Animation Ramblings

Redbull Canimation

2011-10-14T14:21:00.003+01:00

Redbull are looking for animators to do fun (or serious) things with their cans, as long as it's animated then they could be interested

Five renowned industry experts judge your work across three animation categories: Stop-motion, CGI or Drawn. There are some amazing prizes to win.

http://canimation.redbull.co.uk/

Leprechaun

2011-03-17T09:00:00.001Z

Latest animation news from Trailer Trash

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, on this week’s episode of the wacky animated Web series, “Trailer Trash,” characters Billy Bob and Cooter are inspired to hunt down their pint-size neighbor for his gold after seeing “Leprechaun 2” on TV.

Available exclusively on Hulu, “Trailer Trash” is Lionsgate’s first-ever Web series and was created by artist and entrepreneur Todd Goldman and produced by Hud:sun Media’s Max Benator, who also brought you the popular Web show, “Genuine Ken.”

The other Oscar Winners

2011-02-28T07:26:00.005Z

Obviously there's been a lot of press about the Kings Speach and Colin Firth, but what about the Animation categories. Toy Story 3 got the animated feature award and again I'm sure there will be loads on that too. So what about the little films?

Short animated film winner goes to "The Lost Thing" a film about a boy who finds a steampunk style octopus and tries to find out where it's come from, unfortunately everyone else is disinterested.

It was for many an unexpected win with some big names such as Pixar with Night and Day and the Grufallo also being nominated. The film has previously won second place for best animated short at the Palm Springs Festival, however William Barton who saw the film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival was unimpressed.

The Australian Animator Shaun Tan and British producer Andrew Ruhemann have created a wonderful film that brings life to Tan's story and illustrations.

Read more in the Brisbane Times

More about the men behind the Lost Thing.

Bafta 2011 - Animation

2011-02-13T21:05:00.004Z

The Bafta winners 2011 in the categories for the animation are

Animated Film

Nominees
DESPICABLE ME - Chris Renaud, Pierre Coffin
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON - Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois
TOY STORY 3 - Lee Unkrich

Winner
TOY STORY 3 - Lee Unkrich

Short Animation

Nominees
THE EAGLEMAN STAG - Michael Please
MATTER FISHER - David Prosser
THURSDAY - Matthias Hoegg

Winner
THE EAGLEMAN STAG - Michael Please

Eagleman Stag film report and interview from Dragon Stop Motion

Skyarts - Animation

2010-12-20T16:41:00.003Z

Sky Arts have some interesting Animation on over Christmas.

Azur And Asmar: The Princes Quest are on later today at 5pm (sorry for the short noticce)

They are also showing a series films from the Brother's Quay.

Stille Nacht
The Cabinet of Jan Svankmejer

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Virtual Dub

2010-11-24T11:35:00.003Z

This month's PCPro mentioned VirtualDub and suggested it had good facilities for stop motion.

VirtualDub is a video capture/processing utility for 32-bit and 64-bit Windows platforms (98/ME/NT4/2000/XP/Vista/7), licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It lacks the editing power of a general-purpose editor such as Adobe Premiere, but is streamlined for fast linear operations over video. It has batch-processing capabilities for processing large numbers of files and can be extended with third-party video filters. VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 and also handle sets of BMP images.

Here's a quick video to explain how you would use it.

Making Stop Motion in 3D

2010-11-07T11:32:00.002Z

The other evening I was lucky enough to attend a Q&A session with David Sproxton, Nick Park and Peter Lord from Aardman talking to David Rowan from Wired at the Apple Store in Covent Garden.

David Sproxton mentioned that their two new films were in 3D, one CGI and the other stop motion. This got me wondering about what were the technical issues of trying to create stereo stop motion.

The Wired article on Aardman mentions a little, such as that you end up with twice as many pictures to store, that you need to have "rigs for the cameras" and there are post production issues.

I guessed at one of the issues which is that if you were to use two cameras they would need to be very close together. The solution is to use a single camera and a rig to shuffle it along before taking a second picture, these are called "Stereoscopic Stepper Rigs"

Editing of stereo video is straightforward and there are several choices for editing software. You are obviously going to need more storage and more processing power as there is more for the editing software to do. Many people edit in 2D and then the software handles the editing of the 3D.

Post production issues are the usual ones for stop motion such as colour balance. However there is also the alignment of the two images, typical corrections include horizontal and vertical offsets, zoom discrepancies, keystone, and rotation.

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Other 3D stop motion films

There was Coraline, the first stop-motion animated feature to be shot entirely in stereoscopic 3-D.

