This is a great clip. You can see Milt Neil discuss his approach to inbetweens, how he handles cloth animation, and a young Jerry Beck (around 6:08) describes “Der Fuhrer’s Face”. The segment is more of a tribute to Milt Neil than an animation lesson, but there is a lot of great information in there.
Minuscule is a series of buzzworthy animated shorts from France that explore the itty bitty world of insects. The creators describe it as “a cross between Tex Avery and Microcosmos.” Created by Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud, Minuscule shorts have aired erratically on Toon Disney in the United States.
Their techinique is a seamless combination of 3-D animation and live action footage. You can view a large selection of Minuscule videos on this YouTube page. Here’s the official website.
Tease yourself with this trailer for the DVD release. (Don’t bug out, but so far, it is only available as a set of Region-2 DVDs, so unless you have a fancy dancy Euro DVD player, you’re out of luck!)
Back in the 1950’s, the Kool Aid man was not much more than a pitcher with a face. As time went by, Kool Aid Man gradually became a guy in a suit with an animated mouth. The commercials began to feature other animated elements as well. In a few of the commercials, Bugs Bunny and the Monkees even helped out as pitch men.
While I’m not sure the wall wrecking Kool Aid Man sells the powdered drink mix any better than his hand held ancestor, it was interesting to see the progression of the character though the years.
I’m really excited to announce this month’s winner of the Cartoon of the Month prize! We had 8 films from episodes 136, 137 and 138 in the running this time - a bit low because of the Channel Frederator Awards, but nonetheless stiff competition! In the end, Pushkin took home the prize!
Pushkin is a great stop motion film brought to us by Trevor Hardy of Fool Hardy Films. I took a few minutes to do a mini-interview with Trevor below. Check it out and then, if you haven’t had the chance to watch it, or haven’t seen it in a while, go watch Pushkin again in Channel Frederator episode 136.
CF: What inspired you to create Pushkin?
I came up for the story line for Pushkin after losing my own cat who thank fully returned a while later but with bent whiskers??? (Don’t ask me?), whilst writing pushkin I watched Sylvain Chomet’s brilliant film, ‘The Triplets of Belleville’ and of course his sets and atmosphere totally inspired me and helped carve the look of the world Pushkin would live in.
Last week, I posted about the (then upcoming) gaming-inspired art show “I Am 8-bit”. Well, the opening was last Thursday and reports of fun are pouring in from blogs all around. Destructoid and Kotaku, for example. (Crowd photo from Kotaku.)
A video of the festivities from the World of Wonder site is here.
There’s also a Flickr set where you can check out the mayhem that ensued—and peruse halfway decent photos of all the art. Many animation peeps participated. (Photos below by oldmanmusings, btw.)
“Zelda and the Great Deku Tree” by Carlos Ramos (Dexter’s Lab, Chalkzone, Robot Jones).
Find more videos like this on Channel Frederator RAWNew Tee Vee is doing a live screening of animated videos and other not-live-action clips on August 28 in Los Angeles.
They want you Animator types to submit to them Aug. 21st. Oh yea, the theme this month is NON HUMAN.
for more info, Go Here:
http://events.newteevee.com/screenings/08/Submit
-Jeaux Janovsky
There’s a great interview with animation artist Pascal Campion over at Character Design Blogspot. Pascal has a uniquely delicate style which flawlessly integrates complex arrangements of background and character. Most of his work is done in Flash:
I use color differently than most artists I know, more like a painter actually. I don’t do a clean drawing . I just sketch very loosely something in flash, and I clean it up in color! Which is why my colors are as essential to the piece as the composition itself because they ARE the drawing.
Click here for the interview and gallery.
For more on Pascal Campion, see his website and blog.
After the jump, a short video interview with the man, conducted by ChicagoAnimators.com at San Diego Comicon 2008 [Read more…]
Animator and software developer Friedrich Kirschner has figured out a way to do 3D scanning with a webcam, some Legos, a plastic bowl, and milk. It’s called Milkscanner. It’s a silly sort of stop motion that actually works!
The Lego structure holds the webcam. Your object of choice is placed in a the bowl of milk (filled up to halfway). More milk is added three teaspoons at a time. Each scan is a “slice” and it appears that you can get a pretty accurate outline from this calcium-rich contraption. (You have to flip the object to finish the scan.)
For the latest version of Milkscanner, go here.
Friedrich Kirschner has his own website here, which spotlights lots of cool Machinima innovation. (Machinima is the process by which movies are filmed using game engines.)
And go to this Vimeo link to see a variation on the technique where people are dipped into a kiddie pool that is filled [Read more…]
Isn’t this wild?
It’s Emily Gobeille and Theodore Watson’s Funky Forest, an “immersive interactive ecosystem for young children.” Kids can use their bodies to grow trees, water them, and attract creatures to the forest environment.
Funky Forest premiered at the 2007 Cinekid festival in the Netherlands.
More info here. Or watch this video which shows how kids interact with the glowing animated environment.
Gobeille and Waston (along with “polymer artist” Meredith Dittmar) recently had a show at Brooklyn’s Riveria Gallery. The show was called “Biome” and the Flckr set is here. Lovely image on the jump… [Read more…]
