Olivier Barré and Elise Garcette
Friday, June 25, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Music Scene
in the immortal words of Keanu Reeves: "Whoa"
"The Music Scene" from Anthony Francisco Schepperd on Vimeo.
Palm Springs International ShortFest by MAKE
Credits:
MAKE Producer:
Danny Robashkin
Director/Lead Animator:
Andrew Chesworth
Animation Production Team:
Justin Weber
Aaron Quist
Alec Mueller
Jordan Hill
Ben Bury
Niklas Norman
Joe Kim
Voices:
John Olive
Elise Langer
Nicholas Mrozinski
Music:
Steve Horner - Horner Music
Slideshow drawings
Slideshow drawing. Flickr has a page that plays a slideshow of interesting pics from the last 7 days. Andy Latham had this brilliant idea
I had been doing something similar importing a stack of jpgs into quicktime as an image sequence, setting it to 10 frames an image, and then playing it back at the slowest possible speed.
Good for sketching fast fast fast, wish I could find some kind of slideshow software that would go a little slower, 20 seconds is really fast. But still, better then nothing.
I had been doing something similar importing a stack of jpgs into quicktime as an image sequence, setting it to 10 frames an image, and then playing it back at the slowest possible speed.
Good for sketching fast fast fast, wish I could find some kind of slideshow software that would go a little slower, 20 seconds is really fast. But still, better then nothing.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Schooled by my Mom
Damn, never touching any animation before my Mom made this clip with a model I had, which is better movement then I've managed in stopmo so far. Course she was a dancer and physical therapist for years, so lots of training on how the body works and moves.
Man, just got schooled by my own mother. :P
*the jerkiness in the beginning is my bad, I was having her capture 2 frames at a time, but helium frog was already set to double capture.
Man, just got schooled by my own mother. :P
*the jerkiness in the beginning is my bad, I was having her capture 2 frames at a time, but helium frog was already set to double capture.
Children's Movie
I saw a quote a few months ago and I've been trying to refind it and remember who it was from. Lasseter, Miyazaki, Henson? The gist was: we don't make films for children, we make films that will be fun for all people, and some of the ideas may be to adult for children, but children live in our adult world and they have to make sense of it because they will one day be part of it, no reason to patronize them in film.
this Miyazaki quote was close but I don't think it was the original.
“Making a true children’s film is a daunting challenge because we need to clearly portray the essence of a truly complex world,” observed Hayao Mizayaki. “A really dedicated children’s film is something that adults will also find rewarding whereas films made for adults, which consist simply of a kind of adornment and decoration, will leave children deeply dissatisfied. I oppose simplifying the world for children. The fact of the matter is that children know, somehow they intuit and deeply understand the complexity of the world we live in. So, I would suggest that you not underestimate children.”
and ed catmull:
children live in an adult world and they're used to hearing things they don't understand. We don't put things into a movie that would offend families, but we write the dialogue and stories for us, we want them to meaningful for us (the adults). Animation has the advantage of naturally having a physicality that is fun to watch.
this Miyazaki quote was close but I don't think it was the original.
“Making a true children’s film is a daunting challenge because we need to clearly portray the essence of a truly complex world,” observed Hayao Mizayaki. “A really dedicated children’s film is something that adults will also find rewarding whereas films made for adults, which consist simply of a kind of adornment and decoration, will leave children deeply dissatisfied. I oppose simplifying the world for children. The fact of the matter is that children know, somehow they intuit and deeply understand the complexity of the world we live in. So, I would suggest that you not underestimate children.”
and ed catmull:
children live in an adult world and they're used to hearing things they don't understand. We don't put things into a movie that would offend families, but we write the dialogue and stories for us, we want them to meaningful for us (the adults). Animation has the advantage of naturally having a physicality that is fun to watch.
Well done timeline of Miyazaki
Trevor Hogg has written a decent run down of Miyazaki's career. I'm seeing lots of quotes from his book and elsewhere. Nice to have a comprehensive timeline in one place with an idea of what each step meant to him.
To make the persona of Kiki three-dimensional, Miyazaki followed a simple human truth that no one treats everyone in the same way. “The hallmark of this film is the expression of the many faces of a person. In the presence of her parents, Kiki is childish, but on her own she thinks things over with a serious expression. She may speak roughly and bluntly to a boy her own age, but to her seniors, especially to people important to her, she acts politely.”
