Animation Blog

See Sonic run

2011-12-12T11:38:00.002-05:00

There's few more exercises in animation more well-known than the walk cycle. Here's a tumblog (tumblr blog? anyway, a freakin' list on Tumblr) of Sonic in various run cycles, looking silly. Great creativity and something to learn from!

Witness an animator's first stop motion to a great song

2011-09-01T12:45:00.001-04:00

By a local band here in Knoxville called Senryu, the song is great but I'm truly impressed with the animator's skill at telling this story (a story invented by Senryu band member Will Wright). The animator is Kathleen Block, of Greensboro, NC.

Help Wanted!

2011-08-21T13:25:00.000-04:00

I'm actually looking for animators to help me with a project. Ideally, the style should be Klasky-Chupo or something akin to what you'd see on Squidbillies.

Animaniacs re-imagined as South Park animation...

2011-01-17T23:15:00.002-05:00

Frankly this shows how awesome Animaniacs was as an animated series and how much South Park relies on writing.

The beauty of Pixar

2010-12-29T15:29:00.002-05:00

This lovely tribute is making the rounds today. Had to share. Pixar not only makes things look amazing, they are an amazing company inside as well. I'm sure people bitch about policies, make bad decisions or even have issues with working there, but overall I have heard wonderful, wonderful stories about working there.

In another lifetime I would have worked there as well, but fate intervened. My life ain't over yet!

Regular Show is awesome

2010-10-14T01:18:00.003-04:00

Starring a couple of cheeky slackers named Mordecai (a blue jay) and Rigby (a ring tailed coati) who live at this house full of weird characters, Regular Show is a treat for kids and adults. My kids are maybe a skosh young at 7 and 8, but the show is mindless popcorn fun.

One episode starts with the guys assigned to setting up chairs for a party, but winding up fighting a giant retro arcade devil head destroying everything in its path.

Wacky scenarios and rock montages in many episodes appeal to the Gen X-er in me. The boys' slightly foul-mouthed lazy diatribes provide the engine that keeps this cleverly-animated (almost sticklike) show moving. Mordecai is the chilled-out rational one whereas Rigby is neurotic and slightly irresponsible. In the end they balance each other out, like a great comedy duo should.

The show is a tight 15 minutes or so, but the stuff that happens in that time is perfectly suited to this type of animation.

I love that there's an awesome wiki already dedicated to Regular Show.

Highly recommended.

Re-watching Beavis and Butthead

2010-08-10T11:46:00.000-04:00

I guess our standards were lower in the 90's, but Beavis and Butthead... I wonder how it'd do today, competing with YouTube and the rest of the web. It hasn't been that long and the show is almost quaint. Contrast it with Plympton's cartoons and...

But of course, Mike Judge was never about innovative animation, he was more into characterization. It's fun to see the early genesis of Hank Hill and even the Goode's in B&B.

FIRE! FIRE! Heheheheh. Animation is cool.

blahgirls.com

2008-09-11T16:01:00.002-04:00

So, what do you think? A product of Ashton Kutcher and his producer buddy, launched during TechCrunch50 in a room full of nerds. (Full disclosure: I'm a nerd)

100 years ago today

2008-08-17T21:24:00.002-04:00

Can't believe this almost slipped by my radar, but 100 years ago today the field of filmed animation was born. Émile Cohl, working class son of a rubber salesman and seamstress, wound up creating "Fantasmagorie"-- the very first filmed animation feature in history.

Done in chalk on a blackboard, the film is obviously primitive, but like cave drawings, it set the mold for later innovation by guys like Disney, Avery and Lasseter.

To read more about Cohl (a name he actually adopted, it wasn't his given name), there's a Wikipedia article and this succinct but moving biography.

To view the film and additional commentary, check out this post at Current.com.

Now imagine going from chalk to photorealistic CG animation in just 100 years-- and think about the next 100!

Stop motion on the iPhone?

2008-08-17T08:09:00.003-04:00

Once Apple opened up the iPhone (and iPod Touch, which has no camera, mic, speakers, GPS or cell radio) to 3rd-party applications, the flood of new apps has been dizzying.

For example, there are two hand-drawn animation apps: FlipBook and Flickbook. MacRumors has a brief note on those, and TUAW has a hands-on review of FlipBook.

More interesting to me is Watch It Change (which I think is a terrible name, but whatever)-- a stop-motion animation app. Using the iPhone's decent (but not spectacular) camera, WIC allows you to easily snap and assemble a sequence of footage. Naturally, you're gonna want to mount the iPhone in some secure way. The makers of the app realize this, and provide a clever stand for sale on their website. TUAW has a video of the app in action.

