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939 topics in this forum
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http://www.photoshoproadmap.com/Photoshop-...nd-backgrounds/
Last reply by johnl3d, -
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Disclaimer: I have not yet purchased any of Scott Petersen's products so therefore cannot personally vouch for their thoroughness or quality. Scott T. Petersen has been an animator, director and teacher for quite awhile. Here's his basic bio: For those that tend toward a traditional hand drawn approach to animation you may find his current DVDs of interest. At this time he has three available: 1. Animation and Drawing: The Essential Basics 2. Lesson 2: The Power of Anticipation (Umm... no direct link... so see the preview below) 3. Dynamic Posing for Gesture Drawing h7HcAsuYl9o Here's a related video on anticipation that…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I know we have a number of self-employed freelance artists here and people with "day jobs" that have inadequate or over-expensive health insurance. The ACA should be a dramatic improvement in that situation. Forget the hysteria you've seen on cable TV, here is a low-drama explanation of what to expect and what to do. The Uninsured Musician’s Guide to The Affordable Care Act If you want coverage to start on Jan 1 you need to get enrolled by Dec 15. The actual Healthcare.gov website that handles enrollment on the internet seems to be a work-in-progress still. I'd say wait a couple weeks on it. People do report that enrolling by phone or paper form is…
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Good Taste Makes 'Bad Taste' is a documentary on Peter Jackson's earliest work before his rise to fame with 'Lord of the Rings' and 'Hobbit'. It's easy to image that big time film directors appear fully formed but the truth is much more educational. Several videos chronicling Peter Jackson's early effort to learn filmmaking and special effects are available online and should encourage everyone that they can be creative filmmakers and animators too. Of particular interest to many here will be Peter's innovation and work in stopmotion and innovation when trying to produce quality results on little to no budget. QcxMUZjaT4s cK-q6IJ-qo0 …
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Here's something to put on your radar. Not long ago I said, "The time is coming and now is that rendering (as we know it) will be obsolete." or something to that effect. This site is an example of the moving in that direction. Although this is not a renderer as we know it the site does purport to encode media with a hands off approach. What does that mean to you? If you've already rendered a file and need it converted to another format you don't have to spend time rerendering or searching for proper programs and codecs if you can drag and drop the file and get the conversion done while you do other (more important) work. Concerns about security? …
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Here's a really quick tip (inspired by an excerpt from the book 'Professional Storyboarding' by Sergio Paez and Anson Jew) Change in size The underlying thought being that objects that do not change size on a 2D screen are static, unmoving and suggest the scene has little or no depth. Changing shapes is a fundamental of animation. When analyzing animation that appeals to you pick a shape on the screen and follow it... (a nose, a mouth, a hand... pick something. Anything!) How does it change position? How does it change shape? How does it suggest motion and depth in a scene? If change of shapes is so important in animation what does that say abou…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Sad news for animation fans and especially for those that followed his blog (splog). Michael Sporn died on 19 Jan after a three year battle with pancreatic cancer. Michael Barrier has a bio up on his career on his blog. http://michaelbarrier.com/Home%20Page/What...elsporn19462014 It isn't clear what will be done with his blog and it hasn't been online for some time. Michael had amassed a considerable amount of history and commentary on animation that was greatly appreciated by followers of animation.
