Apartment Tour

Well we thought that we would give you all a tour of our apartment, since the pictures that we put up were not all that good. Sorry there is no audio for this video, but as it is, it took a long time to upload this, so doing narration would have just been too much for the video, but we hope that you enjoy seeing the apartment and feel free to post comments about it, or email us too :)

Love you all!

Carla and Matty

One Month Anniversary of Being in Auckland!

Ok, so today, November 29 (Monday for us), is our one month anniversary of being in New Zealand! How crazy is that?!? In a way, it feels like it has not been that long, but in other ways, it feels like it has been MUCH longer than that. I feel like we are finally starting to fall into step living here. It is starting to feel normal, and I have to say, we are enjoying the nice weather! It is almost hard to believe that in just 2 days, it is December, because it is so incredibly warm here! It is 73 degrees F today, and I am sitting in capris, a tank and with the door open and the fan on! It is crazy nice weather here... So I am sorry for all you back home suffering in the 30 degree weather. Lol, sorry had to throw that in!

So anyway, as I said it is hard to believe that it is Chrsitmas time, because it is so warm, but yesterday, we had the pleasure of walking five minutes down to the main street in Auckland and watching the Auckland Santa Parade in the sunshine. I even got a little sunburned yesterday at the parade. It was very different watching a Christmas Parade in the heat, and some stores had santas dressed up in a red short sleeve and shorts costume! So wierd, but it was a lot of fun, and we really enjoyed seeing a Christmas parade; we have never seen one before, so we thought we would share some pictures with everyone.

This first picture is a policeman. They have such funny atire, and this is what they wear on a daily basis; it wasnt just even attire. We have even heard that policemen don't carry guns here. That is pretty crazy, and this guy was super nice. He kept walking up and down the street slapping the hands of all the children. That was fun to see.


This is a picture that Matty took before the parade to show how many people showed up to this parade, and this picture really does not do it justice. There were SO many people, it took us about ten minutes to walk home instead of five, because of trying to maneuver between all these people!

These here, I know it is hard to see, but are Maori's. They are the native settlers here in New Zealand, and they are very "Tongan-looking" people. They are dark-skinned and very muscular, but the Moari's that we have encountered (they really are all over) have been very nice. This parade was very culturally diverse, with the Maori's (we aren't completely sure how to pronounce it, but I keep saying "Mowry"), Koreans, as you will see later in the post, Chinese Dragons (they had Chinese Christmas music playing), Scottish and Irish bagpipers, and tons of other cultures too. Matt and I were saying that we will probably NEVER see another parade that is as diverse as this one was, so it was actually really unique and fun to see.

Here is the Chinese dragon. Matt really liked this, so he took tons of pictures of it, but here is the best one that he took.

And of course, they couldnt have a parade without a Kiwi bird in it, and we couldnt post this without a picture of it :)

The parade, like I said was very diverse, and it even had a float of Woody, Mr Potato Head, and they even had Dora the Explorer and tons of other children TV shows, some of which we do not know and some (sadly) that we do know...

One of my favorites was these beautiful horses (dont ask me what they are called). They were very bg and really pretty, but I didnt like them as much when they stopped and pooped right in front of us, so the rest of the parade it smelled pretty bad... but it's ok haha :)

And much to Matt's disappointment, they had SpongeBob, which is a Nickelodean (did I spell that right?) show, but no Penguins, which is made here, so why wouldnt they have that?!?

But in between all these floats and blimps, they had very off things too. They had tons of these guys on the really tall bikes, people on stilts walking, and even Halloween stuff! It was so wierd to see Halloween stuff in a Christmas parade. There were these girls dressed up in black dresses with black wings on, and black makeup running down their eyes... very odd, but it must mean something to the Kiwi's.

And of course, the finale was Santa. Mind you, it was called the Santa Parade, but there was ONE Santa (I guess that's not a bad thing), but it was wierd that there were not very many Christmas Floats at all really. It was very bazaar, but we are very glad that we were able to go see the parade, knowing that we will probably never see a parade like that again, particularly in Auckland, so we enjoyed it :)

Thanks as always for listening (reading I guess) to us babble and tell about the fun and wierd things we do in NZ. We love you all and cannot wait to post about our next adventures.

Carla and Matty

An Animation Post... Finally

So I don't know if there are any animators, or aspiring animators out there (maybe even future Oktobor animators) that read this blog... but if there are, this ones for you!


