A Great Loss for the Animation World

Earlier this week the animation community has suffered a tragic loss. Monty Oum of Rooster Teeth passed away unexpectedly.

Monty Oum was the chief animator at Rooster Teeth, a production company responsible for many popular web series including Red vs. Blue, Achievement Hunter, and RWBY. Monty's animations have appeared in numerous projects, perhaps most notably the last few seasons of Red vs Blue, as well as RWBY, 3D anime style web series that is largely his own creation. Monty created his animation through the use of Smith Micro's Poser Software.

Monty was a huge creative force at Rooster Teeth, and he will surely be missed. If you're a fan of video game culture or anime, I would recommend checking out some of his videos and other series hosted on Rooster Teeth's website.

Orphan Black Magic

Orphan Black has been a major hit show for the past two seasons and is one of my absolute favorites. Not only because of the characters, but also because of the special effects put into the production to make this show a possibility.  The special effects used in this show allow Tatiana Maslany to play all six clones during filming instead of having six different people playing the six different clones.  Through their use of robotically controlled dollies and the software Fusion, a scene like the one below can be created.  (hint, all four women in this scene is Tatiana Maslany)

While Tatiana does all her work with stand ins acting as another clone, Fusion allows for the editors to manipulate the footage and put all the different Tatianas into the scene at once.  If you have not seen the show I strongly encourage you to watch it.  It will satisfy your creative, technical and slightly weird side that all of us hide.

Madden Predictions

EA and Madden have been predicting the SuperBowl winners since the 2004 SuperBowl when the New England Patriots defeated the Carolina Panthers. Over that span the computer has gone a very solid 9-3 with their picks, most impressively correctly picking the exact final score of the most recent SuperBowl New England 28 Seattle 24. During this span Madden has also released a video showing what their simulation had happening throughout the game, including, the touchdown plays and big plays from the game. Using the in-game graphics to show how these games play out, Madden has been eerily accurate over the past decade. Every year the graphics of these videos improve along with the game graphics for each Madden, with this years looking incredibly realistic.

As you can see from the clip the textures and backgrounds and almost every single part of the animations of the game are incredibly realistic and show a very high attention to detail. As these animations continue to develop and the graphics for games continue to improve we will get better and better quality SuperBowl prediction videos, eventually it may even be like we are watching real game highlights.

Stop-Motion Animation

When someone mentions animation, the first ideas that come to mind are works by famous companies such as Pixar and DreamWorks. Movies like How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek, and Finding Nemo have illustrated the power of graphical animation by developing complicated and concise fictional worlds. But, animation doesn't just stop with cartoon movies. Stop-Motion Animation provides an alternative approach to animation that utilizes all forms of media to create a polished project: still images, sound, video, clay figures (actors), set modeling, and the story-boarding process. One of my favorite stop-motion films, as a child, was Aardman Animations' Wallace and Gromit. Not only did the British stop-motion comedy consist of four short films, but it also included one feature-length film. The academy-nominated relationship, of the two main characters, grows over the course of the series as Wallace's new ideas are constantly met with Gromit's "unimpressed" body language and humorous facial expressions.

                 

This stop-motion graphics artist (below) decided to take the "Wallace and Gromit approach" a step further. With the recent release of Warner Brothers' The Lego Movie, YouTube user, "cheesybricks," takes a stab at his own version of stop-motion animation with the Lego theme in mind. In this short video, watch as the artist "paints with lego."

                     Video Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxy1fkrXmCI#t=85

This video really opened my mind to the possibilities that one can achieve in animation as a field of study. Perhaps, it will be something that I will pursue in the future. But for now, I'm just going to enjoy its prestige!

Game of Thrones Opening Sequence

Last weekend, I saw the last two episodes of season four of Game of Thrones in IMAX, with an exclusive preview of the next season. Clearly, I'm a big fan. The second the title sequence came on, I became filled with excitement (even though I've seen the episodes already). The opening sequence is so captivating and beautiful that, in that IMAX, I honestly would've been content watching it on loop for two hours.