Last reply by Rodney, -
If anyone is interested, I'm currently Beta testing an online tool called RGBnotes. Simon recently posted a refernence video of a weight lifter that would be great for testing the RGBnotes annotation and onionskinning modes. So I might use that video for the purpose of sharing RGBnotes with folks here on the forum. (To join the Beta, projects are simply shared with others via an email) The program is very basic....very basic... at this point but the creators hope to make it a very useful collaborative tool and have started adding features. At any rate, during the beta period the way to get other people into the program is to share a project with someone vi…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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While I'm in the mood, I'm looking for some real projects to model (characters or soft body - not hard surface). Not talking designing the characters - if you have model sheets or well drawn concept images - hey I'm looking for something to do (free of charge). I need to hone my skills. Cheers
Last reply by higginsdj, -
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Disclaimer: I haven't tried this out yet but spotted it and wanted to see if anyone had given it a shot. Anyone? http://www.greentoken.de/onlineconv/ Obviously when you upload a model you have shared it with the server. If the model you want to convert is precious to you and you don't want it out there then don't use these types of converters. Here's the basic info (from the website): If enough people upload .MDL files (which will fail to convert) maybe they'll write a converter for A:M model files. One can dream. The author is a/the developer behind the Open Asset Import Library (Assimp) and associated viewer (C++ etc.)…
Last reply by Rodney, -
Tiny Nomad
by Rodney- 0 replies
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My kind of short film... [vimeo]93537717[/vimeo] Direct Link to Vimeo video This is Toniko Pantoja’s fourth year project at Cal Arts. See more via Toniko's blog. His first year film is impressive as well: Link
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I ran across this short video and thought... that sure looks like it was designed as a showcase for a renderer... and sure enough it is. What I didn't guess is that the renderer is open source with an MIT license. The short is... very short so check it out: [vimeo]92172277[/vimeo] Direct Link The appleseed renderer is currently in Alpha testing: http://appleseedhq.net/
Last reply by Rodney, -
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This is a Star Wars fan film put together by two school mates over the period of six years. The film is in french with subtitles and contains some harsh language not usually seen in Star Wars films. hChZObLRPRc Of interest, there are hundreds of stormtroopers in the film but no one wore a stormtrooper costume. All appearances where 3D models animated and composited into the film. There are several making of videos that are well worth reviewing as well. Here's their website that has links to several: http://1k0.blogspot.fr/2014/03/versus-twts-making-of.html Here's one thatperhaps outlines the effects breakdowns best: CG4AV5UIk…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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For those that might have wondered what legendary Disney animator Glen Keane has been up to since departing Disney, a theatrical release of the immersive application was revealed at Google I/O. Glen was challenged to create a follow up to the very popular and innovative 360 immersive entertainment 'Windy Day' and the result was 'Duet'. The part on 'Duet' to include some technological behind the scenes work as well as the short itself is at the end of this youtube video. Other releases of just the short itself are beginning to appear. As the 'rendering engine' Glen animated at 60 frames per second in order to create the animation for the application. cV8JDSO1…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I'm a bit behind the times, but I viewed Harlock Space Pirate(2013 cg version) for the first time a few nights ago. The texturing details jumped out at me so strong. If you like CG texturing and lighting, this film is worth a view. The characters faces do however look generically anime. It seems like they all use the same head model as the other CG Anime films. But those are even well done. I rather enjoyed the film and found myself drawn to the details of the texture details in both the characters and props. It was obviously a motion capture driven project for both facial and body animation, but it was very well done. William
Last reply by detbear, -
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CGTarian is yet another online school that has offered a wide range of courses. I'm not sure if we've discussed those before. Recently CGTarian launched out on an updated path with new instructors and few newer approaches. I note that JP Sans (highly active in the Animschool realm is an instructor*) and a focus is said to be that individual courses can be taken without signing on for the longer term. A little about CGTarian (from their website): The price of admission is still high for attending online classes but as long as the value is also then taking a course may be well worth the effort. As always, my suggestion would be to sample the lessons ava…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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http://tandf.msgfocus.com/q/16vqEHslJb5/wv This was posted on facebook by animation magazine
Last reply by johnl3d, -
SyncSketch
by Rodney- 0 replies
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We are seeing more and more of these type of applications... a definite trend in collaborative software. While useful and interesting once online sketching is ubiquitous I imagine many of these application will either fade from existence or be assimilated into other products. I fully expect Youtube and other video services to move in that direction as well. But... in the meantime these application are available and can help bring collaborative projects to life. Like several similar offerings SyncSketch provides online annotation of video uploaded to the cloud. Sharing a link with someone else allows you to then share that information with others. Here are a fe…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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From the Hollywood Reporter... I presume there's some sort of signal light they shine on the clouds to call an emergency board meeting.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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This Saturday legendary Disney animator Andreas Deja will be conducting a brief Master Lecture online at Virtual Animators. The 1 hour limitation suggests it'll be a bit brief to be much more than a survey/overview but at $25 I'd say it will be well worth the money and knowing how Andreas enjoys teaching I'm sure there will be many learning opportunities too. He has stated his plans to conduct a demonstration. There is limit seating for online attendance so if you are interested it is best to sign up sooner than later. http://www.virtualanimators.com/index.php/workshops Saturday, Oct 11, 11AM PTD And whether you attend or not... don't forget to kee…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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This is fairly self explanatory. Folks have long desired to be able to make sense of audio waveforms...