With more cameras like the N95 getting video and application capabilities, it'll be interesting to see if any of this catches on for animation. As we know, "The Corpse Bride" was shot using still cameras, so I don't see why not, save for the fact they are tough to mount reliably.

I miss Brad Dharma

2008-08-14T23:15:00.003-04:00

Any animation fans who were around in the 90's will remember the semi-popular "Liquid Television" that aired late at night on MTV. As you may also know, the biggest thing to come out of that was the serialized "Aeon Flux." However, I always felt the tongue-in-cheek "Brad Dharma: Psychedelic Detective" had great potential. Cool lead character, neat mythology, and witty puns and references... The animation wasn't the greatest, but the mix of photos (like Ralph Bakshi would do in some of the LOTR movies) and cultural references were sublime.

I've tried to track down the creators but ran into several dead ends (I know who did it, but can't locate him). Boy I'd love to resurrect this!

How to draw Batman-- the quick way!

2008-07-25T22:28:00.001-04:00

Neat, how to draw Batman in a pretty fast way.

Wall-E may be the best animated film ever

2008-07-18T21:05:00.002-04:00

We took the entire family (2 kids + 2 adults) to see Wall•E a week or more ago. The hyperbole heaped upon the movie isn't just hyperbole. So what makes it great?

1. The homage to the silent film era. Much of the film has little dialogue, forcing comical sequences that are all physical comedy. Not only is this a treat to watch, it must have been a lot of fun for the animators.

2. The clever jab at our consumerist culture. Without spoiling the real surprise, there's no question those piles of garbage left on Earth are signs we did something stupid over and over again!

3. There's a real love story. As with all Pixar films, the movie has heart and clever jokes. A powerful story told with care and skill.

Simple is key

2007-03-24T14:10:00.000-04:00

Check this out from the new TV version of This American Life

The 28 Principles of Animation

2007-03-10T21:29:00.000-05:00

Since I'll be teaching 2 animation classes for the next 12 weeks, this blog will take a look at the methods and tools for making animation, instead of the usual gut reaction posting.

So to start, here's a link to the 28 Principles of Animation. I found this via the Wikipedia entry on Animation.

Normally I distill the principles down to 11. In fact, I use John Lasseter's 1987 presentation to SIGGRAPH that distilled the principles to a tight 11, perfectly applicable to computer animation. You see, computer animation is normally stiff. Mathematically precise, yes. But the precision breeds the stiffness. Look at the original "Mind's Eye" video-- most of the animations are rudimentary, like exercises on a computer. Fluid, natural animation is much easier by hand. To combat the stiffness inherent in computer-generated animation, John presented these principles, which traditional animators knew for years, to the computer nerds... The result? Well, you've probably seen "Toy Story."

Of course, we trace the lineage of modern animation techniques to the masterful artists hired by Walt Disney way back in the day. The techniques Lasseter presented were based on the techniques from Disney's 1930's studio, and the 28 linked above are also from Disney's folks (see Tigger?).

But no matter what method you use to create animation, if you want better results, study these principles.

Archive.org lets you be the star

2007-03-08T23:29:00.000-05:00

If you're looking to store your masterpiece of animation, check out Archive.org. There are a ton of animated works to browse for inspiration as well. I've got a couple of Brick Films (made using LEGO bricks) on my cell phone, in fact.

You'll need to log in or joing Archive.org, but honestly, these guys aren't going to sell your info. Their archive of the web is astounding. I'm not sure how they managed to squeeze copies of iVillage and Yahoo from 10 years ago into their capacious drives, but I'm happy they do it.

Anyway, the animation... There are some rare gems in there, lots of students films, and a lot of fun stuff. Be sure to check out the "game videos" which include time trials and ads for games gone by. My kids love watching the "Boogerman" TV ad from the 90's.

You know you're out of ideas when...

2006-11-19T22:51:00.000-05:00

You make a show around animated body parts. Specifically, just one body part. See, I could see a show about a bunch of parts, like Slim Goodbody or something... But coming soon to an empty brain near you are TWO shows on TWO different networks that center around a body part (although one is plural by default). Funnier still (or unfunny, as I'm sure we'll find out), they are predictably found below the belt.

Assy McGee hits Adult Swim soonish. Can you guess the body part? Yeah, an ass acting like an out-of-control cop. Or something. Who cares? It's a butt shooting a gun. Jeez.

Next up, "Baxter & McGuire" is an online show for Comedy Central featuring a pair of testicles. What's with the Scottish surnames anyway? Oh well, this is from the creator of "The King of Queens." That was a decent show, so maybe it's funny.

