Neon Divide Ragnorak

FACS breakdown blog

Found a great blog breaking down expressions using FACS https://melindaozel.com/

Shadow Box Paper Sculpting

Create Sci Fi KitBashing

Got sucked in and watched a ton of these last night. I love the punk rock "just get stuff done" attitude. I also love that the steps are the same from kitbashing a spaceship miniature, to making a costume, to building a set.
Choose stuff for silhouette and shape
Mash it together strong (trim back after if you need)
Unify it with dark primer (or fabric dye for costume)
Drybrush silver or gold on
Weather it

Love Me Fear me

Love Me, Fear Me from Veronica Solomon on Vimeo.

Gesture while speaking

Iconic - represent literal object like flat surface or car weaving through traffic
Metaphoric - symbolize abstract concept like before, after, or working together
Deictic - pointing to things, positioning yourself tothings
pragmatic - offering the floor, don't bother me
beat - rhythm of gestures matching stress pattern of speech

categories can coexist together

emblem- thumbs up, has to be the correct angle and finger

gesture accomplishes redundancy, re enforcing idea being communicated

also adds emphasis and importance, to communicate more clear, or even to help you think it through

sometimes you just need to point, and if you don't have your arms you'll use your face or your eyes

or acknowledge social norms (uncomfortable ideas show that you're nervous about what you are saying.)

Ghibli Trees in Blender

Living Tombstone - Sunburn

Miyazaki again

I'm not making a story yet, that's too limiting.

Starts with just images that make you question and wonder what is happening. Totorro started with just the image of the kid and totorro at the bus stop. Then builds the story around the moments he explored.

doesn't matter if it's just an illustration, it works so long as it's interesting, if people are bored it's game over.

funiko - atmosphere or mood. japanese animation emphasizes this idea of strong emotional resonance rather than gag based cartoons. the environment is a character and has a feeling mood and story about it. The particularity of place, there'a narrative anchored in the larger world. How does this particular environment push on and change the story elements.

You must animate will, not just movement, the drive behind it.

easy to understand movies are boring. Logical storyllines sacrifice creativity.

empowers his protagonists with a sense of action, the power to do what is right despite adults perhaps not doing it.

he's creating worlds for the next generation.

self satisfied people are boring. we have to push to surpass ourselves

Alex Henderson

Just ran across this guy  Sheridan Grad, 1 man animation band.


Breathing Space - Animated Short Film from Alexander Henderson on Vimeo.


His twitter is full of tons of matte background painting, which look great with the flat shaded animation.

He storyboards pretty tightly. Uses zbrush and mudbox for modeling, feel like he's able to recycle his models some to jump off to a new one. For rigging he uses Rapid Rig to do a lot of the heavy lifting, and has other auto rigger scripts that he hasn't named. (wonder what he does for faces), and then corrective blendshapes for big changes. VFX are a large part preset's he bought for aftereffects. All of those skills are a career in their own, it's impressive how well he does them all, he has commissions on his site for doing quick animate portraits and it seems fairly cheap to be making a new character all the time.

Pretty inspiring what's possible.

He's currently running a kickstarter for a short

Objective vs Subjective filming

What is Character Perspective? from Travis Lee Ratcliff on Vimeo.


This was a fascinating idea when I first learned about it, but I couldn't find any further explanation. This video does a better job of running it down.

notes:

pov shot doesn't give us any insight into the mental or emotions of the character who we're riding.

subjective gives us that story, often by looking at that character as much as what they are looking at

Pitch Bibles

Artist Resource Link with a bunch of show pitches linked in it. What goes into a pitch and glossary

Bee &Puppy Cat

 CocoaNuts

When do we level up

 Other Town

Cupcake and Dino

Bravest Warrior

Adventure time

Izzo Spot

Animation Acting Advice

treasure planet arms are shields for the shy, so keep them close to the body. What mannerisms do you have that someone immitating you would use. canceling a gesture Disney Singing deep diaphragm breaths for control, short tenser shoulder upper chest based gasps for intensity

Blender

Another thing that I came across was how awesome blender is getting these days. They've got really amazing looking CG stuff, but their 2D is and cell shaded stuff is great too.





and I went searching for it because it was so cool, but this 2D looking scene made in Blender.

