Skhizein

This was nominated for an Oscar a little while back. And for good reason. It's really just brilliant.

Fun films I've seen whilst strolling the intra-nubs

Something refreshingly different from Gobelins



And a Sheridan effort...

APT registration is now open

This is for the October 2010 class. Here's the page to sign up. Hope to see you there. :)

APT October 4- November 6

As I mentioned earlier I will be holding an Animation Personal Trainer session this fall. The dates for the class will be October 4th through November 6th, 2010.

I will begin accepting student registrations on September 1st. As usual the student spaces will be provided first come- first served. Space for this class will be limited, so if you want to get in then sometime around midnight Eastern Standard time in the U.S. on September 1st you should go to this page to sign up. The cost of the class will be the usual $995 per student. If you have any questions about the APT and how it works be sure to check out my handy FAQ page, or email me if you're still filled with questions. I'm looking forward to another fun class.

Of course you realize, this means war....

From Animated Views...

http://animatedviews.com/2010/whats-up-doc-live-action-bugs-bunny-movie-on-the-way/

"Warner Bros. has just announced plans to bring a new theatrical Bugs Bunny movie to the screen. The film, to be a mix of live-action and computer animation, is being penned by Elf and Spiderwick Chroniclesscreenwriter David Berenbaum. The project is currently without a release date."

I just threw up in my mouth. A lot.

upcoming APT schedule

I've had a number of folks email me about when the next Animation Personal Trainer session will be. At this moment I don't have a firm schedule, but I am expecting to have another APT class this fall. However because of my full-time job at Valve I won't be able to take on as many students as before, so space will be even more limited than usual (right now I'm thinking of limiting the class to just 5 students). So if you want to get in on the next session the best thing you can do is keep your eyes on my blog here, since this is where I will announce the class dates and when sign up will be available. I am also debating on having a portfolio review for the students I do take on. This would be a first for me. I haven't decided if that is what I will do, but I figure I should let folks know that it is a possibility. We'll see. Whatever I decide I'll be sure to make that clear when I announce firm dates for the next class.
You don't need to do anything yet, just keep watching this space for more info.

Despicable Me = +1

My 8 year old son has been excitedly awaiting the opening of only one animated film this year. Not Shrek 4. Not How to Train Your Dragon. Not Toy Story 3. No, my boy has been anxiously awaiting to set eyes on the irresistible yellow minions of Despicable Me. So today we headed over to the local movie house for a matinee showing and we were not disappointed. The thing I liked is that DM is not trying to be a serious film. They knew their bread would be buttered with appeal, humor, some action and just the right amount of heart. It doesn't burden itself with ambitions of 'weightier' themes like Pixar seems to be trying to do more of late. DM started off pretty silly and it embraced the fact that it's a cartoon pretty much the whole way. The filmmakers did try to add heart with the relationship with the kids, but by and large it felt like the relationships grew organically and it wasn't just tacked on. One or two sequences relating to those relationships felt out of place and really forced, but for the most part I liked how they handled things. And while there were a few modern animated film cliche's, they weren't insufferable and they didn't drag down the more clever bits. The minions are pure animated gold in every way. The world will want more of those. I could definitely pick up on co-director Pierre Coffin's influence on the film. I've long been a fan of Coffin's style and sensibility and it's great to see him getting the chance to shine on DM. The French animation crew did a fine job overall. There were a lot of very nice performances in the film, a nice mix of life inspired movements and pure cartoon inspired ones. The look and feel of the film was solid, even if not exactly groundbreaking. And that's fine. It's a sign that the medium is starting to settle in a bit. The film certainly never felt cheap. The designs for the most part were fun, especially some of the gadgets and the whole style guide for Gru's stuff. The Bill Gates inspired antagonist was a stroke of genius. A few of the third level character designs didn't translate into CG so well, though, but by and large the cast was appealing and well done. Some of the decorations on the rollercoaster in the themepark looked like doodle straight out of Bryan Ballinger's sketchbook. Overall it was a solid, well done film. It didn't stray too far from established formula in look or plot, but it handled most everything quite well, proving once again that ideas aren't all that special- execution is where things fail or succeed. And again, it never took itself too seriously, a wise choice that bought the filmmakers plenty of leeway in execution. I can't speak on the 3d screening quality since both my son and I get headaches seeing films in 3d, so we stuck with the old school 2d screening. Universal should be really happy with how this film will perform for them. My son's already asking to see it again.

