Meeting People

Ever wondered what it looks like if you accidentally throw your sketch book into an Xray machine? Anyway its great to go out to conferences and seminars, you get to meet artists from around the world and you get to pick their brains :)

People I've met from 2009 - 2010 end. Time to make more name cards....




The odd thing though is still the spiral which David Freeman drew in my sketch, I wonder what he really meant...


By the way, it wasn't thrown into an Xray machine, I just accidentally inverted the colors in Photoshop and ran with it, it just looks more interesting than black on white :)

Stuart Coutts

Some really great stop motion stuff from Stuart Coutts, check out his blog for the making and more!



The 11 second club 5th Place Entry
Blog
Youtube

Ryan Woodward

2D Awesomeness!

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Thoughts of You
Dir. & Animated by ~ Ryan Woodward

Thought of You from Ryan Woodward on Vimeo.

ryanwoodwardart.com
ryanwoodward.blogspot.com
vimeo.com/woodward

Don Hertzfeldt

Was doing some research when I came across this, made me laugh :)



You've got to watch REJECTED by Don Hertzfeldt to understand :) Story is King!!!!

Merry BLOODY Christmas !!!!

Ray Harryhausen 90th Birthday BAFTA Tribute

Unfortunately the embedding code has been disabled but click the pic to go to to the vid;

Should check out the other videos as well, its worth watching :)

The Illusionist

Directed by Sylvain Chomet whom also directed Triplets of Belleville .

Passion Republic

Proud & Happy



"When The One Academy honor me the Platinum Achievement Award and recognize my contribution to the 3d community and industry, the first thing that came into my mind is " I am lucky enough to have a team that is willing to go through all the hardship and challenges with me, always pushing the limits and most importantly having faith in my Vision. " Without you guys/girls , our Vision will never be emplify . The Award is belong to everyone that has contribute their heart and soul into Passion Republic and i am honor to work and grow along side with you guys/girls :) Cheers and Million Appreciations !!!"


~ Ng Aik Sern
Passion Republic

European Union Film Festival 2010

European Union Film Festival 2010


Aren't you just sick of Hollywood crap? Why not try something new :) Tickets are ridiculously cheap at RM5.

Got Appeal?

Apparently I don't, well not in my animation.... physicality polish means nothing if an animated shot is lifeless and uncharacteristic and just down right boring to watch. Need to go learn some appeal. Any way, got 12th place for last months entry, mediocre but you guys have got to check out The Winning Entry by Abraham Aguilar, it's really really really one of the best 3d entries I've seen on 11 second club and it sure has appeal.

Demoreel Mid 2010

It's been a while I've updated my blog having taken a year off and then back to work for another 8 months to help up the guys at Passion Republic has really gotten me thinking about my own life career. Anyway here's a compilation of my works from 2006 till early 2010 and it's really my first Demoreel created, will probably recompile another one by year end.

Please feel free to give your comments what you like what you don't like and should be removed and how it could be better any feedback will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Very (x6 months) Late Submission.

Hi!

After putting the Dec2009 entry on the shelf for a few months and finishing it off recently, I thought I'd just throw this up and see if I can get some comments, crits and opinions from you guys. Was experimenting 2d with 3d as well as manual 2d camera panning. The 2d character tends to go off model, didn't pay enough attention to my model sheet. I did however add in some subtle SoundFX and slightly adjusted the original audio track though.

Might take a while to load, its about 13Mb.

~~~

~~~


Will post the WIP breakdown soon.

Me

Well it's been a while I've updated anything personal on this blog, so how much more personal can one get by updating a photo of oneself.

The following photos were taken back in Dec'09 while working on my 11 sec December entry (which is yet to be completed). I was shooting my completed 2d frames at that time when I was suddenly zapped in the head and had this ridiculous idea of a 3rd person view self portrait. I was about to update it in Feb but came across the KL Photo awards which I thought I have a go at...... wished I'd spent the 80 bucks entry fee on buying DVD's instead.

Sita Sings The Blues

Finally got around to watch "Sita Sings the Blues" directed by Nina Paley.

Found it very refreshing, entertaining and really different from any animated film shown in cinema's nowadays. It's an animated musical romance film roughly based off the Ramayana and interlaced is a small fragment life story of the director, Nina Paley. Stylistically its a hod~podge of 3 styles; 2d flash, 2d drawn on cintiq, and cutout animation. In some ways feels a bit like a Ralph Bakshi's film minus the vulgarity.

The 20's, 30's blues music used in this film was sung by the radio star ~ Annette Hanshaw (1901 ~ 1985)

SitaSingsTheBlues.com






Interview with Nina Paley on her film and copyrights;
QuestionCopyright.org

Light Headed

Short film by Mike Dacko

Light Headed



Love the simplicity yet the value of the overall story.

Meet Meline

A short film by

Virginie Goyons
Sebastien Laban

2009 Trailer


For the whole sha~bang of the 7minutes + making + diary + anything you want to know more about, go to MeetMeline.com

James Cameron giving a talk at Ted.com

James Cameron : Before Avatar ... A Curious Boy

Logorama

"Logorama, a stunning film by French collective H5 (filmmakers Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain), is a violent, profane, action-packed caper set in a world comprised entirely of well-known corporate logos and mascots."

~www.thelogofactory.com

Nominated for an Oscar Animated Short
Animation Magazine Interviews Directors of Logorama

Devils Angels & Dating

Got permission to take a week off from Passion Republic to join DAD animation team for a crazy crunch week!

~ Thanks Aik Sern!!!


