Follow up on Posing for Animation

Soooo... just a quick follow up on the post that I did a while back on Posing for animation (click here). I saw this post on Rad Sechrists' "Rad How To" blog. Rad is a storyboard artist at Dreamworks
Animation. He just posted on Shape Design which goes hand n hand with my points on Curve vs
Straight.





Check out the rest of his Blog for other great posing and staging examples. He also has his blog, Rad's Blog, where you can find examples of his work.

Enjoy
JP

How to Modify Norman Rig: Modification Tutorials

Hey Everyone

A good friend of mine pointed me to this blog coming to us from the Academy of Art University. It seems to be started as an Animation Forum for them. I know by now most us us have used or at least seen the Norman Rig (click for previous post on Norman Rig) that they released last year. It's amazing and there is so many different variations of it. Did you ever wonder how??? Well there is some posts on the site that explain just that...how to modify the Norman Rig.




There is three parts:

Part 1 of the Norman Modification Workshop

Part 2 of the Norman Modification Workshop

Part 3 of the Norman Modification Workshop

These are some quick and easy ways to spice him up and doesn't seem to be all that complicated for a great and different end result. Also check out the rest of the AAU Animation Forum for some good animation content.





Also Animation Buffet has a link to download Norman and shows some great ways to modify him.
Check it out here.

Enjoy

Quick Poll

Hey Everyone

I am taking a quick poll to see how the readers feel about one of the categories on this blog. The blog roll is a bit large and as you know not everyone gets updated all the time...actually some of them haven't been updated in a year or two. Usually as I find some new and interesting ones I add them to the blog roll in hopes of trying to give all of us animators out there the most resources as I can...BUT...I looked the other day and see that the list is becoming long. Sooo I am wondering from you whether or not I should take some off that are clearly not being updated or because of some of the great content on them should I leave them up for a resource. What to do? I would love your feedback. Thanks again.

Workflow Highlights: Jean-Denis Haas

Hey everybody

I saw this little piece by Jean-Denis Haas on his blog Spungella. He shows multiple stages of his animation and gives us a real incite to some of his thoughts on workflow. He uses multiple rigs and combines them in a great way.





This is a quick peak into an animators thought process. So check it out here and
Enjoy.

Tips on Body Mechanics

The Animation Mentor Newsletter came today and it had some small tips on body mechanics from Wayne Gilbert. An animator that I feel is one of the best at explaining and breaking down simple planning for working through your body mechanics exercises. Lots of what he says can be found in his book on his site www.anamie.com. You can sign up for the newsletters here. They are always a good resource and great updates on the industry.



So check it out. More on body mechanics to follow. An older post with some more on Wayne Gilbert here.
Enjoy

Jason Schleifer and Rigging for Animators

He is a great animator that also has extensive knowledge in rigging. Specifically rigging for animators! I know doesn't that sound great! He has recently posted on his site shhhLIFE, about a new Automated version of the rigs that he developed here. He explains why he supports this and I think it is a very selfless act on his part. He has a great DVD bundle found on his site under the STORE tab. You can also get the Animator Friendly Rigging Part 1 on the Autodesk site here. I have talked with many of my rigging friends and they all have said it is a great system. I myself have done some rigging and am planning on checking these out.




So cruise his site and enjoy what he has to offer in skill and knowledge of the process we all enjoy.
The drawing come courtesy of the Squeeze Studio site.

Enjoy

A Note from Carlos Baena on Acting

Every now and then I think it's great to revisit blogs or sites that I remember and read over old posts. With all of the information out there now it's super hard to keep up with it. That is what I am here for! I read this post over a year or so ago and although I was still in school at the time it was a great post about "Timing and Acting" by Carlos Baena. I read it again and it has a whole new meaning. Carlos takes a clip from "Seinfeld" in which he breaks down his thought process as an animator as he watches the clip. Now it's hard to put our own thought process into words so
when you have an animator of this caliber doing it so clearly, it can be a great learning tool. He also has another example from "Seinfeld" using Elaine and facial "Expressions" to help with acting. Carlos also breaks it down and gives us his insight.









There are many of these gems through his site so revisit if you haven't been to his site already.

Enjoy

More Animation Tools

There are so many tools out there to help us animators that it sometimes it's hard to shift through the good and reliable ones. As I have done before I would like to highlight some now that will help us animators along our journey to becoming masters of this craft. SO this time around I'd like to highlight some sketch tools that can help when it comes to tracking your arcs and also giving some feedback. I've come across a few that are free and some that are a price but very inexpensive.

The first one is called ZoomIt. Now this one is free and made by Microsoft, so it has some credibility..respectively. They display it as a good for presentations program but you can totally use it for a sketch tool. This is the pitch from the publisher.

"From Microsoft :ZoomIt is screen zoom and annotation tool for technical presentations that include application demonstrations. ZoomIt runs unobtrusively in the tray and activates with customizable hotkeys to zoom in on an area of the screen, move around while zoomed, and draw on the zoomed image. I wrote ZoomIt to fit my specific needs and use it in all my presentations.ZoomIt works on all versions of Windows and you can use pen input for ZoomIt drawing on tablet PCs."


The next would be Sketch It. Looks like it's made by Wilz Modz. This one is also FREE! This is the pitch from the publisher.