It should be funny that there are these two shows on in some regard at the same point in history. Last time I drew naughty bits and wrote comedy sketches for them I was in middle school. I guess that market research would come in handy now, huh?

Aardman does it again

2006-11-07T07:32:00.000-05:00

Last week we took the whole family (2 kids included) to see "Flushed Away" from Aardman... Wow. Great writing, excellent animation. It was really neat to see how they have transitioned from stop-motion to CG animation, but kept the look and style they are associated with. ILM tried to duplicate stop-motion in "Mars Attacks" but it wasn't that great. Aardman hit the nail on the head with "Flushed Away," which looks just plain good. But of course, I can only imagine has simplified things in many regards (all that water? no fun with stop-motion).

I'm hoping the DVD will have some extras that'll explain more :)

Where in the world IS Butch Hartman?

2006-11-01T10:54:00.000-05:00

OK, I'm an idiot. Well, actually, just ignorant. Oh to have a second life (not the game) to absorb it all... Here's the Frederator team:
http://frederator.kz/about.php

Wait, .kz? What's that? I have no idea. I see Frederator has something to do with a Butch piece or two, see that thing he did waaay back with Seth, and jumped to conclusions.

Sorry folks! From now on I'll stick to what I know: whatever animation I see!

To whit: there's a great Frederator podcast episode with a Butch Hartman and Seth MacFarlane project.. it's called Zoomates. You really see elements of both of them.

http://www.channelfrederator.com/short/70

Frederator!

2006-10-20T01:22:00.000-04:00

Butch Hartman is a slick animation dude, and his company has been cranking out (with the help of some hilarious interns, it seems) Channel Frederator, a clever podcast that reminds me of the old LiquidTV. I still want to do a Brad Dharma, Psychadelic Detective movie!

Blender's Open Movie: Elephant's Dream

2006-04-06T21:07:00.000-04:00

It premiered late last month, and the DVD should be landing soon. This looks stunning! Can't wait to order mine. I should have paid up front and sponsored part of the movie, but now I'll just have to settle for a post-release fun fest... Check it out at the Blender 3d site.

"House of Cosbys" is pure genius

2006-04-05T00:07:00.000-04:00

I haven't seen something this funny since I don't know when. If you like South Park, you'll love it. If you don't like South Park, you'll love it. Unfortunately, Bill Cosby is trying to shut the whole thing down. Last time I checked, parody was protected under the constitution. Sad thing is, Cosby's lawyers can force a brilliant, but modestly solvent, young man to stop making great comedy because Cosby can outspend him.

And I'm a big Cosby fan.

Be sure to read more about this tale at Waxy.org.

Happy Birthday Animation!

2006-03-20T21:57:00.000-05:00

Yes, animation is 100 years old. March 1st. Which only makes me about a month behind...

Here's the link from the design blog at Weblogs Inc.

Now I need to get on this animation thing before everyone else figures out it is cool...

Animation Festival (sort of) in Knoxville

2006-01-26T19:22:00.000-05:00

These happen on a semi-regular basis. It isn't really a festival, but a screening of animation from SIGGRAPH. Here's what I got in the old email:
COMPUTER GRAPHICS Special Interest Group (SIGGRAPH) of
the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

-- COMPUTER ANIMATION FESTIVAL --

Thursday, February 23, Room 206 Claxton, on the UT
Campus, 7:00pm.

We will be viewing the 2005 SIGGRAPH Computer
Animation Festival, Part II. These reels were juried
from international submissions, and they were first
seen at the 2005 SIGGRAPH Conference this past summer.
If you weren't at the Conference, this is your chance
to see it.

Free admission. DOOR PRIZES.

For thumbnails, see
http://www.siggraph.org/publications/video-review/sig2005/152.shtml

There is no Full Metal Alchemist porn here

2006-01-18T17:31:00.000-05:00

I noticed a lot of traffic is coming from MSN searches for FMA porn. Hey, guess what? There's none here. I mentioned the show a while ago because I thought it was cool. Do they even show it on adult swim any more?

Anyway, more later I hope...

Steve Jobs has a posse wall mural

2005-12-03T15:14:00.000-05:00

I created a poster based on the Andre the Giant meme, but CafePress wouldn't let me use it. Apparently being on the cover of Time a couple of times each year doesn't make someone a public figure. Anyway, I turned it into a wall mural using Rasterbator and posted up at TUAW. Enjoy!

read more | digg story

Spike and Mike lives on!

