Wednesday, January 20, 2010

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.

Friday, January 15, 2010

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 :)

Monday, January 4, 2010

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 :)

Sunday, January 3, 2010

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!