By Janina Gerards
(@luamono on twitter)

 

@antonioya_blend on twitter automated the process https://twitter.com/antonioya_blend/status/1244294087806783488
(so I think it's part of Blender by default now)






and the classic Blender one by Dedouze

Dedouze tutorial


and part 2 of Dedouze


blender cartoon renderer


flat in photoshop, shade and light in AE



and of course the patron saint of blender PepeLand has a series

1 person film stuff and the power of After Effects

Ok, so I caught that Spice Frontier short and was super into it, I like the flat shade look with 2d vfx. Partly because it feels more 2D so there's more wiggle room to having more stylized characters. Watching a making of Steamroll Studios made it over 2 years, and the main creator wrote basically a novel that he developed into a short. (with plans to go series or feature)

I also bumped into Denver Jackson's Cloudrise pictures again.  Specifically this comment he made:

A year ago, I started animation on this feature. I am now approx an hour and a half through animation! Another 30 minutes to go!

Super exciting. The idea that 1 person can make a whole world  and complete story in a conceivable amount of time. Although I have seen timelapse of Denver working at his cintique and not moving for an entire day, so I think he is putting in deadly amounts of hours.

But, he also turned out a whole feature worth of work already.




He said he painted over 200 backgrounds for it. And then just hand animated the whole damn thing.
A lot of his backgrounds I think he quick mocked up in 3d and then painted over, so as to speed up working out the perspective.

He mentioned that currently he is working with CG characters that he then stopmo puppets in quill/occulus for speed, then reexports back to render.

But a big factor in 1 person productions seems to be how much power is in after effects. Make a shot feel full and vibrant. Lighting tricks and depth of field and atmosphere for depth. Running through some of these it occurs to me that that is what makes a scene feel real, the depth and the sense of environment, weather effects (mist and clouds and rain and wind) and light effects, which makes it feel cinematic because it's easier to suspend disbelief.

And Toniko has a amp up vid about making a film in a week, then you can just blaze through it because you know it can't ever be perfect so you're not slowed down trying to make it perfect.


flat in photoshop, shade and light in AE


basic putting together assets in AE


and adding some volumetric and depth of field to AE


building a long parrallax BG in AE


another putting together a scene in AE


overpainting photos to make BG


rain fx



artist drawing BG starting from ref


lasso color line art


rim light AE


just rough to clean 2D anim


lighting effects in AE

Spice Frontier

Unreal Engine Film BattleSuit

Another example of using game engines (unreal) for film making

BattleSuit Film By Hasraf "HaZ" Dulall

"

Their notes were typically about story and dialogue, things that if we were doing this in a more conventional linear route, would entail time and expense to fix. But because we were in a realtime environment and we didn’t have pipeline steps, such as compositing or multipass rendering as you would get in conventional CG, we were able to make iterative changes really quick straight out of the engine.

“The ability to make these changes on the fly without making a difference to our budget and schedule is another huge game-changer. It could mean that many more story ideas get made because the risk to the producers and finance execs is so much smaller.”

article at no film school

Eddie of the Realms Eternal

Eddie of the Realms Eternal from Realms Eternal on Vimeo.

Au Coin du Feu // By the Fireplace

Gianluca Maruotti

this guy is an awesome stopmo animator. What's inspiring is that it feels like he had a style, then he just made it move, no complicated having to redefining or reaching, just do what already do well.


Giangrande - Free to Roam [Official Video] from Gianluca Maruotti on Vimeo.


Making of 'Free to Roam' from Gianluca Maruotti on Vimeo.



Xavier Rudd - Storm Boy [Official Video] from Gianluca Maruotti on Vimeo.


Making of 'Storm Boy' from Gianluca Maruotti on Vimeo.


Giangrande - Paper Plane (Official Video) from Gianluca Maruotti on Vimeo.


Making of 'Paper Plane' from Gianluca Maruotti on Vimeo.


Making of a plasticine sculpture from Gianluca Maruotti on Vimeo.