Speaking of Animation

A new website created by four talented animators currently working in the Animation Industry to keep us informed and inspired =o).

Check it here.

Check also their Podcast in iTunes. Here is the feed: http://www.speakingofanimation.com/feed/podcast/

French Roast - great short!

Take a look at this short: http://www.frenchroast.fr/index_en.html

AAU, another nice one - Fat-tastico by Yung-Jui "Erik" Lee

Fat-tastico from gogoerik on Vimeo.

Nice short from AAU - Masquerade by Aziz K.

Masquerade from Aziz K. on Vimeo.

Travisty's Beard - Nice blog to follow

A collaborative blog of artists from the art department of PDI/DreamWorks in Redwood City. The artists choose a topic each month and submit their interpretations. The blog is not officially associated with DreamWorks and is for the artists to explore their own personal work and have fun.


Found @ Cartoon Brew.

Waif of Persephone, Nick Cross's new film

The Waif of Persephone from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

Eric Goldberg @ CTN

Someone posted the link to these videos in AM forum and it's funny, I was next to the guy who was filming it, this guy was showing his work to Eric before and was talented, I hope he is lucky and gets the job!.. why on earth wasn't I filming Eric Goldberg??

By the way, my friend Dhar Jabouri is the one with the AM shirt in the back =oD.

Eric Goldberg talks about Ken Harris


Eric Goldberg talks about the benefits of pose to pose in CG animation


Eric Goldberg talks about the benefits of pose to pose in CG animation part 2


Eric Goldberg - What's missing in CG and hand drawn reels.


I found the name of the owner of these videos: Jeremy Hopkins!

The Passenger by Chris Jones

The Making of can be found here.

CTN-X

This weekend I went to the CTN Animation Expo and got some prints from amazing artists, you gotta check out this art if you don't know it already:

From Brittney Lee:







From Imaginism Studios:




From Arthur de Pins (this is a bok I bought, he was not there):

The Academy (Shorts) Short-List from Cartoon Brew

Cartoon Brew posted a list of the nominated short films for the Academy Awards:

The Cat Piano - Eddie White and Ari Gibson, directors (The People’s Republic of Animation). A Cat Writer tells about a fiendish piano made of cats. When the keyboard is struck, spikes go through the cats’s tales, making them “sing”.

French Roast - Fabrice O. Joubert, director (Pumpkin Factory/Bibo Films). A man in a French Restaurant loses his wallet. He sits at the table drinking coffee after coffee until a homeless man kindly pays his check. There is a subplot about a bank robber who is really an old lady wearing a mask.

Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty - Nicky Phelan, director, and Darragh O’Connell, producer (Brown Bag Films) - see clip above! An old lady tells her frightened grand daughter of not being invited to Sleeping Beauty’s christening party.

The Kinematograph - Tomek Baginski, director-producer (Platige Image). The “inventor” of cinema has his own camera made of wood, stereo sound with two Victrolas, and a two-layer color process before the Lumiere brothers experiments, however, his beloved wife dies of consumption and he abandons his apparatus, just as the Lumiere’s breakthrough is being announced in the street by newsboys.

The Lady and the Reaper (La Dama y la Muerte) - Javier Recio Gracia, director (Kandor Graphics and Green Moon). The Grim Reaper keeps trying to collect the soul of an old woman. She is brought back to the living numerous times by her well-meaning young doctor. The old woman really wants to die and join her beloved husband however, so she electrocutes herself towards the end of the film.

Logorama - Nicolas Schmerkin, producer (Autour de Minuit). Mo-Cap. Imagine a world made up entirely of advertising characters, such as the Michelin tire guys, Bob’s Big Boy, Esso Oil Drop and an evil Ronald MacDonald who shoots everybody with a machine gun.

A Matter of Loaf and Death - Nick Park, director (Aardman Animations Ltd.) Wallace, the baker, meets his dream girl, the Lite Dough Girl, who has put on a bit of weight since her days as an advertising model for flour. She has killed twelve baker husbands and wants to make Wallace the 13th. Of course Gromit sees through her flirtatious act and manages to stop her from killing Wallace. Gromit has a romance with the Dough Girl’s French Poodle into the bargain.

Partly Cloudy - Peter Sohn, director (Pixar Animation Studios). Clouds make the babies out of bits of water vapor and give the infants to embattled storks who deliver the kids to their parents. One cloud gets stuck with making the “prickly” critters, such as crocks, porcupines, sharks, etc.