The opening grabs the audience and educates viewers. It's a huge map of the entire world of Game of Thrones, and moves from place to place.

The creative director, Angus Wall at Elastic, wanted to keep the opening sequence feel very true to the world of the books and show. Since it's an unsophisticated place, everything is made out of natural materials. Dealing with the problem of maps being flat and a camera moving around this flat space, they decided to make the world a sphere. In an interview, Wall says, "I quickly realized we were still going to shoot off the map. So the next thought was, what happens when you put two bowls together? You have a sphere. Next question was “how is it lit?” And obviously, If you have a whole world inside a sphere, what would be in the middle of that sphere? The sun! Or whatever the light source of this world is."

Once the shape of the world was figured out, they started with concept art. The details are astounding.

"If you’re going to create a world, in order for it to feel legit, you have to have this fractal sense of detail. There are dust motes in the air when you’re passing through, and all the cogs have a logic to them."


They then planned out the sequence and blocked the big moves. Once they had their final concept art and everything planned, they gave it to the model makers working in Maya.


I'll leave you with some inspirational words from Wall: "But you can’t be afraid. You can’t be afraid to start over if you have to start over. At the beginning of every job you’re starting over. You’re facing failure every time you go out. But you can’t live in the place where you’re saying, I better not try this because I might fail. Because then you’re not going to succeed either."

Some tips

This video is extremely fast, but there's 25 tips that are really quick to grasp that will bring your projects to the next level. If you see something that interests you, you can always slow it down and watch that part over again. I personally thought the light using the alpha matte just before the 1 minute mark was really cool and something I never would have thought of.

https://vimeo.com/93029504

Wallykazaam!

In honor of the one-year anniversary of my favorite current kids' show, I figured I would introduce you all to Wallykazam!

Wallykazam first aired on Nick Jr. last year as the first literacy-centered show on Nickelodeon. The network had themed shows around language with Dora and countless other educational programming, but this is the first centered around teaching kids to read. Not only does Wally teach kids to read, but it's also an adorable show, with great characters, and really interesting art. Wally and his pet dragon, Norville, go on all sorts of journeys around their magical land, and with regular appearances from series regulars like, Bobgoblin the Hobgoblin, the show is truly one of the best ones on TV for preschoolers.

This Friday, February 6th there will be a one hour Wallykazam! special on Nickelodeon at 12:00pm EST. In the lead-up to the special, Wally and his friends have taken over the Nick Jr. website and iOS app, so if you want to check out the show, this week is a prime opportunity.

LSD: Dream Emulator Video Game

I recently heard about this video game and felt compelled to write about it. It's called LSD: Dream Emulator, and it was created by Hiroko Nishikiwa, a Japanese video game artist from Asmik Ace Entertainment. The game was launched for Sony Playstation Japan in 1998, and a fan remake has been in development since 2011. Basically, the game is based on a collection of dreams that creator Hiroko Nishikiwa had kept for over a decade. While the game is in reference to the drug, LSD, there is no present information on it during the game.

The objective of the game is that the player navigates through a psychedelic dream world. While the player walks around and explores the dream environment, bumping into walls or other objects transports them into another environment instantaneously. If the player bumps into either people or animals, the environment becomes much more surreal.

This video takes the viewer through the first 30 minutes of LSD: Dream Emulator

Bézier Curves

Bézier curves are used all the time in computer graphics and animation. They allow you to make complex vector shapes and motions while only using a very small amount of data. Instead of having to plot every point of a curve, a Bézier curve can be produced from a simple equation. All you need is two points for the beginning and end of he curve, and two extended handles that you can stretch to change the angle and intensity of the curve. It is very simple to use these curves, and you can easily achieve the curves you want with trial and error, but it is hard to understand how they work without a good explanation. I found an extremely simple and satisfying video explanation of how Bézier curves work. This might help you in the future if you work with Bézier curves, and if not, it's still entertaining for anyone who has no idea what a Bézier curve is and doesn't care either.