2005-11-05T13:50:00.000-05:00

The Animation Show is Mike Judge's moving carnival of moving images. That is, it's an animation festival that travels around. It's coming up in Philly. So Joe Jack Talcum, if you remember me, go be there. If you still live in Philly anyhow.

Cool.

Via Good Grief

Happy Halloween!

2005-10-31T20:42:00.000-05:00

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. So many cool celebrations around the world on this strange little religious holiday. I think it's important to fully explore all our emotions, and one of those would be fright. Why not?

Anyway, check out this old site for some anime suggestions on Halloween (costume links at the bottom):
Anime Tourist's Anime Chills and Thrills

Empress Chung

2005-10-17T20:21:00.000-04:00

I found out about this from the Design Weblog at my sugardaddy blognetwork, WIN...

But Empress Chung is more than just a lush, traditionally animated movie. It's a project that has managed to bridge some worlds. A collaborative project between South AND North Koreans, it even opened in both countries last month.

The power of animation is more than we imagined...

Wallace and Gromit

2005-10-11T22:37:00.000-04:00

I feel terribly bad for Nick Park, creator of Wallace and Gromit. I've always been a fan of stop-motion, and claymation, and particularly the British humor blend Nick brought to the game.

The good news is, he's not quitting. Those were memories, but only material things. He's going to keep slogging away.

The better news for Nick is that the first really promoted W&G movie, "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" hit #1 at the B.O. this past weekend.

Sorry Nick, and congrats.

Blessing the child

2005-09-17T22:55:00.000-04:00

Interview with Miyazaki the "god" of anime. Creator of most popular stuff like "Howl's Moving Castle" and "Spirited Away."

This is the first interview he has agreed to in 10 years. You gotta love those Jedi man.

12 Animation Principles

2005-09-09T16:32:00.000-04:00

Anyone in animation should be able to rattle off Frank & Ollie's 12 Principles of Animation. Google it.

However, what most folks might not realize is John Lasseter presented "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation" at SIGGRAPH way back in 1987! He sought to bring humanity and artfulness into the emerging art form known as digital animation.

That is why John is THE MAN.

read the paper here

Robots on Sept. 27

2005-09-09T16:23:00.000-04:00

I took my daughter to see the movie Robots when it came out. We loved it. Yeah, it's maybe not the greatest... But it was far above anything Disney has done lately. Robots is from Blue Sky Studios, the same folks who did Ice Age, and soon Ice Age 2. Now the original Ice Age DVD had some killer animation extras. Detailed accounts of character design, some good pr0n on how they animated stuff, etc. These are the things an educator like myself longs to see on a DVD. Not crap like on Finding Nemo, where some damn child farts around the office. That's a joke people. Can you please give the adults something to watch? Bury it five levels deep, I don't care, just put it on there!

Anyway, I was rather disappointed to see Robots will probably NOT have the depth of info Ice Age had. That's a shame. Robots had some intricate setups (like flying through the city on the "mass transit" system), which are great opportunities to show my students just what it takes to animate. The character rigs in Robots are probably pretty cool and accessible as well. Sadly, we'll never know.

Again, this is why I love Project Orange. When they release the models with rigs, I can finally learn HOW to do that in Blender. Of course, Blue Sky doesn't want their "secrets" to get out... Whatever. Information yearns to be free man! Oh well, check Robots out on Sept. 27 on DVD. I'll have the Amazon link when it's available.

Great 3d site!

2005-09-01T21:29:00.000-04:00

Normally I'm somewhat underwhelmed by 3d sites. Turbosquid is really only useful to people with pockets of money, 3dkingdom is often down for the count, and 3dcafe has tutorials older than DOS.

But I saw on Digg.com (which I highly recommend) this great site:
3dbuzz.com

There are a bunch of training videos, which I really enjoy (fastest way to learn IMO). And there's a podcast... Nifty!

Blender people, just use Blender

2005-08-28T22:29:00.000-04:00

It ain't easy. Nobody said it would be. But if you're strapped for cash and must create your animated masterpiece, use Blender3d. It's a free app for modeling, animation, rendering, texturing, IK, character animation, and video game production. And some folks are actually doing something with it!

Check out Project Orange, an open source movie project. I love the idea, and had talked about doing something similar years ago. As James Brown would say, "saying it and doing it ain't the same thing, there's just as much difference as night and day." Or something like that...

Go pre-buy the DVD for Project Orange. Check out the demos on Blender's homepage. When you're ready to get going with Blender, check out the "official" manual in the Amazon links to the right. Support me and the Blender Foundation-- how can you lose?

Wanna learn animation?

