Okta-Awesome!

This is a fantastic short. AND. They have a great making of vid here. Check out the rest of the site for some more great artwork. I'm continually impressed by the work coming out of the Gobelin's school.

Squirrely has a Tail and Other Things...

My buddy Dave (who has a new website by the way) introduced me to a fellow worker of his who has had some great traditional and cg animation experience. He gave me some good suggestions for tweaking "Squirrely's" design. The most important being the transformation of the slightly-inflated-balloon-beaver-tail to something more of squirrelish semblance. Crazy thing is the guy went to a high school in the same town and same district I did - just a few years earlier. It's a small world sometimes...

Some neato stuff hit the net this week:

• Pixar's "Up" Character designs - Couple of characters are up. The attention to detail on the scouts gear is specially great. Even from the little bits I've seen about the film, it has great story potential.
  
  
• Great little read on Facial Animation - Check it out. Written by Shawn Kelly from Animation Mentor. Being that facial animation is pretty much the vast majority of what I do at work, I particularly found it insightful. Facial animation is gravy, not the meat of a good performance.
  
  
• Princess and the Frog trailer - As excited as I am about Keane's maiden voyage into CG via Rapunzel, it's about time Disney got back to traditional animation. Can't wait to see more.
  
  
• Very creative little flash game - This is a fun little diversion from a talented flash animator named Nacho Rodriguez. I ran across another of his surreal shorts this week as well.
  

Something neat from an old teacher...

Larry Lauria was my first traditional animation teacher at SCAD and grounded me in the basics. He's just releasing a new set of classes partnering with Digicel Flipbook (which still finds a place on my desktop). It looks like the basis of the Introduction to Animation I had with him back in the day and it was a great class then. Check it out if it floats your boat (not too pricey either).

Scripts, Podcasts and MacGuffins!

Been working some on Bokser's film and enjoying that. I can't wait to get past blocking and into animating after the assets are finaled. In the meantime, I think it's time to get some back to the basics exercises going.

• Updated jbExportQss - Got some insight from a poster on Cgtalk and adds some new abilities and squashed some bugs. Still available here. After this one, I think I'm done mel scripting for a while...my brain hurts.
  
  
• Andrew Stanton Podcast - A nice long interview with the director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo.
  
  
• Big MacGuffins - I had never heard this term but this was a great introduction to it and an insightful pose. My meager education in storytelling continues.
  
  
• Another Episode of Simon's Cat - I love these.
  
  
  
• Some amazing concepts - Check out the work of Harald Siepermann.
  
  

Bolt Trailer!

Not sure what to think yet, but it's looking promising. Some of the animation looks great and I dig the little hamster (giving me some inspiration for a character I've been thinking about). Part of my still prefers the old character design (aka American Dog) by Chris Sanders, but it looks like the story has gone through several re-evolutions since then...

New link, embed link was removed. Thanks Ale!

Keane, Koch and... K..adobe?

• Glen Keane is my hero - The title has little to do with this vid, but just thought you should know. Watch it anyway - great stuff. A buddy at work pointed it out. It's Glen talking about Ollie -
  
  
  
• Another great animation blog - Kevin Koch has some great experience working in both traditional and cg animation. He also has a great animation blog. Thanks to Kyle for my finding it.
  
  
• More flash goodness - Here's a great little piece done for some sort of Adobe competition. The animation in particular is a good example of seemingly simple design handled exceptionally well. Oh, and here's some behind the scenes stuff on it.
  
  
  

Pixar and Snipers!

• Not sure how long this one will last on the net, so enjoy it while you can. Fantastic animation there - the texture of the swift against the still is magical. Can't wait to see the whole thing!
  
  
  
• Here comes the sniper - yet another fantastic little shot into the life of a character of the insanely popular Team Fortress by Valve.
  
  

Some Great Video Game Cinemas...

One of my favorite series of games is the Oddworld series. Fantastic art, comedic, good gameplay. The last outing in the series, Stranger's Wrath, had some particularly beautiful cinemas. I wouldn't mind playing through it again but I don't have my original Xbox anymore and its sadly not on the backwards compatibility list for the 360. You lose a little context just watching them back to back but you can surely appreciate the cinematography and design seeing them. Don't watch them if you might get a chance to play through it as you don't wanna ruin the surprise.