Motion Graphics Designs!

I ran across some videos today with very cool motion graphics designs. I thought that these videos would be useful to everyone! (There is even one with a 3D bird) 

Typomania Festival: this short was made in attempt to popularize the typography culture and was aimed towards designers, illustrators, and animators. Notice the 3D birds at 0:28 seconds. 

                   Take a Look:   https://vimeo.com/68512678

Social Media Awards Ceremony Opening Titles

      I enjoyed this video because the fairytale story about the competition between social media comes across flawlessly to the audience. However I'm posting the video because its primarily composed of animated shapes, expressions, several layers, and text (nothing that we can't achieve as After Effects beginners- or atleast i think.) 

               Take a Look:  https://vimeo.com/76510274

Cinco Radio Buenos Días 25 Aniversario:

   This animation piece was made to celebrate the 25 anniversary of Cinco Radio, a local radio station in Puebla, México. Every single aspect of this piece was amazing and is a goal for any graphic designer or animator to accomplish (not to mention the intricate and spot on detail of the hands!) 

            YOU NEED TO SEE THIS:  https://vimeo.com/77067342

Till next time, 

Krystal . 

   

    

Song of the Sea

This week I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about the Oscar nom no one's talking about: Song of the Sea. In a category with some of the largest animation giants in the industry, Song of the Sea is definitely an underdog, but it's nomination is definitely well deserved.

The story is based around the Celtic myth of the selkie and features two children, Ben and Saoirse. At six-years-old, Saoirse is mute, and has yet to begin speaking. When she discovers a shell flute left behind by her deceased mother, the music introduces her to a world of magic and selkies under the sea. In the end, to keep the tales alive, Saoirse must find her voice.

The artwork in the film is amazing, and the traditional animation style sets it apart from the 3D animation that has taken over the Oscar nominations this year. While its screening has been highly limited, Cornell Cinema will be showing the film in February and I highly suggest that you take the time to go see it.

Off the Air

Off the Air is a adult swim show that airs late at night. It is a compilation of experimental films that they find on the internet. They cut the videos together and animate the transitions with unique and "trippy" changes. I personally love the show. I think it is a very creative work of art that while at some points can get extremely weird, is truly enjoyable to watch.

The show has a plot based on a specific word like "falling" or "color", then the makers of the show choose selections that fit into that category. The run time of each episode is only around 11-15 minutes, but there is so much going on in each that it feels just as long as a episode with a normal half hour runtime. 

The show focuses primarily on animation but there are some times when some strangely edited live footage comes into play. As seen above there is a colorful spider that made its appearance on the "Dance" episode where it was performing a strange mating dance that had some strange editing and animation. 

Off the Air incorporates a lot of unique contemporary animations. I find the style of some of the animations they choose to include to be very inspiring. The experimental videos are all entertaining but the animated ones specifically catch my attention due to their creativity and style. 

Here are some links to full episodes:

Colors

Animals

Falling

Food

Perceptions of the Eye

I have been told that drawing is not about any particular skill or talent, but rather sight and perspective. I recently purchased a wacom tablet to help with animating from the computer. After having set up all the applicable software, I was ready to draw. At first, I was simply doodling, drawing smiley faces or writing my name. I found the technology and the apps that cater to it to be really fun and intuitive. However, when I attempted to actually try to draw something with a little more substance, I found myself really struggling. The tablet itself does not show anything that you've drawn on its surface; all of that appears on the computer screen. So while drawing with a pen and paper has a natural connection with the eye and the hand, that connection is broken when drawing on the tablet. I often found myself looking at the screen as a frame of reference, and my hand would get confused and not do what I wanted it to do. Even when I tried to trace an object, my creation came out less than beautiful. I don't blame the technology or the hardware for this problem, it's all on me. I think that just getting used to a new way of looking at something will be challenging and difficult to accomplish, but I'm certainly looking forward to trying .