2005-08-27T16:52:00.000-04:00

From time to time I'll be posting little "how to" animate links or articles... So here's one I dug out of my bookmarks:

Larry's Toon Institute

A nice overview for character animation.

Unity is awesome for game development

2005-08-25T23:58:00.000-04:00

I blogged this up on TUAW (The Unofficial Apple Weblog), so you can read my spin on it there, but MacMegasite has a cool wording read more.

BTW, that was my first post for TUAW-- wooohooooo!

Anyhow, I think Unity is the bees knees. I've played with the demo, and it's amazing. Unity is a fully formed game dev platform. Physics, particles, rag dolls, animation and scripting, all in a great workflow and GUI. The weird thing is that it's Mac-only, but will now export Windows games.

Since I'll be learning Maya soon I probably won't have time to tinker with Unity (for now). Anyone want to team up and work on a killer toy? Notice I didn't say game. What I have in mind is more like a Power Toy. Appealing to the idea of "personal media" and targeting animation enthusiasts, filmmakers, bloggers, anyone interested in making cool stuff...

Let me know at davincifeedback AT mac DOT com...

[ FULL METAL ALCHEMIST - HAGANE NO RENKINJUTSUSHI ] Synposis - Character Bios, Reviews, Summary, Rank System

2005-08-25T01:34:00.000-04:00

Getting up to speed on Full Metal Alchemist

Well another anime show has sucked me in! Good stuff. Very inventive, and I love the story line. Recommended for folks who have never seen anime, or think it is porn or something...

There is even a video game that was released here in the states.

Disney, dumber than dirt

2005-08-24T23:44:00.000-04:00

Oh man. I don't mean Walt Disney was dumb. I mean the management AT Disney, for the past 15 or so years, hasn't been all that bright. Here's why:

1. Celebrity voices don't matter
2. It's about the story
3. It's not about eye candy

They don't understand any of those rules. The same could be said about Hollywood in general, but the reason Disney has been spectacularly crappy of late is primarily because they just don't get the whole "story" thing.

Case in point: "Valiant." It was a cute movie. But the main character, Valiant, is just a simpering sod the whole time. He "does what's right" from beginning to end, and never really sees any character development. See, no story! Just a bunch of stuff that happens. Great for documentaries, not so good for narrative film.

I always show my students the "making of" doc on the Incredibles DVD. It has Brad Bird explaining why he did a movie with Pixar. "They protect stories here," he says. He goes on to explain how movies are like gambling, and that scares the business suits in the industry. You don't get any suit-ee-er than the current Disney Poobah, Eisner. Megalomania aside, he really wants to churn out formulaic schlock because he figures it's good for the stock. Well, guess who's laughing all the way to the trading floor?

And if all this wasn't enough, I found this on digg.com:
Pixar tells story behind 'Toy Story'... Basically the gist is that 10 years ago Disney execs canned Toy Story because all their well-meaning corporate-meddling notes had turned it into another formulaic schlockfest. Once Lasseter begged for more time to fix (and he removed all their asinine suggestions), they screened the movie proper and the execs liked it. Ugh. I feel bad that John, Steve, and the rest of them had to go through all that. I can't imagine the stress. Vindication today, but what a pain.

Here's to Woody, Buzz, and the entire crew in Emeryville, CA. If'n y'all didn't live in such a nasty spot I'd love to join you...

Turn 3d into Real-D

2005-08-21T01:34:00.000-04:00

OK, I posted this up over at Download Squad but thought I should mention it here too...

Pepakura Designer is a really boss but bizarre little app that takes 3DS or OBJ files (among others) and turns them into printable templates. Cut them out, glue them, bingo, you have your paper model of whatever you were doing on the computer. Neat-O.

Be prepared for a learning curve. Even the simple objects I tried turned out needlessly complex using the automatic settings. Problem is, it tends to split your meshes along the faces, not the polygons. Those of you working on 3ds max know what I mean, right? Thus, ragged edges where you could've had square ones. Oh well. I need to play with it some more...

If David Lynch did anime...

2005-08-19T01:25:00.000-04:00

It would be Paranoia Agent.

Totally freaky, totally amazing. Great story, inventive design. Even the credits (beginning and end) are compelling. Damn. I'm watching it right now on Adult Swim, 1 am. Usually I'm going to bed at this point, but looks like I'm going to have to build that MythTV box to keep up...

Welcome to crazy town!

2005-08-17T16:23:00.000-04:00

That's right, this is blog #5 for those of you counting at home. But this one's all about animation: movies, tv, 3d, 2d, and tools and techniques. I'm hoping to expand into Machinema and stop-motion eventually. Stay tuned!