I hear they're working on a game again and I can't wait to see what they brew up. The First 10 Years Art of book has a special place in my collection.

Master Classes and 2d Animation...

• Richard Williams Master Class - This is the guy that wrote the animation textbook that most animators, that I know of at least, cut their teeth on. Turns out he's releasing a DVD masterclass that looks to be pretty amazing. When I first saw the price, I gasped a little. Then I thought about how I'd thought about Animation Mentor and how little traditional animation training I actually got at college (2 classes). Thinking about what those cost put the price into perspective. Listening to The Animation Podcast and hearing how all of these animation greats trained under greats of their own days makes one yearn for those days. I do believe that Animation Mentor is trying to capture some of that magic again but I'm thinking a seminar that I can watch repeatedly might be a better investment. That's not to knock Animation Mentor - I think it's a great program and I wish it had been around when I was starting out. However trying to work it in with a full time job, home life and working on short films in the spare time doesn't leave a whole lot of extra.
  
  
• Kung - Fu Panda - Here's a sweet traditional animation credits sequence for it. Ben's name is in there too! No I haven't seen the movie yet. I was in Arkansas last weekend hanging with my wife's fam. However, we're gonna catch it this weekend and I'm super excited. Gonna push Wall-E till next week or so for the crowds to thin a bit.
  
  
• Art of Books - Picked up The Art of Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E. Can't wait to dig into them but holding off until I see the movies...alas....
  
  
• Irma's Car - Nice bit of work combining 2d and 3d by Crew 972 out of Tel Aviv.
  
  
  
• Great bit of 2d animation - A great take on the 11 second club by Ivan Oviedo. He's got great other stuff too, check him out.
  
  CATS FINISH from ivan oviedo on Vimeo.
  
  

Cool little short made with open source cg software...

Not bad at all. Nice lighting, impressive fur (especially for free stuff). Take a look at what some folks did with Blender.


Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.

This one's for Matt...

Man, I keep getting called out by my friends. Gotta work on being more on top of things. And speaking of things...

Things are going well, been adjusting to working from home which can be a challenge. I have to say I miss working with folk face to face. For now, this will be just fine. Mainly working on The Wheelman now for work which is coming along well and the short film project is a lot of fun in what spare time I can carve out. Need to shoot some video reference of a "flowery dance" as Dave called it. Worked on a little number this weekend and need to get his approval before spending time in the computer. Been trying to plan shots better to work most efficiently with the little animating time I have.

Houston is warming up as is the box office - ton of promising movies coming out. The soonest being Iron Man which I'm hoping to catch in the next week.

What else...

• Orphaned Works Act - I've been reading about this bill for awhile on different sites with differing opinions. If you're an artist and don't know about it. Educate yourself.
  
  
• Mac jump - I'm pretty sure now that I'm gonna make the shift to macs for my personal work. I just can't seem to decide whether a desktop or a laptop. It doesn't help that I'm such a scrooge that the idea of spending that amount of money causes me to hide my wallet from myself - quite a feat mind you - made possible by my horrible memory.
  
  
• Work flow- Yet another informative animation work flow article.
  
  
• Animation notes - From a seminal with John Lasseter. Where have I heard that name before...it's on the tip of my renderman rendered mind...
  
  
• Wall-e Stuff! - Four minute featurette! Wow...
  
  
• Avatar is back - Again...they really need to be able to schedule their shows so they can show more than a couple of new episodes every few months...
  

Don't forget Mother's day, peeps!

For Ben and other Bits...

What's good from the net this week...

• Karate Kats...er...somethin - Having been called to the carpet by my buddy Ben....YES, I am excited about Kung Fu Panda. The art looks awesome and from what I've seen and read, it's shaping up quite nicely. I know I'm buying the artbook at least. :)
  
  
• Animation Workflow - Seeing how other animators work is a great way to keep growing as an animator. Here are some fantastic insightful reads:
• Mike Walling Workflow - Animator at Bluesky and worked on Horton (which had some fantastic
  
• Cameron Fielding's Dinosaurs aren't nice Workflow - Animator at Propaganda Games on workflow for some sweet human vs dinosaur animation
  
  
• Castle Crashers is still very much going to be Awesome - There's a blog to chronicle its awesomeness and the art is beautiful. And speaking of workflow...
  
  Marsh Land Construction from The Behemoth on Vimeo.
  
