Another class completed

Its break time! A time to relax from study after a term full of acting in animation. Yesterday was the last day on AM Fall Term 2008 and I think I am already missing AM for the holidays.
After the pantomime assignment in this term we had to animate a dialog. Since this was an introduction to dialog, we were not supposed to animate the facial controls and so it showed how it is challenging to show the acting and emotions through the whole body even without facial expressions. Only the jaw and eyes could be animated, so I wanted to take full advantage of it to push the emotion displayed through his body.

Here is the shot. Please Note that it is still a work in progress. In the next term I will be working on the facial controls and lip-sync and make it final. The "final" in the video below indicates the final assignment for the term.



Ah! Acting is SO difficult even though you know its not a theater stage that you are presenting it on. I like to see how we unknowingly do some things in front of the camera which we might not have imagined if we were bringing it all only from our memory or imagination. This is the video reference I settled on before going into animating it.



I hope to get the best out of this shot once Class 4 starts, for now its break time ! :)
- Chai'

For Sock's Sake

This is a Animated short made with stop-motion by exchange students of Le Gobelins (France) and CalArts. The story is fun and it is amazing how anything can be made into a character ! This film is an example of how the story can be understood without any dialog but just sounds. Even watching it without the sound is still very readable. One of the students of Gobelins went over to Pixar after this film.

Gym & Body Mechanics

I recently joined a gym after a quite some years. Getting fit was my my reason of joining in like for most of us. I am enjoying it, but at the same time I realised I had joined a class of studying body mechanics for free along with it ! :)



If you keep your eyes open to what all action is happening around, you will understand how the weight, balance, muscle contraction, relaxation and a lot more things that happen in our body. There are mirrors all around, so you can see how your body behaves when you do some physical activity like pulling, pushing, lifting, holding, stretching and so much more.
Even observing without the mirrors in a great way to understand how parts of your body are affected when you do some activity. This way I am gathering a lot of raw information in my brain, which some day might come out in my animation, hopefully making it more believable and interesting.

So, if you fellow Animators are thinking about having some exercise, go join some gym :)

BOLT

My current mentor Mike Belzer has recently finished working Disney's new movie 'Bolt' coming out this Month. This is a story of a dog 'Bolt' who is the star of a kick-ass TV show in which he plays a dog with super human dog abilities. What happens when he gets lost in the real world thinking he is really a 'Super' ?

I saw the trailers and the chase sequence that is released is mind-blowing. Its so well crafted and created that it leaves anyone who watches it in a sense of amazement.

Click here for the trailers in iPod to HD resolution.

Pixar's UP Trailer

The Trailer for Pixar's UPcoming movie "UP" directed by Pete Docter is now online



No doubt, this will be an amazing story. The characters seem fun. Observe the 'Mr. Fredrikson' (the old man) character design. Its so squarish - the hands, the head. Seems a little different from the designs we have generally seen in recent Pixar movies.
Now hoping this one releases in India very soon after the US release.

Pantomime

Last few weeks I have been working on this Pantomime test at AM. For this assignment we have to plan a shot with clear change of beats in the animation, also being pantomime, all the acting has to be conveyed through actions and the body.
I enjoyed doing this one a lot right from the planning and video reference to the final polish.
Here is my final test -




Now over to some Dialog Animation :)

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