Some Disney Stuff!

Andreas Deja on the topic of Frank Thomas:



Glen Keane on the topic of Ollie Johnston:



Storyreel from the Rescuers:



Linetest from the Rescuers:



A short Glen Keane Tarzan Scene:




A long talk from Disney artist Chen Yi Cheng can be found here.

The Aroma of Tea

Michael Dudok De Wit's newest short.



Probably the simplest and most abstract of his films yet.

The Old Lady and the Pidgeons.

An early Sylvain Chomet (creator of Triplettes of Belleville) Short.

2006 Oscar Nominated Shorts...

Let's start with the Animated Shorts, shall we?

All but Pixar's "Lifted" is up on around the net for you to see (Lifted will play in front of Ratatouille, out June 29).

Maestro:

Disney's The Little Matchgirl can be viewed here.



Blue Sky's "No Time for Nuts"


The entirety of the winning short, Torrill Kove's "The Danish Poet" used to be on the NFB's website. If you didn't catch it, here's at least a small clip:



The Live-Action Shorts are a little harder to come by.

Binta and the Great Idea


The winner, West Bank Story, was taken off YouTube. I could only find this trailer:


Here's a clip from it:


Two clips from "The Saviour"




And a clip from "Helmer and Son"


Phew! Long post. Enjoy!

Some Sheridan 2007 Grad films...

Casper Konefal



Jarrett Young



Ray Xu



By no means an exhaustive list - Just what I could find so far! Hats off to the grads and thanks for posting their films to YouTube/Photobucket.

Sheridan Group Films...

Two of the Sheridan Group Films completed this year:

A Rotten Habit:


The Monster Germ:


Not all of them are up on YouTube yet. Until then, enjoy these!

The Drawing Club...

Made it out today for Bob Kato's Drawing Club.

Here are the sketches.









Also check out the Drawing Club Blog to see how the others did.

Co-workers...

Matt Nealon's film, Fuhrer und Fuhrball



Ian Worrel's, Icarus and the Tree Herder:

Goofy.

A little peek at the new Goofy Short, How to set up your home theatre.

In dutch, no less.

You'll have to select a size (also in dutch) before the link plays.

Another Ho-hum Life Drawing Session..

Life drawing feels almost like an event for me nowadays. Life drawing once a week is not good for the soul.

Les Lascars Feature

I know there's a lot of Les Lascars fans at Sheridan - so check out this report via AWN that claims that Les Lascars is making the jump to the big screen via Canal Plus and France 2

The Mizer

And older film by Dan Rodrigues, Kyle McQueen, and Jon Klassen - done at Sheridan.

David Hand on Staging...

Hans Perk has two posts (here and here) on staging, as taught by "the number two creative" at the Disney Hyperion studio, David Hand.

Sketchcrawl 14

Hey there, attended the 14th somewhat-monthly Sketchcrawl, L.A. Chapter today. Sketchcrawl was started by the Pixar story artist Enrico Casarosa. Basically, people meet and draw all around the world. Check out the Sketchcrawl blog and the SketchCrawl Forums for more info.

We met at Santa Monica Pier:


Here is the 'we' (sans me):


They are: Alina Chau, Shiho Nakaza, Leon Gittens, James Mar, Mike Cheda, and Josh Sheppard.

Peeps I drew at the Pier:



On the way home from Sketchcrawl I spotted a chess park and decided to sketch some of these guys. Great subjects!

Calarts Producers Show Opening 2003

For all you muppets/Glen Keane fans.

Some UPA Shorts...

Just snooping around YouTube, doing some research.

Jot



Jot Episode 2


Christopher Crumpet


Unicorn in the Garden


The Rise of Duton Lang


Rooty Toot Toot


I know this is Disney, but check it out anyways:

Toot, Whistle, Plunk, and Boom:

Doodling...

Meant to draw a Power Ranger, drew this instead.

New Ratatouille Poster

I like this one a lot more than the other one I've been seeing.

New Bee Movie Trailer

Watch it here.

Zhaoming Wu

Thanks to Jeffrey Cheung for pointing his site out.

Two Supinfocom Shorts

Out - Once upon a time.








And Overtime:

Chuck Jones...

I saw that Mark Mayerson posted an extremely strange Chuck Jones film, Now Hear This. I guess to serve as a counterpoint to that, I ought to post one of my favorite Chuck Jones shorts.


The Dot and the Line: A Lesson in Lower Mathematics

Calarts Producer's Show Opening

Absolutely hilarious. I love how they got Glen Keane and James Baxter in there.

American Dog

Apparently the latest showing of the American Dog story reels were well received, according to the TAG Blog, as well as Frog Princess and Rapunzel well on their way to being up on story reels soon.

New Burny Mattinson Podcast

Clay Kaytis at the Animation Podcast has completed Show 18, Burny Mattinson Part 3.

Download AAC here

New Pete Caricatures..

Pete Emslie did some new caricatures of famous Disney people for Walt's People 5. Always fun to see Pete do some likenesses of famous people as well as students!

Finally...

Found a place for life drawing in Santa Monica.

And boy oh boy am I rusty.

The Labyrinth Store

Dan Merisanu has opened up a permanent spot for the Animation Road Show in Downtown Toronto. He's two blocks West of the Spadina Subway station on Bloor.

Make sure to check out the site, which will have an online store starting July 2007, and Dan's blog.

Henry Yan

I've been trying to find more of this guy's stuff for the longest time but didn't know his name.

Check out his website here.

