Animation with a moustache

The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!

Monthly Archive: December 2009

FX and Mat 0

Animation

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FX and Mat

fxandmat

fxandmat


I have spoken about those guys some time ago and browsing the net I realised they have a blog. I am not entirely sure who those guys are but they seem to be linked to the great british production company Nexus. Nexus is also a studio I have been admiring since the days of Satoshi Tomioka and his surreal short films like Justice Runners.

After the great Royal Bank of Canada advert, FX and Mat have created a very nice shortfilm for the next olympic games of 2010 and sharing with us some behind the scenes. Nice! {james I saw you ;-)}

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6718629[/vimeo]

Yep it is possible to animate in Max and rendering has never been an issue:

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6718548[/vimeo]

http://fxandmat.blogspot.com/

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/1276483[/vimeo]

“The Passenger” 0

Animation

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“The Passenger”

The Passenger

The Passenger

During an animation lunch, one of my co-workers told me about a crazy Australian video game developer who spent 8 years making a 7 minutes shortfilm from animatic to rigging, animation, rendering, compositing, music scoring and music FX!!!

[…] (more…)

Weight shift 2

Animation / Animation Mentor / Education

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Weight shift

The principles of animation have been laid down by Disney Animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in the “Illusion of life ” in 1981.

Some more concepts have been added over the years and one of the most important addition, or clarification, is the concept of “weight shift”.

When standing straight, our weight is equally distributed over both legs, so to be able to lift up one leg, we need to transfer that weight in the opposite direction of the leg being lifted up.

If a character were to lift up his left leg and did so without shifting his weight from the centre to the right, he would immediately fall to the left as 50% of his weight wouldn’t be supported by his left leg anymore.

Animation is about stylised motion but no matter what style of animation you are going for,
weight shift is a concept you should always keep in mind when animating a character lifting up one of his legs. Successful weight shift is what separate the boys from the men!

Here are several examples for you, a good one I just made in Maya using the great Animation Mentor rig Ballie and a very average one that is still on my showreel 🙂 {examples coming soon}

{my reel, bottles lifting up his leg}

Ballie Step to side

Kyle Balda has a great weight shift demonstration on the trailer for his Masterclass .

kyle

http://www.kylebalda.com/

Related post:
28 principles of animation

“Speaking of animation” blog 1

Animation

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“Speaking of animation” blog

Speaking of animation

Speaking of animation

After Pixar and the Splinedoctors, Disney and the Animation Podcast, Dreamworks has now http://www.speakingofanimation.com/ a blog managed by a bunch of animators working mainly at the house of Shrek and they have started with a bang! The website is really really professional and was very well thought. They also started with a great interview of an ex Disney 2d animator: Ted Ty. I didn’t know him before but he definitely has a lot of great things to say!

Check it out and bookmark the website immediately, hopefully a lot of similar interview will follow.

http://www.speakingofanimation.com/

Ted Ty interview

Simplification in animation 4

Animation

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Simplification in animation

I wanted to post this for a bit but never found the time until today.

One very important concept in animation is “Simplification”. Looking at shots like the following extract from Pixar’s “Presto”, you will realise that animation is not about making hyper realistic motion but rather “to paint it”, with broad brush strokes.

Instead of painfully detailing how Presto unlocks Alec’s cage, the animator only “evokes” the motion of opening the closing mechanism.