Runaway - Cordell Barker, director (National Film Board of Canada). A passenger train has a hard time scaling a mountain and runs out of coal, the passengers throw all their clothes in the firebox and half the passenger cars to get steam up.

Variete - Roelof van den Bergh, director (il Luster Productions). A man juggles plates on poles with the various elements of his life on top of the plates, such as girlfriend, school teacher, best buds, parents, wife, children, etc. Eventually he can’t sustain the numerous spinning plates and all collapse, clearing the way for the next generation.

For the original post at Cartoon Brew go to http://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/the-academy-shorts-short-list.html

Take a look at Florian Satzinger's Blog... great artwork!

I've been following this blog for few weeks now but every time I see his work I get inspired, I love his style and for what I understand he'll have an exhibition in Linz...





I hope I'm not committing any infringement by putting 2 of his drawings here.. I just wanted to spread the word and work of this fantastic artist!

His blog here.

Western Spaghetti - stop Motion film by PES

Also from the Best of Annecy:

Ex-ET from the Best of Annecy

I saw this film at the best of Annecy and I gotta say that wow, I totally loved it, the story, the characters, the animation!!! you can go to their website: http://ex-et-lefilm.com/



Also 3 other shorts got my attention:
Madagascar, Carnet de Voyage


Chick


The Man in the Blue Gordini

The Way to Heaven by Dalton Grant and Mier Tang

This is one of the trailers of a short film that my friend/teacher Dalton Grant made together with a great team of people, even though I haven't had the opportunity yet to watch the film I'm sure it's going to be a big success!!

For more info about the film go to it's site: http://www.thewaytoheavenmovie.blogspot.com/

Good Vibrations by Jérémy Clapin

Animation Mentor's November Issue is out

Part 3 of Norman Modification Tutorial

Tips and Ticks originally taught to the AAU Animation Club by Joshua Slice in a live demonstration on campus, 10-03-2009, is now in a SUPER EASY written tutorial by Vaughan Weigert. Enjoy!

Modding The Mouth...

THE MOUTH:
Start with fixing that giant overbite on the Original Norman... Make Curves visible again and place the Teeth back in the head so they don't collide with the head mesh.



1. Grab the Jaw Controllers and move them up or back as the case may be.
2. And SCALE the jaw Controllers to fit your head.



3. Select the "boca-burger" mouth shape surrounding the jaw and hit the "f8" key to view the mesh in COMPONENT MODE.
4. Now, select all verts of the object in component mode and move it back, and scale it, to fit into the head.

THE TONGUE:



1. Grab all vertices of the mesh in Component Mode and move it up (TY).

You may want to open the jaw and check to see that it looks right.



Got it from aauAnimationClub

Cool Sony Bravia TV Commercial

Here is a cool Sony Bravia TV Commercial animated by David Anthony Gibson and Alan Hawkins..

Planet 51 two minutes clip

Despicable Me trailers

Can't wait to see this movie!

Trailer #1:


Trailer #2:

Al Dente Short Film!

Al Dente from Mathieu Alvado on Vimeo.

Tarboy... awesome short!

Very useful Arc and Spacing Tracker

This is a script that Louaye Moulayess gave me at the school... it's written by Cameron Fielding, it can be found on his site.

Great tool to track arc and space in animation, it updates itself as you change your animation... sweet tool!

Download it here.

Adding Framecounter in quicktime

Someone at AM gave the link to a helpful tutorial on 11 Second Club on adding framecounter to your animation in quicktime, which is very cool when you don't have a shot mask...


PART 2 - FRAMECOUNTERS

Animation is a frame-by-frame art form. It's important to have control over each and every frame that's in your animation. And when you're critiquing someone's work, it can be invaluable to be able to be able to refer the animator to a specific frame or range of frames in their animation. Instead of trying to talk in a roundabout way, vaguely referring to an area of someone's piece by mentioning a bit of the dialogue near the frame in question, or a gesture that occurs slightly after the note you're trying to address, imagine if the previous video had actually been posted like this:

Hey hey hey! Now I can happily frame back and forth through this animation, and get down and dirty with my critiques. With the addition of a framecounter, I can now post a response something a little more like this:

2D Rig tutorial

Thanks Luis Gerardo Castellanos for sharing this on facebook...
This is a 2D rig tutorial using Anime Studio Software which I find very useful, I'm gonna give it a try on my short film, I have little cut-out girls that need to be animated this way...

