Traditional Animation 3 Final: Work in Progress

Hey All,

The words that would make any art major scream bloody murder in the middle of the night: FINALS!
For those of you not in the art world finals usually consistent not of cramming for a final exam, but usually a 4-8 week project. And this project will likely carry upwards of half of our semesters grade. Thats a lot of caffeine and cortisol.

Well my traditional animation piece I am working on is from an old Abbott and Costello bit - the infamous Mustard and Hot Dog debate. I started it out 3 weeks ago designing the characters I would use, thumbnailing, making xsheets and then filming myself for reference.

Right now I'm in the middle of crunching out the hundreds and hundreds of inbetweens and I have but 7 days left to polish and turn it in. I'm feeling pretty great about this project.

Not wanting to give too much away for my big End-of-the-Semester Post, here's the animatic on my piece WARNING: Its pretty crude.

Back to drawing...See you all soon.

Animation Spotlight: Life is Beautiful

Well yes it is...Life IS beautiful. Check out this awesome animation short - Very grim for such a colorful world. But it has purpose.

 

Art Spotlight: Adrift

If you need a little inspiration - here's a great one for you.

Pixar Animator and Academy of Art graduate Simon Christen has great talent, not just in the world of animating but in photography. Capturing a quality photo is not too hard, but capturing a photo that has a story, emotion, beauty and jaw dropping craftsmanship is a little bit more difficult. And by a little I mean a hell of a lot.

There are millions of amatuer and professional photographers in the world but there is a distinct line in the sand from the everyday photographers and the one of a kind photographers. Simon spent a good part of 3 years filming a few time lapse videos capturing the awesome grandeur of Bay Area's infamous morning and evening fog. This video is not only a representation of nature's beauty (HEY! Remember that Finding Inspiration post I had.) but what someone with time and dedication can capture on a camera.

Adrift from Simon Christen on Vimeo.

Traditional Animation Week 7: The Window

Hello everyone!

So I've been absent the past two weeks with several projects in the works, one I just wrapped today, another I will wrap by Tuesday, another that will take the next month and a half and a few paintings between now and summer! Plenty of Work In Progresses to come. :)

Meanwhile heres what I just wrapped. Sadly I did not take it as far as I wanted but it was a good place to stop. No polish or clean up passes on this one.

Definitely ate what was left in that ream of paper and a bit into the next. Thats why I suggest you all buy recycled animation paper.

Animation Spotlight - Dark Noir

I have nothing but the utmost respect for stop motion animators...especially when they craft something as beautiful as this..

Enjoy.



Dark Noir from Gillian Glendinning on Vimeo.

Glen Keane on Ollie Johnston

We're studying the masters of animation in my traditional animation 3 class. There are just dozens of gems to be found online like this video! This one has Glen Keane talk about Ollie Johnston's drawings.

Really inspiring!

Traditional Animation Week 4: Polished Pass

And as promised, the cleaner version of the rough pass - Golf Crisis.

Its not the final, and I doubt I'll have much time to create said final (maybe I'll add a few elements).

You can definitely tell by the jittering feet it needs to be cleaned up a bit more. Granted if I had more time (and paper) I definitely would do a final pass.

Enjoy!