The beginning of each new year is a gift. As the calendar flips to January, our minds can’t help but reflect on the previous twelve months – as well as try and take a peek into our future. This is a rare moment in life as our minds are usually preoccupied with the hustle-and-bustle of “the now” that moments of reflection and insight can easily be overlooked. A new year also usually brings some type of “want” to our minds as well – we want to meet a goal, we want to achieve more success or we want to alter something.
Earlier today I was looking at posts on the astounding Pixar artist, Austin Madison’s website and came across a post that really caught my eye. He was chatting about how his original application to work as an intern at Pixar was declined, but he landed the internship after another year of hard work. So, what is the point of chatting about Austin’s post? Simply…Inspiration and focus.
In November we were lucky enough to chat with Pixar animator and Animation Collaborative founder, Michal Makarewicz. The largest piece of inspiration we took from the interview was that you need to focus on what truly matters. Focus on what you “want” but don’t negate the other things you need to do…just put more fuel onto your true “want”.
Speaking of Animation Collaborative, Pixarian Bill Cone wrote a great post on his site recently about a course that he’ll be teaching at the school. The 12-week course will focus on “developing and orchestrating a light and color based plan for a film”. Bill continues to expand on the course in his post as well as provide samples of his work on A Bug’s Life, Cars, Air Mater and La Luna. Be sure to check out the article and read up on the course at the Animation Collaborative for a little more inspiration.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, the daily minutiae can often distract us from progressing towards what we really want, and for 2014, Pixar Post will focus on not only the news of Pixar but the inspiration of Pixar as well. We’ll look at websites, we’ll look at publications, we’ll chat to Pixarians…all in the hopes of helping inspire each other along the way. A few changes will be coming to the website as well and we can’t wait for you to jump in and chat with us. To get started, feel free to leave a comment below or post a link on this forum post with a source of your inspiration (we already suggested three sites on the forum). We can all benefit from each other’s motivations.
Welcome to 2014 and here’s to another great year at Pixar Post!