Foxed! by the Geneva Film Co is also in production.

Early stop motion in 3D

3-D Stereoscopic Film and Animation Blog

People

Frank Passingham: one of the few highly regarded cinematographers in the field of animated film who has the knowledge and experience of producing 3D stop-frame animated feature films. He was a DOP on Chicken Run and is currently a DOP on the new Aardman feature Pirates.

Tom Barnes: Technical Director of the new Aardman feature film Pirates.

François Garnier a leader in the field of 3D

Upcoming Master Class

As part of the Encounters festival there is a master class on "Stop-Frame In 3D" Thu 18 Nov, 2pm with Tom Barnes and Frank Passingham

Software

Dragon Stop Motion and Stereoscopic filming

Stop Motion Pro 3D Interfacing to Mark Roberts rig

Stop Motion Pro 3d Workflow

Stereo Video Editing

Neo3D from CineForm
Freeware StereoMovie Maker
Quantel Stereo3D
Sony Vegas Pro

Other references

Paul WS Anderson "The Future of 3D Filmmaking"
Gone Phishin' with CineForm Neo3D
Creative COW Magazine : Stereoscopic 3D Issue : The 3DVX
3D Research
Interocular distances
A slide bar, a low tech alternative to a stepper rig

Eadweard Muybridge at Tate Britain

2010-10-05T12:57:00.011+01:00

Most animators will know Muybridge from his books, Animals in Motion or The Human Figure in Motion. He is famous for his use of clever photography that used multiple cameras in quick succession to produce the characteristic images of horses walking and running.

This exhibition at Tate Britain provides a more overall view of his work. The first few rooms of the exhibit look at Muybridge's time in California and Central America. Whilst there Muybridge experimented with a range of photographic techniques. In Yosemite he produced very large prints and attempted to use multiple exposures, a technique we now called "High Dynamic Range" photography. He also successfully grafted the sky from one photo onto the landscape of another. Stereo photographs were another of his achivements but the examples and glasses provided at the Tate don't demonstrate this effect as well as I've seen elsewhere.

The panoramas of San Francisco are very impressive and as well as showing photographic achivement show the social history via the items and buildings.

The second half of the exhibit focuses on the photos of moving animals and people we more commonly associate with Muybridge.

His early work focuses on horses and in some cases the photographs were of such poor quality that he employed artists to trace the outlines. However these were sufficient for basic analysis of foot movements and show the arcs that animators should be used to seeing. As well as moving pictures of horses Muybridge took still images to aid an artist with foreshortening. As he got more practiced at taking photographs of movement he also developped more advanced and faster camera shutters. His topics also grew in sophistication with acrobats, and athletes employed as models. His photographs of everyday people including himself in the nude cause controversy. However not all were critical with artists such as Edgar Degas for one taking inspiration for his leaping horse sculpture.

So that people could see these photographs in action, Muybridge invented the Zoopraxiscope which was effectively a projector version of the Phenakistiscope.

The Zoopraxiscope used a disc of tiny 15mm slides with a counter rotating disc of slots to project the moving images. This is one of the earliest examples of projected motion picures.

The Muybridge exhibition is at the Tate until 16th Jan 2011 and gives a great insight into the works of this pioneering photograph and aid to all animators.

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Sintel - The latest from the Blender Foundation

2010-10-01T16:32:00.004+01:00

Sintel is the latest release from the Blender Foundation. They've come a long way since 2005 when I watched the Elephants Dream, the first film from the foundation. The plot of the film has received some critisim but I felt it held together well and was quite watchable something I did not feel was the situation with the Elephant's Dream.

The technical challenges the team have taken on for this film are numerous, massive landscapes, snow, sand, fire, humans and animals are all done very proficiently. There were a couple of times I though the camera movement was not very natural but the photography was also very good.

All in all a very watchable short film and I wish the film all the best in the up comming festivals that it's showing at.

Toystory gets 3 honors in IGN’S Third Annual Summer Movie Awards

2010-09-30T08:59:00.005+01:00

To celebrate the best of the summer box office, IGN recently released its 3rd annual “Summer Movie Awards” and “Toy Story 3” fittingly took home three of the honors.

Beating out Mickey Rourke’s Ivan Vanko character in “Iron Man 2,” Lots-O'-Huggin' Bear won for Favorite Villain, while Tom Hanks’ Woody received the award for Favorite Hero.

To top it all Toy Story 3 won Best Animated Movie, Despicable Me and Shrek Forever After runners up for the Best Animated Movie.

