Annecy Animations from Gobelins

I came across these new shorts from Gobelins on Victor Navone's Blog. They were all made for the Annecy Animation Festival in France, which must have been a blast to be at. Anyway check them out, they're really entertaining. My two favorites are La grande Arche and Chronos 1.0. Enjoy

Update

Well its been a while since I've updated the blog, but anyway theres a lot of exciting stuff going on.

For you guys at Full Sail, I talked to Jeremy Vickery, who is a lighting TD at Pixar, the other day and he is coming to talk about Ratatouille on either the 12th or the 19th. He was here last year around the same time to talk about Cars.

SIGGRAPH is also coming up pretty soon, which is going to be completely amazing. If you're reading this you probably already know about SIGGRAPH but if you don't its a computer art and technology convention where people from all over the world come to show off their work/research. Its going to be in San Diego this year at the beginning of August.

Right now I'm working on 3 different scenes so I have something to show off when I get there. As soon as they're finished I'll throw them up here for you guys to look at.

In the mean time you guys should check out this new website called My Toons at www.mytoons.com. Its a place where everybody can show off their animations and have them rated and all that good web 2.0 stuff. Check it out though, there's some nice work on there.

Behind the TD scenes of Ratatouille

Heres is a new Ratatouille video for all of you who love seeing behind the scenes as much as I do.

Wasapanin

Well things have been pretty busy around here with class all the time, working, and still making time for friends.

I've been working pretty hard outside of classes trying to get prepared for demo reel creation. Since everything is based on getting something great out of that class i figured I'd better start now. Its coming along, I have a few scenes coming along nicely, while others are still getting some things worked out. Since I've started reading Acting for Animators though, I've taken a whole new perspective on the process. I didn't realize how lacking my characters and stories were, but its better to figure that out right now than in a year when it really matters.

I've also started to notice that the more I'm animating the more passionate I get about it. Its come to the point where I eat drink and sleep this stuff. I'm always taking little mental notes on peoples mannerisms, watching films think about how "X" pose could be pushed just a bit more or how to move out of a pose and have it better support the intention. I try to tie animation in to everything. And I think to be successful, or at least be ahead of the competition its necessary.

A lot has been going on

Things have been going great these past two weeks. Here's a little bit of what I've been up to

-Interview with Joshua Bass, Art Director at Rock Star Games. He's a great guy, really willing to help out, and I'm glad to have met him.

-The Animation Guild is in full swing. We had a good number of students show up, as well as Mike and Hugo, so thanks a lot to those guys. Two of the lab instructors from the Character Animation class said they also want to help out which is great. We got our mini challenge idea going and critiqued a few demo reels. So its going great.

-I was asked to speak at our local SIGGRAPH Chapter this Friday. Since, we started this animation guild, its drawn a lot of interest. So I was asked to speak at the SIGGRAPH Chapter meeting to sort of introduce myself and the motivation behind the club.

-I also applied to SIGGRAPH as a Student Volunteer, so I'm really hoping that I'm accepted so I can meet all the amazingly talented people out there that I'm always reading about and listening to. Most notably the Spline Doctors, those guys have been a huge help to me.

-I've been working on quite a few animations. Its about half 2D and half 3D, so as those get finished I'll post them up here for critiques and comments.

Acting Acting Acting

I found these acting videos on AM student Adam Strick's blog. If you have the time, you really should watch them. Even if you don't have the time, watch them! They have tons of great info about how to deliver a performance.





Part 1:




Part 2:




Part 3:




Part 4:




Part 5:




Part 6:

Recent stuff and some news of sorts

Well, the knight animation is coming along nicely, but there are plenty of things I wish I would have done differently when I started that would have saved me loads of time. I suppose that's the benefit of animation experience is that you know what to do and how to work.

I just subscribed to Keith Lango's VTS series, and let me tell you, its a godsend. There's so much great information in those videos, its hard to believe I was trying to animate without them. I definitely feel like I have a much better understanding of animation because of them. I love how he draws from a traditional animation work flow and relates it to how CG animators should approach their work.

As for the Animation Club, I'm still waiting on an answer from the Animation Department. So, until they give me a yay or nay, we'll have the meetings on our own. I'm working on the flier right now, and trying to tell as many people as I can. Hopefully, we can get a sponsor, because without a teacher, we'd only be drawing from our own experience (or lack there of), and nobody wants that.

Anyway, take it easy, keep animating, and I'll post any news about the club as soon as it gets to me.

Animation Club

Lately I've been trying to get an animation club started here at Full Sail. I think its important that the animators from different classes can come together to have a look at each others work and better their reels. I'm trying to get the word spread around so we can have descent turn outs. Theres nothing definite as of right now, but I'm really hoping this catches on.

It'll be a really relaxed meeting where people just come to learn and share ideas about animation.

An outline for the club would be something along the lines of:

Instructors showing demos with different animation principals/rigging tutorials
Watching and critiquing reels/shorts/pencil tests
Competing in bi-monthly or monthly animation challenges (2d, 3d, stop-mo)
Character design/story challenges
Sharing work flow ideas
Sharing assets (tutorials, websites, sound files, rigs, models, scenes)
Networking
Group project collaborations

Obviously we won't cover all of this every meeting. I'm just trying to get a feel for what we could be doing. People of all skill levels are welcome, so spread the word!

Knight Scene Blocking

So this is the first post of the blog. I've been meaning to get one for a while, but just never got around to it. The reason I got a blog is because I'm always checking the Animation Mentor guys/girls' blogs for new information, seeing what they're working on, and finding out things that are useful to know in this industry. I'll probably link a few of them from time to time, as well as other stuff that's interesting/useful to know.

Now the business end. For the Fundamentals of Animation class I'm taking this month, we have to get a knight character though an obstacle course in 550 frames or less. The knight has to walk over a log, up some stairs, jump off a platform and over some water, then navigate his way though a swinging axe, and finally pull out a sword stuck in a stone.

I've worked though the blocking stages and I'm starting to get all my extremes in and fixing some poses. Some areas are still just contact positions. Here is what I have so far. I should be getting to the inbetweens near the middle of the week. Feel free to critique it.