Have Fun: There's no harm in pure entertainment!

I just wanted to give a quick note on animation.  It's Supposed To Be Fun!  Anyone who gets into this field does it because they enjoy doing, so I say there's no harm in creating stupid shorts that can be solely for pure entertainment value.  Life's to short, so live, laugh, animate and enjoy it all.

I only say this, because I feel that it is too easy to get wrapped up in the commercial mentality or the artistic nature of giving meaning to everything we create.  Instead, I propose what some friends and I did which was have an animation night.  Get together with some friends, sit down, and animate a stupid scenario for 20-30 minutes tops.  It's fun and stupid and gets back to the true nature of why most of us decided to become animators.

I leave you with this thought and wish you good times animating.

Aesthetics Final

Here is the final piece I did in my Aesthetics of Animation class. It's a short flash piece that was all hand drawn with a cintique.

Acting in Animation

Here is the final for my Animation I class. The assignment was:
-Take a character and have them change from one emotional state to another
-5 sec.
-Think about silhouette value in pose
-And... if it does not read between two clear emotions = automatic C

This was a great exercise that I would suggest to anyone who care to try it. Do a lot of gesture sketches, figure out your key poses, and time it. Then inbetween and figure out the way in which the character gets from one key to another.

I must admit, I didn't really understand the timing and arcs in animation until I did this assignment. Something just clicked when forced to sit down and draw every frame of the character to get the transitions correct.

Hope you like it.

Up and Coming Features

Many new trailers have been released most recently for some of the latest animations coming to the theaters. Pixar's Up, Dreamworks's Monsters vs Aliens, and Disney's Bolt, all look like very interesting features with some great characters. Here are some links to the trailers below:

Up

Monsters vs Aliens

Bolt

Check it out and enjoy!

What Is The Deal With 3D?

I feel like Jerry Seinfeld here, but I'm a little curious on why every new 3D animation being produced is made for a 3D viewing experience. My assumptions are either it makes more money in the box office this way, companies are trying to stick with this new trend, or it really does enhance the viewers experience. Personally, I first saw one of these new 3D films when Monster House came out, and the way objects jumped out at you was very interesting. But why can't good animation be enough for an audience? I did enjoy Monster House in it's story and particularly it's characters. It would have been just as successful without the 3D viewing experience, but still both Disney's Bolt and Dreamworks's Monsters VS Aliens are pushing for this new trend in animation.


There is an interesting post on /film by Peter Sciretta about this new trend.

"Katzenberg explained that filmmaking has been through two great revolutions, the first being the transition from silent film to talkies, and the second being the transition from black and white to color. He insists that 3D is the next great revolution."

“The movie theater experience has not been innovated in any meaningful way in decades. Meanwhile, the home experience with the big flat screen tvs and surround sound, blu-ray and everything else has just become amazing. So one experience has stood still while the other has continued to rise up.”

Movie attendance continues to fall as the popularity of the home theater and on demand movie watching builds. This leads us to Katzenberg’s passionate plea to keep the movie theater experience alive.

I think there are some interesting points here about keeping the movie theater experience fresh and new. To read up on the full post check it out here.

Also, if anyone has any insights or comments on the subject, let me know.

Walking and Running

Our last assignment was to have a character walk across screen and then run back in the opposite direction. We've all done walk cycles and runs before, but I think it is helpful to try this one by hand, because when you do go back into 3D it makes so much more sense.

Follow Up

Hey y'all, sorry for not posting in such a long time, but it's quite busy down here at SCAD. I just finished my fifteen page research paper on Social Values reflected through animation.

Here is the next assignment we did after the sliding seaweed. It is a side stepping character and there is a focus on transfer of weight, follow through, and drag. See if you can see the connection between the two assignments. [Note: Side-Step assignment is good but pretty hard to get it right]