Animator/director Nick Hilligoss

2010-06-06T12:46:00.000+01:00

I discovered Australian animator/director Nick Hilligoss some years back because of his archive of stop-motion and model making.

Nick has made many films over the years and has won some awards. It is not too surprising that a lot of the films contain animals when you hear that Nick works for the Natual History department of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Shots from Nick's films:
Once upon Australia
Turtle world
Good riddance

His latest project is also stop-motion with a fantasy theme with caves and dragons. Nick gives us a sneak preview with videos of how he built the dragons' head and the cave. The techniques although very impressive use simple materials and tools so could be reproduced by anyone with a kitchen table or small workshop

Nick's examples and tutorials of set building, puppet making, camera and lighting rigs can be viewed at http://www.picturetrail.com/hilligossnic

More of Nick's films, a bio on Nick from ABC and on Stopmotionworks.

Carrara 8

2010-04-05T12:25:00.004+01:00

Even though I've not yet moved to Carrara 7, those people over at DAZ3D have been working on a new version 8.

Carrara 8:

* Multi Threading
* FBX Export Updates
* COLLADA import/export Updates
* Multi Leaf Objects
* God Rays
* Barn Doors for Spotlights
* Puppeteer Animation Tool

Carrara 8 Pro:

* 64-bit versions for Mac and PC
* Edit Figure in Vertex Modeler without the need to Zero Figure
* Network Rendering Improvements
* Negative Lights
* IES Lighting
* Normal Maps
* Bullet Physics Engine - Rigid Body and Dynamic Cloth

There are also a few videos to demonstrate the features

Daz3D are also giving away a few copy as a prize in their Bullet Physics Competition

Funding opportunity for film makers

2010-02-19T13:24:00.001Z

Some news via Short and Sweet.

IdeasTap has launched Ideas Fund Shorts, £40,000-worth of funding to help young people realise their short film projects. Eight awards of £5,000 are being offered to anyone aged between 16-25 to create a five minute short film. Recognising the lack of funding for young people within the arts, and the endless application forms and hassle to secure what funding there is, IdeasTap created the Ideas Fund to make it easier for young people to get their creative projects off the ground. Along with the website, www.ideastap.com, IdeasTap is dedicated to providing opportunities for up-and-coming creative talent. Alongside the launch of Ideas Fund Shorts, IdeasTap is also launching the second round of Ideas Fund Innovators; ten awards of £1,000 for creative ideas from any discipline. The deadline for both funds is 29th March 2010.

Animation for Christmas 2009

2009-12-23T10:03:00.006Z

There's a good range of animation on this Christmas. I watched the Nightmare before Christmas the other day and there are a few specials and premieres. So I decided to list a few that I've found. If I've missed anything of significance please let me know.

Christmas Eve

10:25am Curious George (2006) on ITV1 and Home on the Range (2004) on BBC1
4:25pm Over the Hedge (2006) BBC1 followed by Shrek 2 at 5:45pm
5:15pm Creature Comforts on ITV1 and Corpse Bride (2005) at 6pm

Christmas Day

Channel 5 has animation for younger viewers until 10:20 with one of my favourites "Little Princess" is on at 9:10am.
The Polar Express (2004) is on ITV1 at 1:10pm
The Incredibles (2004) on BBC1 at 3:10pm on BBC1
Happy Feet (2006) Premiere's on BBC2 at 3:40pm
I found Shrek the Halls just a little too silly but if you missed it before or want to see it again it's on BBC1 at 4:55pm.
A half hour BBC Special "The Gruffalo" is on BBC1 at 5:30pm Christmas Day.

Boxing Day

Technically not an animation but one of the films that inspired me due to it's puppetry and animatronics, The NeverEnding Story (1984) is on ITV3 at 1:35.
Aardman's first venture into CGI, Flushed Away (2006) is on BBC1 at 3pm with more Aardman at 4:40pm with Wallace and Grommit Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
A repeat of the Gruffalo on BBC3 at 7pm.

27th December

Chicken Run (2000) 3:05pm BBC1

New Year's Eve

BBC1 seems to dominate the Animation listings for New Year's Eve starting with The Magic Roundabout (2004) at 9:55am. Then the Premiere of The Ant Bully (2006) at 12:40pm and finally Madagascar (2005) on BBC1 4pm.

New Year's Day

The Disney classic, The Sword in the Stone (1963) is on BBC1 at 9:45am
Shark Tale (2004) BBC1 1:55pm
Ice Age: The Meltdown (2006) ITV1 at 2:50pm

There are also Creature Comforts scattered through the ITV listings through the Christmas period and there's a few muppet films too.

