Zlogspot - animationandvideo

If you're serious about becoming an animator in any style from traditional hand drawn animation to 3D computer generated animation and everything in between (even cut out or stop motion... brickmation even) this book is a must have. Not just on your book shelf but well within reach of your work space. The Animator's Survival Kit, Expanded Edition by Richard Williams is considered to be the animator's 'bible' for good reason. It's simply the best book on the craft of animating I've ever read (and if you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know I've read a few). Note that I've deliberately described animation as a craft because that's what this book is all about, learning the methods, formulas, principles and techniques to create convincing animation. There's no how to draw articles here. Nor is there any tips for how to make it in the animation business or develop your show reel. It's focus is entirely on animating and how to ...

Buddy's World TET at his desk. I'm busier than I ever have been working on animation projects. The trouble is, most of what I'm doing doesn't make for very interesting blog posts. Half my day is spent learning about animation or animation software. The other half is spent doing the grunt work on projects, drawing hands... well paws, so many paws and key framing... so many key frames. There's also that game app I'm working on. So here is a quick run down of what I'm doing since I last posted some Project Updates . JAC the Cat CrazyTalk Animator 2 Although I finished my blog series on creating this CrazyTalk Animator, G2 character, the character its self is far from finished. What Reallusion don't tell you in their promo's for ' making your own G2 character with our custom template ' is that it's actually templateS (that's plural). To make a fully functioning G2 character, after the initial full body template (that you saw me create), ...

Aliens and Alien Societies - a writer's guide to creating extraterrestrial life-forms by Stanley Schmidt is another book that I originally bought almost 20 years ago and never got around to reading. However, now that I have a regular reading schedule I'm powering through books... comparatively, as opposed to not reading much at all... and I was really looking forward to reading this one. Science Fiction being one of my creative interests. Especially the possibility of creating my own unique worlds and populating them with any kind of alien I can dream up. Oh my god! (sorry for blaspheming but I just can't think of an appropriate face palm alternative right now). If science fact is often more interesting and exciting than science fiction then this book is not the poster child for fact verses fiction. Total buzz kill. This is more a science fact text book that explores what science knows about the universe and how life develops, or could conceivably develop, on other planets...

JAC Continuing on with the creation of my first CrazyTalk Animator 2, G2 character, Happy Cat JAC, I'm happy to say that I've had a major break through with setting up this character, specifically, how to add a tail. Before moving on, if you'd like to catch up on previous posts before continuing, here are the links for Part 1 , Part 2 ,  Part 3  and Part 4 . Last update I had imported my DrawPlus Character template into CTA2 and discovered a number of issues. 'Inverted' colors of the ear. Some body parts had, what appeared to be inverted colors but is actually an issue with how CTA 2 is interpreting the vector art. It apparently gets confused occasionally and will either read a closed shape as open, or think the join is in a different place, messing up the fill pattern.  This problem can mostly be fixed by going back into the DrawPlus file and reducing the number of points in the offending shape (using the 'Clean Curves' function). If the problem persists st...