Incredible Animation

    Pixar's The Incredibles creates dynamic characters with physical traits that directly correspond to the superheroes' powers. For example, the fast running boy has pointy, lightning bolt like hair and the mom is extremely skinny due to her stretching super powers. The end credits sequence, however, consists of different animations than the movie. The style is more simplistic yet flows well and transitions into different roles of the behind the scenes players. It is truly a sequence that keeps the audience in their seats during the end credits. Teddy Newton, a Pixar animator, worked on this title sequence along with many others. I looked up Teddy Newton and found a short film he directed entitled "Day and Night." The main characters are simplistic compared to the detailed animation that takes place inside their respective figures. The animation is also completely different than the animation in The Incredibles end credits sequence. I plan to look into more of Newton's work and perhaps find a sequence that I could emulate. I am somewhat nervous for this class because I have difficult using new software. I will work as hard as possible to keep up with others and create something that I'm proud of. I think animation is still young and over the years, even though there are some animations today, it will be nearly impossible to differentiate between real life and animation.

-Matthew Clifford Hadley

The Incredibles end credits sequence

"Day and Night"

Day & Night

I've been really interested in masking lately because we do it a lot in class and I'm planning to do some for my project. I started to think about some good examples of masking that I could study and I remembered this one short from Pixar called Day and Night. It's actually one of my favorite Pixar shorts because I find the premise really touching and well done. The short makes fantastic use of 2D hand-drawn animation to mask 3D animated scenes. I actually feel this is something that could be relatively easy to do as well, at least in regards to using 2D animations to mask other things. Check out the short below plus a fun how-they-did-it video.