Info from tvguide.co.uk

Stop Motion Stuff

2009-12-16T07:00:00.000Z

I spotted this morning that I've been neglecting the animation ramblings blog so here's a quick post with a selection of Stop Motion Links that I've found over the years.

Modellers / filmakers
Jan-Eric Nyström
Marc Spess
Interview with Jim Rohn
Jeremy Spake
Scarlet star studios
Larry Loc
Menagerie Productions

Materials
Sculpey
Trylon

Armatures
Armaverse
Gryphyn
Animation toolkit
Textbook Industries
Animation Supplies
King Kong Armature

How to make models
Tom Brierton on Foam Puppets
Scarlet Star Studios - stop-motion puppet construction
Stop Motion Works

Miscellaneous
Using an armature as a input device
Animatronics

Up

2009-09-25T21:13:00.006+01:00

Pixar's UP will be in UK cinemas from October 9th and in 3D in selected cinemas.

This latest CGI film is the story of an old man Carl and boy scout Russell who travel to South America by tying rather a lot of balloons to the house.

There were many interesting technical challenges for the animators as they chose to animate 10,000 balloons using physics and to promote their films this was done on a smaller scale with a real arm chair floated with balloons. Feathers, forest animals, the dog Dug, a Wedding dress and Carl's cube head and stubbly chin also challenged the Pixar animators who discussed some of the issues at presentation of UP at the Gnomon School

Where the wild things are

2009-09-24T11:46:00.002+01:00

"Heads on and We Shoot: The Making of "Where the Wild Things are" will be released on 1 October 2009, but you can pre-order now.

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Branchage Film Festival Jersey 2009

2009-09-18T15:00:00.000+01:00

For the 1st 4 days of October the island of Jersey will be home to the Brachage Film Festival. There is a lot packed into those 4 days but here's some of the highlights for animators.

Friday 2nd October 2009 - Mont Orgueil Castle

The Secret of Kells is an animated fairytale for both children and adults. It won the audience award at both the Edinburgh Film Festival 2009 and the prestigious Annecy animation festival in France.

Friday 2nd October 2009 - Opera House

This is followed by Animagica Night. The Icelandic quartet Amiina performing an original soundtrack to classic Lotte Reiniger animations followed by the ‘live cinema’ experience of Paper Cinema. Inkblots, photocopies, cardboard, angle-poise lamps, the occasional table, video technology, a laptop and a banana box, are all put to use alongside a cast of hand-drawn marionettes magically brought to life.

Saturday 3rd October 2009 - Town Hall

Bev Sage is host to Richard Golesowski from Aardman Animations, for a special Shaun the Sheep masterclass, with models and images to show how little Shaun makes it to the big screen.

Also featuring trailer of new animation “The Puffas” by Ray Hedges and live performance by Simon MacDonald.

StopPress:

There will also be animation in the Max Hattler retrospective and in the London Short Film Festival presents Music & Video.

Follow the latest about the Branchage Festival on Twitter.

Aardman latest

2009-09-13T08:00:00.010+01:00

Aardman have been busy over the summer. They have been moving into their new offices, creating animation on the Nintendo Wii® and have been commissioned to make a new inventing series for the BBC. They have also been involved in a range of adverts such as the Change for Life, Cherios, Marie Claire and Birds Eye 'Steakhouse'. The Aardman feature films teams are working on "Arthur Christmas" and "The Pirates! which they hope to release in 2012. They have also been building a digital WebbliWorld.

King Kong Auction

2009-09-12T22:08:00.003+01:00

Frank Grimshaw reports in the Imagine Animation Blog of an auction of a 22-inch armature made by Willis O’Brien for the 1933 film of King Kong, it was used in the final scene on top of the Empire State Building.

This and other Vintage Film Posters and Entertainment Memorabilia will be on sale at Christies South Kensington Offices at 2pm on November 24th 2009.

Manga Madness!

2009-08-29T15:07:00.006+01:00

JapanJourney are arranging Manga Tours in Tokyo. The 7 day trip includes a visit to the Ghibli Museum, a tour of a working anime studio, a stop off at a Manga Café as well as more traditional Japanese attractions such as temples and gardens. Plenty of time has been allocated for those wanting to shop at all of the wonderful locations such as Nakano Broadway and Akihabar.

The next tour is 18-25 March 2010.

London International Film Festival

2009-08-27T15:24:00.006+01:00

The official opening of the 2009 London International Film Festival is on Monday 31 August 6pm at the Renoir Cinema.