GIRAF call for entries

I was asked to pass this along, and I thought "Hey, that sounds interesting..." So here you go. You independent animation filmmaker types, send something in!

Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival (GIRAF)
Wednesday, Nov 3-7, 2010
at Plaza Theatre, Calgary, AB

Call for Submissions

The Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival is the only exclusively independent animation festival in Canada, with a focus on experimental and self-produced animated film. GIRAF plays an essential role in the promotion, education and appreciation of independent animation from around the world, exposing hungry local audiences to the best animated content from at home and abroad.

Important Note: Submission deadline August 2nd, 2010

Visit

http://www.giraffest.ca/

Cours Toujours

This little gem is absurd, but charming and graphically appealing. I like it!


Cours Toujours - animation short film from Cours Toujours Team on Vimeo.

Sculptris

I've tried several different sculpting/modeling programs. Z-Brush, Mudbox, etc. They all were really clunky for me and I was never able to get them to play nice with my animator brain. No matter how hard I tried I always just made tumors. Something about those programs was just.... I dunno. Not something I could handle.

Then I'd heard about this small, free sculpting tool called Sculptris. The price was right so I figured, what the heck? I'll try it. And wow!-- It is easy and super friendly to use. The interface is extremely slim and unintimidating. The program isn't bogged down with a million different modes or tools. There are maybe 8-10 different hot-keys and two modes- sculpting and painting. And that's pretty much it. I was impressed with how it automatically adds tessellation when the sculpting needs it and you don't even need to think about how that works. It just does it. But it also lets you paint to reduce the topology if the mesh gets to be too dense to deal with. You'd still need to re-topologize the model to get a rig-able/animatable mesh from this, but then you need to do that with the other more expensive tools, too. Here's the first character head I made with Sculptris. I whipped this up in a couple hours today....

And a screen grab of the entire interface. This is literally it- no other windows, menus or tabs. Simplicity personified....

I had an absolute blast making this. (I wish CG animation was as simple and fun) It's not a great sculpt, but then I harbor no delusions of grandeur regarding my sculpting skills. But for someone who has never been able to make anything more than a lumpy potato in Z-brush or Mudbox, I think this is a bit of a breakthrough. If you've tried the other sculpting tools and felt overwhelmed by them, maybe you should give Sculptris a go. At a slim 3.2 mb download it's smaller than an MP3 from iTunes. And you can't beat the price (there is a donation button on the site, though. For something so cool I just had to drop them a little cash).

Emery Hawkins interview

This isn't really a new item, but I stumbled across it going through Thad Komorowski's blog the other day. This is a transcript of an interview that John Canemaker had with Emery Hawkins back in the 1970's. Hawkins is an old time animator from back in the 'golden era'. I found his story resonated with me. He never did settle in and become known as a 'great' animator on the strength of his film animation at the big Disney studio, even though he worked there at different times. In fact he never settled down into much. By his own account he'd changed jobs 47 times in his career. He spent time doing all kinds of different types of animation. Mostly shorts and commercials. He never did work on a big feature film (until his work on the Raggedy Anne & Andy movie at R. Williams' studio at the time of the interview- and even that wasn't a smashing box office or critical success), but you don't get the sense that he felt like it diminished his career. He certainly didn't seem bitter about it. Seems he enjoyed his non-standard career rather much, actually. He spent a good number of years at Sutherland's studio doing corporate animation, and other years doing commercials. Basically he is the polar opposite of the 9 Old Men in nearly every way except in his skill. I definitely empathize with his wandering attention span. I too get bored really quickly if all I do is the same thing every day. And repeating a single style or formula of animation is also not something I find terribly interesting or fun. This quote pretty much sums up my feelings about my own career....

In fact the one thing I found that was more rewarding was working for a small insignificant studio because they just didn’t care what you did so you had an opportunity without it being cut out or altered because they had a rigid notion about something. You’d get that chance to do it.

I realized this about myself some years back and I came to see that I'd be a terrible fit at a big studio- so I stopped looking for work in one. Every now and then a person (often a student) asks me why I never worked at one of the big film studios. Like there's something wrong with me (some folks maintain it's because I'm a 'failure'. Whatever narrative works for your worldview is fine with me). But I know myself well enough to understand that it's just not my bag o' bagels, ya know? And if it's not mine, then there's a good chance that there are others out there who feel the same way. The animation biz doesn't do much to validate those outside the big film studio systems, which is kinda sad, but understandable on a base human level. It's for this reason that I find non-conformist stories like Hawkins' to be refreshing and even a little liberating.