Dan Platt is a conceptual 3D artist who works in traditional sculpture but who also has some mad cg skills to boot. Dan is battletested! He's done work for films like, "The Cave", Disney's "Meet the Robinsons", and "Bolt". His work is nice, clean, balanced, exemplifies good form, is capable of creating a variety of forms and surfaces, and also has a nice storytelling aspect to his work. Many of my students marvel at the level of detail he puts in his pieces.
Paul Debevec is a pioneer in computer animation famous for his eyecatching breakthroughs in technology that were eventually used in films such as the Matrix, Superman Returns and Benjamin Button. In my animation classes, I show his animation called "Parthenon" as a good example of lighting, texturing and how animation is used to educate people in an interesting way. He has inspired me for many years. If you've never seen it before, click here, you'll like it and just maybe, you'll also be inspired too.
In the above lecture, Paul talks about the light array process called Photometrics used to capture realistic detail in a human face. The results, as you can see below are amazing (face only). He also shows how the information can be used with Imagemetrics to create a digital puppet of the actress named "Emily "that produces startling results. The image below says it all. Check out the lecture above and here from one of Computer Animation's greats.
In teaching my website design class for "non-webdesigners", the task of designing a "gallery" is by far the hardest thing to design. In it, artists usually showcase their drawings, paintings, conceptual designs and even photography, that gives the recruiter a better idea of the artist's drawing and painting skills, use of color, composition and design. Here is a collection of free web photo galleries that you can use to spice up your web portfolios.
It is difficult to design because students come with a large array of pieces, and so the student must find a way to narrow down his pieces to only the best, and in some cases, must group them so that a user can navigate through them easily. For example, all of the 3D renders could be grouped together, as well as all of the lifedrawings, paintings, photography, etc...
In the last year of teaching this class, the gallery of choice for many of my students is Lightbox. To make it easier to install this in someone's website, I've created a video tutorial that you can check out, and to see an example of it, click here. This usually eases the burden for the student to learn "code" as the tutorial explains things fairly easily and so far...no complaints. It actually makes me feel great when someone on their own, puts it together and tells me of their success.
But, if you are tired of Lightbox, be sure to check out the Easy Kiss 123 site. In it, you'll find many great examples of free photogalleries that are just plain sweet. But hold your horses....
There is a cost. The only cost to you is the learning curve. You have to spend time reading the instructions to learn the basics of how to put the gallery together. Its well worth the time and energy to find a nice gallery presentation for your precious drawings, paintings, designs and photographs.
If you have a favorite one, please let us know below so that other people can benefit as well. I like the Flash Photo Stack and Autoviewer
On the Animation Mentor - Tips and Tricks Blog, there is a posting about how to prepare for the animation industry. The blog post is informative and covers the following, but if you think about it, the advice crosses many disciplines. Visual Effects and Game Art and Design professionals would benefit from this advice as well. The blogpost includes:
Know the studio and the work they create, so you can tailor your reel.
Avoid putting work in your demo reel other than your own.
Keep in mind that you will be hired during crunchtime - so meet those deadlines.
Check your ego/attitude at the door.
The last one is interesting. Lots has to be said about being humble and open to critique. Having an attitude that prevents this stifles growth, and nobody will want to be with you because you will be deemed hard to work with.
Hey Guys, here's a nice example of character animation. Pay close attention to his moving holds, his use of arcs and variety of timing. All of the these together make for seamless smooth movement as he transitions from one pose to the next. He's also got a kick butt last name. "Slice" it up.
Some more "animation fuel" (Hey! That's not a bad name for a cool animation blog). Paparalla is an animator and visual effects artist for Cacure Studios in Venezuela. Their work is muy bien.
Whatever those guys are drinking down there seems to be working...their animation work is superb. Check out the "Mouse" visual effects piece below as well as the "Making of" clip so you get an idea of the many passes and renders needed to compose the shot.
And the "making of Mouse Cacure"...
And oh yes, their work is also very cute. Check the bird piece below and pay attention to their lighting and texturing. The animation also features nice styling and clever music that I think you'll enjoy. Thanks Trevor for the heads up - this was lots of fun.
And while we are at it, we might as well check out their 2008 Demo Reel.
In this video, we explore gameplay within a simple environment created within the Unity 3D platform, in it, the designer talks about the various components needed to make an interesting game such as pacing, balance, the creation of a challenge and reward system and the amount of time needed to create this simple game. It took him about 4 weeks to make (this is great information if you've never made a game before). If you are interested in the subject and would like to one day create and design your own games, be sure to check out what this video talks about. I think you will find the information to be most beneficial.
Another reason to watch this piece is that our school will soon be switching over from the Unreal Tournament Game Engine, to the Unity 3D game engine. Watching the video will give you an idea of its capabilities. The video is another example of what Unity can do. Be sure to check out the Unity 3D site to get a feel for the variety Unity offers. Its pretty awesome.
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.
The movie "2012", one of the first, main, visual fx loaded, blockbuster films of the season premieres Nov. 2009, that depicts the end of the world. The documentary below highlights the various theories that may cause many of the natural disasters depicted in the film, which in my opinion are artfully done. If you choose to check this movie out, I recommend you view it IMAX.
The producers of Pixar give us a tour of their studio. In this presentation, you'll see lots great concept art that were used during the design process for many of their scenes and characters. If you watch the piece all the way through, you will even take a peek into one of the animation studios, that has a secret passage into a hidden room, where...perhaps lots of inspiration is exchanged.