However tonight is party night for the festival goers at the Roxy, The Brothers McLeod join with animation and film night organisers Paperbag with DJs and musicians.

The Monday night even will be no-less special with a special preview of Mary and Max by Adam Elliot and the results of the POOP Golden Poo Awards.

http://www.liaf.org.uk/

Pegbar - Irish Animation Networking Event

2009-08-01T07:00:00.001+01:00

Press Release

For anyone around Dublin, Ireland on the 8th of August

Pegbar is holding another one of its amazing events! But this time round we’ve got a whole day of talks from industry professionals.

There will be talks about the animation industry, the games industry, moving image, running small studios and making features. And we’ll finish the night off with our networking event.

So Pegbar will take place on the 8th of August, in Filmbase, 11am to 5pm.

There will be a workshop on making comic books for young artists in Filmbase 11am – 1pm

And then in the evening our ‘it’s a pegbar affair’, will be taking place in Murrays Bar, on O’Connell St, 8pm til late! Where there will be loads of cool animations playing and an enjoyable place for everyone to network.

There will be a colouring competition, to which the winners take home loads of Pegbar goodies!

Tickets are as follows:

A whole day pass, including the talks, the evening event and some pegbar goodies are €20, there are only 70 places available and you can prebook the tickets through info@pegbar.ie (discounts available for artists who submitted work for the show)

The comic book workshop, is free for young artists aged 12 - 17 and can be prebooked at info@pegbar.iethere are only 12places available.

The evening networking event is five euro on the door and can be paid for on the day.(Artists who submitted work have free entry)

http://pegbar.ie/

Fantastic Mr Fox

2009-07-31T10:01:00.004+01:00

It seems like everyone is talking about the new stop motion animation from Wes Anderson, "The Fantastic Mr Fox", it's based on Roald Dahl's story and will be showing at London Film Festival later in the year.

Total Film's report
Movie Blaze
The Playlist has some excellent pictures of the film.

The production process has been complicated by the closure of Revoltion Studios so Fox Animation have taken over the gauntlet. Mark Gustafson has taken on the role of Animation Director after Henry Selick left to work on Coraline.

Captain Horatio Pugwash

2009-07-24T16:13:00.009+01:00

Cartoonist John Ryan, who created the popular Captain Pugwash British television series, has died aged 88 this week. He is famous for the comical pirate series and author of a multitude of books. As well as writing many of the early scripts he also produced the artwork and directed the filming. John was also responsible for Sir Prancalot which was a similar style to Pugwash and set in a castle. He used his great artistic ability on the Ark Stories in 1981 using a rostrum camera to create simple animated animal stories, Percy Edwards provided the voices.

The Captain Pugwash Television Series

Before the Captain and his band were on television they were a successful series in the Eagle and then the Radio Times. The very TV first episode aired on BBC1 on 22nd October 1957. That initial pugwash series was filmed in black and white and ran for 58 episodes, in the 1970s a second colour series was commissioned by the BBC and 30 more episodes were made.

Later in 1998 John Cary created a third CGI Captain Pugwash using the 2D software Animo to produce a crisper result. Some people have criticised the CGI seascapes but most would agree that the style is very similar.

The Characters

Captain Horatio Pugwash was joined by Master Mate, Pirate Willy, Pirate Barnabas and the voice of reason "Tom the Cabin Boy". The pirates sailed the Black Pig and their arch enemy was "Cut-Throat Jake"

The Captain was renown for making stupid plans and his exclamations such as
"Plundering Porpoises!", "Jumping jellyfish!" or "Harrowing hurricanes!"

The Music and voices

The series music is possible even more well know than the series itself. The Trumpet Hornpipe is a lively sea shanty played on the accordion.

All the characters were voiced by Peter Hawkins

Technique

Watching the series it's easy to assume that the technique is simply cutout animation on a painted backdrop. However it was actually a cardboard puppet play filmed in real time with articulated puppets made from card and metal. Some panning and zooming was also used with larger sets. This technique enabled Ryan and his team to shoot and impressive 400ft of film a day which meant that each Pugwash episode took only about three weeks to complete. John Ryan's setups were called "Captions" and he used same technique on the later series Sir Prancalot and also on Mary, Mungo and Midge. The illustration was crisp and high quality and the colours bold.

Links

Toonhouse Pugwash Early Series
Toonhound Pugwash Modern Series
Wirligig TV's Look at Captain Pugwash
BBC Entertainment News
Telegraph Obitury

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