More on the pitch...

What would you do if your best friend was the lower-half of a Grumman Apollo LEM?

New Animation Building - The Pictorial

This is mostly for you folks who live or work far, far away from Oakville and you people who don't like going outside who do.

It's the current (as of a few minutes ago) status of the new building. Check it!

Build, Crane! Build like the wind! Build like you only had a month and a half to go!



The Money Shot:



The-Main-Entrance-That-No-One-Will-Use-Because-It's-Not-Connected-To-The-Other-Buildings-And-Faces-Away-From-The-Apartments:



A close-up of said entrance (no trespassing for me today, I guess):

Some Pixar Stuff...

If you're in L.A. on Oct 21, make sure you check out Screenwriting Expo 5 - which has a whole-day feature with Pixar's story brain trust. Andrew Stanton, Brad Bird, Lee Unkrich, Gary Rydstrom, Brenda Chapman, Mark Andrews, and Ronnie Del Carmen, (among others) will all have talks at this little soirée.

Make sure too to check out this Flickr set of Enrico Casarosa's gesture drawings, completed at Pixar's life drawing sessions. Pretty cool!

The First 24 Minutes of A Scanner Darkly

Thanks to IGN.com for posting this and Mark Mayerson for pointing me towards it:



Check out interviews and the first 24 minutes of A Scanner Darkly Here

Life Drawing

The digital one is in Painter.

Dick Williams on the Thief and the Cobbler

Hey there - Phil found this on YouTube - not sure if it made the rounds.



I got stuck in Toronto because of a train derailment. I'll get some drawings up later today.

NFB and the yada-yada-yada.

It's been crazy at work! It my first-ever late-night animation deadline! Had to stay in the studio until around 11 - no life drawing for me I guess!

Make sure to check out this page ripe full of good quality versions of famous NFB films. You know you want to take another look at Cordell Barker's The Cat Came Back just for Vivian's sake. You know it.

Check out the last four posts on Mark Kennedy's blog about story and approaching characters. Any of you third years (and fourth years!) racking their brain for story ideas can definetly grab something from this.

And for all you animation lovers out there, check out Matt Williames's post on planning your shot.

Life drawing later today, hopefully!

The New Disney Logo

Hey, who saw Pirates here?

And more importantly, who saw the new Disney logo that appeared in front of it?

Gone are the days of simple graphic logos:



As well as simple graphic stylizations:



And it's turned into this:



Sorry I can't find a better version but it's definetly more visually busy.

Check out some info about it here. Apparently it was done by Weta. Wait a minute.. don't they have Pixar -and- Disney feature film studios to do stuff like this?

Anyways...

This totally reminded me of Jon Klassen's post on logos designed by Saul Bass.

Here's the logo from Rapunzel Unbraided, while we're on logos:

Life Drawing and the Rumour Mill Continued

Hey there,

I said I'd post about the other issue, which I talked to D.Q. about - I dont' want to turn this blog into a gossip section though so I think this will probably be my last Sheridan Animation Rumour-related post.

So apparently the group films will be larger next year - with 8 or more per group, with the groups formed around the second week of class. The group is given a parameter and they are to come up with an idea within this framework.

I believe Dave Donar left, for those who don't know, so I think there's a hole for the story teacher in third year. Not to mention the entire staff for fourth year (the only one I know is Gerry for Life drawing for the first half of the year).

I looks like D.Q. will be the animation and character design teacher for third years - he said he wanted to focus on giving us some exercises to challenge those who were comfortable with animation as well as bringing up the skill level for those who were struggling. He said he wanted to push us like Art Babbit did with Richard Williams' studio - having animators do exercises with stick figures to push the motion and performance - as well as having us do an exercise from rough animation, to cleanup, to final colors (an exercise that would not be a scene from the film that you're working on).

I guess I should add an addendum that not even the teachers really know everything that's going to happen next year, and things will definetly change - but this is just what i've heard from teachers for now.

I also wanted to thank everyone for coming out to this blog - I've hit over 20,000 hits a few days ago and I think that's a great thing.

Pirates and The Rumor Mill

I'm still fighting my cold off and am coming back home from work late nowadays, so not much postin' going on. Sorry! I'll get some life drawing and new designs up over this week for sure though.

Seen the second pirates of the caribbean movie? I liked it - it was entertaining and well-made for a popcorn flick (gosh!). Anyways, check out the new toys from McDonalds with this Parappa the Rapper inspired Jack Sparrow:



I guess it's old hat that Pirates made over 130 million dollars in it's opening weekend, no? That's the biggest -evar- (sp)

Anyways - to the brunt of the post! Nothing like starting up the old rumour mill courtesy of Blogger. And as you probably know, a Sheridan Animation rumour is never rarely a good rumour.

