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...

TET, hard at Work. I've been particularly busy lately working on various projects. Scheduling my time much better so I work on several things for just an hour or two each day. I thought I'd give you a quick run down of what I've been doing of late. Starting with JAC the Cat character... JAC Cat, Crazy Talk Animator 2 I haven't really advanced this enough to warrant a full post dedicated to my progress on this. However I have been working on it daily, trying to solve all the body part import issues that I outlined in my Part 4 update. JAC Cat body Parts. I can tell you I've pretty much resolved everything with regard to importing my DrawPlus template into CrazyTalk Animator 2. Body parts are all in the right place, none are missing or color inverted. I'm now fixing up the various joint masks - which I've discovered don't do their job nearly as well if you use a lot of gradients in your coloring. I'll need to plan my character design better next time,...

JAC Last time I posted about the creation of my first CrazyTalk Animator 2 G2 character, Happy Cat JAC, it was just a progress report to say I'd completed a second view of the character in my DrawPlus X8 template and a commitment to say progress had accelerated to daily work on the project. If you'd like to catch up on previous posts before continuing, here are the links for  Part 1 ,  Part 2  and  Part 3 . I'm happy to say I've stuck to the daily progress commitment and can report that today I finished the last of all seven views in my DrawPlus template. Which you can see below. Seven views of JAC finished. DrawPlus G2 Character Template. If you look closely at the 180 view (2nd from the top left) you'll see that view includes a tail. CrazyTalk Animator G1 characters have provision for a tail made up of nine segments. Although the tail is not part of the official DrawPlus G2 character template, CrazyTalk Animator 2 still retains the tail in the character composer -...

Club Med and BAFTA nominee and Art Director/Creative Lead at animation studio 3.81, Matt Oxborrow, have teamed up to answer the question "Is your luggage having more fun than you when you go on a holiday?" Find out in the delightfully unique animation, Sun, Sea and Scanned: A Flip-Flop Family Holiday (below) created using a full-sized airport luggage scanner. Inspired by the 'other worldly' look of luggage when viewed through the screen of a security airport scanner, the colors and shapes you see look nothing like what you remember packing. So Club Med decided to have a little fun with that and created the story of a family of flip flops and their holiday inside your luggage. Their adventure includes: A bottle of Head & Shoulders shampoo as a speedboat. Hairbrush water skis. Chewing gum eyebrows. Flip flops faces with metal bead mouths and coin eyes. Tennis ball sun. Paperclip aeroplane. Hair straighteners and multi-plug adapters as skyscrapers. Watch the video a...