Wednesday, November 25, 2009

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):



Monday, November 23, 2009

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

Thursday, November 19, 2009

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.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

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

Saturday, November 14, 2009

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/

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

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

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

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:

Monday, November 2, 2009

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!