So I've passed by the hole in the ground new animation building a few times in the past few weeks and for those of you who aren't a stone's throw away from Sheridan, they have the foundation and metal frame up. Last I talked to some people in Administration they seemed unrealistic overly optimistic that the building would be built on time. School starts later than September 11 this year so maybe they have a chance! I might try to shoot a photo sometime soon to give all you guys outside of the province a gander. Here's again what I know: It's gonna be three floors - 2nd year, 3rd year, and 4th year will all have their own work areas and desks, all three of which have keycard access to the doors. The 2nd year and first year work area is on the second floor, and the third and fourth year work area is is on the third floor. The 1st year area is again just going to be lightboxes in a classroom - there are two classrooms for animation on the second floor to accomodate for this. The 4th year students have linetesters in their work area, and the linetesters for the rest of the years are on floor two. There is a painting room with a sink on the second floor as well. The first floor houses offices for faculty, and two computer labs (the same as we have now - the third year lab and the digital meth lab), as well as the stop-motion room. I guess what's left is the pitch room on the third floor which has a collapsable wall so two pitches can go on at the same time (i guess). If you've got any questions feel free to ask!

The other thing I found out was from Mark Thurman, who told me that the third year life drawing teacher this year is going to be Angelo Libutti, and Gerry will be teaching fourth year (which is only a half year course, by the way). I figure this had made the rounds but I thought I'd post about it anyways.

There's one more thing but I ought to talk to D.Q. about it before posting. I figure it's also made the rounds but I'll post about it tomorrow if I make any headway. It relates to the third year groups films - Talk to Farrukh about it if you don't want to wait that long!

[Update] Just wanted to add to the post about the building - the C Wing will be transformed into a student relaxation area and the life drawing rooms will all be in the illustration wing (note that IT will be in a new area (the fishbowl - C129 - if you must know) and that leaves room for a new life drawing room.

Today's news and stuff.

Spline Doctors posts a pretty nifty interview with former animator Mark Oftedal (warning, PDF link).

One part of the interview in particular struck home with me:

I don’t want to be misleading, particularly to students that might be reading this. Your question asks what type of animation I enjoy more. The real answer is “neither”. For most of the process, I don’t like to do animation, because it’s hard. But I love to see it when it’s done.

This reminded me too of the animation program Reflex - I've only heard about it and heard nothing but good things. Than again, the same can be said about Marionette, the package Pixar uses to animation.

Stay tuned to Spline Doctors as some new podcasts are coming up too. I'm psyched because they're probably going to talk to (a yet un-named) story artist next!

Also in terms of software, I've heard some rumbling about a 2d animation software package called Mirage. Check out D.T. Nethery's post about Mirage and see it for yourself! Sadly I don't think it runs on a mac. [Small update] I guess I should have looked before I leaped! The screenshots that D.T. posted up are clearly the Mac version. I'm definetly going to give it a whirl now!

Someone recommended this software to me at TSA the other day (the guy that Phil refers to as the 'vampire guy.' Still, it looks pretty good at mimicking real pencil lines! Make sure to check out some of D.T's drawings at the bottom of that post - They really look like graphite and col-erase that has been drawn on paper!

Lastly, but not... leastly, Ninth Wave Designs posts about 'beauty queen' style competition in hopes of finding a suitable successor to the Blackwing Pencil, the famed animation pencil used in the days of old and now discontinued. Guess I might have to search out this so-called California republic pencil... Or just get better at drawing!

Over and out!

Life Drawing for the Day

Here's my stuff from today:

Another foray into digital life drawing - this one's definetly just a sketch. Gonna practice with simplifying more. This one's with Painter instead of Photoshop, by the way. I don't like to zoom in while doing these because it tightens me up too much, hence no hands.



I had totally given up on the following drawing and smudged it over and start using the eraser technique. Turned out ok I think so here it is! Never give up on a drawing!



Just a normal one:

Aww man!

Ugh, I totally just woke up and it's almost 12. Argh! I hate being sick.

I'm totally jealous of Calarts student Steve Macleod. He got the story internship at pixar this year and posts some of the antics that go on in the studio. Check out this badass t-shirt that the story interns got:



Here's hoping that a Sheridan student nabs one of these next year!

Haha, one more thing in the news today - it looks like SETI (The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) might have made contact. Just thought you'd like to know.

Digital Gestures

Oh man I feel sick! Ugh!

I brought my iBook and Tablet to Life drawing today. I need sleep! Guh!








Anyways, just trying to stay loose and gestural - I'm planning on doing my boards digitally so I need to work a little on this technique. Twas fun to try out though!

I'm going to drink some chicken noodle soup and go to sleep now.

More used Mac Shenanigans

I caught a cold! Bugger!

