David - Promo Spot for Prometheus

TED - Promo Spot for Prometheus

Custom Organic Brushes

Ok, here's a quick tutorial on building custom organic brushes.

All files have been posted at actual size in case you wish to download them for scale comparison with what you do at home.

The Source


First off, you'll need a good organic greycale source image. I'll usually start off by scanning something in, or just making compicated selections and painting into them, or search on Google Image. For the purposes of this example I just downloaded a crumpled paper image off the net.

You want the image fairly big -  After you've done your Google Image search click the 'Large' option on the left side to refine the search. You can scale brushes down easily, but they begin to lose clarity when you scale them up, so I like to keep my brushes of this type in the 500-1000 pixel diameter range. Anything over 2000 and the Brush won't get made.

Notice the very high contrast. This is essential for a good looking brush, as you can always lower the brush's contrast behavior, but never increase it. So, start at the highest contrast possible, or you may come to regret it later.

The Shape

I used a lasso with a good feather on it to carve away at the source image until I was happy with the shape. I will often use the brush tool with a lot of feather at this point as well, to get the look I want. Try to keep it more or less symmetrical in your early brushes, until you have a good understanding of the potential controls. Be sure not to leave any " orphan points" that stand out too much, as you will begin to recognize them as a pattern in a brush's sweep, and ruin the natural effect.

Also, make sure that the area surrounding your final brush shape is 100% white. This is essential, because now we are going to select an area around your brush shape and "define" it. Any grey information would be saved into the brush, and the edges of your selection would show up as a noticeable ghosted line.

That said, make your selection, and in the main PS program edit menu, choose define brush

Creating the Brush Controls

Once your brush is defined, you need to fine tune the way it will function in order to randomize it and make is seem natural, seamless, and unpatterned.



As you can see in the above illustration, when first defined, a brush looks fairly unnatural.



The first thing I usually do is increase the spacing until I am happy with the density.



Then I will add some size and angle jitter to begin randomizing it's behavior, and adjust the minimum diameter to an amount appropriate for the type of brush I am building. In this case, I want to maintain the crinkly look and feel, so I set it quite high.



Next I added a bit of scattering, to mix things up a bit. This is a good touch when you plan to use a brush for coverage, as it will prevent the brush from leaving a definite path as you move it back and forth across the page. If you space your strokes carefully, you can usually use a brush like this without any visible trails.



Now after I adjusted the spacing a bit more, I saved the brush by clicking the "new" icon indicated by the cursor. You will end up with two brushes using this method. Your working one, and this final one. I like to have both in case I want to go back and tweak without affecting my newer "master" brush.



Here is the brush I built at home for a freelance gig. The top one is built up sweeps at increasing opacity settings. The bottom row is just the brush passed twice, in horizontal strokes.

And of course, finding different high contrast grayscale textures will create various FX brushes.
Enjoy!

(via dave-co.com)

Mathias Lachal's version of this famous commercial

David Maingault

A short film (made in 3 days) by David Maingault for the Tim Burton exhibition in Paris, and another film he did (in 4 days) at EMCA school.

Sam Chou's new animated series in production

Keith Harings Journals on Tumblr

Keith Haring: 1978–1982 is the first large-scale exhibition to explore the early career of one of the best-known American artists of the twentieth century. Tracing the development of Haring’s extraordinary visual vocabulary, the exhibition includes 155 works on paper, numerous experimental videos, and over 150 archival objects, including rarely seen sketchbooks, journals, exhibition flyers, posters, subway drawings, and documentary photographs.
The exhibition chronicles the period in Haring’s career from his arrival in New York City through the years when he started his studio practice and began making public and political art on the city streets.

KEITH HARING: 1978 – 1982,

Brave Promo

James Baxter - Notes on Acting for Animation

Performance

Animators are the ones that throw the switch; the ones who make an audience forget that they are animated characters.

The most important thing is to try and find the truth.  But you can’t do this by “method” animating.  You can’t be in the moment for the length of time it takes to complete a scene.  Actors do, while animators describe.

Best note of the day: You don’t have to do improv classes (Yeah!)

When you act out a scene, it’s important to remember that it is your body you are acting with, not your character’s.  Your character can do things your body can’t (and is probably better at them as well).

Bill Tytla was the first animator to take acting in animation seriously.

Real Acting

Stanislavsky was the one who focused actors more on their preparation rather than on acheiving results.  Method acting is the process of moving away from thinking about what you are going to do in a scene and instead, focusing more on what you need to do to prepare to make the scene honest and true.  In this way, you allow the spontaneous to happen.