Also, he's got a book out now - check it out.

Tintin? 3D? Really?

Variety reports that a 3D trilogy based on Herge's "Tintin" graphic novel series is in the works, and is currently planned to be a 3D performance-capture film (motion capture).

Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are apparently set to direct.

Pucca...

Some interstitials from the fine folks at Studio B:

Parlez-Vous Francais?

Cool Claymation...

Californian Hobo

So ya I had some time so I figure I'd do this week's Facebook sketch ahead of time. I just joined and it said that the feature of the week was hobos. Not sure how old that is, but here's a Californian hobo in all his glory.

Sumo..

Just a quick doodle.

Hi-Res Ratatouille Images

Slashfilm has some Hi-Res photos of the characters from Ratatouille.

Skinner


Collette


Django


Ego


Emile


Gusteau


Can you tell I can't wait for this film? Thanks to Deep for point me towards this.

Happy Birthday...

Bill Peet Boards..

Michael Sporn posts on his splog some of Bill Peet's boards from Sword in the Stone.

5 Calarts Films...

Here are 5 Calarts films that aren't featured in this year's Producer's Show.

"Prehysterical" by Joe Pitt.



"Special Delivery" by Steve MacLeod.



"A Primer of Chess" by Jules Soto.



"Functional Design" by Christian Robinson.



"Way Back Home" by Bert Youn.

More Ratatouille... Linguini Style

Oh, I missed a few from the Ratatouille Video Podcast.

Cooking 101:



Brad Bird - The Big Cheese:



Patton Oswalt on Remy:

John K on Animation Curriculums

Aaron Simpson of Cold Hard Flash interviews John Kricfalusi about a myriad of topics, one of which sticks out for me. John is asked what his ideal animation school curriculum would be:

Aarons asks: "Imagine that you were creating the curriculum for an animation college. What course titles would you start with?"

1ST YEAR

* Rubber hose animation
* Walks, runs, basic movement
* Basic lip synch
* Figure 8 motions
* Animating to beats
* ¾ walks with animating backgrounds
* How to read and write ex sheets
* Animating the impossible - using the medium to do what only animation can do
* History of cartoons, comics and animation from around 1920 till about 1965 - this would be every year and each year I would have the students study aspects of classic cartoons that relate to their exercises
* Life Drawing with an emphasis on slow careful drawings, structure, perspective and proportions
* Caricature
* Observation over style: Learning to use your eyes and senses to analyze, rather than copying trendy styles
* Music, Dance (every year)

2ND YEAR

* 40s principles of animation
* Using simple organic characters made of pears and spheres
* Basic acting, staging, timing
* Observation and application
* More Life Drawing
* Applying concepts from Life Drawing to your animation
* Caricature of bodies as well as heads

3RD YEAR

* Character animation
* Animating different types of designs
* Solving design/animation problems - animating cartoon designs from media other than animation-comic strips, magazine cartoons, etc.
* Advanced acting and dialogue animation - timing and pacing
* Animating caricatures
* Animating specific gestures and expressions that your fellow students make

4TH YEAR

* I'll have to think about this one... maybe make a film.


If there was a school like this, the graduates of the first 4 years of the program would revolutionize the medium and no one else could compete with them.

Make sure to check out the rest of the interview here.

An art drought?

I noticed that on my front page, only four of the posts relate to my own art. This definitely isn't because I haven't been drawing a lot, but most of my time has either been taken up at work or with my own film, which I've started working on with Philip Rodrigues. I'm not too eager to post the work related to that in it's current form (that will come more during the school year), so I imagine that a lot of the work that will be posted this summer will be life drawing. Of course, I haven't started doing that yet down here in L.A, but I will post it up when I do.

In the meantime I'll try and post as much news and inspiration as I can, and possibly stuff from work whenever I'm allowed.

Some More Glen Keane Videos...

I meant to post some of these up but it looks like someone else beat me to the chase.

Anyways, here they are:

Four Stages of Animation



Drawing Tarzan:



Showing off a scene from Fox and the Hound:

Alex Hirsch..

Hey Guys,

Not sure if you've seen the films of Calarts student Alex Hirsch.

Check it!

Zero and One



The Calarts Song



Off The Wall

Aardman signs 3 year deal with Sony...

Variety reports that Aardman and Sony Pictures have signed a 3 year deal. Apparently too Aardman has 4 scripts in the works. Can't wait!

Right back at ya, neighbour!

A big thanks for the link and plug from my new neighbour, Angie Jones. Angie is the co-author of "Thinking Animation - Bridging the Gap Between 2D and CG" and the Thinking Animation blog with Jamie Oliff.

Check out both the book and the blog!

Youtube Linetests...

Nothing like finding some more good ol' linetests on YouTube:

Timon from Lion King 1 1/2 by Richard Bazley:



Taz from Looney Tunes, Back in Action by Richard Bazley:



Make sure to check out rmbazley's Profile page for some work from Barnyard and Osmosis Jones as well.

Also:

Pedro Daniel Garcia's Demo Reel

Is there anyone else here that's intrigued by this film?

Julie Taymor's latest, "Across the Universe."

First saw it in front of Spiderman 3. Gotta say the trailer for this film was better than Spiderman 3 in its entirety. Julie Taymor directed "Titus" and "Frida" - films that definitely look in the same vein as Across the Universe. Just something about this that seems more interesting...

I could be wrong though, and it could be completely forgettable.

Make sure to check out the Quicktime version to get a better look.

More of Venice Beach....