Last reply by Rodney, -
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from the Too Many Times to the Well department... 'Toy Story 4' coming from Pixar in June 2017
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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How is it that no one noticed this before? Escher’s impossible stairs inspired by high school stairwell
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Source: Numberphile I've always like Tony DeRose and here he discusses the process of subdivision, averaging and such that they've used in computer animation. At the end he discusses the weighting that allows for smooth curvature by identifying the limit that can be used in smoothing that just happens to be an equivalent to smoothing to infinity. There is to be a follow up video but I don't think it's been posted yet.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Here's an interesting (hand drawn) flour sack animation by Ron Zorman. The aspect I like best is perhaps the transitions of weight throughout with the flour sack interacting with those various objects. Not that it's high-falutin' awesome or anything but that it's subtle-like. There are a few inconsistencies (the typical continuity problems that exist in most stories) such as when flour sack feels obvious pain in his foot during one sequence but is oblivious to that pain later (when we are set to anticipate it). Ron Zorman is a character animator on Ren and Stimpy and many Pixar movies.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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The folks over at 'Taught by a Pro' have a new video lesson by Reuben Aquino that focuses on use of Center of Gravity in animation. At $10 I'd say it's well worth the prince of admission. http://taughtbyapro.com/course/animation-fundamentals-center-gravity/ Some of his credits include: “Mickey’s Christmas Carol” 1982 (clean-up inbetweener) “Black Cauldron” 1985 (animator) “Great Mouse Detective” 1986 (animator) “Oilspot & Lipstick” 1987 (CG short, animator) “Oliver & Company” 1988 (supervising animator, worked mostly on Francis the Bulldog) “The Little Mermaid” (1989; supervising animator, Ursula the Seawitch) “Rescuers Down Under” (1990; supervising ani…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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For those of you who got new portable gadgets, to run A:M on perhaps, here is the current best practices for maximizing your battery's lifespan. It's addressed to smartphone users but all Lithium-Ion batteries should benefit from this... How To Take Care of Your Smartphone Battery the Right Way
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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Last reply by johnl3d, -
tiny utility for ImageMagick users (Convert PNG sequence to Gif animation w/ transparency)
by Rodney- 0 replies
- 519 views
For PC users... If you use ImageMagick (or have it installed on your system) I created a little utility program to convert a directory full of PNG images into a GIF animation. It's pretty no frills but has the following features: - Converts a directory of PNG images into a GIF animation - Preserves transparency (most gif converters do not) - Works if setup properly from the Tools/Customize menu in A:M (so converting renders from A:M to gif is a quick process). - Allows user to enter a name for the converted gif animation (pressing the enter key results in only the date/time stamp being retained as filename) -- If entered, the name will be added in front of …
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Video Blocks has been around for awhile... long enough to spam my email account for quite awhile. I'm not sure how this fits... but for those who might make a few pennies on creative works it might be worth a look... or at least pay for the video blocks subscription if you have one of those? Video Blocks' Members Only Marketplace let's creators retain 100% of the fees brought in from those who purchase their content. They can do this because their primary source of income isn't from the content itself but from the subscriptions they sell that let's others access the content. While I can't speak to the amount of money this might generate (it could easily be nothi…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I invite our numerous graphic art talented forum members to submit design concepts for a medal that would be awarded to the winner of image contests. Don't post any proposals here, contact me privately for the particular design considerations.
