David works with a small team of illustrators in ImageTap, a creative service of Vertis Inc. The group specializes in illustration for print media and dabbles in animation for corporate communications. Their work can be seen as ad inserts in national magazines like Newsweek, Popular Science and  National Geographic among others. The team has been featured in trade publications such as Adweek and Photo District News.

Davids talents these days are focused on generating award-winning illustration for the print medium. His primary tool is Lightwave 3d as an asset generator. He has a passion for the fantastic & cartoony, but clients most often tap him for realism or a stylized reality. Usually his efforts are a collaboration between himself, photographers, photo-illustrators and traditional illustrators.

Deuce Bennett
Senior Animator of Creative Imagineering, Inc
also on Newtek's Development Team

Deuce has 25 years physical special effects for motion picture and television and 15 years computer graphics - corporate id's, Animation TD for Jimmy Neutron, military visualizations

Deuce owns studio Creative Imagineering, Inc. and works for NewTek Inc. with the development team for LightWave 3D.

His effects career involved physical effects for over 75 films including Lonesome Dove, Problem Child, Captain Ron, and extending to the last years of the Walker : Texas Ranger TV series.

During the final episodes of Walker , Deuce became more active in Visual Effects and worked on Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius as an Animation Technical Director. He currently is Senior Animator of Creative Imagineering, Inc. and spends all of his energies creating and teaching computer magic, as well as helping the Development Team with LightWave's new direction.  He also finds time to do military simulations and spend time with his wife Miracle and his 8 year old son Alex.

Also..

We took a special look at ImageWrangler from BareKnuckle Software .

ImageWrangler was designed with one goal in mind: manhandling your image sequences.
ImageWrangler will fundamentally change the way you interact with your image sequences

SIGGRAPH 2005 Review
This month we will be presenting selections from SIGGRAPH's 2005 Animation Theater. Come and watch a few shorts on our big screen.

Bryan Smith will also be previewing his upcoming MELBOTS masterclass.

Best wished to T.G. Weem as he will be moving to Boston soon. T.G. is a founding member of ABOSG. We are having a party at Circle R Media this Friday after work.

SIGGRAPH 2005 Preview

J. Marshall Pittman, ABOSG Secretary and DFW SIGGRAPH Professional Chapter Chair, will preview animation and presentations to be presented at SIGGRAPH 2005 in Los Angeles, July 31 - August 4. http://www.siggraph.org/s2005/

Our guest speaker for the April 30, 2005 meeting will be JUSTIN BARRETT of Reel FX Creative Studios. Justin will demonstrate character animation techniques. He is the author of "Animate a Face", a 2-CD set of instructional videos. One copy of "Animate a Face" will be given away to a lucky attendee at the meeting! Check out Justin's website: http://www.justinanimator.com/

Justin grew up in Port Angeles, WA and "was always a freak for moving visuals as a kid." He also developed an interest in acting and was inspired by Pixar's "Toy Story" in 1995 to merge his interests in acting and animation. He started teaching himself 3D animation and then attended the Art Institute of Seattle, graduating in 2000 with a degree in Computer Animation. He was hired by Big Idea in 2001 and worked on such productions as "3-2-1 Penguins!", "Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie", "An Easter Carol" and others. At Digital Production Solutions he was the Animation Director for "Monster Monster Trucks: The Golden Rule Rules!" For Reel FX, he has worked on "GI Joe: Valor vs. Venom", "Halloweentown High" (as Supervising Animator), "Action Man X-Missions: The Movie" (as Supervising Animator) and a "Robots" theatrical PSA.

Digital Tutors visited us for the April 2 meeting.
Piyush Patel and Kyle Green demonstrated modeling and integration of Zbrush to Maya techniques.
Digital Tutors
Pixologic/Zbrush:

Our guest speakers this month were Mike Fortner and Michael Comet. They discussed their work in the industry and talk about character rigging and setup for animation. Michael showed off some of his amazing rigging scripts - be sure to check out his site. There were nearly 120 people at this meeting - almost time for a larger room.

Mike Fortner, has recently worked for Reel FX as Lead Technical Director. At Reel FX, he overlooked rigging, skinning and modeling on various productions including "Halloweentown III", "Valor vs. Venom", "Red Star", "My Little Pony", "GI Joe Spytroops" and a soon to be released animation for Hasbro UK. Mike has recently accepted a job at DNA to work on their current feature film.
http://www.mikefortner.com/

Michael Comet started his career with gaming company, Volition Inc., as Lead Animator. Later, he was an Animator and Lead Rigger at Big Idea Productions where he worked on "3-2-1 Penguins" and "Veggie Tales". In 2003 Michael moved to Blue Sky Studios and worked on the upcoming feature film "Robots". He is now Character Rigging Supervisor at DNA Productions (http://www.dnahelix.com/). http://www.comet-cartoons.com/

Modeling with Wayne Braddick and Daniel Trbovic.

Wayne Braddick works for Resolution Independence Studios, has taught animation at The Art Institute of Dallas and is teaching at UTD this spring. He
is also a Certified Alias instructor and trained for Alias beginning with Power Animator and later with Maya.

Daniel Trbovic moved to Dallas in November 2004 to work for Reel FX. He has been a CG artist since he began working with 3D Studio DOS version 1.0. He was born in Belgrade, Serbia and has credits on several European animated titles as well as commercial work for Daimler/Chrysler, United Nations, Procter & Gamble and others.

Stephen Steinbach, director of the Expresslane short, spoke in his progress on the 2D animatic and invite artists to participate in the production of this animated short.

ALSO: Thanks to Peachpit Press - Our first book Give-A-Way "Animation and Effects with Macromedia 2004".

Don Stokes and Loren Soman of Post Asylum.

Don Stokes is President of Post Asylum, past president and current board member of the Dallas Producers Association, and a very active member of the local production community. Don has been producing award-winning films and videos for more than thirty years. He is heavily involved in script and project development, supervision and selection of the production team, in addition to budgeting and cost control

Loren Soman has visited with us once before, if you missed him the first time - you really must come and check out his ultra cool work. Some of his credits include Ghostbusters 2, Total Recall, RoboCop 2 and 3, Bugsy, Basic Instinct, Toys, and Shrek. Loren currently works for Post Asylum.