Call for Submissions - Celebrate National Crunchy Taco Day

commonvision is celebrating NATIONAL CRUNCHY TACO DAY with an awesome event!!

It will be held Monday, March 21st in the Sports Zone during Free hour (noon-1pm). 

During that event we want to showcase animations and videos related to Crunchy Tacos!!

Guidelines:

-Theme must be crunchy taco related

-Must be 1 minute or less

-Have fun!!

-Anyone can enter!

Please send all submissions to inet@umbc.edu by NOON 3/17.

 

Need inspiration? See below. Anything crunchy taco related goes!!! 

Meet Yaakov!!

cv: What is your role at commonvision? How long have you been working there?

Yaakov Weinstein: My role at commonvision is iNet Animator and I've been here since June 2015.

cv: How/When did you know that you wanted to be an animator?

YW: I first wanted to be a video game designer, but I knew I couldn't just jump to the top of the ladder without first laying foot on the lower rungs. One day, I saw a commercial on TV for The Art Institutes and the lead game designer for one of my favorite games, "God of War III," was on it. He said that he started as an animator and worked his way up to lead game designer, so I thought I could do the same and use my art skills for video game animation. Little did I know, animation is a very involved process and the field is competitive, but the payoff is rad because you get to see your ideas come to life.

I don't even know, man. Animation and voices by me (Adobe Flash and Audacity). Also, special thanks to freesound.org

 

cv: What is the best thing about working at commonvision?

YW: I could be corny and say that it's the people I work with because they're some of the nicest, coolest, and most talented people I've ever met, BUT I do love getting to see my animations live on screen in The Commons.

cv: Are there any projects that you are particularly fond of having created? 

YW: The project I am definitely most proud of is something that I did in my After Effects class. It's called "The Awakening." I really like the way it turned out, and it was inspired by some of my favorite things like Shadow of the Colossus and Samurai Jack, to name a couple. Hope there's no risk of copyright infringement.

As for projects that I did at commonvision, I think my favorite piece so far that I did is the iNet for Arne Schmidt from Firaxis Games. It's the first project that I really got to do from scratch and I got to do some 3D animation in it. I'm happy with how it turned out.

Long ago, man worshiped machines as gods. Their reliance on them led to humanity's downfall. Time passed, the machines decayed, and the world remained barren, until one day, they awakened...

cv: How did you get interested in game design? 

YW: I just really love video games, and I also love making my own worlds and stories. I used to draw short stories and would always get inspired by movies, TV, and video games. I would dream up these epic scenes and cool characters and I would always wish that I could make them into video games so I could inspire players the way that video games inspired me.

cv: Is there a particular game designer or company that you like more than most?

YW: Naughty Dog. My first video game was Crash Bandicoot 2 and I would always sneak into my brother's room and turn on his PlayStation and play it. I think he would intentionally turn his TV volume way up so that when I turned on the game he would hear it from downstairs and know that I was in his room. He would get so mad. Good times.

cv: You have said that you would be a vegan if it weren't for cheese. Do you not like the vegan pizza option?

YW: I do not. Pizza is holy so when you put vegan cheese on pizza it's like shaving the beard off a rabbi. Yeah, he's still a rabbi, but ew, what happened?

cv: How much do you love cheese? Which is your favorite?

YW: It's like those cousins that are really awesome, funny, and have cool stuff when you go to their house, but you don't always get to see them, but when you do, it's delicious. But you don't really know them that well because there are so many different kinds.

cv: You like to garden, what do you like to grow? Do have a large garden?

YW: It varies from season to season, but I've always grown tomatoes. I like growing leafy greens like spinach and kale because they're easy, you save a lot of money by growing your own, and they're FRESH. My garden is a little bigger than the white tile spot in commonvision.

Meet Justyna Kurbiel

commonvision: What is your role at commonvision? How long have you been working there?

Justyna Kurbiel: I was hired summer of 2015 at commonvision as a motion designer/ amimator, to create animated advertisements mostly for the televisions in UMBC’s The Commons. I was also pleasantly surprised with the amount of fine arts and film work I’ve been given during my time here.

cv: How/When did you know that you wanted to be an animator?

JK: I believe I decided to become an animator somewhere around middle school (a glorious age, let me tell you), after my family and I had watched Toy Story 3. My dad started geeking out about how crazy it was to see the first Toy Story where he saw for the first time a full length feature, made entirely using computer graphics. We started watching videos comparing the new and old Toy Story, some behind the scenes stuff and out of the blue my dad said, very casually, “Hey maybe you could do this.”