So first of all as an animator its very important to get lots of reference for what you animate. In my case its penguins! Doesn't everybody just love penguins! haha

My wife and I recently took a trip to a local place that has a bunch of penguins and it was a ton of fun to see real ones moving around and interacting with each other!
Don't you just love the way they walk!

So even though those pictures were great and reference IS important, that's not actually what I wanted to talk about. But I figured, who doesn't like to look at funny little penguins! The real topic I wanted to talk about was that feeling you may sometimes get where you feel like you don't know what you're doing or that your not good enough. BUT first, I have to show you a picture of the bus that takes you to this penguin habitat!

Isn't that hilarious! hahaha

Ok, now down to the real stuff! So as I was saying as an animator or student of animation you may sometimes feel like you don't know what your doing or your not as good as you should be. First of all you need to understand that this feeling is completely normal and surprisingly common. Through AnimationMentor I have heard that its when you stop feeling that anxiety that you start to hit a wall. As crazy as it sounds that feeling actually pushes you... you just need to push back. You cant give up!

I just read something by one of the mentors at AM who had a visit from Glen Keane a while back. Glen told him that when he was assigned the Beast in Beauty and the Beast he got that same feeling. He felt that this was when everyone would figure out he couldn't animate. And this was after he had already animated Ariel in the Little Mermaid! Obviously he could animate!!

The point is EVERYONE gets that feeling. Funny enough I read that story the other day at work, and as coincidence may have it I was feeling that anxiety at that moment. I was working on a really long shot with more characters than I have ever animated at once... and its very physical! I was just thinking... this is it, working in the industry was fun, but surely they're going to send me to the firing squad after this. I had no idea how I was going to animate that! My wife kept telling me I was hired for a reason, but I just wasn't sure. I had spent at least a few days on this shot getting absolutely NO where.

Then I read that story, and I thought well if Glen Keane can feel that way, I suppose I can too. So I kept working... and kept working... and kept working! I tried harder and harder, and then I got it. I figured it out. And I learned two things from that shot. You really cant give up, even when you feel like there is no way you can animate that shot. You just need to try harder than you knew you could and you'll get it. It may take some time, but you WILL get it!

The other thing I learned from that shot is that sometimes the hardest shots you have will be the best shots you animate. They may end up being your favorite. For me that is certainly the case. Out of all of the shots Ive animated at work, that's probably the one I'm most proud of. I didn't even think I knew how to animate it and now its going to be on TV. I learned a TON from that shot, and now I know that if I ever have a shot that's in any way similar, I know that I can do it, and I even know how.

Never give up. When a shot pushes your limits, push back and you'll learn more from that than an easy shot that goes smoothly. That's why animation is so rewarding, because it challenges us.

Keep animating!

Matty

Quick post for the Fam

Hey Family!


We love you guys and miss you!! We hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving :)
Anyway Today we went to Newmarket and took some pictures that we just had to share.

The first couple are all for you Ron! So Im sure youre used to seeing this kind of stuff back home... but remember, we are in a different country where NOTHING is American. So this was pretty awesome to see!
This is a little bar we walked by.

AND... check out the sign inside...

Isnt that crazy! I dont even think they have mustangs over here! haha And unfortunately that poor waitress probably thought we were creepy and taking a picture of her. Well Im sure that makes you enjoy that story that much more.

Well after that we just wanted to try something new. So we went to Mac's Brewery and its fantastic! All NZ brewed beer and the food is great! And in the picture below you'll see Carla holding an NZ beer with cricket on the background tv... I dont understand that game.

Our delicious beers!

And then me.

We thought this was pretty cool. They each show the temperature that they keep each beer at... in Celsius of course.

Then after that we went to Albert Park to read some since the weather here has been absolutely beautiful! I hear back home the high has been as low as around 20 F. Wow, thats cold! Here its been a lovely 65-70 F. Heres us in the park :)

Love you guys!

Matty and Carla

Turkey Day/Matty's Birthday

Hey everyone!


Sorry its been so long, its been quite busy at work. But we just wanted to say a Happy (but late) Thanksgiving to everyone back in the States. And as some of you may know, my birthday lands right around the holiday, so I've got a couple stories and pictures to share!