I often encourage my animation students, on the side, to begin and work on personal projects. Its best if they are simple and short and can be as simple as a compositing exercise, 3 - 5 second character animation, acting or lip sync exercise. Be sure that the exercise is fun for you, because it has to sustain you and so that in the end, your payoff/satisfaction is well worth it.
Once this personal clip is completed. It will stand out as being one of the best pieces in your demo reel/ portfolio. Simply, these pieces will stand out because we can tell that you had fun working on it, and the presentation will be better than anything else because we can sense the level of care you put into the overall display.
I've attached the above clip for inspiration. In a very short time it will give you ideas and concepts to build from, just remember to shoot your own footage. Begin by watching the clip and making note of shots that attract you. Narrow these down to the one or two that would be the easiest for you to create, storyboard it out and get to work. Don't give yourself a time limit (although some might think it may be a good idea, depending on how you work), you don't want it to be stressful - just fun.
Keep those personal projects flying to stay sharp, engaged and to enhance your demo reel.
This week, I saw this and felt that it was one of the most incredible things I have seen in a long time. I am a dude, and don't usually watch the Oprah Show, but if you're like me, your significant other is into Oprah. So, once in a while, you have to watch it. For the most part, her shows are positive and full of great helpful information that even a guy like me would like.
Oprah's season opener featured performances from popular groups, but there was one in particular that I though was very special. During the The Black Eyed Peas performance of the song "I Got a Feelin" there was an incredible Flash Mob performance. For those of you who don't know, a Flash Mob is a large scale choreographed performance involving hundreds, even thousands of people. The cool thing about this Flash Mob, is that I don't think anyone knew about it, including Oprah. When I saw it, I thought it was incredible, the energy was infectious and left me feeling really happy.
If anyone out there was part of that Oprah Flash Mob, and happened to stumble upon this blog, feel free to chime in and let us know what it was like. I'll bet that you'll never forget that day. I wish I was there, but in all honesty, the energy could be felt from far away - it was truly amazing. I could only imagine some of the bystanders who were attended but were not part of the originating group, I'm sure you couldn't help but join in either.
The Flash Mob portion of the clip begins at about :58, and after the performance, you'll see a segment about how the entire stunt was planned, organized and executed. The incredible thing is that the word got out through the use of Facebook and Twitter. Way to go guys on pulling off an incredible memorable event.
The original instance of the Flash Mob can be seen in this clip below, filmed in Antwerp Belgium approaching 11 million hits.
and more recently in Mexico, over 13,000 people perform Michael Jackson's Thriller, I think that's a new Guiness Book World Record.
In my advanced animation classes, as everyone progresses towards the creation of their final demo reel, comes the subject of typography. No, we aren't graphic designers working with typographic layouts on a regular basis, nevertheless the subject is important. Its important because its directly related to marketing, and marketing is what you have to keep in mind when designing your portfolio, website and demo reel. As an animator, you may be called upon to create animated text via CG or After Effects and you definitely have to create animated text to spice up your demo reel.
Your animation demo reel will work fine without animated text, but since you are "the animator", you want to show that you can animate anything. Doing so, shows people that you pay attention to detail, the overall package, and it showcases another marketable skill that Art Directors might want to use.
Naldz Graphics is a site that showcases great examples of integrating CG text in design. When you look at these examples, pay attention to the camera angle, the diagonals create interesting compositions and if you are animator, take it a step further and ask yourself how these designs can be animated. One other benefit in creating text in CG is the ability to create materials, notice how the text in the example I've included has a shiny reflective plastic material. This ability also creates unique textures, gradients and values that unique only to CG.
So if you are a modeler, texturer or animator, use those CG skills to create interesting typographic compositions and spice up your portfolio. Have fun and fire it up!
Rising Sun Pictures is a visual effects company based out of Australia, and for most of you, are pretty familiar with their work, you just haven't heard about them. They've created some pretty impressive effects for some of the top movies which premiered this year such as Wolverine, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Terminator Salvation and Superman Returns. The reel below showcases the work they completed for the last Harry Potter film.
For my animation students, be sure to check the link to get a nice sampling of what's possible with the applications that we are learning. You'll see great examples of animation, compositing, lighting and texturing, motion tracking, digital matte painting, and moving animated textures. The reel is impressive and should get you inspired and pumped up for what we do.
Today, we were visited by former Art Institute of Seattle graduate Dean Zulich. A native of Bosnia and Herzogovina, Dean is a commercial photographer focusing on conceptual fashion, advertisement and celebrity photography and is most famous for his success as the runner up on Vh1 reality television show "The Shot".
In a short amount of time, Dean garnered success from his engaging photography. His compositions and subject matter are interesting and thoughtful, and we were very fortunate to have him share his road to success with us. His talk was quite inspiring.
What struck me about his talk today, was his feeling on the importance of continuing personal projects. Doing this "keeps the fire alive" and its what keeps him going, and he said that, I realized how much I missed that feeling, and will be putting together a personal project soon. Doing personal projects is an easy way to enhance your demo reel and or digital portfolio. Viewers will be able to sense your enjoyment in personal projects and they usually get more attention.
To learn more about Dean, visit his website, http://www.deanzulich.com His website is nice and clean and features his different portfolios (books).
Hey Dean, thanks again for your visit, for sharing and for inspiring. Keep up the outstanding work and best of luck in all you do.
Dan Platt is a conceptual 3D artist who works in traditional sculpture but who also has some mad cg skills to boot. Dan is battletested! He's done work for films like, "The Cave", Disney's "Meet the Robinsons", and "Bolt". His work is nice, clean, balanced, exemplifies good form, is capable of creating a variety of forms and surfaces, and also has a nice storytelling aspect to his work. Many of my students marvel at the level of detail he puts in his pieces.
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