Meisner believed it wasn’t enough to rely on a sense of memory - that your memories were inadequate for the task of acting.

Sandy Meisner’s famous quote that great acting is - “the ability to live truthfully under imaginary circumstances.”

Approaching a Scene

Many things to consider in your preparation for a scene:

• The context of the scene in the sequence

• How does a character move physically; what sets them apart from others in the same film?

• Best way to stage a scene.  Consider the correct angle to sell an emotion.  In CG, it’s easy to lose the point of a scene behind all the lighting and rendering.

• Be aware of the composition of a scene.

Staging

Referring to the Shere Khan/Kaa sequence in Jungle Book.

Milt has set it up so you only look at one thing at a time.  He crafted the scene so that when Shere Khan pops open his claws, everyone is looking there.  Nothing else is moving. (Waste of time to always be moving all the background characters).

Your eye reacts to movement, color and contrast.  Use those to direct your audience’s attention.

Fred Astaire is good at that - staging a dance so you look exactly at what he wants you to.

Posing

The life of a scene usually leads him from a very emotional point to a very technical one.  Emotional as he figures out the acting; technical as he makes it look good.

You need to block things out with enough juice to communicate your intentions to the director.

Example: The Pinocchio scene with the tail popping out to point out: clear line of action and a clean and natural balance and rhythm to the poses.

Don't have a whole bunch of different attitudes within a scene.  Usually there is one or two major poses per scene.  Horton as an example of animation having too much to it.  Loved the scenes with JoJo because you could actually focus on what he was doing.

Remember the timing within a scene - make sure you have enough time to do the action that you want.  Don’t force something in there just because you think it looks cool.

James Baxter’s "perfect animator" exists somewhere between Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, and Ward Kimball:

• Milt for pure draftsmanship, posing and technique.

• Frank for truthful acting.

• Ward for shear graphic ingenuity.

Ward Kimball is the one that constantly pulls James away Milt and reminds him that animation is not real; you can actually do whatever you want.

 

 

Analyzing Live Action

If you find yourself watching a greatly acted scene but not knowing exactly why it works think, how else could they have done it?  That helps you figure out what kind of preparation they had to go through and helps you to see the kinds of choices that had to be made.


Comparing the work of Frank Thomas to Milt Kahl

Frank Thomas always considered the “actor’s animator.”  While Milt used poses to communicate his intentions, often focusing on a single drawing, Frank used actions to communicate the intentions of his scenes.

Milt’s scenes tend to have very strong “tentpole” poses; what happens inbetween them is often the same motion (headshakes, hand gestures, etc.).
Frank was more concerned with the feeling and flow through a scene.  He made drawings that wouldn’t necessarily work on a model sheet, but in motion they feel right.

Showed a sequence with Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone where she speaks to Wart on the table.  The “one little finger” and “ugly” scenes were Milt and they look very familiar (move like other characters).  Beautiful but reminiscent.  Frank’s scene is the one directly after where she walks by Wart looking down at him from the corner of her eye.  Milt would probably never have done this kind of acting, but it feels more truthful to the scene.

Showed sequences from Jungle Book comparing the different ways of approaching animation on Baloo.  The scene of Baloo screaming “Bagheera!” at the edge of the cliff was Milt’s.  Baloo gets up and starts punching the air.  Milt seems more considered with making awesome drawings that animate beautifully.  Seems to get carried away with the mouth shapes on “mangy monkey.”  Frank probably would’ve used that opportunity to have Baloo connect more with Bagheera. Example; the scene of Baloo waking up Mowgli - very different acting choices.

Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas

Milt Kahl

Io: Moon Over Jupiter

How big is Jupiter's moon Io? The most volcanic body in the Solar System, Io (usually pronounced "EYE-oh") is 3,600 kilometers in diameter, about the size of planet Earth's single large natural satellite. Gliding past Jupiter at the turn of the millennium, the Cassini spacecraft captured this awe inspiring view of active Io with the largest gas giant as a backdrop, offering a stunning demonstration of the ruling planet's relative size. Although in the above picture Io appears to be located just in front of the swirling Jovian clouds, Io hurtles around its orbit once every 42 hours at a distance of 420,000 kilometers or so from the center of Jupiter. That puts Io nearly 350,000 kilometers above Jupiter's cloud tops, roughly equivalent to the distance between Earth and Moon. The Cassini spacecraft itself was about 10 million kilometers from Jupiter when recording the image data.

The Art of Mike Mitchell

Mike Mitchell created for the show at Gallery 1988.
Some of these are still available for $30 each.
Via SuperPunch