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....

Again, just for kicks...

Here's the 9 minutes of Ratatouille on YouTube.



Also, some download links, in quicktime, for you frame scrubbers:

HD 1080 (780 Megs)
HD 720 (630 Megs)
HD 480 (270 Megs)
Hi-res SD (170 Megs)
Medium-res SD (84 Megs)
Lo-res SD (48 Megs)

Industry Day Hearsay...

There's definitely been a reaction to the industry day at Sheridan this year. I expected such, since there was no industry day screening last year and this was the first of the new BA program.

Check out this article on industry day featured in the National Post. It's pretty erroneous (apparently JibJab is a videogame company in Vancouver, according to the article, amongst other humorous little oddities). Check it out anyways, though!

Found this post on the AnimationNation.com message boards - Steve Schnier posts:

I went to the Sheridan Industry Screening today and I have to say that it was a huge success. One of my criticisms in past years was that despite the leaps made in technology, the content - the "thinking" both in design and story, hadn't progressed since my day, Class of '81.

The 2007 Graduating Class, the first since the 4 year, BAA degree was introduced at Sheridan, provided a huge and very pleasant surprise. There were a wide variety of styles, innovative design and some very clever thinking in these student films.

Is it the new program, new staff or a new attitude amongst the students? I don't know - but whatever it is, they're doing something very RIGHT at Sheridan College.

You can read the whole thread here.

Of course, there's the opposite opinion, featured on the blog Nick and Nora's:

As an animation supervisor, I was asked to be one of the representatives of my studio at Sheridan College's Animation Program 'Industry Day'. It was to be a landmark event, since it was also to include final-project screenings of some 68 graduates of Sheridan's new "Bachelors of Animation Arts" degree program. A four-year animation program that - surprise - comes with a bachelor's degree; a rarity in Canada.

Prior to the Bachelor's screening, we sat through roughly 40 other student shorts from graduates of various one-year computer animation, and character animation programs from Sheridan. The results of the one-year programs were mixed, more on that later. However, I expected the outcomes of the four-year program to quantifiably exceed the output of the one-year classes. After all, these students had invested four years of their life and countless thousands of dollars in order to get that elusive BAA. Besides, four years in an average production environment is enough to get most any animator with a hint of talent ready to start entering the big-leagues of the industry. So at the very least, four years of intensive education would be expected to produce passable entry-level talent. Right?

Wrong.

Very, very wrong.

I sat in a daze as the program's administrators ran short after short in an agonizing, head-splitting, intermission-less three hours, as nearly 70 student films unspooled one after another. What I saw upset me, then confused me. I had been sent to keep an eye out for potential talent for the tv series I was working on. I was looking for animation basics. Acting basics. Any basics. And I kept looking in vain for them as short after short played out. Rather than the basics, what we got were orgies of runaway production design, the odd cubist abstraction, a whole lot of half-finished shorts filled with unintelligibly scrawled pencil tests, the occasional bit of incomprehensible 'something or other', and a lot of stuff that was just plain sloppy.

Read post here.

[Update] Discussion's been moved to here. If you've seen the screening this year, please drop a comment by my blog or the above link - good or bad feedback.

[Update X2] Be sure to check out this thread on the AWN.com forums, as well as the comments on Mark Mayerson's post.

I should also take this time to remind everyone to keep the comments clean! No need to attack anyone else or their skills! Just clean debate, please!

Ah Hollywood....

Went to Hollywood today...



Checked out Graumann's Chinese Theatre:



Found Disney's star on the Walk of Fame:



Met the incomparably awesome Sean "Cheeks" Galloway in a Hollywood comic shop:

Fishing...

Watched people fishing on Santa Monica Pier...