How to train your dragon trailer is out!

Dupleggcated by Robert Huth

Ringling.... another awesome school!!
It makes me happy to see this kind of work, very inspirational all of the shorts I've posted, well hehe at least for me!

Anchored by Lindsey Olivares

This short really touched me... the story is beautiful and the style is so unique!!!

Anchored HD from lindsey olivares on Vimeo.

Hold the Line by Sem Assink

Great short film:

The Box and the Black Button

I found this interesting to share, at first I though that the movie The Box was a rip off of a short film I watched some time ago called Black Button, but after reading more about that I realized that none of them is a rip off of the other, it was a story created long time ago... anyway, I'm sharing the Black Button short film here because it is really good, and also sharing the The Box trailer just see both hehe... I gotta watch The Box in theaters, it looks really cool...

Black Button:



The Box:
Well I couldn't embed the video so here is the link.

Skhizein - Short Film

Fantastic short found @ spungella

Skhizein from Josef K. on Vimeo.

Distraxion by Mike Stern

Awesome piece:

Greed by Alli Sadegiani

Another great one:

GREED from Alli Sadegiani on Vimeo.

Love Blows by Malcon Pierce

Well I'm just posting some of the AM short I've seen and that I love... it's a way for me to have quick access to them (I don't get tired of watching them and I do publicity at the same time =oD )

Reach by Luke Randall

This is another of my inspirations, Luke it's just awesome.

Better off Undead by Bobby Pontillas

I've seen this short-animatic so many times and I still love it, it's not finish but it looks so good already...

Better Off Undead ! from Bobby Pontillas on Vimeo.

Brendan's Bouncing Ball Lecture

found @ Spungella:



Brendan Body put up an AWESOME tutorial and deconstruction of a bouncing ball. Don't be fooled by the "basic" animation idea, because he nicely demonstrates how a bouncing ball principle can be applied to a walk (human, squirrel or dinosaur). Go check it out! (thanks Brecht for the tip!!)

I updated my Demo Reel

I still have to work on putting some textures and lights but here it is, a mix between AAU and AM assignments...

Pixar Intro Parody

Haha great Parody found @ collegehumor

Another cool short: For sock's sake by Carlo Vogele - Gobelins

found @ Gobelins site

Wow Gobelins students are awesome! Inka Bola

I found a link to Floriane "Floony" Marchix's blog a there you'll find the making of Inka Bola!.. here few images taken from that blog:

How to modify Norman tutorial

Check out this tutorial:

Part one



Part two



found @ AAU Animation Club's blog

Effects in flash

Take a look at Elemental Magic's blog there are few test of effects done by hand... really neat!




Here another great tutorial on smoke made with flash I found, it's gonna be great for my thesis project:



found @ Flash FX Animation

Animating a Facial Take by Victor Navone

Take a look at that guide of Animating a facial take on Dash by Victor Navone, it's really great stuff.

Tutorial here

Creative Talent Network’s Animation Expo (CTN-X)

The CTN Expo 2009 is going to take place in November 20th to 22nd at the Burbank Convention Center (Los Angeles).


From CTN Expo's website:

Be a part of the only dedicated Expo for animation talent in the USA—located in the #1 market, Burbank California, this event fills a substantial void by providing highly focused conference programming, workshops, recruiting, presentations and networking opportunities designed to connect animation artists, studio executives and industry leaders both locally and internationally.

Launched in 2004 CTN (The Creative Talent Network) is a virtual community of animation artists from some of the highest grossing films in the history of animation who come together once a year to showcase their work and connect with other creatives. As the leaders of this community our mission is to empower the talent and engage with studios and educators. Making meaningful connections that propel talent into positions within the animation, games and surrounding industries is at the heart of what we do.

“Great ideas and meaningful connections happen most often in the hallways and casual gatherings of creative and talented people!.” says Tina Price founder of CTN and award winning animator, industry pioneer and 24 year former animation professional with the Walt Disney Animation Studios. The CTN Animation Expo is a unique event that brings these creative talents together by providing a collaborative arena in the heart of the animation market to promote employment, education and industry growth — and have some FUN doing it!