The History of Mario

It’s amazing how much animation graphics change throughout history when referencing video games. One of the most popular games of all time, created by Nintendo, is the Mario Brothers collection. From the 2D to Three-Dimension world, Mario Brothers stands at the forefront of animation in video gaming from the perspective of user experience, graphical presentation, and overall innovation of animation techniques as technology improved from year to year. Beginning in 1985 with the release of the original Super Mario Bros, the game not invited the user to get lost in the colorful 8-Bit world, but to also guide the main character from the left to the right sides of the screen. Similarly to many famous films, characters are introduced from the left frame of the shot in order to present them in a way that makes sense to the viewer. In Mario’s case, the animation appears from the shadows on the left frame of the screen and forever continues to explore by always continuing to the right.

As technology continued to improve, however, the 2-Dimensional cookie-cutter colored Mario evolved into a three-dimensional boxed animation in Super Mario 64 and then ultimately grew into the polished, immensely colorful character in Mario Party 8 that we hold as today’s modern standard. The animation transformation can be observed in many other games following the technological generation timeline as did the characters in the Mario franchise. But, how many games can state that they have maintained popularity over two generations of family members? No other game has proven its presence in the gaming community and its versatility to take advantage of the available gaming hardware that Nintendo releases every console cycle. The iconic color pallet utilized in Mario games can be recognized by any new user because its visual effects, sounds, game mechanic simplicity, and overall animated diversity.

 The facial structure has remained the same. The scaling of the character in relation to the surrounding landscape has remained constant. The effortless intuitive controls have maintained consumer popularity. From an animation standpoint, the Mario franchise continues to push video game designers to their limits by creating new stories and worlds that take advantage of technological innovations while consistently upholding the iconic video game character.

 If you haven’t played a Mario game (from start to finish), you have no idea what you’re missing!

A new Batman movie...based on toys?

Transformers, G.I. Joe, The Lego Movie, we have reached a point where we no longer should  be surprised when a movie comes out based on a line of toys. Yet I still can't help it after DC Comics announced a new line of animated shorts and an animated movie based on lines by Fisher-Price and Mattel. 

Debuting on May 12th, Batman Unlimited: Animal Instincts will be based on the Batman Unlimited toy line by Mattel. The movie will include characters like Batman, Nightwing, The Flash, Green Arrow, Red Robin, and the Penguin. The movie will be released direct to video. There will also be a sequel later this year.

Warner Bros will also be releasing the DC Super Friends based on a line of toys by Fisher-Price. This will be a series of 15 animated shorts, all about 3 minutes long. This will include characters from the Justice League.

The concept of basing a movie off of a toy based off of a comic book character seems rather peculiar, especially after seeing toys based off of movies for years. But when you think about it, it seems to make sense. The line of toys probably reaches a larger demographic than the comic books.

Stop Motion in Robot Chicken

As we become more familiar with animation software like After Effects, it seems like computers have made animation ten times easier. With the class's limited understanding of basic functions of After Effects, we can create a ball that bounces for ever in a matter of minutes. Imagine what we would be able to do with deeper understanding of the software. Because the software seems to make animation so easy, one may assume that all big studios would utilize those programs rather than rely on older animation techniques. Of course, there are a number of shows that make use of older and much more difficult animation techniques, like stop motion. One such show is Cartoon Network's Robot Chicken.

Robot Chicken is a sketch comedy show that airs during Cartoon Network's "Adult Swim" segment nightly segment. The show makes use of stop motion animation, where they move the figures in tiny increments, recording each new placement one frame at a time. The do make use of some computer generated graphics for explosions or mouth movements, but a majority of the show is done stop motion, a technique that can take hours to just get a couple of seconds of video, and that's not counting the time it takes to make each figure and setting. You may not like the crude humor that the show has, but you can appreciate the amount of work that the creators put into each ten second sketch.