"Have you ever had trouble explaining your idea on a computer to someone? Have you ever simply wanted to mark on your screen for illustrative purposes? Have you ever wanted to sketch an equation or figure to the side of your notes? Well now you can. With Sketch It! you can draw on top of any program on your computer including your desktop. Sketch It! will allow you to turn your ordinary computer into a virtual drawing surface. With a variety of features from changing the appearance of the line your drawing including size and color to placing the screen's image into the clipboard or saving it to a file it's all there. One of the best features about Sketch It! is that you'll hardly notice it until you want to use it since it stays on the task bar waiting for you. Sketch It! is a perfect tool for a variety of individuals and professions."





And then there is Annotate Pro. Which there is a free 30day Trial version and then you can pay $19.99 and get the latest version in all its glory. You might have heard about it or seen it on Keith Lango's tutorials. He speaks of it well and uses it all the time.






As you can see Keith sketches away in Maya. So hopefully you can find one that suits you and will only help you become a more efficient animator.

Enjoy.

Did You Miss Prep And Landing?? Replay!!

Hey Everyone

Sooo if your like me you missed Disney's Prep And Landing last night. :( BUT...good news! They are replaying it on the ABC website with limited commercials. So check it out and have fun. Fun story and great characters. A little Christmas spirit coming your way.





Enjoy!

In Honor of Veterans Day

So in honor of Veterans Day, I thought that I would post some shorts just having any military connection. All of them are not what we would usually honor the military for but they are all military related and all animated! So I think that just watching some shorts about the service on VDay is good.

The First... I first saw linked on Mark Mayerson's Blog. It's called Germans in The Woods done by the Rauch Brothers. If you check out the page, it actually tells alot about the story behind the short and is a great switch to just watching and forming your own storyline.





The next is one I watched a long time ago and has great characters and good camera work. It's called Hold The Line. "It's an animation about four soldiers marching through the remains of a ruined world. Discipline keeps them together. When they are ambushed by an invisible foe, the men come up with the ultimate tactic to take him out." That's from the site. Check out the site...it seems to have won various awards and was first put together in 2005. It's a fun one!





The next one has also been out a while. It's called Fifty Percent Grey by Ruairi Robinson. I will let this one speak for itself but it's really well done. It shows you how you can make a good short film with virtually nothing but a good story.



And the last has also been around a while and has quite the following. It is a great film and really well done. It's called Fallen Art done by Platige Studios. You can download lots of freebies on this site but the one thing that you can't do is watch the film?? So you have to go to the companies site to check it out here. There is a small intro to the short here. So check it out.





Happy VDAY and hope you enjoyed. You can also check these films out under the Short Films category on the right along with some great others.

Free Animation Mentor Webinar with Eric Goldberg

The time has come for another Animation Mentor free webinar!! This time CEO/Founder Bobby Beck will interview the brilliant veteran animator Eric Goldberg about his new book. Along the way I'm sure that he will add some great animation tips and it should be a great webinar. Also if you haven't picked up his book, Character Animation Crash Course...I highly recommend it. It is probably one of my favorite educational tools. If you have not hit up Animation Podcast either Eric did a podcast there a while back that was great! You can check that out here.




Enjoy!

Website Highlight

I thought I would try something new here once in a while. I know under the Animator's Website section, there is a ton of sites and it's hard to explore them all. Soo I figured that I would highlight one every couple of weeks or once a month. I think that some of these sites are great references for us animators out there. Really to see some great work and possibly always something to strive for and appreciate good animation.

The first site I chose to highlight comes to us from Ron Zorman. It seems from his recent updates that he still and has been at Pixar for a while. He has a ton of his shots listed on there in Quick Time format which I enjoy greatly because you can actually frame-by-frame things. I really do prefer that to the alternates of YouTube and Vimeo just for the simple fact that you can't frame-by-frame and really appreciate the animation.





It seems that he is still in the process of uploading his stuff from Ren & Stimpy and his personal work but the stuff from his Pixar films is def a good ref. So take a look, frame-by-frame and enjoy some good bits of animation.

Workflow Highlights

So you probably have seen these posts by David Anthony Gibson about his workflow and process on some of the shots he worked on for Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs BUT....I thought it was worth highlighting here just in case you missed them. So check out the links below.

Cloudy With A Chance Of Eyeballs

Cloudy Animation…now with more Meatballs

Enjoy!

Quick Lighting Tutorial

Hey Everyone

I ran across this quick and easy lighting tutorial and thought I would share it. Lots of times I know that I am not the best lighter and if I do go to light and render my shots out it takes me a bit longer than I would've like because of the fact that I am an animator :) So this quick tutorial by Stephen Melagrano goes step by step on how he lit and rendered one of his shots. It seems like a simple process and real easy to change depending on your scene. So check it out and see if it fits.





Enjoy!

More Animation Tools

A friend pointed me in the direction of this site the other day and WOW! There are more animation tools out there than I realized. I guess as more and more people enter our industry there will be more tools made for the various programs that we use. TradigiTools has made scripts for Maya that will make life that much easier and our workflow that much faster. It is equipped with various tools like, a tweener that actually highlights your breakdowns with green ticks and keep the normal red, Timing incrament tools so you can automatically select how many frames you want or need between Keys and a Redundant key remover. There are quite a few more options and they have it setup in all nice drop down menus. Have a look at there Promo Vides to see for yourself..click here. Animation Mentor has also gotten together with them in promoting their tools. I honestly feel more schools should invest in this and let their students enjoy some of the tools that will be available to them as they hit the industry. So check them out and enjoy.

Screen shot.