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!

Roy Edward Disney

May Roy Edward Disney Forever be Loved & Remembered

(1930 ~ 2009)

"If you don't tell a good story... forget about it, you know ~ it's like real estate.
There's 3 important things about it, about film that's story, story and story...
and if you don't tell the stories...
well they've got someplace else to go pretty quick."

~ Roy E. Disney

Archive of American Television
AWN Article

11 Second Club November 2009

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAC MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!!!!

Woot 6th, again. Thanks for the votes and comments !



Initially was thinking of animating an alien in a cocoon, so I did some character exploration sketches, the bandaged dog with the cone of shame was inspired by my own dog which had an ear infection and had to wear that cone, the other reason was to limit the animation to just facial.



I ended up going for Pac Man because I had one week to play around and I wanted something simple to animate as well as practice more on facial animation especially the mouth area, so what better character than a round sphere with his jaw half his whole body mass.

Also wanted to experiment gesturing with a simple sphere, it's limited but you'd be amaze with just some squash, stretch, tilting and timing of the sphere, one can portray some simple body expression of deflated, disbelief sadness and directness, add it with a pair of eyes and a mouth and viola, you have facial gesturing.



Also experimented on full motion distortion and distorted eye darts, I thought it would go horribly wrong but it came out quite alright I guess, except for some places....... but that's for you guys to find out :)

Crits & Comments are most welcomed.

Enjoy!


Final Animation for now....
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Break Down!
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By the way the collaborated Pac Man skeleton sculpture is created by;

Le Gentil Garçon
François Escuilié (paleontologist)


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Some of the more constructive comments & critics by 11second club members;

Kashif:

"Haha Packman addicted to the cream. Wow. Great concept and wonderful lipsync. I love the weight shifts on Packman. In fact, after noticing this I wished you made the Ghosts shift their weight when they looked at each other. Either way, tops in my book."

Ryan Hayford:

"The expression in this is excellent, and the reveal is great. I thought this was gonna be a talking head facial animation excersice and then the ghosts jumped in... maybe you could have given more backround, like more dots or part of the maze so we know right away it's pac-man."

Justin West:

"Wow, that's some really impressive 2D! Very bouncy and expressive! The only thing that didn't look quite right to me was the sobbing at the beginning. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe there's movement in the mouth, I don't know. Sorry I can't be more specific. Great work, otherwise! I won't be surprised if this wins. The ghosts are a great touch, btw!"

Robert Holmen:

"No cliched arm gestures in this one! extra star for that.

This is a great study in just "face"

Some of the gestures seem not to be timed quite right, like the last one for "whipped cream"

Jett Atwood:

"Finally! Something original! Great idea, well drawn. My only suggestion would be to layer the ghosts blinks a little bit. It's jarring to have them blink at the *exact same time.*

Great stuff and shows that good character animation can be done with something as simple as a sphere."

Emmanuel Vergne:

"The lipsync seems off."

*Note; I'm not 100% sure if the name links are linked to the right people, if it isn't please let me know immediately, thanks!

Thanks again for all the C&C you guys gave, I've read them all and just posted these selected few for readers and me who want to learn more on what works and what not.

Till the next round, December's clip sounds WILD!

Pogo

I don't think I've posted this on here before but it was something I came across a few months back, music created by Pogo.

So, for all you Animators who loves chillout lounge music;


Alice

Expialidocious

White Magic

Pogo Youtube
Pogo Blog
Pogo Last.fm