But he's used Mark's animux Linux distribution and set up his own renderfarm in his apartment. Jeff has graciously given us permission to use it for this project. And if we find out that we really need it, Jeff also has a mocap rig that he's just itching to put to good use.

Jean-Sébastien Guillemette (Ecks) - Montreal, Quebec

Modeler/Texturer/Lighting: Part of the team coming from Montage Studio. It's difficult to describe JS's work in a sentence without using the words "totally sweet" or "kickass". His cityscapes and intricate vehicles are... well, kickass... and he works very quickly. He'll be heading up one half of the Modeling Group, focusing on sets, buildings, and vehicles. You can look at the Montage Studio website for his work, or check out this timelapse video of him modeling a futuristic jet car in just over 2.5 hours.

Jonathan Williamson (mr_bomb) - Manhattan, Kansas

Modeler/Texturer/Lighting: The original Montage Studio guy. Jonathan's skill as a character modeler in Blender is nearly unparalleled. He's truly one of the most gifted organic modelers in the community, both for how good his work is and for how insanely fast he produces it (here's a hint... it's really fast). He'll be heading up the other half of the Modeling Group, focusing on creatures and characters. Like Ecks, you can see some of his finished work on the Montage Studio website... and you can check out this time lapse video of him modeling a male head in just over an hour. There's a slight chance that Jonathan will make it into town and be part of Team Richmond. Sweeeeet.

Mark Puttnam - Detroit, Michigan

Render Farm Wrangler/UberTech: Mark is just straight-up brilliant. He runs and maintains his own render farm at his home and is also developing his own animation-focused Linux distribution, animux. His knowledge and understanding on these things will be invaluable during what might the most time-crunched portion of the process on the event weekend.

Pablo Vazquez (VenomGFX)- Patagonia, Argentina... though really he could be anywhere right now... :P

3D Generalist/PINK!: Pablo is just cool. He travels all over the world doing cool Blender things and I couldn't be more jealous of him. He's an incredibly talented 3D artist with a penchant for cartoony styles. He was on the Yo Frankie! open video game project that the Blender Institute did last year and as long as he has a place to sit with his laptop and connect to the internet, we'll have his talents at our disposal. Have a gander at his stuff at venomgfx.com.ar.

Sam Brubaker (rocketman) - Asheville, North Carolina

Animator/Rigger/Modeler/Voice Talent: Not only is Sam a barrel of unbridled creative energy, but he's also a very talented animator. He won a Suzanne Award for Best Animation at the Blender Conference in 2006 for his piece called Infinitum and has continued to be productive since then. We'll certainly be taking advantage of his animation and rigging skills to complete this project. To have a look at what Sam's been up to recently, take a gander of his made-in-Blender webcomic, Us the Robots.

Thomas Vecchione (Seablade) - Santa Fe, New Mexico

Sound Designer/Modeler: Thomas is an extremely talented sound designer currently contracted to work for the Santa Fe Opera (which is why he's not currently in Richmond). He has great ears and also has some experience in 3D as well as IT. On top of that, he brought his digital sound library with him to Santa Fe and should be clear to use this for this project. Awesome! More information can be found at his website, leviathan-avc.com.

William Reynish (Billrey) - Denmark

Animator: William is a last-minute addition to our team, but that doesn't make him any less awesome. In fact, he was responsible for the bulk of the character animation in Big Buck Bunny. He's also been instrumental in the user interface refinements planned for Blender 2.5. He's a great talent and he'll be helping out the team with animation when things get to get close to crunch time on late Saturday and all day Sunday. You can see more of his work at shadeless.dk.

So that's the team. Sweet, huh?