He’d known that I had always had something in me that gave me the urge to draw. Perhaps it was boredom, or maybe I inherited a high artistic productivity from my mom, but regardless, drawing came first, from my early childhood.

cv: What is the best thing about working at commonvision?

JK: The best thing about working at commonvision is the job experience. My free time in my schedule is filled up by my job, and thankfully my job is constantly adding new things to my portfolio. By working with other talented artists I can both draw inspiration and compete with them. I’m always learning something new. Even if I’m working on something that I have done before, I push myself to do it even faster than before.

cv: Are there any projects that you are particularly fond of having created? 

JK: This has to be the hardest question for me. I have a really hard time appreciating my older artwork, and older in many cases can be as short as two weeks after its completion. Although it sounds bad, it pushes me to keep creating something new. I’m pretty proud of the bumpers I made for the different departments of The Commons. I made the assets in a few hours and quickly animated them after. Before this piece, I always felt as if my animations looked scrappy, like guess work. It was the first time I felt confident in my animation. It  feels professional and clean.

cv: So, why do you fear getting your fingers stuck in a bowling ball? This ever happen to you before?

JK: I forgot that I told you guys this. It’s never happened to me before, but the reason behind it is that when I go bowling I use the lightest balls (is that a 7 or something?). Those are designed to be for little children with little fingers, and my fingers have grown.

cv: Speaking of fears, you ever get a sunglasses sunburn? You do not like that look?

JK: I haven’t ever gotten sunglasses burn, no. Have you ever been in a tornado or a tsunami? Not many people want to or have experienced their biggest fear. I was a lifeguard in high school, and I was always switching between sunglasses and squinting, because I didn’t want my eyes to be white. Some days I would hide under my blanket and ignore the swimmers. I do not like that look. I don’t want to look like an inverted raccoon.

cv: What would you do if you ever, in fact, caught one of the geese on campus?

JK: You know, I really do wish that I could do that, but only the baby ones. That way they could do that imprinting thing they do and they could follow me around! The trick though would be keeping it a secret from the CD. Let’s just say that I haven’t been on the best terms this year with Harbor Hall’s Community Director.

cv: You like to draw a lot, how long have you been drawing and how would you describe your style?

JK: I don’t know; I feel like I’ve been drawing forever. I don’t want to be one of those people that says something like “I started playing soccer when I was 4,” ‘cause yeah right. Honestly I have no clue. I had to write a journal in 1st grade about my life and each page we could include a drawing. I drew a very nice bird feeder in there (It really really sucked, but! I was trying to understand perspective! So even at that age I was trying to draw from observation… In third grade I drew dogs and horses. In 6th, cows. In 8th, sea gulls and anime? In 9th grade I started drawing people and by 12th I knew how to paint.

Aah, yes, let’s talk about style. I am a person that grew out of whining “It’s my styyyyyyyle,” every time I received a negative critique. Before I decided to make this change, all I was doing, stylistically, was either drawing from my head, or imitating other artist’s styles. When I transferred to art school my art teacher told me I had to break out of this bad habit. I entirely scrapped my style and started drawing from life.

After that point my style became like a talent boundary on my skills as an artist. If I couldn’t draw noses, for example, and drew them all the same, it would be my style. The word style became a bad word to me. I would get angry at myself and say “Ok, from now on, I’m drawing only noses.” While I started to become more comfortable with the cycle of scrapping and rebuilding my style, I somehow created a style.

This is getting redundant, isn’t it? I just want to say that I didn’t choose this style, this style chose me. I was focused on constantly improving. By drawing quickly and constantly, I was able to make more mistakes. By correcting those mistakes I improved. Because of this quick pace, I personally prefer to use a gestural line. I also like to make things cute. But if someone asks me to imitate a style, I’d like to say that I could get pretty close to it.

cv: What do you think you want to do when you leave UMBC? 

I’m hoping to get an internship at one of the big name animation studios like Pixar or Dreamworks, but I’ll take any job honestly. I love working; someone should just let me work. I feel like I’m going to have a midlife crisis though, after I realize that the animation industry is a tough one to be in and become a flight attendant or a dentist or something. Or maybe, I’ll start my own animation company; who knows? I definitely want a german shepherd husky mix. And I want to touch a red panda. And I want to see New Zealand.

 

To see more of Justyna's work, please visit http://justynakurbiel.tumblr.com/post/127161685537