Friday, July 29, 2011

11secondclub Interview: Jamie Giger, Blue Sky Studios Animator


Head over to the 11secondclub blog and read through the interview with Jamie Giger! Great insight into his reel, which got him a job at Blue Sky Studios. Thanks Romit for the tip!

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Fall 2011 Spungella Workshops sign-ups


The Summer Workshops are coming to an end and Fall is just around the corner! If you're interested, sign up for the On-site or Online Workshops!

To learn more about it, read the FAQs:

- On-Site Workshop FAQ
- Online Workshop FAQ

If you have questions that are not covered in the FAQs, just shoot me an email!

The On-site Workshop starts Monday, September 5th. Both Monday and Thursday are available. You can choose between the two days. How many spots are left can be seen here.

The Online Workshop starts Monday, August 29th. You can see how many spots are left here.

On-site Workshops are $800 for 16 weeks, one session a week plus email feedback.

Online Workshops are $500 for 16 weeks, with unlimited email feedback.

That's about it! See you soon!

Cheers
JD

Thursday, July 21, 2011

100 Frame Animation Contest - Summer 2011

Contest is CLOSED. Thanks for all the entries!
____________________________________

Topic is: MAGIC

___________________________


Start: Monday, August 1st, 9:00 am
End: Monday, August 8th, 9:00 am

San Francisco, USA, Timezone!

100 frames, no more, no less. Adding sound is okay. Any rig is fine. Any style is fine. 1st place winner gets any $50 gift from Amazon.com (Amazon must be able to ship to your address).

Email me your quicktime movie or a link to youtube/vimeo/etc. once you're done.


________________________________________


ALRIGHT! Anybody up for another 100 frame animation contest? A few workshop people have asked about it, so I wanted to ask everybody on the intertubes about it as well. It would be cool to get at least 10 people who are committed to doing it.

We could start in a week, so leave a comment and mention a theme you'd like to use. Use the contest tag for prior examples and inspiration.

As a reminder:

- the shot has to be 100 frames long (not shorter, not longer)
- you can use sound if you want to
- you have one week to finish it
- winner gets a $50 Amazon prize (make sure that Amazon ships to where you live - otherwise I can't send you want you want!)

Who's in?

Kaeloo

More about it at drorlazar. Thanks Le Roy for the tip!

Kaeloo - Prince charming - Si on jouait au Prince charmant... from Cube Creative on Vimeo.

The Acting Blog

I found this Acting blog via @animpodcast and it's quite interesting.

Darkstalkers and the Twelve Principles of Animation


There's a really cool post by Richmond Chaisiri outlining the animation principles using the Darkstalkers game. What's cool about it is that he uses animated gifs from different fight elements to illustrate his points. I found this via Eric Williams' Pushing Buttons... blog, specifically the Tidbits posts, which has a ton of awesome links, like the Street Fighter Third Strike Sprite Animation Library!!

Never give up

I found this thread at conceptart.org via the 11secondclub and it's so inspiring!

I recommend you check out the whole thread, but basically it shows you how this artist's skill set evolved over time from:



to work like this:


There's a lot more to see and it's really inspiring to see his journey as he keeps practicing, learning and improving.

Toilet Please - 11secondclub May Winner - Workflow and Interivew


Another great workflow breakdown post, this time for Arthurnal's 11secondclub winning entry, which you can see here. The interview and breakdown post is here. It's cool to see how he blocked out the shot with a cube for the character first.

The Animator Prepares: Unique Workflow to Make It Magical


Super cool breakdown for Peter Nagy's 11secondclub entry. Head over to youanimator.com for an interview with Peter about this shot.

Framepool - Motion Content


Great site for reference, go check it out! usa1.framepool.com

How to Cheat in Maya 2012: Tools and Techniques for Character Animation


How to cheat in Maya 2010 was a great book and totally tailored towards animators. Now there is going to be a 2012 book, with the addition of Kenny Roy, which can only be awesome! If you head over to howtocheatinmaya.com you can watch tutorial clips and download maya files regarding animation principles down to facial animation, polishing, etc. It's absolutely great and I highly recommend checking it out!

Thanks Franck for the tip!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Your Basic Cable Weatherman

Spaceman George

Looks great! Nice work Jim!

Posts translated into Italian

Eleonora Tiberi has a great site in Italian called animatorspot.com and on it you will find posts from Spungella or Academyanimation translated into Italian!

The first one is "The Keys to Getting a Job by Pamela K. Thompson" and more are to follow. I will update posts and notify readers here.

Thanks Eleonora for doing that!

So head over there for the translated post!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Monday, July 11, 2011

Les chiens isolés

"Isolated Dogs" (Les chiens isolés) is very cool, I love the tone and atmosphere and hey, you could have made it live-action, but why not animated?

New Adventures of Tintin Trailer

Still some creepy moments, but it's starting to look very entertaining. Love the "Excellent!" moment around 1:43. :)



- found it @ firstshowing

Friday, July 8, 2011

Follow the Sun!

Very innocent at the beginning and then turns into awesomeness closer to the 2min mark. Found via @halhickel

MK12 | Follow the Sun | 2011 from MK12 on Vimeo.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Friday, July 1, 2011

A week in Crunch Part 1 by Brendan Body



If you want to get a glimpse of what crunch time is like, speed over to Brendan Body's blog and read the first part of "A week in crunch".

It's super detailed with sketches and blocking playblasts and I highly recommend that you check it out. It's one of those posts that I will never write, since I'm not allowed to post about any of our material, let alone non-rendered material, unless it's out there in a trailer. But as I was reading the post I couldn't stop nodding and agreeing. It's a really cool insight into the process that goes beyond the setting-keys part, because it talks about the complexities of getting a shot assigned within a company and what that really means.

Head over there!

UK Trailer for Studio Ghibli's 'Arrietty'