Madame Tutli Putli

Madame Tutli-Putli is a visually striking stop-mo short film. Very moody. I love the eye work in this. They used an interesting technique of compositing photographed human actor eyes onto the puppets. But it's not  just a straight up projection of filmed eyes. The film is loaded with very solid choices about what to use and what not to use. The attention to the important details they have is amazing. A lot is made of attention to details in animation these days- mainly because the advent of CG allows us the bandwidth to explore such high frequency detail data where before we were limited by the medium of choice. But it's attention to important details that is key. If you don't differentiate between important and unimportant details you end up with a lot of useless, technical fluff. Like empty calories, empty detail in an animated film drags things down. Anyhow, this was nominated for an Oscar in 2007, I believe.

Pivot

I've been away, busy with a big cross-country move and the new job at Valve (which is going awesome, by the way!). Thought I'd come back with a post highlighting this really sharp short film. I love so much about this one. Enjoy!




More info at their website... http://pivotthemovie.com/

This is awesomely funny

http://web.me.com/pascalboogaert/Site/foto3.html

Tom-ay-to, tom-ah-to. Avatar, Pocohontas. Whatever.

Help the Hodges

I'm putting the word out because I want folks to help Tim Hodge, a trusted friend and a wonderful soul. From his blog...

As many of you know, my son was in an auto accident with a train back in August. He has still not regained consciousness, but is doing a little bit better each day.

As you may not realize, our short term insurance expired in September. The rest of the family could renew, but Matt became a pre-existing condition. So Matt's healthcare since that time has all been out of pocket. Vanderbilt Hospital was gracious to us and forgave our six figure debt to them. But Matt's ongoing care and future rehabilitation is still in the balance.

To help off-set these costs, several friends in the animation and comic world have put together an auction to start on January 21 on ebay. There are several prime pieces that have been donated. Go to www.helpthehodges.com to see more.

And thank you!

Even though this has been very sad and it makes my heart heavy, I've been blessed to witness how their family is dealing with this tragedy. Their strength, courage and faith in the Lord through this nightmare has been humbling & inspiring. My heart breaks. So please, help them out.

Big Story

Not sure how this flew under my radar, but I'm glad I caught it all the same. I came across this from a new post on Jamaal Bradley's Pencil Test Depot blog (great blog, by the way!) The animators Tim Watts & David Stoten roughed the animation in pencil first (see it here on Pencil Test), then animated it stop-mo. Here's the final version....



Too fun!

Candyman

Animator extraordinaire Bert Klein emailed to let me know about a live action documentary about his father, David Klein- the inventor of the Jelly Belly jelly beans. It looks like an interesting bitter-sweet tale of success and ruin. They have a site dedicated to the film. An excerpt from the site explains the story...

Candyman tells the amazing true story of David Klein, an eccentric candy inventor from LA, who in 1976 had a once in a lifetime epiphany and came up with the concept of Jelly Belly jellybeans. These colourful beans came in numerous shockingly realistic flavours and were a radical new product. They became a pop culture phenomenon and revolutionised the candy industry. It didn't hurt that no less a personage than Ronald Reagen, president of the USA, proclaimed Jelly Bellies as his favorite sweets. David's eccentric personality and peculiar sense of business led him to give up the business just as it was about to explode. He has struggled with bitter regrets ever since. Jelly Belly has grown into a billion dollar enterprise, and the company has deliberately erased him from its history. There is no room for a flaky genius like this in the modern corporate world. The movie is all about both sides of the American dream. It tells how Klein lost his beans, but kept his soul.

Here's the trailer....



It will be playing in Slamdance (the truly indy film fest that runs on the other side of town from Sundance) in 2010. I'm eager to see it when I get the chance.

new animation blog/site-- Speaking of Animation

Got a little blurb about this in my inbox from one of the founders of the site, Jacob Gardner. Looks like it could be a nice one to follow.

http://www.speakingofanimation.com/

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Been kinda slow posting on the blog here the last month or two- I've been super busy with that thing called life. But I wanted to take a moment and wish everybody a blessed and wonderful Christmas. All the best & God bless!

Meindbender is awesome. Seriously.

Just go there and fall in love with their special brand of appealing ugliness.

Well what do you know...

Interesting article in the Wall Street Journal on how Nina Paley has managed to make $55,000 so far since releasing her film Sita Sings the Blues for free. Her revenue stream is quite varied, itself evidence of a fair amount of work on her part to monetize the film. So no, it's not the artists (unrealistic) dream of simply making a film and waiting for the checks to come in the mail. One of the first rules of being an independent filmmaker is that you must work as a business-person. Not as dreamy or glamorous as the artist dream, but it is do-able. Is $55k enough to make a living from just making films? Depends where you live and how often you make new ones. At the very least it makes the effort somewhat financially viable on its own merits.

Tough sledding

Slow, slow progress on the Otto & Schmitty front. Between the new job, wrapping up the APT class, finding a new home for the family and traveling there's been no time to get any new shots done. Oh well. The schedule is opening up and I'll be able to get some stuff done. Thankfully the project was built to go fast when it is worked on, so even just a litle time spent yields decent progress.

Look, the Gobelins chase animation meme- now in anime!

I think I've written this before (maybe not), but more than a few of those popular Gobelins short animated student films all seem to share a single element: the crazy, out of control speed chase/run/fall. It's been this way for at least 4 or 5 years now. Go ahead, look 'em up. It's a repetitive trope, but it has certainly been a good one if you want some popularity. One even was nominated for an Oscar. Well, the concept has flown from France to Japan-- somebody has made an anime short employing the same central concept. With panties.



Kinda like the love story angle, though.

Eye Like Pizza- short film in prod

Animator Jeff Robinson is working on a neat looking little short film project titled Eye Like Pizza. He has a production blog here. The image above is one of his main characters. I like the look. Jeff tells me it's gearing to have a "classic-cartoony vibe". I'm all for that. He's got a quick little motion test he put together in this post.  (note: Jeff- make this stuff embedable!)

Looking forward to seeing more soon.

Really cool video

Sent along by Paul Campbell and the crew at Corgan Media Lab. Great mix of CG onto live action.

On Innovation

Via TechDirt.