On my birthday, I went to work like any other day, got some happy birthdays from coworkers... very nice. Then a couple of my officemates came in with a bunch of cookies and cupcakes they made for me! It was so sweet and very delicious! Heres a picture of them

Then right around lunch time a bunch of animators came into our little office... now at first I thought, oh no this is going to be a Nerf gun massacre. But then they all started singing happy birthday! I thought wow thats really nice that they care that much... THEN through the middle of everyone comes Carla holding this birthday cake!! I couldnt believe it! I was so surprised and I couldnt believe how everyone cared so much to organize all of this! It was amazing! The people I work with are pretty awesome :) (Side not to all aspiring animators out there, no matter what studio you work at, its the people that make it an awesome place to work.)

And heres a portion of the animators... the office is pretty small and our team is growing every week so I couldnt fit everyone in the frame. It was amazing! I did have to black out the bottom left corner of the picture because it had some of my monitor on it and what Im working on is TOP SECRET :)

Ohhh the birthday fun doesnt stop there! So that was Tuesday that all of that happened. Then last night, on Friday, Im working away and enjoying my drink from the drink trolley... wait side note... not sure if Ive told you before but every Friday at around 5pm the high ups at the studio come around with the "Drink Trolley" serving alcohol to all us workers, I know, Awesome!

AND back to the story, so on Friday after the drink trolley came around, Carla all of a sudden shows up at work! Im not even sure why, then I look to all of the other animators and they say "We're going out! Happy Birthday!" haha They wanted to take me out for my birthday but never got a chance to so they decided to do it then. They (and my sneaky little Carla) had planned it all week! So after work, we all went across the street to the Sale St Bar!

Heres me and my glass of Kiwi beer! Pretty good!

Here is the group that I went out with. These are all of the people that I share my office with (I know they really like to pack us in). Great bunch of people! And then theres sneaky little Carla down in the right corner... Shes pretty great too :)

SALE ST! Whoooo!

Oh and of course animating shots at work isnt enough, I still had to take more shots at the bar.... ok so maybe animation humor isnt that funny. ANYway they felt that I NEEDED to have a birthday shot... and in light of all of the effort they put out, I felt it was the least I could do.

And then TURKEY DAY! Since Ive been Calling Carla "sneaky" this whole post, Im going to go ahead and keep it up. After all she did give me a hard time in one of the last ones... (I told you Id get you back!) haha So my beautiful little sneaky Carla was incredible and made such an amazing Thanksgiving meal all by herself. It was all ready by the time I got off work. I couldnt believe how much food she made because if youve seen pictures of our apartment youd know that we really dont have much to work with. But how ever it happened (Ahhh another reason to call her sneaky) she made all of this outstanding food that was perfectly cooked and so full of flavor! And to top it all off it was the first Thanksgiving meal she has ever made! Im one lucky guy :)

So here are a couple pictures from our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, and our first Thanksgiving in another country where they dont actually celebrate the holiday. It was perfect and made us feel a little bit at home :)


YUM!! Im still enjoying leftovers!

Me and the Sneaky one!

Thanks for checking out what weve been up to!

Matty and Carla

Auckland Zoo/Big Ups

So, sorry it's taken so long to tell you about our fun from this past weekend, but we are still trying to get into the flow of things here :). Matt is having so much fun at work, but he is definitely not used to working full time, and he has been bombarded with so much work that he has been working overtime too (with no avail - he doesnt get paid for overtime), so he has been very tired when getting home from work. I am still trying to get used to things around here, so I have been exploring a lot! It has been a lot of fun!

Anyway, so this past weekend we decided to go to the Auckland Zoo, which was a lot of fun, but they are under a lot of construction right now, so it wasnt as fun as I think it could have been; it is suppose to be fully remodeled next September, which is when mom and dad Wheeler are suppose to visit, so hopefully we will go back when they are up here, and hopefully it will be done and a lot of fun! :)

So the zoo is HUGE and I am pretty sure that we missed some things, but when we first walked in, we saw this big area with Zebras, and Emu's and these giraffes. There was some baby giraffes too, and I got some good pictures on my camera, but as Matty said to me, he got some GREAT pictures on his camera, so these are all from his camera (haha I had to throw you under the bus Matty). He is so conceited lol!!! But isnt that giraffe beautiful?!? Such amazing colors!

This monkey below was the funniest thing in the world! This is a sort of bad picture, but it looks like a smaller gorilla, and we were looking at the bird section, when we kept hearing this screaming, and we were trying for a while to figure out where it was coming from. We followed the noise, and these are what we saw! I took a video of them on my camera, which is at the bottom of this post, but they were pretty funny! I am actually not sure what this type of monkey is called, but it was a lot of fun to watch them.

