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What is AAU?

Posted on July 23, 2008  | 6 Comments
Filed under Animation

Norman rig

Norman rig

We normally refer to AAU when we talk about the Pixar Character animation class from AAU. You probably know them through the rig above, Norman or “the virgin voyage” or “Creampuff”. The Pixar class doesn’t exist anymore as most Pixar animator/teacher are now teaching in other school or working on personal projects.

Check the following links to see how good the work was .

http://splinedoctors.com/stuff/student_work/
http://www.jeandenis.net/Animation.htm
http://erikleeanimation.com/animation.html
http://www.atsushikojima.com/
http://www.imjuliechoi.com/3dani_frame.html
Mark Harris
http://www.sangwoolee.com/ani.htm
actually all the links from Leif website
http://www.leifjeffers.com/animation.htm
Jean Denis teaching website Spungella and his previous Academy animation blog
Guilherme Jacinto
Aaron Koressel

Uta Hagen, acting class

Posted on July 23, 2008  | 3 Comments
Filed under Acting

Last year my ex girlfriend introduced me to the work of Uta Hagen.

I won’t go into much length about who she is tonight and will only recommend the purchase of her DVD “Acting class” and her book “Respect for acting”, both available at Amazon

Watching her videos, the lecture with Doug Sweetland we had at Animation Mentor finally made sense, especially the concept of Endowment.

Here is an extract:

and are some exercises I just found:
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~thea301/Rigdon/Uta_Hagen.htm

Beautiful, look what I found too!
http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2006/05/08/respect_for_act.php

Paul Ekman

Posted on July 23, 2008  | 1 Comment
Filed under Acting, Animation

Ed Hooks and Andrew Gordon kept referring to Paul Ekman and his concept of micro expressions, here are few video as an introduction:

and something a bit more entertaining, “Why we lie”:

Lines and colours

Posted on July 23, 2008  | 1 Comment
Filed under Miscellaneous

For the past few years, I have noticed a shift in my interests. In the past, I used to spend a lot of time reading technical books or browsing websites dealing with the technics behind digital art but for the past few years I have shifted my interest from CG to the real stuff.

“Lines and colors” is one of those websites I discovered lately. As the author puts it: “lines and colors is a blog about drawing, sketching, painting, comics, (…) and anything else I find visually interesting. If it has lines and/or colors, it’s fair game.”

What I like about this blog is that you can easily select your favourite mediums in the category section on the right and browse hundreds of post about pastel, ink, watercolours…

Happy reading!

“The human animal”

Posted on July 22, 2008  | 2 Comments
Filed under Acting, Animation

Desmond Morris is regularly referred by top character animator for his zoology studies applied to the human: “Manwatching” as he called his 1977 book.

He wrote few book but as a start you could already check his first video from a series of 6 called “the language of the body”. Consider yourself lucky I think they are all available on Google video.

The first one is probably the most interesting as he quickly goes through a classification of gestures.

If you want to know more about the man. Check that fascinating 58 minutes video about his life.

Upgraded to WordPress 2.6

Posted on July 22, 2008  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Miscellaneous

After few days of struggle with Media Temple, I finally managed to update my blog to WordPress 2.6.

For the past few month my blog suffered from invisible HTML injections advertising Viagra and other stuff and I couldn't upload any pictures anymore.

The update went fairly smoothly. My category names were gone but luckily they were still existent with an invisible name in the database. I had an old page still open and I could give update the names.

I am not too excited about the way the pictures are handled and I haven't been able to upload any so far.

Anyway everything seems to be find and I should be able to embed videos now.