Living Lines Library

Sorry for the delay, started a new job in designing and animating casino games. I will continue to post relative and inspiring posts about animation, concept art, user design and experience on this blog for inspiration. Thanks to all for following.

When you get a chance, check this website out. It features hundreds and hundreds of pencil tests from the animated movies that we love. We found it easy to get lost in the work, its absolutely marvelous. It also features documentaries and production artwork from the last fifty years.

http://livlily.blogspot.com/

All we need to make this better, is a way for Youtube viewers to step an animation so we can view a piece frame by frame. I know there are some plugins that exist, that add the controls via your browswer, but the controls I've seen are inconsistent and don't always appear in the ui.

Definitely check it out.

http://livlily.blogspot.com/

Below is an example from Glen Keane's found on the site.

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Glen Keane - rough penciltest - BEAST from LXP on Vimeo.

Fire It Up! Randolf

Urbance: Directed By: Joel Dos Reis Viegas

Had to post this one. Really nice work. Nice music, style, flare, hip and visual rhythm. Urbance is created by Steambot Studios. Roland, thanks for the heads up! Fire It Up! Randolf

The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1. Animated Movie. Clip

This clips has definitely got the Frank Miller look and feel, but toned down quite a bit to look like a "normal" animated feature.

Rango - End Credits

Once again, another fabulous end credit presentation. Great styling and music. Oh yeah, the movie was also very good...dark, grungy, dirty, cool.

Ryan Woodward: Martha Graham Google Doodle

This short animation caught the attention of many of us this week. Its a small, beautifully executed animation by animator Ryan Woodward.

Thought of You: Ryan Woodward

This animated piece by Ryan Woodward is beautiful, elegant and sophisticated. This was a personal project for him and his process can be viewed on his website here >>

Lifedrawing is a passion of mine, so seeing this done with conte crayon, gesture lines and clear poses, animated in this way is very inspiring.

He also posted a cool "Making Of" featurette on Vimeo for us to learn about the process by which this is done. Nice work Ryan! You got a lot of fans here who appreciate what you created. Keep up the good work.

Randolf

Thought of You - Behind the Scenes Preview - ROUGH CUT from Cambell Christensen on Vimeo.

Dance Central: In Game Cinematic

Finally got a hold of the XBox 360 Kinect with the kids to play Dance Central by Harmonix. The game is pretty darn fun, not to mention its also a great workout. I'm a big fan of the songlist with songs by Lady Gaga, Bel Biv Devoe and Cascada.

The ingame cinematic was pretty cool, and features a hip urban 2D animated style. Welp looks like a have a new label for this blog "ingame cinematics"

Visit the Harmonix website here >>

ILUVUXDESIGN & Yellow Submarine

If you have ever designed your own website, rearranged your livinging room furniture, or lost sleep over the colors of your fonts on your blog, you are, in the most common way, a User Interface / User Experience Designer. If so, this animation is about you.

Animation Peeps, its not always about slick realistic CG renders, as you'll see here sometimes its more important to get a clear interesting message across. The styling is reminiscent of the The Beatles animations in Yellow Submarine, not sure if the message was ever clear in Yellow Submarine, but it sure was a nice trip.

Fire it Up and Enjoy!

Le Petit Nicolas: Cut Paper Animation

This movie intro features animation utilizing cut pieces of paper in a "pop up" book style fashion. Do you think this was done in CG? The animation is cute, clever, and has a nice feel. Just a little somethin somethin to keep you inspired.

Fire it up!

The Golden Rectangle: Donald Duck Style

Design is a very important topic in many of my classes, and eventually we learn, discuss and practice a very important tool/concept to help with our designs, the Golden Rectangle. Established and used by the Greeks and also found in nature, it is an important tool that we can use to help us with our designs to achieve pleasing and comfortable proportions in everything (yes). This is explained quite well by Donald Duck and the Crew.

Enjoy & Fire it Up!

Hey Chris, thanks for the heads up!

Disko Studio

Redbull BC-one re-uploaded from Disko Animation on Vimeo.

Got an email from Ferdi, a 3D illustrator and animator based out of South Africa - Always a pleasure to get notes from abroad. His group is called Disko, he's got a great sense of storytelling, and a unique take on CG that is unique and aesthetically pleasing. I really like the Red Bull BC animations.

Check out his site by clicking this link here >>

Guru Studio: Animation Reel

Guru Studio is an animation firm based out of Toronto Canada. They show a great variety of styles and techniques, some which I have never seen. I'm particularly attracted to their simple designs, where they use color and composition to achieve a wimsical look and feel. Nice work guys. Hopefully their work inspires you and triggers new ideas.

To learn more about them, visit their site below:
http://www.gurustudio.com

Fire it up!

Rogier Wieland: Paper Animation

This is a showreel of great animations by Rogier Wieland made entirely of cut paper. This guy is so crazy in my opinion because of the amount of time it takes to make one piece, but the look and feel of the pieces are outstanding and engaging.

Below is little video about his creative process that I also found incredible. Do you think you would have the patience to create animations like this?

Gobelins School of Animation

Gobelins is a visual arts school based out of Paris France. The animations that are produced from the school are high quality, they show good timing, clever movement, they have a beautiful sense of design and texture and they are also very witty. "So Bon".

It makes me want to go there and to all you animation students out there, I hope these examples inspire you. If you look at the credits, five students work on these.

