America

While doing some cleaning found this map of the United States.

It was for the credit sequence we produced for a short film "American Dream".

Keiko Kuramoto drew it.  I did one that was awful to show her the idea and she came up with this.

Valentine Notes

Here are notes from Tissa David's animation class of 2/14/1991.

The first part gives tips on "treadmill walks" also called "cycling in space" in which the character remains in one place while the background pans behind.

BG moves at the same speed as animation
Legs should not shorten.
Legs should be on different level (to connote space/perspective)

There's then a diversion (pedagogically the diversion can be the strongest teaching tool) into a horse's tail.

Horse's tail should have straight lines to give the feeling of bone.  Also gives more flow.

Page two

Pippa Pieces

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee opened nationally last week.

I'll assume Verizon has once again screwed up on phone service, preventing the avalanche of new work from advertising bigwigs and movie moguls.

It's currently playing in two Manhattan theaters, Long Island, White Plains, and North Jersey so I assume most Americans will have a nearby theater screening it.

As I've written previously, our little bit of animation was very difficult to produce.

The characters were more like portraits than caricatures, making the reproduction exceedingly difficult.  On top of that Leah Tinari's painting style is specific in its shape and shading, but our production required too many shortcuts to match each of these specificities.

We did animate a shadow pass.  Here's an example on the Winona Ryder character.

Doug Compton did the animation.  Several young artists worked on the assisting.

We also asked Leah to create the backgrounds herself.  Placing the animated approximations of her characters into an environment fashioned by her own hand gives them some authenticity (we hope).

Liesje's Painting

I looked at several Fred Mogubgub paintings a few weekends ago.

He turned from animation to painting in the late 1970s.  The earliest dated painting I have noted is from 1980.

While some of the work is quick and rough, it's all meditative.  Most move very far from his 1960s films -in form at least.  The connection is not overt, not obvious but the more you live with these paintings the more their connection to that vibrancy becomes evident.

The melancholy of his film "Unknown Reason" from the early '70s carries through in much of the work, its ethereal spirituality even more.

Through this a pop sensibility remains.  Many of his canvases he "defaced" with broad strokes of color overtop of intricately detailed portraits. 

Liesje Kraai picked up this piece.

It's initialed, not signed, dated 1985.

This was after his work on "The Soldier's Tale" and a few short years before his death.

Princess and The Frog for Christmas

It's going to start getting "Christmasy".

We've already gotten our first card of the season (thanks Buzzco!).

A few months ago we received an early Christmas card, of sorts, when Doug Compton sent his film, "Nuttin For Christmas". He'd been working on it for a year and created the whole thing himself. Drawn, scanned, digitally painted.

The most amateurish question we're asked (with surprising frequency) is if animation is on "one's" or "two's". The polite answer is "The best animation mixes it up." I won't write what the response should be out of fear of being labeled an obscene site by Google.

With that in mind, and the Princess and Frog on nobody's lips, I thought I'd post frame grabs of a single scene. Which demonstrates Doug's terrific sense of animation timing and spacing.

Each drawing is number according to the frame it appears in the shot. Missing numbers are holds. Example: there's no 8, 9, 10, 11 because 7 holds for those frames.

It's a lot of drawings but well worth the study.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flame On

We've had to do a lot of "effects" or dynamics animation for the Buddha documentary.

Many of it is stylized, such as this sequence in which water and flame shoot from every part of the enlightened Siddhartha as he walks a jeweled path in the sky.

Here's an early pencil test of the "shooting".




Christina Riley did the animation.

A few of the scenes were dropped. The close of the nostrils, for one, we felt was a little too snot-like.

Oh, Tiger

This segment we produced at The Ink Tank for Between the Lions might shed some light on recent headlines out of Florida.




Tiger Words.

I did some of the animation. I think this also contains some of Patrick Smith's work. We did about six of these and would take parts from all of them and put them into the others. Steve Dovas did a lot, Tony Eastman may have done some. A few assistants around the studio did some scenes too. I'm pretty sure Scott Dodson did Tiger fumbling through his bag in this one.

I was very proud when we could make a whole two minute film by reusing 1:45 and just swapping out backgrounds.

Maciek Albrecht designed the characters. He storyboarded the first one too. After that, he just designed incidental props for new segments. The rest was auto-pilot.

Also, Fred Newman does the voice over. He did a good job.