  
• The Batman Animation Law - Dictates that Batman in pretty much any animated form will rock. I'm definitely looking forward to this incarnation. I will say the original animated series from the mid 90's is still my favorite and I think the Justice League version lost some cool factor (way too big of ears...)
  
  
• Some GREAT Disney Art - LINK
  

Major Changes and TOONs!

Lots of stuff been going on. Got married to an amazing woman, a bit of snowboarding and snow shoeing in Vail, getting set up to work from home via VPN AND I ate a huge turkey leg at a rodeo last night! Oh, and chuck wagon races rock.

Lots of great animations burning up the internets lately:

• New Wall-E trailer. This film looks better every time I see a trailer. I cannot wait for it to come out. Watch it!
  


• Horton Hears a Who is coming out to play this weekend and I'm going! Hope the who is fun. Thanks to Ray for the link to this vid.
  
  
  
• Cat Shorts - Simple design, brilliantly executed, especially humorous for anyone who's ever had a cat. And there's another!
  
  

This week in fantastic animationy goodness...

• Wall-E Spot - much of it animated by the ever talented Victor Navone.
  
  
  
  
• George Grows - A fantastic walking cycle short. Watch it.
  
  
  

Happy New Year!

It's a new year and I accomplished about 2 of my resolutions from last year. Let's see, what did I do this year? Hmm...

• Got engaged to my amazing fiance
  
• Taught a semester of college
  
• Finished working on 3 games at work (Stranglehold, Blacksite, and the next Ballers)
• Learned to write some mel scripts
  
• Grew my beard back
• Read a copious amount of books
• Visited Yosemite
• Moved to Austin
  

I guess that's not too shabby. I've got some resolutions for this year, but I'm not writing them on my blog so I can't see them a year from now glaring at me having not accomplished them.

What else is going on...

• Glumpers - Amazing sound, beautiful animation. Just watch it.
  
  
• Project No Name. Still chugging along on my buddy Dave's film. I'm really excited to be working on full body stuff again. I've blocked a couple of scenes and am looking forward to digging in. I think it's gonna be a great piece.
  
• Share the Potion! - Check out an Animated short/commercial by my buddy Cory.
• Dynamics - I hate thee. I've been working on some dynamics at work and it's about to eat my lunch. I hear Maya's rigid bodies aren't well suited for what I'm making them do, but I don't have any other options at present. A work flow of move this, run 5 minute simulation, move that, 5 minute simulation isn't the most efficient. I'm sure there's better ways of working, but I did find this heartening read that let me know even the big budget movie guys have the same frustrations.

Today in Animation goodness

Who wouldn't love this??

• I am inspired - This guy is absolutely amazing. Pocoyo is one of my favoritily (yes that is now a word) animated children's shows. I know I've posted it before. It's my blog and I'll do it again if I please;)
  
• Yet another cool film from across the pond - Jungle Jail - I dig some of the cinematography choices. Watch it here
  
• I have finished Mass Effect - I shall be animating again. No more games for a while. On the game in particular, the combat takes a while to get used to. I had many hours in it before really understanding how best to use my abilities. The other party members aren't that great at combat, so bear in mind that playing as a mainly support class wouldn't be such a grand plan. Some elements get a little repetitive at times (i.e. the planet scouring game design). However, the story was fantastic and the world better realized that I thought it would be from early observations during the game's development. The auto generated facial runs the gamut from pretty good to just bad in sections. However, the idea of trying to hand key that much facial animation is laughable. That last hour and a half of it was one of the best gaming experiences I've had in a while. I salute their efforts and eagerly look forward to what they have in store for the next chapter.
  

Lovely little film...

...about things you might think about at work when there's nothing to do. Kinda like now. For me.



Some of the best student animation I've seen has come out of this Gobelins (an animation school in France) and this piece only goes to uphold that idea.

Ryan...

I've been wanting to see this film for years...thanks to my buddy Steve for stumbling upon it. I've never seen anything like it...what an amazing visualization of "seeing" ourselves...

Ryan
Uploaded by superchomeur

More game animation goodness...

And if you can't wait for this to launch on the 360 next month. You could always get in on the beta...:)

I'm going to try to be strong...

Another Round of TF Goodness!

I can't wait to see this game when it's done! If the animation carries over in game play as well as it does in the cut scenes it's going to be phenomenal. Great stuff!