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.