Pencil - 2d animation software

Aloha to the citizens of the internet kingdom !
This is something I have wanted to write about from quite some time. I came across this software called "Pencil" which is open source and is designed for artists to create 2d animation. The best thing is that it is free.
Unlike other proprietary software, this one is very simple to use. Only the time-line editing can take a little while to understand. You can have a camera layer, vector and bitmap layers. Some advantages other than that its free are that its very light and fast to use. You can export flash/swf files and even Quicktime .mov files if you are using a Mac. Their website has a good User Manual which can get you started and also a forum to discuss stuff.It is available for Windows and Mac OS X.
I had tried using it in class 1 for some simple planning and again used it for planning my pantomime assignment at AM this class3. Planning an animation in 2d before getting into Maya, can be very useful and can save a lot of time correcting timing and poses. I'll upload the 2d animatic (nothing amazing - simple stick-figure drawings) I did alongwith the final assignment which I will submit this week.

Give it a try and you might like it as well.
Heres a link to the Pencil website: http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/index.php?id=Download

Class 3 : "Intro to Acting" starts

Hey everyone,
This post is coming quite a bit late. I started with class3 a month back and I love all the stuff is going on. If I had to write all the things that I learnt in this past month, I would complete a full notebook with it. Acting in animation is one of the most difficult things to understand, it being different from acting in live action. Animator has to not only act but keep in mind that the physics, the body mechanics are working right, the acting choices are perfect, it is free of cliches and so on. It is said that an animator's job is more difficult than that of a stage actor. Since I know little about stage acting, I dont know all the difficulties that a stage actor has to face, but am beginning to understand the thought process. An actor has to understand the scene, his character, the moment, the surroundings, clarity, acting choices, expression, voice and the characters around. But he never has to worry about the physics, the movement and balance of the body because its natural being a human being. Here is the challenge a character animator has to face. He has to do all that an actor has to do, plus the fact that he has to make the audience believe that its not a drawing or an image but a real character - alive !

The Lectures this term have been focusing on acting and are simply great. I have a new Mentor - Mike Belzer. He is an amazing animator and the fact that he has been an animator for really long, he started with stop-motion animation and worked on Nightmare before Christmas. The last 10 years or so he has been at Disney Studios and he has recently finished work on Disney's latest animation feature, Bolt. I am very lucky to have such an experienced animator to help me through this acting class. The first day of class3 when I got to know Mike is my mentor, I was extremely happy to know I have a really amazing animator to look at my work and tear it apart ! Here is a link to an excerpt from the meet-the-pro QnA at cg-char website where Mike answered some questions.

I'll write about my new assignment this term soon.

Hi, I m a Mac

and I was a PC


A change of topic. Recently I got a new 20” iMac 2.66Ghz and this post is my thought about how its changing the way I use my computer.

I have studied computer science in college and have used different Operating Systems. I first started using DOS and Windows 3.1 on a 286 PC when I was a kid, drawing in paint-brush and taking its printouts on a noisy dot-matrix printer. Since then I have used all consumer (non-server) versions of Windows till Vista SP1. In college I started using Linux, namely Fedora and RedHat and also used Fedora for all CS assignments. None of the OS and their different versions was a nice experience . I always felt Windows more comfortable to use over Linux. But I hadn’t seen Mac OS X yet.

I got a chance to try it out a couple of months ago. Last 3 months I was taking a look at the Mac side of computers, read a little about it, saw some how to videos on you-tube and I was blown away by the sheer simplicity, the efficiency of the OS and the Design. It dint take more than 5 days to get familiar with it and it soon made me feel at home. I hadnt ever seen before seen a computer boot within 40 seconds and completely ready to use.

Also, the hardware design is a world apart. Its so slick and solid. Gosh! I miss all the wires, bulky hardware and clutter :D Now with the iMac that sits on my desk, I totally can relate to the “Hi I am a Mac, I am a PC” ads. Of course those are sometimes exaggerated, but yes, close to reality. I am still awe-struck with it. How hadnt I seen anything like this ever before ?!

Its not that I hate Windows, I have XP installed through boot camp. But its there just in case there is a need to run some windows based program on that rare occaison.

I think if you hasn’t seen or used one, I would say do yourself a favor by trying it out and if you like it, free yourself from the hard-ships of “maintaining” the computer.

Cheers !

Siggraph event on Procedural Animation

Last Sunday I attended a seminar in my city which was a part of the events being held as a part of Siggraph Asia. This was organized by CGTantra, Asifa India and some other companies and organisations related to the Computer Graphics Industry.

Actually this was a first time I attended any CG event. The topic for the talk was ‘procedural animation’ which is way different than key-frame animation that we as character animators do. Here the focus is more on how to get most out of the computer and using it to simulate particles, crowds among other special effects. The Lecture was a more casual one with the speaker Craig “Xray” halperin sharing his experience in the industry interleaved with some technical know how about the subject. There was a small demo of ‘Houdini’, a 3d software which provides this feature. It was a little technical, but he made sure that he kept it simple for anyone and everyone to understand. It was nice to get an insight into some things that are used to make the movies we love to watch on the Big Screen.

Craig has worked on some popular movies like Titanic, T2-3D,Armageddon, Hollow Man, Xmen 2 and a lot more. Recently he had worked on Kung Fu Panda at Dreamworks and now is at Image Movers Digital. Craig or Xray as he is called, told us his early days when he started at Digital Domain and got a foot in the door. He walked through his different stints in the industry and shared what he learned along the way. He kept the whole talk really light and interesting.

Normally we don’t get to see what happens behind the scenes and when we watch a movie don’t even realize that how all the magic was done. Making those crowd animations is so crazy. I had never thought that the crowd in the movie Titanic on the docks before the ship leaves might be computer generated.

After the seminar, I showed my recent progress reel to Chand, who is a co-founder of CGTantra. Then Craig too watched it and both of them gave some valuable critiques on my work. Incidentally when I mentioned that last term I was mentored by Joe, Craig was surprised, “Joe Mandia? I know him ! Tell him you met Xray”. Whoa! I was so shocked to meet someone who had worked with my mentor here in Pune.

Here is Craig’s post on his blog about the event: http://blog.agentxray.com/2008/09/28/day-8-pune-india/ He also has a photo of the event and more from his recent visit to India and South-East Asian countries.

Overall this was a fun Seminar and I am looking forward to more such gatherings.