BladeRunner Making of

Blade Runner Convention Reel 1982 from Future Noir on Vimeo.

* wow that got yanked quick, glad I jotted down some notes

a society where life had become very difficult, the urban environment had become a trap for the people. So started with very clean design concept then successively layered on top an accumulation of details and repairs and extra pieces of equipment that weren't the original equipment idea, and achieved this fixit it because it has to run which is the whole visual flavor which is the essence of the film, so it isn't a shiny futuristic society it's a society where the supply lines have broken down. the street level became like the sewers the underside of the city being trapped on the street was not only just unromantic but a thoroughly nasty way to spend your life because the street is just a service access to the upper city, Decent people didn't live below 40 floors above the street so you get an accumulation of detail of vent pipes generators and left over kind of society that your forced to live with because you can't afford to go up. It takes a trend from the current larger urban centers and accelerates it and charicatures it makes it more brutal and more glamorous at each end of the scale.

*found on animation

Chipotle Ad

Boom, hand done. Johnny Kelly behind the scenes flickr set

* found on Cartoon Brew

Getting going

I think I have a new trick. You know when it's time to get down to work but you feel that big resistence to start (the lure of nets trying to get you to put it off.) A few times now I've done 5 minutes of figure drawing (15 second poses) and that did the trick of gear shifting my brain to get to business.

Elder Vid Ref

such a brief flit of light, this puff of life we have

Chaos Cinema - Shakey Cam

Chaos Cinema Part 1 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

Chaos Cinema Part 2 from Matthias Stork on Vimeo.

like it or hate it it is part of the modern movie lexicon. Interesting how the sound track is what knits it together. It may not allow the viewer to securely know where they are in the picture, but it trades that for visceral feeling of such chaotic events.

Portal: No Escape

pretty cool, kind of bugs that the gun doesn't pull up to her elbow

Cigar Box Guitar

Nothing related to anything I usually post about, but I'm all excited about Cigar Box Guitars. The idea being you don't need a big fancy expensive consumer product to make music, just whip something together and start rocking.

There's a whole ning site dedicated to it. (saw one made out of a frying pan over there) and they have a ton of how to's, from super simple to lutheir quality.

Uncle Crow threw up a how to build one in an hour video walk thru for a cost of less then $15

Red Dog Guitars has a lot of fancy nicely done ones, and has some great music on the site.


Dr. Oakroot made a bass guitar using weed wacker strings

a 2nd ning group on the same thing

I just love the raw sound and the D.I.Y. approach

anyway, now I have the links wherever I go

and as long as we're talking home made instruments:

Cranes are Flying

Daaang. Check out this clip and think about where the camera man must have been. Skillz

Clothes for stopmo Puppet

Nice thread on puppet cloth making, quick summary of possibilities. Options are, follow a simple pattern. (ala Nic Hilligoss, ton of knowledge on his site)


Some folks just glue the cloth on. Jon does, and uses clay for collars etc (which can get tellingly thick in cloth.)

Others pin cloth on, and either sew it and pull it off and turn it right side out, or sew it on with invisible seams (sounds harder)

Leevi Lehtinen points out that he doesn't attach the parts, sleeves are seperate from torso etc.


Nathan and Josh Flynn have pro looking clothes which they sew, but they have good tricks for little details.

Roger Evans - Johnny Quest

Roger Evans has been plugging away at putting the Johnny Quest intro into stopmotion. You can follow along shot by shot on his page. He's finally finished. Pretty awesome project.

Frame by Frame

Iestyn Roberts found this cool tumblr that has snippets of animated films and the frames individually so you can pull it apart and put it back together.

AnimSchool

promo video for Animschool has really fantastic animation in it, they definitely have appeal nailed.

FPS Russia

Awesome sauce. Um, we'll file this under reference, in case you ever need someone shooting,anything. Love his attitude and accent.

Impressions Jim Meskimen

Jim Meskimen





* found by Jesse Rignall @ 11second club

as Jesse pointed out, great for mouth shape, facial shapes, and head accent timing

Jim Hull Story Fanatic

I have a link that I haven't gotten to yet, so I'll put it here to clean up my bookmarks.

