Rabbids Go Home

How can you not love these guys? Simple designs, really appealing... Great little animations... Love it.

Electric Mayhem....

Maybe its the exhaustion and sleep deprivation talking... Or maybe this is just pure genius... This time of the school year, its hard to tell... You be the judge. Enjoy. :)

Michelin Man

Love this spot... The animation is good, but I'm more into the design, and how CG now seems to be on a trend to sometimes pass itself off as looking like stop motion, or something else... I like this trend. The Spot is done by 'Psyop' and I think there's more in this series out there.. Enjoy.

Pop Tarts

who doesn't like Pop Tarts? I mean really. And especially after seeing this commercial. I'm going out right now to buy a box of strawberry Pop Tarts, and burn the roof of my mouth with the magical jelly filling inside. I found who animated the Spot, they're called "FWY Studios" The FWY stands for "Friends With You". And they're in Miami. East Coast Represent. www.fwystudios.com You have to check out their website and reel...its Trippy. anyway.... enjoy the spot. They say its a mixture of 3D animation and miniature sets...it looks great. Simple and appealing.

Dancer (Pop-Tarts) from FriendsWithYou on Vimeo.

Love it. Simple.

Blip from Sean Mullen on Vimeo.

John Hughes 1950-2009

I can't think of any one filmmaker that takes me back to those awkward teenage years, and with a smile no less, like John Hughes. Walk into the video store where I worked as a teenager, and 9 out of 10 times, you'd find me watching one of his movies....again. He gave us The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Vacation, Weird Science, Pretty In Pink, Some Kind of Wonderful, Uncle Buck, Planes Trains and Automobiles, and my favorite film of all time....Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If you want a window of what it was like to live in the 1980's, nobody did it better than John. His films still resonate with me, and I've yet to find a filmmaker today that can tell so many stories with such incredible heart and humor in the way that the did.... Mr. Hughes passed away of a heart attack on August 6th, he was 59 years old.
"Yep. I said it before and I'll say it again... Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around, you could miss it." --Ferris Bueller

Viva la Fjorg!

Fjorg! has begun.. What is Fjorg! you ask? Its an animation marathon at Siggraph... Teams are to create a 15-45 second animation in 32 hours time. No more, no less, no Resubmits. This is no small task, for one thing...its 32 hours straight....and two, its in New-freakin-Orleans, and three....random distractions are thrown at the animators at any given moment. Good times....good times.
Day one Link:
Day two Link:

Here's an updated link to a short film about this years Fjorg! Ah, the joys of Sleep Deprivation. Plenty of Ringling Students and Alum representin y'all.

SIGGRAPH 2009 FJORG! Competition in New Orleans, LA from Alumiq Productions on Vimeo.

Good times....

Here's some great slo-mo reference for the next time you're working on some blendshapes or something... At least thats my excuse for putting it up here. Enjoy.

A letter from Ward Kimball

Back in 1973 a young Will Finn wrote a letter to Ward Kimball.... On Will's blog, he recently posted the letter he received from Ward. It still holds many words of wisdom for aspiring and current animators today... Check it out....

So Simple......

Here's a commercial I saw recently that I just think is just so damn simple its awesome... Its one of those ideas that when you see it you say, "Why the hell didn't I think of that??" I dont know what it has to do with Frito-Lay chips and dip, but I dont care....I just like the animation. :) There's a webiste with more of their commercials at:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/03/in-videos-frito-lays-dips-and-chips-animated-commercials.html

Enjoy!

How much does an extra "D" cost?

Just went to see "Monsters vs. Aliens" this afternoon and enjoyed it... What I didn't enjoy however was when the kid selling tickets told me, "You know the 3D vesion costs $3 dollars more....is that Ok?" They were showing both a standard 2D version, and the nifty new fangled 3D version with Buddy Holly glasses as well. I asked him why the 3D one cost more, was it the glasses? He told me, "Its to cover the cost of making the 3D...." Uh....Ok. So thats $12 for adults, and $9 bucks for the six year old. I dont remember paying more to see Coraline a few weeks ago... Maybe Katzenberg is offsetting the cost of installing a Holodeck needed to make these 3D movies....
The 3D was cool....but I'm still not 100% on board..... It's still a bit dark around the edges, and fast movements seem to Strobe a bit. Overall it still has that gimmicky 'ViewMaster' feel...which was cool as a kid, but.... Maybe I'm just getting old... ;)
Sent from my iPhone

"Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" Trailer up....