Event includes:
Artist panels / interviews
Special exhibits and demonstrations
2D and 3D demonstrations
Speed Talent Recruiting Mixers
Privileged access Networking
Leaders of the Industry Discussions
One on One Critiques

“Jobs come and go and projects fail or flurish but the one thing that remains constant is the talent is still talented.” ~Tina Price the Owner of The Creative Talent Network.

more info @ CTN Expo's site

SF Intl Animation Festival

November 11–15, 2009
Landmark's Embarcadero Center Cinema
One of the most fertile practices in contemporary film and television, animation occupies a unique space between artistic, experimental, commercial and industrial media. The five-day San Francisco International Animation Festival celebrates San Francisco’s prominence as a hub for one of the most creative cinematic forms.


more info @ San Francisco Film Society

Behind the ‘toons, part 2: The Shader by Sunny Kharbanda

Sunny Kharbanda just posted the steps he went through to get a nice toon shader, just read it here, thanks again Sunny for sharing this.

The first part (backgrounds) can be found here

Guide to help give more benificial Feedback for animators! by Malcon Pierce

I found this interesting article by Malcon Pierce about giving feedback, most of us are feeling bad when having to give feedback to our fellow animators because we still don't feel like our skills are as great as they should be. Well, we LEARN by seeing other people's work (that's my thought =oD)...

Let's read what Malcon has to say...

How to give awesome Critiques!

So Giving feedback will not only help out the person you’re giving feedback to, It will help you learn also. This seems obvious, but when you break down somebody’s animation and really look at it on a micro-analytical level(yes i think i made that word up… and I like it) Your forcing yourself to think about every action and you end up rationalizing every move. for example, You learn why the weight is off, or how the animator got the weight just right. You can see clearly why the animator made certain decisions, maybe to make an idea read clearly, or even to confuse the audience. By doing these things your animation vocabulary will grow. Not talking about words and definitions, but methods, and or tricks that can take your animation to a higher level. So in my opinion, giving really solid feedback involves breaking down the animation and thinking about why the artist made decisions, and how did the artist accomplish ideas. This applies to all animation, Highly polished feature level, or somebody that is just starting out. You’re going to learn from both and I think it’s Vidal if you want to improve. So if somebody needs feedback on their shot I think it is important to consider a few things in order to give the best, and most beneficial advise to help the animator improve upon their shot.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Eyeballs By David Anthony Gibson

David Anthony Gibson goes step by step how he animated some of the dock shots in Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, to have all the pics and video you should go to his blog.

Part 2 is here:

Great animation... Yellow Cake by Nick Cross

Yellow Cake from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

Another nice style...

Haha I feel I'm getting my blog full of different styles... I would love to give each of them a try!

The Forest from David Scharf on Vimeo.

Gretel & Hanzel nice looking short here by Ringling School...

Where The Wild Things Are' art blog

Found @ Terrible Yellow Eyes

Wow!!!!!

Work with different styles by Victor Navone

Concerning style, how have you learned to match the style of a film? In other words, how have you approached animating so that the film appears as if it was animated by one person?

Consistency is a big issue at Pixar, because we don't have Character Leads, in the traditional Disney sense. Pixar animators are assigned scenes, not characters, so any animator may animate any character at a given time in the film. This is one of the reasons that dailies are so important. We can all sit down in a room with the Director and Supervisors and see what's being done with the characters. The Director can decide what works and what doesn't, and further define how the character behaves. This helps us to all get on the same page and understand who the character is. Usually one or two animators will demonstrate a knack for a certain character, and their work will become a touchstone for the other animators to reference. These animators will occasionally give lectures to discuss what we've learned and give tips on how to approach a particular character.

We'll also develop model sheets (collections of images of the character in poses that are considered in-character on and on-model) as well as libraries of facial expressions that other animators can use as a starting point. Ultimately it's up to all the animators, Supervisors and the Director to police each other and work towards a consistent portrayal of the character.

found @ animationtipsandtricks.com

Victor Navone on Body Language

Victor Navone analizes this scene by letting us know how each character feel about the other by just paying attention to their body language. I totally think it's a great piece to study.



For the compete analysis head to this link.

Laika cuts computer animation

Portland’s Laika studio (Coraline) has scrapped all its plans for creating CG features and will instead focus on making stop-motion films exclusively. The studio laid off 63 computer graphics employees today, according the website SlashFilm. UPDATE: Studio publicist Maggie Begley wrote in to clarify: “It’s not accurate to say that the studio is abandoning CG altogether. They will continue to use CG opportunistically in stop motion films and will continue to develop CG projects in house for further down the road.”

For more go to Cartoon Brew's blog.

