Thursday, July 28, 2011

Glen Keane Rapunzel






Tangled was fabulous animation, Glen was involved in the whole process from creation and rigging of models to animating it. In the Tangled chat they talked about how his drawings was the lantern finding the path for them. Anyway, I was hoping to find some of the drawings he did to help the animators get closer to his look but I haven't seen any yet (art of tangled didn't have mhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifuch I don't think.) Glen's drawings are just so rich, he put it great speaking of another animator "feels like high calorie drawings, like you could get fat just looking at them" uggh so awesome

*Got these from Flooby Noob, he has more.

*12/2/11 as does Living Lines

Angry Men (mostly)




*found on FloobyNooby

Animation Scout

Ugur Yetiskin has a series of solid videos on face stuff.

AnimationScout - Blinks from Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin on Vimeo.



AnimationScout - Mouth Corners from Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin on Vimeo.



AnimationScout - Head Direction from Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin on Vimeo.



AnimationScout - Eyelids from Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin on Vimeo.



AnimationScout - Eye Direction from Ugur Ulvi Yetiskin on Vimeo.




the whole looking in certain directions thing I don't think I buy, I think the first time it was an example of 1 subjects directions, and everyone took that up as the definitive, and I'm not sure it was proven anyway. Anyone know some real research. *added July 31 Check out wiki on neuro linguistic programming see where my hesitation on this comes from, so you can decide for yourself.

Kevin Koch still has best work up on blinks I've seen. Ugur's got some decent formula's here, but formula's without back ground information always seem dangerous to me.

eyelids, I think individuals have different neutral positions, which I'm getting from that Facial expressions book, but the stuff on the lower lid I agreed with, (lower lid can only get tightened up to close lid, going down only because bulge of cornea pushes it)

the mouth corner thing seemed solid, especially the arc part

head position seemed good too, wonder where he got the info.


* found on animation

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Kaeloo

don't know why this is hitting now, but kaeloo's been on all the sites. I put it up because it's such a great example of crazy stretchy cartoony animation in CG, it feels more authentic CG then the nostalgically overweighted Coyote RoadRunners a few months back.

funny, Olivier had posted about it back in 2010, and for some reason I'm feeling like it's one of those shorts from before youtube days. Anyway

Kaeloo - Prince charming - Si on jouait au Prince charmant... from Cube Creative on Vimeo.



Kaeloo Pilote English Version from Cube Creative on Vimeo.



Kaeloo - La QuĂȘte du Greul - Extrait from Cube Creative on Vimeo.

Lighting - Francesco Giroldini





Olivier found this awesome dude: Francesco Giroldini who has some solid lighting chops, stuff looks like Daisuke “dice” Tsutsumi paintings in CG. And fortunately for us, also has a generous side and has thrown up a ton of lighting tuts.

He mentions this lighting thing.

reminds me that Lucas Martel has some decent lighting walk thru's also.

Choppin Brocoli



over the top, but still, lots of possibilities for stuff to throw into lipsynch or facial ticks

Monday, July 25, 2011

Assassin's Creed Retro

Assassin's Creed Retro from Mitch Pecqueur on Vimeo.



by Mitch Pecqueur, Arnaud Baudry and Julien Baret


it's fine, but the interesting part to me is the proof of concept of how much you can discard when you go a little stylized and cel shaded, like BG, and can go in and out of speed lines effortlessly.




*my coworker sent it to me from Kotaku

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Jazzed

JAZZED Full Short from anton setola on Vimeo.



I know I'm gonna come looking for this later. By Anton Setola


* found on cartoon brew

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Boxers - Nicolai Howalt


PhotographerNicolai Howalt. Something about these images, taken right before and right after a match, some inarticulatable difference between the two shots. Somehow you can tell that some life was lived. Maybe it's just Kuleshov effect. Really interesting.


*found by flooby noob

more Time in the Day

Ok, so I have 2 small kids at home, so when I get home from work they own my time til they go to bed, then I need to do dishes and clean up the house to try and help my wife stay sane the next day with the kids. That leaves me about an hour to do whatever. But often that whatever is spending time with my wife, or doing grown up chores like pay bills, or get some jogging in. Sometimes I try and be disciplined and do some animation, but it's often really REALLY hard to knuckle down and get right to work at the end of the day, I often "look up one thing" and then realize there isn't enough time left to bother to animate. So reading Cameron Fielding's post again I thought I'd try his trick of getting up and working 5-7am before everyone else is up. Worked great for me this morning, got right to work (at 6, I'm working down ;), no distracting internet (we turn it off at night), no interuptions, it was great. And the only discipline is going to bed early enough, which I have to do anyway to stay cheerful for my family (lack of sleep makes me emo :( ) so I feel like I've discovered an extra 2 hours in the day.