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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On another forum someone asked how to "study" a shot Here was my response... At AnimationMentor they told us it's better to study live action shots than to study animated shots. You don't want to be re-creating other animators' mannerisms if you can help it. None-the-less there are some things you can ask yourself about any shot, live or animated... -What is the goal of the character? What are you seeing getting done that advances the story? -How does the character visibly change to show thought or action? -What are the main poses and changes of appearance the character goes through to show you what he is thinking or doing? When a character comes to a hol…
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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For any of you Android phone users. from NPR... Major Flaw In Android Phones Would Let Hackers In With Just A Text
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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You are now free to sing "Happy Birthday" and use it in your movies without paying royalties. The rigorously enforced copyright, which all the facts indicated was invalid, has been declared invalid by a Federal Court. This one has actually been all they way to the Supreme Court before with a win for the copyright claimants, but now that is over... for now. ‘Happy Birthday to You’ copyright thrown outand ‘Happy Birthday’ Copyright Invalidated by Judgealso... Old Colbert Report on "Happy Birthday"
Last reply by robcat2075, -
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If you aren't following the Animated Spirit blog... you might want to add it to your list of resources. There have been quite a few useful and interesting posts there since James Chiang first launched the blog back in June. James is a 17 year veteran of animation. In the latest post James analyses a shot from Pixar's 'Ratatouille' where he delves into how the audience is directed right to the place you want them as well as what that means relative to characters /elements in the shot. There's too much to summarize here so go see for yourself. Amongst other topics James emphasizes that "Forces begin internally" and that "Understanding forces is the key to belie…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Here's a brief but good article from the Animated Spirit Blog: http://www.animatedspirit.com/the-five-phases-of-work/ Overview: Phase One: Beginnings Phase Two: Preparation and Planning Phase Three: Doing the work Phase Four: Struggle Phase Five: Completion This process is not unlike any good story-telling worth being told. I can easily see overlap between the phases that suggests similarity between the three (and often four) act structures of theater/film production. And (because things in collections of 5s seem to be important) don't forget to read James Chiang's five part review of the book 'Five Cs of Cinematography'. It's very well worth th…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Bottom line up front: Everyone needs some type of video capture software. There are a lot of screen capture programs and utilities out there and each one has it'd pros and cons. There are so many in fact that I've debated running something of a comparison in order to highlight some of the options. But... since such a comparison will take considerable time and a lot of information is already available via a quick google... for now I'll just point to yet another of the options. Atomi Active Presenter is a program that I don't recall highlighting and it is one of the more powerful ones out there because in addition to screen/video capture it also has some basic vi…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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This may be of interest to those who need more realistic characters... of a variety of body types. It was previously reported that Adobe had acquired Maximo and the latest news shows plans moving ahead to provide Fuse software with Adobe CC. Fuse is a bipedal set of tools used with Maximo (and other software) used to create characters. It's similar in many ways to MakeHuman and other software. For geometry the characters can be exported as OBJ. For animation the preferred format is FBX. In something that reminds me much of Hash Inc's earlier ground work with segmented models, the highlights of Fuse are the quick modification of modular characters (those …
Last reply by Rodney, -
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For those of you wanting to move your A:M work into the communal online world and perhaps eventually make a few $ in the process here's a platform that is in early stage of fielding and yet considerably mature underneath the hood. https://www.otakhi.com/pages/overview Here's a current look at the repository: https://www.otakhi.com/pages/home.php This would be for those of you that like to use code as a key component is three.js (javascript) but the platform states that writing javascript is "purely optional**" as the modular approach is designed to be drag and drop. My guess would be that a trip through a program such as Blender would be required to get y…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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http://monocle.com/film/culture/new-generation-animators/
