Production Blog

I have begun production on my second short film (I got the itch again :D), and I thought I would post some progress as I go along. I debated on whether I wanted to post my boards, but I think I will let the story be fresh and the boards are only in the initial phase right now anyway. I don't want to give too much away. Enjoy :D UPDATE: I'll be adding stuff as I get it done. Hopefully updating the blog will help to keep me motivated.

Update! 09/19/2014 I'm still doing boards but I took a break from boarding to actually model some things and concept more of the world and things. Progress!

Small Update 1/21/2015! I've been working slowly on modeling assets, but we moved across country and that has taken up most of my time. Now we're in San Francisco!!! Here are some models :D

Spacechanic

Made a little thing. :D

Mohammad

A little painting of my my wife and my stuffed octopus, Mohammad. You will hopefully be able to go to http://dottinghill.com and vote for it soon :D

Maple

My wife saw a tree while she was up north and it stuck with her... she told me about it and asked me to try to recreate it. I did my best and I really like the way it came out. I might go touch up some of the issues I see with it later, but I'll call it done for now :D I miss autumn... wow, I know... three posts in the same day! It's crazy!

Shape Challenge

I did a shape challenge today for . It was a fun little sketch exercise, and I really enjoy drawing heads.

Dead to Rights

It seems that I've neglected my blog lately, but things have been crazy and I started working at JibJab Media as a production trainee (summer intern). It's been awesome, but now I can post my film to my blog and share it with my modest number of followers. Enjoy!

Dead to Rights from Mark Neil on Vimeo.

Thesis: Accomplished

I haven't updated my blog in a while. I've been trying to put the finishing touches on my thesis film, and recruiters are coming to campus... there's not a lot of time left for much else. The good news is I made it into Best of Ringling. It's kind of bittersweet. I'm ecstatic to be in the show, but there were so many other amazing films that didn't get in. These are my friends, and they deserved to be in. Their films were fantastic. It's a pretty exciting time. It's difficult to describe. I'm nervous for what may come, but I now have a shot at being an animator! Soon, I'll graduate and then I'll have to face the unknown. I think I'd just like to sleep.

Drama!!!!!!

Another piece for Drawing for Animators. This one was really a challenge for me because I'm not really a painter. It was really fun though. Thanks to all the folks who gave me critiques! It really made the piece better.

VALUEables

Value painting for my Drawing for Animators class.

Self Charicature

This is our latest Drawing for Animators project. We had to come up with a charicature of ourselves for our lip sync project next semester. This is the first time I have really painted a person in full color. It was both extremely fun and extremely frustrating. Such is art...

Still Life

Texturing and Lighting Exercise

Texturing in Photoshop, rendering in Renderman. Models were provided by RCAD.

Lip Sync

We created a character, selected 15-20 seconds of audio and animated our character saying the dialog.








These are the designs for the character.

Character Jump

Freshman Year:
This was a project from my Traditional Animation 1 class. We had to create a character and make them jump to achieve a goal.






And this is the development for my character.





...and this is the finished model sheet.