You gotta check out this great looking test

It's Sunny Kharbanda's blog, he is doing some test trying to get a cartoony style which looks amazing.

Here is how did the backgrounds.

I love this style!

I got it from Cartoon Brew.

BAIDIR from slimane aniss on Vimeo.

My AM Class 4 Progress Reel

Done with class 4... I'm so excited for class 5!!

Hilarious Kids being tempted reference

I got this from JD's blog..

Oh, The Temptation from Steve V on Vimeo.

Great sites for video references

My mentor Nicole Herr gave us these links which I find very helpful when the time comes to look for video refs.

www.youtube.com
www.gettyimages.com
www.bbcmotiongallery.com
www.pond5.com/

I finally finished AM class 4, but I gotta say I feel the luckiest person in the world because I had Nicole as my mentor, I learned lots from her... Thanks a lot Nicole!

Rythm and Texture by Victor Navone

I found this @ Victor Navone's blog, he explains what Texture in animation is...

These are a couple of animation terms that get tossed around a lot, and many animators are not completely clear on exactly what they mean (I wasn't completely sure about them myself until well into my animation career). One reason I think they're so hard to pin down is that there's a lot of overlap (not that kind of overlap) between them, and it's hard to talk about one without referencing the other. Kind of like trying to talk about spacing without talking about timing and arcs. But lest I digress, I'm going to talk a bit about rhythm and texture as specifically as I can, and how important they are in your animation. I suppose I should attempt to define these terms before I go much further, so here's how I understand them:

Rhythm - how the actions or "beats" in a shot are spaced out over the length of a scene. You might also call this "tempo". Unlike with music, good animation has an inconsistent rhythm, making it less predictable.

Texture - the variations of timing and poses in your shot. Big and little actions, slow and fast timing, flurries of action and holds. A shot in which all the actions are the same size, have the same timing, and occur in an even rhythm has no texture.

The complete article can be found in http://www.navone.org/blogger/2009/09/rhythm-and-texture.html#links

September Animation Mentor Newsletter is out!

Check it out here: http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0909/index.htm

Last Assignment for Class 4

I'm almost done with class 4 and already excited for class 5... here is my work in progress of my first dialogue with AM, it has limited facial, in class 5 I'll be finishing it, for now just a playblast...

How NOT to network

I got this article while visiting Rich Fournier's blog, he got it from http://www.awn.com/articles/career/career-coach-how-not-network.

Great advices to follow...

Networking is a vital career skill. But there are rules to follow. One of the most important is don’t be a networking leech. Do not suck the lifeblood out of your network.

Most people who worry about being too network aggressive usually have a long way to go before being labeled networking parasites. But some cross the line. If any of these people sounds like you, it’s not too late to change.

Here are a few real life examples of networking leeches that were shared by friends.

A girl I met at a party immediately demanded to know the address and contact information of my employer as soon as she found out I was working. I did not even know her.

Then there was the guy who pumped me for information very pointedly every time he saw me and constantly e-mailed me seeking job leads.

Time to Harvest

Nice shading in this one: http://www.awntv.com/videos/time-to-harvest

Cameron Fielding

This guy is just fantastic, I can't stop being amazed...

CamAnimation08 from Cameron Fielding on Vimeo.

Tim Burton @ MoMA

From November 22, 2009–April 26, 2010 The Museum of Modern Art in NY will present an exhibition of Tim Burton's film work. All the people that has the possibility to assist please don't miss it, unfortunately I'm to far away to go...

IRON GIANT PROJECT

The Iron Giant Project is looking for artists who worked on the "The Iron Giant" original film or just people that loved the film to contribute with a small piece of art showing your love of Iron Giant and the creative team behind it, to create an art show as a tribute to the film and its creators.

For more information head to http://irongiantproject.blogspot.com/

AM Showcase Summer 2009 is out and it's amazing!

Check it out at:



http://www.animationmentor.com/showcase09/

Great as always!!!

Woot Woot!!! I got my AM Student's Badge

It's so cute

AM BBQ

I had so much fun at the AM BBQ, it was really cool to meet my classmates and to make new friends.

My new Progress Reel

Wow, I haven't post in a looooong time... well, better late than never!

Here is my progress reel until now, it includes Class 2, 1 and Maya Springboard with 3 awesome mentors (Mike Walling, Chad Sellers and Chris Caufield)...

I had so much fun in this Class and also got to know closer some new amazing people!