Last reply by Tore, -
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While cleaning out the storage are of the theater room, I found an old PC. Not being sure about the PC, I placed a monitor and power cable on it and started it up. It is an XP box and much to my suprise I found several acts and scenes from TWO. After investigating the machine it is one that I set up for Steve Sappington to use Web Render on. It was fun seeing some of the TWO files. Steve
Last reply by Shelton, -
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*Some corrections updates have been applied to this topic since first posting* This is kind of a 'yikes' for me... I've reported on the project management solution known as 'Tactic' by Southpaw Technologies and even explored it a little as I thought it was well worth looking into. In recent times Southpaw had been pushing a tailor made VFX setup of Tactic designed with filmmaking in mind. The 'yikes' of this post is that I just saw the news that Toonboom Animation Inc. has purchased Southpaw** and is rolling out their own version of Project Management named Toon Boom Manager. https://www.toonboom.com/products/manager news release: https://www.toonboo…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Introductory pricing for 48 hours... $39 vs $60. Aaron continues to put together some of the most direct, accessible and... reasonably priced material on drawing and animation available. This time he tackles human anatomy. https://creatureartteacher.com/product/drawing-human-anatomy/ Here's the promo video: xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOcrsSbYteA The primary reason I think Aaron's approach is superior to many available is his experience with a variety of art mediums but specifically his foundation in animation which brings it all together. Description of content from his site: In this comprehensive 9.5 Hour video course, animator, dir…
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Well worth the watch but set aside some time as the interview runs approx. 1 hour and 45 minutes, including a fairly long intro outlining the 'Design by Hand' project headed up by Cooper Hewitt. Part 1 xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00hDSOCQy4s Part 2 xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmUzwM89Fdw John Lasseter, twice fired from Disney Studios recounts the history of animation which culminates in him leading the Disney Studio into the current age of computer animation.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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Anyone tried out the newly released Vivaldi 1.0 browser? It has some nice features: https://vivaldi.com/features/ I've just now downloaded but not spend much time looking into it. So far so good. The webpanels and moving back and forth in time should be quite useful.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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- 668 views
Here's a site that let you play back youtube video frame by frame and at various speeds. I'm guessing there are some other sites that do the same or similar but this one caught my attention. I'll link with a video to one of Robert Holmen's animations because it's well worth reviewing. Note that linking into the video with frame and timing set is by the parameters added at the end of the link. In this case Time (t) and Speed (s) added as &t=0&s=0.25. http://rowvid.com/?v=pDqKABYtDB0&t=0&s=0.25
Last reply by Rodney, -
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TED Talks presents a talk with PIXAR's Danielle Feinberg on Lighting in PIXAR films. Well worth the watch (especially for those that had their dreams of being artists crushed as young children): LINK Note that is you see a download link that allows subtitles don't opt for the subtitles as the download appears to fail. Download without subtitles instead or simply stream the playback.
Last reply by Rodney, -
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- 582 views
I don't really need one of these but I WANT ONE. xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pl7xM6atCQ I don't see an anticipated price yet. Sold only through resellers a this point. 96TB of capacity on the desktop up to 2600MB/s speeds RAID 5/6 Specifically designed for use with data from 4/5/6K cameras. For those with the need you can sign up to win a free one here: http://textseagate.com/nab/signup/
Last reply by Rodney, -
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I just returned from seeing the new movie and... This is an impressive movie on many levels. What perhaps surprises me most is that I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as the original animated version that is such a classic. No spoilers here except to say the film remained faithful is significant ways to the animated film. I was surprised by that too. Two other things that was a bit wary of going in but turned out to be just fine and well executed: - The film intentionally exaggerates scale on and they work that element like it's almost a character itself. As such it enhances the experience in significant ways and enlarges our view of the jungle especi…
Last reply by Rodney,
