Zip! Bow! Wow!

I've been meaning to post a review of Batman even though I haven't seen it yet, but I haven't gotten around to making up anything good.

Hopefully next week, I might even see it by that time. I'm really looking forward to some nice "POW!" "BANG!" "POP!" graphics for the fight scenes.

So I haven't seen Batman, unlike the rest of America. Partially, because I don't really care about men in tights all that much. When I see a superhero picture I like to moazy on in after a grueling day of making schedules and budgets for jobs that never happen. If a movie is sold out days in advance, it's unlikely that I'll be a ticket holder.

The other reason is that we're pretty busy.

Above is a logo animation we made for On The Leesh, an independent production company run by awesome people. A couple years back we did the titles to their short "What Are The Odds?" (below)



If you get past the crappy, crappy YouTube compression, you'll see some pretty nice animation by Ed Smith. Ed has an encyclopedia of great talents as an animator. Under the letter "D" is "dog". I've never seen anybody animate dogs -all shapes, sizes and varieties -with such personality and skill.

The "On The Leesh" logo was animated by Christina Riley. She does a good with dogs too (even though its hard to compete with Ed Smith). The dog's playfulness with the film is "realistic" and he's got a fluid energy.

One thing that's tough about this type of design -and Flash animation in general -is the difficulty of tracebacks. In frames 40 through 50 of this animation, the dog's body is on hold while his tail wags. Given the energy of the character (and the furriness of the pup) you'd like a little bit of something going on with character. In a silhouette character, that redefines the shape and alters not only the mood of the character but can cause a jitter on feet and hands that makes the character slide.