And of course, here are some lazy hippos! We stood by them and watched them for probably 20 minutes and they didnt move at all, but Im pretty sure I have never seen them in real life before, so I enjoyed looking at them. So we were standing there, and of course the place is covered in mud, so there were flies all over, including by us, so I felt a bug on me, and I thought that it was just a fly, so I went to brush it off, and OF COURSE, it was a spider! If anyone knows me, they know that I have the worst luck with spiders! I always think that I have a hair, or a sly on me, and it always seems to be a spider, which I am ABSOLUTELY freaked out by! So anyway, I go to swat the bug away, and it is a spider! UGH; so not only that, but I am wearing a loose shirt, and so when I swat it away, I push it down my shirt on accident! AHHH!!! And I am not completely comfortable with the types of spiders they have over here yet, so I have NO CLUE if it is a dangerous spider or not! (I have heard that there are no deadly spiders here, but that doesnt mean that they dont bite!!!) So anyway, it was not fun! After it went down my shirt, I lost it, I couldnt find it anymore, which just made me feel creepy-crawly the rest of the day! Haha, I know that is silly, but it wasnt fun!

Here is the biggest tortoise either of us has EVER seen in our lives! I know it is hard to tell in this picture, but we were talking and we bet that it weighs about 300-400 lbs! It was HUGE! I know this is a funny way to look at it, but if you were to roll me into a ball, the tortoise was probably twice that size!!!! Amazing!

These here are AMERICAN alligators! There are only two species of alligators in the world (or so we read) and they are Chinese and American alligators; it was fun seeing these in a zoo in New Zealand! We thought that we would end up seeing a lot of exotic creatures, but there were actually a lot of animals that we have seen before, and we went to the area where Kiwi's are, but were unable to see any of them, because they were all sleeping... boo.

But we went to the area where sea lions and penguins are... the penguins are off display right now for some reason, but we did get to see these sea lions, and they were really playful, which was a lot of fun to watch! Usually you just see them lazing around but these ones were swimming all over and kept coming up on this rock, and Matty got some great pictures of them!

And of course, Matty's favorite part was the tiger. When we first walked over to them, they were all very far away and hard to see, but then, the zoo keepers walked by, and the tiger feeding time was only like an hour away, so once the tiger saw the keeper walk by, he got up, and ran to the window to see if he was coming to feed him! It was REALLY cool, because it was so hard to see him before :) It was great, and that was like the last animal that we saw that day. It was a nice note to end on. We were there about 3 hours, and we could have seen a lot more probably, and if we would have stayed another hour, like I said, we could have seen the tiger feeding, but we were exhausted, so we left. It was still a great day, and we look forward to going back when it is fully remodeled.

So that was on Saturday... then Sunday evening, we got invited to go with all Matty's animator friends to this place called Big Ups; anyone who has had Safe and Sober Grad Night in high school would probably recognize all this equipment. It was a big play house for grown ups lol. A lot of blow up slides, and a soccer field, and the velcro wall and sumo wrestling; all that fun stuff. They reserved this place after hours on Sunday, so it was just the people at Oktobor Animation, so that was a lot of fun. Matty said that he has never had so much fun with people from work, and it was a lot of fun getting to know these people and their spouses. We had a lot of fun!

This picture below is Matty going down the blow up slide the wrong way! He is CRAZY! But it was a lot of fun, and we didnt end up with too many battle wounds, other than the sore neck and the occasional rubber burn! They even had these big clear balls that are like the ones that Guinna Pigs run around in; they are called Zorbing balls, and you get inside them and someone pushes you around in them! Crazy! Anyway, if you get the chance, google Zorbing in NZ! It is a really popular thing around here and we really want to try to do that while we are here sometime!

It was a lot of fun doing this on Sunday, and we were so sweaty and gross by the end, and on Monday, we were both pretty sore. Ugh, but it was a lot of fun!

So, anyway, that is what we did this weekend, and OH! I have to tell all about Sal's pizza! We went there on Saturday evening, and Im not sure if we have told you guys yet, but pizza here is VERY different as well! They do not have just pepperoni pizza! Their pepperoni is like salami, so not the same at all! Matty and I are very plain people, and we LOVE pepperoni pizza, so we were so BUMMED to hear that they dont have that here! So anyway, we did find this pizza place and we went there on Saturday; it is AMERICAN pizza! It is a guy from New York who came over here and started a pizza place and it is the BEST pizza ever! I would even venture to say that it is better than most in Reno! So great, and they have REAL pepperoni! haha, it was so great to find this place!