Yeah it's lame to get up early (I get my best sleep in the early mornings, I hate being awake then), but if you want to go big you gotta make sacrifices. Barriers are just there to keep everyone else out while you prove you deserve it.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Nother Quick Draw Site

Like the other figure drawing sites mentioned before, new site for quick sketching.

new link for it

tigertigertiger (can never find this post when I'm looking for it, so maybe I'll be able to with that odd word)

Julie Bell - Monologue Reference

So as I was going through that list of art I just posted I came across this interview with Julie Bell. (not really my flavor of art). Since so often animation exercise is monologues in one spot I thought this was great reference. She's in 1 golden pose for 5 minutes, she uses her hands to illustrate what she's talking about, good ref for little head accents on the words, interesting how her mouth is slightly asymetrical.

Wheel of Time cover art








Irene Gallo has a series of posts going over the art commissioning for the e-book Wheel of Time series. Interesting to see how the pro's work.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Mello Yello

interesting blend of flat and CG, feels pretty smooth

Mello Yello 'Animated River Journey' from Passion Pictures on Vimeo.




*found on animation

Friday, July 8, 2011

Fur

YAY hand drawn




* found by Flooby Nooby

Thursday, July 7, 2011

eye tracking again

remember the There might be blood Eye tracking, James Gurney posted up another one of those (with some good observations), apparently it's a group of scientists (DIEM) doing these studies and they have a vimeo page full of them.

Eye Movements during a segment on Chilli Plasters from TheDIEMProject on Vimeo.



Montage of 4 Visualizations of Eye-movements during Charlie Bit My Finger from TheDIEMProject on Vimeo.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Blik

Blik from Polder Animation on Vimeo.



honestly I'm mainly putting this up because I like the shading. The physicality is good, nice weight, the acting is pretty clear the lack of faces makes it more universal, but also makes it a little more distant.



* found on animation

Un Monstre a Paris music vid



I know the setting is a theater, but I wish I could see a whole film with such daring use of color & light and symbolic (as opposed to real) backgrounds. Course to do that I think the characters would have to be more graphical also, which would also be good. (though the pink is a tad too candy, but better to go too far then not far enough)

(pretty fun song too, I wish there was an easier way for me to delve through the non english music scene)

The animation is 3d and the backgrounds are matte painted/camera mapped

from the upcoming flick Un Monstre A Paris from Europa Corp


* found by Olivier, he has links to the blogs of some of the folks working on it also

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Tips for Indie Directors

bunch of quick articles for improving your game if you want to make your own flick.

Untangling Tangled

Untangling the Look of Tangled from Creative Talent Network on Vimeo.



shrinking the world makes it friendly intimate and appealing
shrink it by scaling the buildings down to a few stories at max, cut the sightlines down so few long vistas make it cozy and comfortable instead,
curves (especially S curves) add to the appeal gives a composition a sense of flow and grace (inspired by cinderella who had a shape vocabulary of shapes built of curves that gives a consistent feel all the way through, and feels like a storybook)
european architecture inspired, quirky details, unexpected variety/color, feeling that you might find a secret door at any point
pinnochio for building scales, all kind of chubby not to tall, wrap around character
for economy made x number of buildings and made them different from side to side, so that could make it feel like a lot of buildings easily
running through the forest you see very little of the individual trees (unless the characters specifically interact with them) so the forest becomes pretty abstract and atmospheric
round out and plump up the shapes of the tower set to harken back to the cozy appeal of old disney movies

light to express character, rapunzel spends a lot of time in warm glowing sun

If it moves through space convincingly that's enough (John Kahrs thought that for years) But Glen brought to the group
the way the character is feeling inside in their heart, it controls their core. It's okay to twist and change that body mass/body core based on how they're feeling.

looking to get a sense of fleshy mass in the face (through good blendshapes I'm guessing)

the whole crew did practice on simple things on the characters (walk test, simple turn around, simple sit) to practice believability, weight, physicality of how humans move (as a baseline to create sense of disbelief, acting on top)

did a lot of focus on the characters animated breathing