Ottawa (Last Day)
First thing I saw today was the amazing panel on the making of the Goofy short. It was paneled by Stevie and Kevin (the directors), Marlon West (FX), Mark Henn, and Tamara Boutcher (Producer)
Also, there was the final showing (best of festival)
The list of winners:
Best Animated Feature: Persepolis
Best Independant Short Animation: Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor
Best Student Animation: Milk Teeth
Best Commissioned Animation: Golden Age
Best Canadian Animation: Sleeping Betty
Honourable Mention: I Met The Walrus
School Showreel: Bezalel Academy for Art and Design (Israel)
Independant Shorts:
Narrative Short Animation under 35 minutes: Madame Tutli-Putli
Experimental / Abstract Animation under 35 minutes: Framing (Bildfenster / Fensterbilder)
Honourable Mention: Teat Beat of Sex [2007] Signe Baumane, USA
Student Animation:
Adobe Prize for Best High School Animation: Herbert
Undergraduate Animation: Doxology
Graduate Animation: t.o.m.
Commissioned Animation:
Promotional Animation: National Lottery ‘The Big Win’
Music Video: OOIOO ‘UMO’
Television Animation for Adults: John and Karen
New Media:
AniBoom Prize for Animation Short Made for the Internet: L’eau Life
Animation Made for Children:
Best Short Animation: Zhiharka
Honourable Mention: Nightmare at School
Honourable Mention: Aston's Stones
Television Animation for Children: Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends 'Squeeze the Day'
Honourable Mention: Pocoyo 'Dance Off'
NFB Public Prize (Voted by the Audience): Sleeping Betty (Isabelle au bois dormant)
And with that, Ottawa's done!
2 comments:
"First thing I saw today was the amazing panel on the making of the Goofy short."
Any details on that , Alan ?
I'm so stoked to see the Goofy short and the cutting edge technology (animating digtially on Cintiqs) is something I've been interested in for a while. Anyone who reads my blog knows I'm pro-Cintiq (especially with my favorite app TVPaint) but I'm hearing rumblings that some of the artists (particularly clean up) find that drawing on the Cintiq goes tediously slow and is difficult to get the same amount of finesse into their drawings compared to just doing it the regular way with pencil on paper. I can see both sides of that ... I enjoy drawing on Cintiq a lot, but it takes a different mentality and developing some new skill sets , so I can well imagine some animators and clean-up artists finding it a rather steep learning curve to climb . "The traditional pencil & paper animation system ain't broke , so why 'fix' it ?" some would say . I also haven't actually used the Cintiq in regular production where I've had to sit down and turn out hundreds of fine line clean up drawings on a tight production schedule . That might take the gleam out of my eye when it comes to Cintiq, too.
Did they go into any of that at the panel in Ottawa ?
You bet!
They are using Toon Boom Harmony for just about everything from rough to final colored animation.
They noted that the process worked really well for effects but became problematic on character animation when the cleanup line has to be exact and most vector programs automagically smooth the line. They said that they had to turn smoothing down to the lowest possible setting, and keep redoing the line until it was exactly what they wanted.
Some animators were resistant to using the cintiq at all (Andreas Deja and Mark Henn), some half-and-half (Eric Goldberg), and some were completely Cintiq only (Alex Kuperschmidt, Randy Hancock). They said that they looked at several packages and found Harmony to fit their needs the most, and that Princess and the Frog would also use it, albeit with a different workflow now that they had the knowledge of what worked well and what didn't. I get the feeling that they are looking for an alternative cleanup option over Harmony.
They also seem to be building up their studio from scratch so I guess many of the people who would just have to do cleanup aren't necessarily relearning anything - rather, they have started their workflow over from scratch (for better or worse).
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