“For us, the continuity sketches are the screenplay,” admitted Hayao Miyazaki. “With continuity sketches, you have the drawings in the frames and next to each frame a description of the content in the frame, with stage directions on the left side and dialogue on the right. When you look at the page, therefore, you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on, so it’s what the animators use to base their drawings on.For Whisper of the Heart [Mimi wo sumaseba, 1995], we had planned on a ninety-minute film, so we wound up with nearly 450 pages of continuity sketches. With Kiki’s Delivery Service, it was about 550 pages. For Castle in the Sky, it was around 650 pages. This is frankly a huge amount of work.
Mononoke-hime [Princess Mononoke, 1997] does not purport to solve the problems of the entire world. The battle between rampaging forest gods and humanity cannot end well; there can be no happy ending. Yet, even amid the hatred and slaughter, there are things worthy of life. It is possible for wonderful encounters to occur and for beautiful things to exist.”
“As usual, after the production started, I realized that it would be more than three hours long if I made it according to my plot,” revealed the anime artist. “I had to cut a lot from the story, and make a complete change.
So, I am making the film with the idea that it is the world, rather than bad guys or good guys. The scary woman, Yubaba, who looks like a bad guy in this film, is actually the manager of the bath house where the heroine works. She's having a hard time managing the bath house; she has many employees, a son, and her own desires, and she is suffering because of those things. So I don't intend to portray her as a simple villain
‘This is a two-dimensional film. This is our strength.’ There is a fundamental difference in thinking about how to approach a 2-D versus a 3-D film. For example, Yubaba’s head [large as it is] is not always the same size in every scene. Depending on my mood and her mood, the size of her head changes. This is an emotional relationship we develop through scale with the audience, one that we would have to abandon if we wholeheartedly embraced digital technology
Until now, I had made ‘I wish there was such a person’ leading characters. This time, however, I created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize, someone about whom they can say, "Yes, it's like that." It's very important to make it plain and unexaggerated. Starting with that, it's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances
To make the persona of Kiki three-dimensional, Miyazaki followed a simple human truth that no one treats everyone in the same way. “The hallmark of this film is the expression of the many faces of a person. In the presence of her parents, Kiki is childish, but on her own she thinks things over with a serious expression. She may speak roughly and bluntly to a boy her own age, but to her seniors, especially to people important to her, she acts politely.”
“For us, the continuity sketches are the screenplay,” admitted Hayao Miyazaki. “With continuity sketches, you have the drawings in the frames and next to each frame a description of the content in the frame, with stage directions on the left side and dialogue on the right. When you look at the page, therefore, you can get a pretty good idea of what’s going on, so it’s what the animators use to base their drawings on.For Whisper of the Heart [Mimi wo sumaseba, 1995], we had planned on a ninety-minute film, so we wound up with nearly 450 pages of continuity sketches. With Kiki’s Delivery Service, it was about 550 pages. For Castle in the Sky, it was around 650 pages. This is frankly a huge amount of work.
Mononoke-hime [Princess Mononoke, 1997] does not purport to solve the problems of the entire world. The battle between rampaging forest gods and humanity cannot end well; there can be no happy ending. Yet, even amid the hatred and slaughter, there are things worthy of life. It is possible for wonderful encounters to occur and for beautiful things to exist.”
“As usual, after the production started, I realized that it would be more than three hours long if I made it according to my plot,” revealed the anime artist. “I had to cut a lot from the story, and make a complete change.
So, I am making the film with the idea that it is the world, rather than bad guys or good guys. The scary woman, Yubaba, who looks like a bad guy in this film, is actually the manager of the bath house where the heroine works. She's having a hard time managing the bath house; she has many employees, a son, and her own desires, and she is suffering because of those things. So I don't intend to portray her as a simple villain
‘This is a two-dimensional film. This is our strength.’ There is a fundamental difference in thinking about how to approach a 2-D versus a 3-D film. For example, Yubaba’s head [large as it is] is not always the same size in every scene. Depending on my mood and her mood, the size of her head changes. This is an emotional relationship we develop through scale with the audience, one that we would have to abandon if we wholeheartedly embraced digital technology
Until now, I had made ‘I wish there was such a person’ leading characters. This time, however, I created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize, someone about whom they can say, "Yes, it's like that." It's very important to make it plain and unexaggerated. Starting with that, it's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances
Dreamworks Director Steve Hickner
Dreamworks Director Steve Hickner
The main things that were interesting to me was how he talked about attitude being so integral to longevity in a career. If you are positive and a room of people is happier with you in it then you'll be wanted on future teams. Ask for opportunity not money, if you get the chance, cuz a little bump in your salary won't affect your life, but a chance on a new project might. And he talked about being in the right place helped him, twice he was working in miserable offices that nobody wanted to be in, but both times his office was the heart of the film so he talked with everyone. (where everyone came to shoot and watch their dailies.)