Jim Hull's Story Fanatic page, lots of great articles on story structure, analyzing and breaking down stories and why he thinks they work, lots to learn.

50 most inluential disney animators

Grayson Ponti a highschool student put this together, how cool is that. Haven't had a chance to go through it yet, but seems like an awesome blog.

50 most influential disney animators


5 posts in 2 hours, maybe I should get some work done :P

quick list of things to do to your character

25 ways to F**k with your Characters by Chuck Wendig, looks like he may have other useful articles, gotta do some mining.

Horse=Brick

horse cheat sheet by Emma Coats from her twitter

and since we're at it, Gurney had thrown up this cheat sheet from Spirit days (though I don't think he was involved)

Black Dynamite Animated

Black Dynamite was a fun campy recent blaxploitation (c'mon he nunchuck fights Richard Nixon!)

Now there's an animated series.




(my favorite part was when they were tapping on his fro with the boom mic)
*found on flooby nooby

How To Cheat at Maya

Eric Luhta, who I went to AM with for a while, wrote How to Cheat in Maya (which has a lot of the approaches you learn in AM in it) and now has re released it with new stuff and a guest author Kenny Roy (who I learned a TON from).


They have couple of videos on their site, and any time you see Kenny Roy in a video it's worth paying attention!

vid on 2ndary animation (he touches on his frequent spiel of 2ndary animation = subtext which is a useful idea) but this idea of using animation layers to allow you to build up your animation and make changes easily is one I was vaguely aware of but haven't had a chance to explore. But here he is making it seem like a very useful approach allowing for late changes without headaches. Example here was having a tapping finger on a new layer, so can key it in and out easily to play with the thought shown through 2ndary acting happening.

vid on buffer curve: saw this from him elsewhere but it's a great cheat to re write it down, basically if you use buffer curves it's like having a save as alternate version of animation just by using the swap buffer curve button

Public Domain music

Public Domain music resource. Haven't checked it out thoroughly, seems like a good start but do your research (don't wanna get hit like Nina Paley where the songs are copywrite free but someone still holds the rights)

Don't forget the sound fx to go with it

Move Eat Learn

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover
All Music composed and performed by Kelsey James
Music Recorded and mixed by Jake Phillips
Colour Grade : Edel Rafferty and Roslyn Di sisto
Online Edit : Peter Mirecki
Assistance in titles and production design : Lee Gingold, Jason Milden, Rohan Newman

the world is such a small place, and we are all connected through more similarities then differences, vids like this help us remember, nice production value on this really professional feeling, but in a way Where the Hell is Matt is better because he just has more joy in it, so the lesson I take Passion trumps proficiency (not to diss the Move Eat Learn guys, there piece is really cool)



and something else Matt and the Numa Numa guy have: Dance like no one's watching just be joyfull in yourself and don't worry about everyone else

Ormie the Pig

nice and simple, beautifully animated!

by Rob Silvestri


*found at short of the week

Claythings - how to clay animation

a solid walk thru of animating in clay








*found on animation

High Heels

was animating a woman in high heels today

Future of CG - no more polygons

of course being able to model atoms isn't a garauntee for fun games, more of a garauntee that a game will never be released and have a huge budget to make it all, but this is an amazing new tool used in the right hands. I mean it's the future, if the virtual world can be as detailed as the real one the next step will be to improve our interface with the computers (a la matrix plugs) very interesting

Bechdel Test

So I just learned of the Bechdel test, such an easy test and so sad that so many films completely fail it.

Trucker

This is a super old one, very NSFW and pretty misogynistic but if you can put that aside it's pretty fun.

FLAIRS - TRUCKERS DELIGHT from 3rd Side Records on Vimeo.

Mac N Cheese

Mac 'n' Cheese from Mac 'N' Cheese on Vimeo.

by Tom Hankins
Gijs van Kooten
Guido Puijk
Roy Nieterau

these guys are doing it right, pushing it!