Anyways, this time the IT labs is selling the formerly-leased iBook G4's. Here are the specs:

12" 1024X768 Display
1Ghz G4
512MB Ram
30GB Hard Drive
32MB Ati Radeon 9200
Combo Drive
No Airport Included
4.9lbs
Comes with AC Power Adapter and Laptop - No Other Accesories or Software discs included.
Final Sale - As-Is
Price with tax - $404.70

Full list of specs here.

If you wanted a cheap reference computer that can do some quite compositing and photoshop work, that's quite a bargain. Better get them quick - they're selling out fast (I saw one person buying 6!) They're available at the IT Labs, go to Harveys and take the stairs downstairs. Available to Sheridan Students and Faculty only. If you have any questions, drop off a comment.

And another...

Probably the last variation on this character today.

Onto the other character!

(Another) Blast from the Past.

Hey there, I thought I'd post more of my stuff (and by stuff I mean life drawing) back from first year. It's fun to see how I've changed and how they compare I find!

These definetly make me want to go out and draw.

Roto, Motion Capture, and the movies that result.

I guess I should start this off as a point of discussion because a few newer films have been added to this issue and am wondering what everyone else thinks of this. Here's my two cents.

Seems to me lately that there's as much money going into 3D animated films such as Cars and Over the Hedge as there are alternative forms of filmmaking, such as Rotoscoping and live action motion capture to achieve a graphic, stylized, or 3d-animated look. We saw it on the Polar Express (for better or for worse).

Of course, Bob Zemeckis, the animator's former best friend, is bent on pushing motion capture as the future method to created Computer generated films, requiring smaller casts and supposedly fewer animators to complete a feature-length project, and purportedly captures a 'real human performance' - according to the producer of Polar Express (don't remember his name, haha). Anyways, here's the successor to Polar Express, Monster House. What strikes me about this movie is that the only element that needed to be a cgi element was the house itself - and truth be told, the budget would have been much less had they just shot actors and spent the special effects budget on blending the cgi element with live action. Of course, producers see cg animation as the 'in-thing' so therefore kids, who aren't supposed to know the difference, see it as the same. All I know is that the cost of the Polar Express was much higher than that of, say, Cars, because of the expenditures related to futhering the technology of the motion capture devices, which, in my opinion, have not been perfected as of yet, and will probably need similar future investments to put it on par with some of the real animation that's out there. Either way, check out the expression on that guy's face - I can't tell what it's supposed to emote (sadness? unconfortable-ness? weirdness?) but it's badass nonetheless. Go motion capture.

This brings up another method that people are using called Rotoscoping, another way of achieving a 'sort-of-animated-sort-of-drawn' look for a film. Richard Linklater's second attempt at this looks to me at least better than the first, since the subject matter could benefit more from the technique, but rotoscoping is a painfully arduous process of painting literally every frame exactly like the live action reference and is no fun for person who actually has to do it. Another thing about the method that Linklater is using is the fact that the paint seems to float around someone's face when they aren't actually moving or moving only a little, such as in the scene with the screencap above, where the reaction is actually confused to the viewer because they are looking at the extraneous movement of his cheeks instead of his eyes. (Check out the doctor on the left's eyes right after that too - he totally goes cross-eyed/lazy-eyed). Trailer here.

Then there's Pathé dans Paris, whose film Renaissance got the big prize at the Annecy film festival this year. It uses live action motion capture as well and capture a sort-of-sin-city-look. Check out trailer 1 and trailer 2.

And while you're at it check out this short film with a similar style based on Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart.

I think what bugs me the most is when people say that movies like this have 'really nice animation but the stories are not so good' - especially with the fact that it's not really animation that they're doing, and without a story, it's just a piece of eye-candy. With Waking Life, I can't see that as being a notable film without its style aiding it, and the Polar Express itself is a rather ho-hum adaptation to a good short story. I think the common denominator with these films is that their style is more of a gimmick to draw viewers rather than a medium chosen to tell a story. I realise there's a pioneering spirit out there in terms of pushing visuals, but if you want the visuals to really sing, make sure it moves as well as the style that supports it - and I really think that the movement is the sole thing missing from interesting styles like that in Renaissance. So the real question is, why don't 2d and 3d animators do something with interesting styles and stories of their own? I've definetly heard the point being raised that with 3d animation, the designers are no longer limited to considering what animators can draw consistently, so all sorts of new options have opened up (for instance, no one would want to animated a character with stripes or patterns, among other things), and 3D allows for that.

Your comments?

Draw!

jeeess worken' on a pitch idea.

A New Look

Just 'been playing around with my blogger template today.

Hope you like the new look/features!

[Updated]

Looks like I've got some work ahead of me to make this look the way I want in Internet Explorer 6 for Windows. Argh!