SEVEN. MONTHS. I’m hanging my head in shame…

Let me update you on what’s going on in my life! Because there’s a lot that’s transpired since last December! We’re going to talk about three things.

1. Work on “The Secret Number” continues.
2. My short film “En Route” has been released online.
3. I’m going to Pixar!

1. The Secret Number is coming along! It’s been a tiresome production and post-production has been grueling, but we’re really in the home stretch now. Although I’m making last-minute editing tweaks, that’s the most complete part of the puzzle. Right now we’ve just got tons of music, sound design, color grading, and visual effects work still to do!

Until recently, I’ve been pretty good at keeping my vlogs up-to-date on the The Secret Number site.

Thus far unreported: Last month we showcased a work-in-progress version of the film for my school, and it got a great reaction! We ended up winning several school awards:

1. Best Undergraduate Narrative
2. Best Visual Effects
3. Best Cinematography
4. Best Sound Design
5. Best Editing
6. Best Original Score

Crazy, huh? It’s funny because so little is actually finished.

2. Yesterday, I finally released my short film “En Route” online! Check it out:

This has been a long time coming, but I’m very proud to finally be able to show it off.

Also, check out the revamped site! We’ve got the full film available for download, a VFX breakdown, as well as stills and set photography. The comments are starting to stream in on YouTube, and so far the reactions are positive!

3. I’m going to Pixar! Yup, I can barely believe it. I was lucky enough to have been offered a 12-month residency position in the Camera & Staging Department at my favorite animation studio in the world.

This news got a pretty huge response from the Blender community. When a blurb was posted on BlenderNation, over 130 people commented on the story! I’m pretty blown away, honestly.

I clearly owe this opportunity in large part to Blender and “Sintel”.

So, I’m excited to be moving to Emeryville in early September. I don’t know quite what to expect but I’m of course super super psyched! But I have a lot to accomplish before then…

Back to work!

Now that it’s been a few months since the DVD came out, I thought I’d throw them up on the tutorial section of my site. I wasn’t sure whether or not to keep them on my site or put them on YouTube. Blenderheads, what do you prefer?

This series is a compilation of some of the tricks and features I picked up during my time on “Sintel”.

So much cool stuff about Blender is hidden. So many handy tools are accessible with keyboard shortcuts — but if you don’t already know about them, you may never know what you’re missing!

These features were demod with Blender 2.5 beta.

I plan to put up the two longer tutorials from the DVD as well.

If you’ve never heard of me before, good to meet you! I’m a 20-year-old guy from Maryland who does film, animation, and visual effects. If you have heard of me before, you may recognize this:

My old site.

You may be thinking to yourself, “What was wrong with the old site?”

That’s a great question, friend! There are a couple reasons.

First, the site’s name. You see, I used to operate incognito, under the alias “Peerless Productions”.  Not quite sure why.  But since I’m basically one guy, and have very few legitimate ‘productions’ to speak of, I thought I’d drop the official-sounding name and just go for colinlevy.com.  (So the official link has changed: please update your bookmarks!)

Second, it was a huge pain to update with new work. Thought I could solve that problem with the current redesign, but absolutely did not.

And third, I wanted a blog.

So yeah, I’m excited to show you the site! I’d love to get your feedback – I just spent two of the most frustrating weeks of my life making it work… so show it a little love!  Browse around, and leave me a comment!

–Colin