MAN - A Short by Steve Cutts

In class we have been getting more and more into animation with After Effects. So far we have completed a cube in 3D space and have learned a few different expressions. By next month we will have our name projects done and will have learned a lot more. As I was looking at various pieces of animation on youtube I came across this short animated by Steve Cutts. It says in his YouTube description that he created this animated short using Adobe Flash and After Effects, two programs that I am familiar with and am currently learning. The short follows the story of a single man, who essentially represents the entire force and motivations of mankind on our planet. As man continues to grow and evolve we continue to push other aspects to the wayside such as the environment and other living creatures. It is a short that depicts the harsh truths of our destruction as mankind, and it does so with a very effective animation.

http://www.stevecutts.com/

Thank You For Playing

During my time interning for POV Films, Thank You For Playing was easily one of the most beautiful films I had the opportunity to watch. This film follows an incredibly loving family in which the father, Ryan Green is creating a video game called That Dragon, Cancer. The game incorporates their day to day struggles with their son, Joel, who is battling a cancerous tumor in his brain. The film follows the family's life and how they are coping and celebrating Joel's life through the game. A  large part of the film is watching Ryan translate the intense and harsh reality they live in, to an interactive animated 3D universe. The process is tedious but the fruit of their work will leave you in tears. It is revolutionizing the way stories are told in video games and the kinds of games being told through video games. One if Ryan's missions through this game is to get people talking about cancer and show that people effected by it directly or indirectly are not alone. Below is the link to the website for the game.

 http://thatdragoncancer.com/

 As for the film, it's not another hopeless film about a kid with cancer that is just terribly depressing the whole time. It's a story portraying what an unconditionally loving mother and father will do for their beautiful child and how you can turn something so awful and unthinkable into a beautiful work of art. I have watched this film twice and ended up crying more the second time in addition to an hour after I turned it off. It really is a powerful film to the point where you feel like you know Ryan and Joel personally and you just want to give them a hug.

http://www.thankyouforplayingfilm.com/teaser/

Legalize Ted

Recently the new trailer for Ted 2 was released showing scenes from the sequel to the highly popular movie Ted, the story of a living stuffed bear and his buddy, played by Mark Wahlberg. Now to film this movie they couldn't just take a real teddy bear and have him walk and talk through the shot, they needed to use a lot of high level animation in order to me Ted look like a real living teddy bear. Therefore, they employed the use of motion capture technology to capture actor/writer Seth MacFarlanes motions to use to make Ted's motions look more life like.

Although this video makes it appear that everything Ted does was animated through the motion capture, a blog post from one of the animators who worked on Ted tells us that, the motion capture was used mainly for the sitting and gesturing scenes, while the larger motions were completely cg animation. This blog explains that at times due to the topical nature of the jokes some scenes had to be reanimated because the jokes simply were not relevant anymore. You can learn more about the animation of Ted and the point of view of one of the animators here: http://comedyforanimators.com/2012/06/29/behind-the-scenes-of-ted/

The Story of Electronics

Yesterday in History and Theory of Documentary (yes I know I'm an idiot for taking it) we watched an interesting video that was animation combined with a live action talking head called "The Story of Electronics" (its about 8 minutes long but not that much of a drag)

What I really liked about this video, other than it being extremely experimental and going right over my head, is that it was very down to earth without being in your face about the problems here on earth.  The animation of the pollution, land fills and consumerism allows the big ideas to be digested by very different people.  Rather than making viewers uncomfortable with pictures of these horrific things, the video gently speaks about them with images that depict the problem in such a way that allows the viewer to understand it as a problem rather than a stomach ache.  We as humans need to start working on solutions to these problems, and we are not going to do so if we feel lectured or afraid when we speak about them; this video is a wonderful stepping stool to the point where we can effectively work on them.