So we went there because we were told about it from some other Americans, and we met someone here that we were told was from Reno, as well. Her name is Mo (Maureen, but everyone calls her Mo). She married a Kiwi, so she lives here now, and she is so AMAZING! She has been so helpful to us, and so we met her on Saturday, and we all went to Sals pizza. It was yummy and it has been great being able to talk to someone from the States (especially Reno), and who has been here for a while, so she has been showing us some really great places, and took me to a couple bars, when Matty is working late, which is great! By the way, they have GREAT beer here!

Okay, sorry, this was a long post, but had to tell all about Mo and the great beer lol!!!

So I hope this video plays, but the one below should be the video of the funny monkey from the zoo!

Okay, love you all and hope to do another post sooner than next week haha!

Love

Carla and Matty

Oktobor knows how to Party!

Kia Ora!


So I just wanted to share some more things about the place I work at, Oktobor Animation. Its such a great place to work! Oktobor actually had its official ribbon cutting last Friday and there was a lot going on! The Mayor and the Minister of technology came, two news stations came, some Maori performers, and the president and executive producers at Nickelodeon came. Then there was an afterparty that was a fantastic time!

This picture below is the Oktobor Animation after party!! They really went all out and basically built a very nice bar in the soundstage room. Free open bar, anything you want as much as you want.


I love how they had our logo projected onto the wall! So cool! The two people in the picture are Tiffany on the left and Katie on the right. They are both fellow animators and very talented.

Isn't it cool how they buikt up that wall and put Oktobor down the side! Oktobor was all over the place... It really made me feel like I was part of something big. The studio really did a great job at making all of us feel special.

It was a pretty big party and semi formal... about as formal as animators get.

The amazing picture is a painting by one of our animators. He did Skipper the penguin (from the show) shaking hands with a Kiwi bird representing the collaboration between Nickelodeon in America and Oktobor in New Zealand.

They even had a podium with Oktobor written all over it. The picture below is of the head of production, Rob and one of the co-founders, Chris. Both guys are super nice... and American!

The next picture is of a couple of the Nickelodeon big-wigs. The one on the right is the president of CG at Nickelodeon. Amazing guy! During the week he would just come into our office while we were animating, sit next to us, and just chat. He would ask how we were doing, if we had any suggestions, and he would just make us laugh with funny stories from the 60's. These guys at Nickelodeon really are interested in every artist's opinion.

The guy on the left is the head of assets.... its a complicated job. Any way he's very high up. Long story short, there was a karaoke contest that us animators definitely won! We were great up there, none of us on key, but still great! It was so much fun... and I'm not usually one to get up and sing in front of people. So as a prop to our singing, we brought our Nerf guns up... Well this head of assets guy gave us a bad score so we shot him with our Nerf guns. I SHOT a Nickelodeon big wig.... good idea? Not sure, but it was fun! But for real, all the guys were super cool and encouraged the fun!

Carla and I in the hall of the studio next to one of the many Penguins decorations! Oh if anyone is wondering about the mustache, me and a group of guys at work are doing growing them for a thing called Movember which benefits prostate cancer awareness. And no... Carla is not a fan :)

Flags in the atrium of the studio. Penguins rock!!

And here is the atrium with Oktobor, Penguins, and other fun stuff!

I love working on this show!

If any of the family is wondering... This is the Fras! For anyone else, this is Frasier my producer. Really funny guy with a talent for growing killer facial hair. And he rocks the karaoke machine!

The picture below is of me and the Movember crew. Notice the cool mustaches... mustachi.... whatever the plural is. Anyway, if you're asking "what is a girl doing in that picture... well the guys grow mustaches and the girls grow hair socks... hahaha! Shes an animator who works in the same room I do.

And lastly this is Me, Tiffany and Matt (two other animators) and the two Executive Producers of Penguins of Madagascar, Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle. When it comes to Penguins, you don't get any higher than these two. They are the ones who come up with all the great stuff we animate. It was a pleasure to meet them and again, they were so incredibly kind and willing to talk to us and really listen.

Like I had said earlier, two news channels came to the studio and I'm so excited to be able to share these videos with you! Now you can see a bit of where I work :) Im not actually in these, but a lot of my friends are. Check out the links below!

http://www.3news.co.nz/Oktober-Animation-major-player-in-film-industry/tabid/367/articleID/186077/Default.aspx

http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/nz-s-newest-animation-studio-open-business-3893754

I hope you enjoyed!

Matt and Carla