The main things that were interesting to me was how he talked about attitude being so integral to longevity in a career. If you are positive and a room of people is happier with you in it then you'll be wanted on future teams. Ask for opportunity not money, if you get the chance, cuz a little bump in your salary won't affect your life, but a chance on a new project might. And he talked about being in the right place helped him, twice he was working in miserable offices that nobody wanted to be in, but both times his office was the heart of the film so he talked with everyone. (where everyone came to shoot and watch their dailies.)
How to Break Into Animation Steve Hickner Dreamworks Director from Creative Talent Network on Vimeo.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Stephenie Mercier's flick
Stephenie Mercier made a little short that's fun, and sadly seems to reflect modern times pretty well.
Girls suck at video games / Les filles sont nulles aux jeux vidéo from Stéphanie Mercier on Vimeo.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
non weighted tangents
Ran across a tip from Ken Music on his blog.
Since you might be asked at any time to make changes, if you use keys to make all changes to a curve, then it's easier to edit because it will stay consistent. If you have edited the curve using tangents and weights then if you add or scale or anything all your changes will be unexpectedly changed.
Since you might be asked at any time to make changes, if you use keys to make all changes to a curve, then it's easier to edit because it will stay consistent. If you have edited the curve using tangents and weights then if you add or scale or anything all your changes will be unexpectedly changed.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Hair Painting Tut
I'm thinking I'm gonna take a crack at low poly modeling soon. Ran across Bobo The Seal's site, he has a pretty decent demo of painting hair, with brushes.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Gurney on how you look
James Gurney was working with some scientists studying how people's eyes move across an image naturally. here and here
Saccades occur between three and five times per second, alternating with brief periods of rest called fixations. Larger saccades for absorbing the scene, smaller ones for getting details. (which is useful for animators)
The artistic theories of composition driving the eye and of the golden mean don't appear to hold up. Dr. Edwards succinctly puts it, “abstract design gets trumped by human stories.” The job of the artist, then, in composing pictures about people is to use abstract tools to reinforce the viewer’s natural desire to seek out a face and a story. Abstract design elements do play a role in influencing where viewers look in a picture, but in pictures that include people or animals or a suggestion of a story, the human and narrative elements are what direct our exploration of a picture.
The unconscious impulses seem to include the establishment of hierarchies of interest based on normal expectations or schema of a scene. Just because an element has sharp detail or strong tonal contrasts, it doesn’t necessarily attract the eye. The dark branches behind the dinosaur’s head drew almost no attention because they fit into the natural schema of a forest scene, they didn't stand out, but the sunken log and detailed leaves did gain a lot of attention because they could house another potential threat to the characters.
Saccades occur between three and five times per second, alternating with brief periods of rest called fixations. Larger saccades for absorbing the scene, smaller ones for getting details. (which is useful for animators)
The artistic theories of composition driving the eye and of the golden mean don't appear to hold up. Dr. Edwards succinctly puts it, “abstract design gets trumped by human stories.” The job of the artist, then, in composing pictures about people is to use abstract tools to reinforce the viewer’s natural desire to seek out a face and a story. Abstract design elements do play a role in influencing where viewers look in a picture, but in pictures that include people or animals or a suggestion of a story, the human and narrative elements are what direct our exploration of a picture.
The unconscious impulses seem to include the establishment of hierarchies of interest based on normal expectations or schema of a scene. Just because an element has sharp detail or strong tonal contrasts, it doesn’t necessarily attract the eye. The dark branches behind the dinosaur’s head drew almost no attention because they fit into the natural schema of a forest scene, they didn't stand out, but the sunken log and detailed leaves did gain a lot of attention because they could house another potential threat to the characters.
Art Babbit interview
here's some clips of Art Babbit found by regi536. (Art Babbitt for those who don't is the guy who gave the taught Richard Williams all the wisdom of the golden age, it was his lectures that Richard Williams wrote down in a book for the rest of us.)
Cafe Allonge
was touch and go with this film, but the weirdness won out. The french sure have embraced anime and run with it. Created by Kawanimation studio
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