The animation gallery showcases the best their school of animation has to offer.

We will be watching these pieces below to begin one of my Background Design classes this week. These backgrounds tell a lot about the story and the character. They have a wimsical feel to them, but are so full of depth. This is done through layering, exaggerated angles, atmospheric perspective, handmade textures, sense of light, and in some of them, a nice merging between the 2D and CG elements. The ones below are great examples of this.







And my favorite one...

How to Break Into the Animation Industry

Allow me to add some gasoline to your "animation fire". Clay Kaytis, blog host of the Animation Podcast, interviews professional animators working in the field and posts these interviews on his blog. His latest podcast is going to be of some interest to you if you are interested in breaking into the animation industry. In it, he interviews 4 animators currently working in industry at Disney, and they share many great tidbits of advice to help you improve and break into the animation industry.

Collectively, each animator talks about the following:

• Going to college to study animation.
• Continuing the practice of drawing.
• How to tailor your portfolio?
• Creating a voice and versatility in your work?
• Importance of figure and gesture drawing?
• Getting feedback on your work.
• What is it like working in an animation studio...good and bad.
• Importance of having "the drive".
• Starting out, aiming high.
• Having fun.
• Getting out of a creative or professional rut.
• The importance of working on your own projects...

Great advice! Are we crazy to want to be part of this industry? I think so.

The interview can be heard on the Animationmentor.com site, a great resource for learning how to animate from professionals in the industry.

Hopefully, these interviews inspire you. Keep drawing, keep painting and keep animating.

Fire it up!

- Randolf

VJ Robson Victor: Demo Reel

One in a while, I'll browse through various video sites to check out the latest and greatest of demo reels. This one, by VJ Robson caught my eye initially because of the Wolverine image before it plays.

What a nice surprise. When I saw his reel, I was immediately impressed. He's got a good sense of design, color, layout and knows how to animate elements in a way that is engaging. He's got great timing and shows a lot of variety in his work. I think VJ has been around. The students in my classes are often very expert in drawing, painting and are very good at creating vector style graphics, but need to see more examples of how movement can make their pieces better. This demo reel is a great example of that and its a trait that comes with years of observation, practice and taking risks.

Hey VJ, well done. Thanks for inspiring us. If you happen to see this post, feel free to post a response and by all means, keep up the awesomeness!

Fire it up!

Randolf

Transformers Franchise History

Here's a little documentary that we stumbled upon about the Transformers franchise. With the premiere of Transformers 2 fast approaching we thought a little history lesson would wet your appetite. For those of you who remember the very time the toys came out, you would have to agree that these were the greatest baby sitters, keeping all of us out of trouble, but also away from "the girls", which is okay, its just that some of us haven't grown out of the toys yet.

This documentary features its Japanese origins, the first Transformers toy commercial premiere, information about the different generations (Transformers Generation I and II), clips from the various animated series (Dinobots), and its transition into the 2007 live action piece. Its a nice little hit that's well worth checking out.

My favorite part of this clip, was seeing Soundwave. The cool "Walkman" style Decepticon who had the two cassette tapes that would launch and transform into a Buzzsaw and Ravage. I'll have to admit that I lost interest after the Dinobots, but in the film, we can see how the remnants of those types of ideas play a huge role in giving the robots variety.

Check out the film when it comes out.

See you at the concession stand.

Fire it up!

"GI Joe Resolute"

In order to fan of the flames of the of the new GI Joe Movie, be sure to check out "GI Joe Resolute". It was created in the anime style and premiered on the Cartoon Network's Adultswim. Here, you will see an awesome piece of work of one of our favorite characters, Snake Eyes. This is so cool in fact, that I propose they make an entire movie on this guy he's so cool. If you were a big fan of the weekday afternoon showings of the GI Joe animations on TV when you were a kid, you probably remembered that nobody every died. When planes got shot, everybody parachuted down. We appreciate the concern. In these clips however, don't expect any parachutes, because its pretty violent and, needless to say, well done.

And...for those of us who are aware, none would be complete without a fight against Stormshadow. If you are not up to date on the backstory between these guys, never fear, this second clip below will fill you in just fine. I've included both of these clips here for our viewing pleasure and inspiration, pay attention to the timing and compositions...enjoy and fire it up!

The Great Disney Multiplane Camera

The multiplane camera was invented by Walt Disney that enabled a greater sense of visual depth for flat two dimensional animations. The technique is still used today, but with greater efficiency and ease of control. You'll see it many times in animations done in Toon Boom, After Effects and Flash. Many of my animation students were trying to create this effect without realizing that it was done before. If you are interested in adding more dimension to your animations, check out this presentation as explained by the master himself.

Fire it up and enjoy.

Randolf

Kung Fu Panda: Opening Sequence

Kung Fu Panda is one of my favorite animated features. The story was great, I laughed many times while watching (Thanks Jack Black), and the animation was impressive. I could only imagine trying animate the timing for many of the fighting sequences of some of the characters, from what I hear, I heard that was the most challenging. Well done. The part that caught my attention however, was the opening sequence which was primarily 2D animation. The look and feel of this portion of the film was unique, expressive, wimsical in nature and simply awesome.

I've hunted for a clip that I can post on my blog and found one on Google Video. The animated intro usually comes up in my animation classes and so posting it here would serve as future reference. To view this clip, click any of the pictures or the link here.

Enjoy and learn grasshoppers!