Friday, February 16, 2007

Mega Robot Returns

A very funny li'l short by Kaktus Film. Such a simple, clever concept. And I love the way the animators avoided the I-BIG-RO-BOT-I-MOVE-LIKE-RO-BOT cliché. The movements are more organic than mechanical. Check out that little extra move just when it figures out where the dog is. Brilliant. Add the fact that it appears to be very irritable, and immediately this thing becomes a character. Well done, guys. Oh, and the ending is great too. So unexpected. I laughed so hard.

A few behind-the-scenes images here. I love making-of's. Always interesting to see how other people tackled a problem that you might've handled in a very different way.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

TO DO: Finish typing this senten...

On my harddrive at home I have at the very least 9 project folders of about 40 gigs of unfinished personal projects. I used to think that I have a serious attention disorder, since I've only ever finished 3 personal shorts in my entire animation career (all of which have been in my first 2 years of working, and therefore not fit for viewing these days)

Yes, so sometimes I get interested in a project again, go back, animate a couple more scenes, lose interest, and back into the box it goes. And I have a faint guilty feeling afterwards for pretty much wasting 20 or so hours, but that feeling goes away soon after.

It seems Sean Hayden has the same problem:

"The most enjoyable part of an animation venture is creating the initial idea . I lose interest once I sit down to do it- ( when the hard work starts).

I say this because im currently trying to work on my own film, where inspiration comes and goes. I battle to stop beginning other projects but sometimes I need to just create something - get it out my system - and put it away on the shelf."

Keith Lango also knows how it feels:

"It seems that he, like many creative types, has a kind of weariness for the actual implementation of the cool ideas he cooks up. In his latest post he shares how he keeps that spark alive while not de-railing the current project– Make something new! Just don’t do anything with it for now."


"...like many creative types..." Whe-hey! I'm not alone! I'm not the only one!

Friday, February 09, 2007

I done it in three hours, guv. Honest.

A little something I cooked up last night...empty scenefile to mpeg in just under 3 hours. That includes modelling, rigging, animation and rendering. I'm quite proud of that.

No, it won't win any Oscars (no mocap, see), but that wasn't the point. The exercise was to see how long my attention span is when working on my own project.

Turns out it's about three hours.

Hmm...maybe that's why I lose interest in all my projects so quickly. Hmm...

Thanks to Cubus for hosting this for me.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

I haven't failed, I've found 10 000 ways that don't work.

So after my 2 previous posts, which were uncharacteristically whiny, it's probably time for a happy post. Normal service now resumed.








From Dilbert.com

Monday, February 05, 2007

Mocap killed the animation-star

I was going to write a whole story on the use of motion capture in modern 'animated' films...but then I saw this and this on Mr Keith Lango's website. So I'm not gonna write the same thing again, and he's a more concise thinker than me.

Go...go and read.

Life's a pitch

Creative pitch process ethics

from Biz Community

"One of the most constantly vexing issues to bedevil South Africa's advertising industry is the creative pitch process. The problem is not only the amount of time, effort and money spent by an agency preparing ideas and strategies for these pitches, but also the ethics of advertisers getting all sorts of new ideas from the process."

Here we see some local agencies complaining about their clients making them pitch, and the whole ethics issues surrounding that. Then they turn around and have no problems with making as many production companies and animation studios as possible pitch for them. Oh, the irony.

I'm not gonna say much more about this.