Looks like it could be fun... Very stylized characters and animation which is refreshing.... even if the eyes look reminiscent of Davey and Goliath here and there... Click the Image for the Link.

Is that a Blender in your Pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

BlenderPocket is a Blender port dedicated for mobile devices (Phones, PDA, etc.) having a touch screen, small amount of memory (RAM), a low speed processor (with no floating point unit) and no graphic unit (no hardware acceleration). BlenderPocket is working today on all mobile devices with Windows Mobile 2003 or newer but it should be "easy" to make it work on any other devices. It just got upgraded from 2.42 to 2.48a!

I've never used Blender personally, but I've heard really good things about it....and you cant beat the price. Its free. Open source even. Good times. Now you can build, rig and animate 3D models while you're sipping coffee in Starbucks or not paying attention to the road while driving.... Here's the Link.

"UP" Trailer from Pixar

Another trailer for Pixar's upcoming "UP" is online. If you click on the HD version, and let it load into Quicktime Pro, you can dowload it and then geek through it frame by frame... Some really nice stuff on the humans so far.... Pixar definitely gets it right when it comes to design and execution of 3D human characters....so many other studios somehow miss the mark. Great hand poses by the way. Anyway... enjoy!

Prelude to Eden

This is a fun piece of Animation from Michel Gagne called "Prelude to Eden". I'm sure you all have seen Michel's work in one place or another, he's an amazing designer/animator. I haven't seen this clip since I was working on Prince of Egypt back in 1995. Its got some familiar names from some other Dreamworks Animators like Dave Brewster, Barry Atkinson, and another amazing designer/animator Shane Zalvin. Enjoy!

Generic vs. Specific.... Animation Performance....

Some of you hopefully were able to attend Simon Otto from Dreamworks' Lecture in 2008 when he visited Ringling... He showed a clip from the Movie "Moliere" where the Acting teacher asks his student to act like a Horse. The student proceeds to do so, and afterwards, his teacher grills him as to "What kind of horse was that? Are you all horses in one?" Ah the French. :) The point of the clip though is to think about your animations....specifically your performances....How can you push your performance from Generic into something Specific? Like a walk for example... Your character....when he/she walks... How does he walk? does he just put one foot in front of the other like the song says? Or does he tell you something about himself in the manner that he walks? Is he tired, has he had a bad day, is he sick, is he overjoyed, has he eaten too much for lunch, is he lost? When your character tells the viewer these things in the way he moves, your character becomes Specific, and your viewer connects with him on a much deeper level then if he is just moving Generically. Every single keyframe you set should tell a story. Deep...I know.... but think about it as you're working on your Next pose.

James Baxter is the Man....

Yes indeed. James Baxter is the man. And not in the "Man is trying to keep you down" sense of the word. He's the Man as in, "This guy can freakin animate." He's one of those animators that makes it look effortless.... Really has such a grasp of technique and performance that you're often sucked into the scene so much you forget you're looking at drawings or 3D rendered frames....you just see it as a living, breathing, emoting character... Here's some clips of some Line Tests of his work at Disney Studios...and a promotional clip from James Baxter's own Animation Studio. His Studio Animated the 2D Opening Credits to Kung Fu Panda.

Whiplash the Dog riding Rodeo Monkey

Goofy!

This is just a really fun clip of Goofy... I never really liked Goofy as a kid.... I didn't like the Beatles as a kid either....what did I know. Wasn't until I was older that really came to appreciate them both... Beatles first....Goofy much later. Anyway..."On with the Show"

Animation Stopwatch on IPHONE

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/internet-blogs/an-iphone-stopwatch-for-animators.html

This is Brilliant! One of my coworkers already bought and installed this on his Iphone and showed it to me this morning... Its designed by Randy Cartwright, animator at Disney. Its so easy a monkey could run it! Simply turn it on, Shake or tap the phone to start the Clock.. Then tap or shake the phone at any time to add a marker to the Timeline. After you're done recording your timing....you can view it in Frames, Seconds, or Footage... I've always hated footage...never did like doing the math. :)
For 2 dollars, 99 cents, you cant beat this. All I need now is an Iphone.