Devils Angels & Dating Trailer


~ directed by Micheal Cawood

Crazy Electro Funk Animation

Director ~ SUGIMOTO Kousuke
Music ~ MANABE Takayuki


T H E___T V___S H O W




Check out their Youtube channel.

80's "Western Anime" & Cyber Formula

So... I was day dreaming childhood memories of cartoons I've watched when I was like 5 but never realized what they were about nor what they were called and they were just soooo cool!..... well back then. A pang of nostalgia hit me and I just felt like searching the intro to those "cool" 80's ~ **"Western Anime" cartoons such as Thunder Cats, Ghost Busters, Voltron, Saber Riders & The Star Sheriff, Robotech/Macross, Jem and Mask (the one's with big helmets and changing automobiles, not the green face guy). And the intros are still great to watch because most of the production money went into this 30 -40sec montage thus higher frame rate with cooler effects and opening theme song :)

**I don't really know what to call these cartoons because they weren't Warner Bros, Disney, Hanna Barbara nor anything similar to the limited Saturday cartoons and they do look and feel more like Anime, so I call them "Western Anime", was probably shipped to Japan to be animated anyway....

Getting back to point ~ back when I was like 5, I also remembered a cartoon which had really cool 6 wheeled racing cars which could transform (anything that transformed was automatically cool when you're 5), so went Googling and found the anime. Cyber Formula is an Original Video Anime (OVA) which means it was created originally as an anime TV series, usually Japanese anime series are either based off existing manga or stories.

The anime is about the young drivers, advancing technology in the cars and the racing sport which is similar to F1 except with really advanced technological vehicles installed with AI guidance and not forgetting the ridiculous Jet Boosters propelling the cars up to 600kph. The race cars themselves were cool but sort of strange and really outlandish to have a 4 to 8 wheeled steering/driving chasis and thought that it was just as a design appeal for the anime.... . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . .... then I found these;

Apparently 6 wheeled F1 cars actually existed back in the 70's, they were experimenting on traction and steering control, you can read more about it on Forix as well as the following wiki articles;

Tyrrell P34
March 2-4-0
Covini C6W


80's Cartoon Overload!

Enjoy!

Helpful Hints

A really really really good animation article by Eric Scheur & his friend actor/teacher Chris Murray;

Acting It Out

Enjoy!

Ever Seen An Animation Paper Puncher?

Tada!


Where you can go to get B4 paper to do some punching.

The Last Lecture

I know this is a blog mostly about animation topics, but this is one lecture I'd recommend watching, especially if you're doing some soul searching and planning out your life. There are some related stuff about Virtual reality, Disney and EA though.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture ~ Achieving Your Childhood Dreams



Worse come to worse at least I hope you learned some expression, gestures and body language of a speaker at a forum.

P A P E R

A4 B4 F4

Aaaaaaah, the essential thin dry piece of mashed bleached wood pulp we artist use daily for our sketches, notes and art. So, I was shopping around for animation paper the other day and so far the only 2 places where they sell actual B4 Size punched animation paper are at Vision Art (Sunway) and Venus Art (Petaling Street).

Unfortunately...... Vision Art sells a stack of 450pcs @ RM25, and Venus Art sells an old musty branded stack of 100pcs @ RM80 :|





Soooo, thought to my~self why not go hunt down a paper supplier and see if I can get my hands on a box of un~punched B4 and go punch it my self at TOA (owns an animation paper puncher), and found a place in Klang thanks to my friend Bryant :)

Lian Peng Stationary sells a box(5 x 450pcs) of B4 @ RM75, economically wise I could save half the price for a stack of punched B4 and double my quantity of animation paper if I had bought the paper alone and punched it myself instead of getting it from Vision...

So I did :)


Oh and I found an odd stack of F4 sized paper..... it's like A4 but wide screen :) I just couldn't resist and bought a stack to punch for experimenting for next time. It's fun prepping your own animation paper, its like prepping a magazine of ammo to be wasted by a machine gun. Helps to discourage me from wasting paper anyway :)

Parkour Real Time 2D

Once in a blue moon I'd come across videos of these interesting and new experimental ways of utilizing the 2D medium. There was another one on a stop motion graffiti which I can't recall the name but it was pretty cool.

Enjoy :)

parkour motion reel
Uploaded by yom_. - Watch original web videos.

Kyle Balda Critic

The other day during the Master Class I asked Kyle Balda if he could give some feed back on my animation for 11 Second Club Nov '09 entry, and being the nice guy he is ~ he said yes, so here it is for your learning pleasure :)






Hi Marcus,

Unfortunately this particular piece of dialog doesn't allow much in the way of subtext or changes. he says what he feels and there are not really any emotional changes. So in terms of acting, its hard to do anything REALLY interesting other then what is obvious. having said that,. the only suggestions I think I can offer on this piece is that the lip-sync feels just a little bit off. It might be a good experiment to make the audio play a frame or two later. I understand the filmic reason for cutting away to the other characters but sometimes when the principle character is NOT talking is the best opportunity for the acting.

I guess the main thing you could ask yourself with this piece or if you are moving forward on another is "what is it the character is NOT saying, but is feeling and thinking" And show THAT! It will be far more interesting. And I think for that you need context, a situation. I think your work is good, there is not much to say technically, just think of the "story" for the next one. and what is the un-obvious and complicated emotion or idea that you as the animator can simply communicate?

Hope that helps!

Kyle

Also check out his tutorial for 3D World;

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If you guys got anything else to critic just post it up in the comments, I'll be refining this entry.

Happy New Year 2010!