Animated Walks and Runs

These walk cycles are pleasing to the eye for more than one reason. Thanks are in order for animator, Felix Sputnik.

Class Evolution

This piece was created by The Workroom in response to the digital era blossoming in Italy.  This piece deals specifically with how the digital boom is effecting the classroom, and how teachers and students are starting to experiment with more innovative tools like tablets and interactive blackboards. I love the design and simple icon animations that comprise this piece.

Scotty Reifsnyder

Scotty Reifsnyder is a wonderful illustrator whose works have been in such publications as GQ, Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, The New Yorker, The New York Times and Wired.  I love his printmaking style.  I especially love when artists pair this vintage art style with iconography of the present, such as iPhones.  The two are so different that it's almost humorous seeing them together, like some weird sci-fi 70's film.

Mr. Frosty Man

It's never too early to get into the holiday spirit. Check out this claymation for Sufjan Stevens' new song Mr. Frosty Man

STOB EHT

Photographer Dan Wilton has an interesting new photo zine out called STOB EHT in which he follows The Bots, brothers 18 and 14, as they head out on their European band tour.  Needless to say it makes for some quirky and unique photo opportunities.

Photo of the Moment - ...

..., a photo by Mind Her Design on Flickr.

Via Flickr:
Ozark Empire State Fair: Missouri

Bit dark/grainy but this is my first portrait of a genuine stranger. Always intimidates me a little bit.

Emmanuelle Walker

In a recent blog post I stumbled upon illustrator/animator Emmanuelle Walker. What I found shortly after visiting his website is that he has a plethora of wonderful work. I describe his style as vintage quirkiness with an influence of fashion. I particularly love his unofficial music video, 'ON and OFF', for Royksöpp — So Easy. It began as a simple experiment in animation and turned out to be one hypnotic masterpiece.

Work Inspired by Mindjet and JESS3

A lovely little animation from JESS3 that tells a story broad enough that almost anyone working in this day and age can relate to. I think that is what I enjoy most about this piece. The style is great, the animation is smooth, but it's the ability to create something that will capture an audience's emotions that is truly the difficult part of storytelling, and I believe JESS3 accomplished that here with this piece.

Recent Entries for Animade's Full Secs

Here are a few recent highlights from Animade's Full Secs channel on Vimeo.

The first one comes from Emmanuelle Walker and it is titled 'Moth.' The style reminds me of an encyclopedia in a good way and the action he captures is a quiet one, but one we as humans are all so familiar with.



The next entry comes from Thomas Lucas and his piece is called 'Pop.' I love colors and humor of this piece. That and I can almost never resist anything space related.

Tim Walker

Some very surreal photography from Tim Walker.

Viggle MusicBoy

Some really high quality and fluid animation from PUNGA for Viggle. I especially love the dance sequence and the way they create their own unique motion blur using streaks.

Kid Jokes

Finally finished my submission for Animade's Full Secs. For anyone who doesn't know, the only requirements for submissions is that they have a 2 second intro and outro title with a 1 second animation in the middle.  I found it a joy to only have to worry about 24 little frames of animation.  It freed me up to spend a great deal of time on the environments and characters. I spent a few days here and there putting all the graphics together and finished the animation in 2 or 3 hours.  I really had a lot of fun making the animals in the title screen as well.  A lot of the submissions I've seen are good, but also pretty simple in design. I wanted to pack as much as I could into those 5 seconds with the hope people rewatch again and again to see something they missed.

Keith Negley

Some beautifully designed work from Keith Negley.  I'm definitely a fan of the painted texture that he uses in a few of his pieces.  It adds another element of grime, distress, and emotion that I think a flat vector illustration would be lacking.  I also adore the space that Keith creates in some of his work.  He is definitely looking at the world from some very interesting angles.

Sophie Roach

Very vibrant and detailed illustrations from Sophie Roach.  Wish I could animate this work, I love the line quality and hand drawn feel.  I could see making looping animations in where all the elements are moving and interacting with eachother. Call me up Sophie, let's do this!

Photo of the Moment - Ghost Dog

I'm definitely doing this to my cat.

House of Wine / Morandé

I'm very fond of this animation from Fluor Films on the process of making wine, from start to finish. Where to start? I love the ink like quality of the graphics paired with the texture throughout. I also enjoyed that they only stuck to about 6 colors. The pacing is great, I never felt overwhelmed but I also never felt confused or bored. Lastly, the compositions and transitions really make this a solid piece. The conveyor belt scene is one of my favorites. If you like what you see I suggest checking out Flour Film's site for more work.

Cel Animation Tutorial // Mr Cube Breakdown

Today I bring you a fantastic little tutorial from Casey Latiolais on his amazing Grey Scale Gorilla 5 Second Project called Mr. Cube. Before I say anything else, take 5 seconds and watch this beautiful piece of animation.



Wow, still looks great even today. What I love about this tutorial is that it didn't take a lot of fancy plug-ins or secrets to achieve this look. The process was actually quite basic. I think that really says something, but go ahead and look for yourself. You can also find Casey's project files here.

Photo of the Moment - Berlin Märkisches Viertel VI 2012

Berlin Märkisches Viertel VI 2012, a photo by derkleinekönig on Flickr.

OLO for iOS

I've played OLO and it's quite a lot of fun. It has a great style that Sennep has utilized in this animation promoting it. I'm also quite fond of how they used the split screen in this piece. You can find out more about the game here.

OLO for iOS from Sennep on Vimeo.

The Story of a Man Who Thinks He's a Dog

Alex Goddard shows us all what you can do with 4 days, a pen, some paper, and a scanner.

Friday Sketch Day

I'm trying to sketch more damnit. I promise. Today it's a cat, tomorrow who knows. Probably another cat...

Animade Full Secs

Yet another thing to submit to. This one comes from the guys at Animade. They've made this system of animations consisting of a 2 second intro, 1 full second of animation, and a 2 second outro. Some are pretty brilliant, some are ok. Below is one of my favorites, but you can check them all out at Animade's channel here.

The Wiki Man - Film 1

Quirky little animation illustrating an excerpt from Rory Sutherland's book, "The Wiki Man." Created by Moth Collective and Animade, this animation's personality is as charming and engaging as Rory when he speaks. I find them to be a perfect pairing. To find out more about the book go here.

8-Bit Titles

I've been thinking for my new reel this year that I want to have a video game title screen style opening. When looking for references I stumbled upon this treasure trove of a website called Title Scream.  Here are a few of my favorites from back in the day.

Star Wars Uncut - Something Is Wrong

Star Wars Uncut scene 2 complete, and with only hours to spare. I honestly believe the only reason I completed this was because I had so much energy behind it after creating the first background. This was actually the original scene I was going to choose, and now after completing both I know I should have followed my gut. However, I'm still glad I got to do both because they were good experiences for different reasons. As I said in my Landing At Bespin post, I appreciated the attention to detail that went into these shots, and I also had fun playing with color. For my 'Something Is Wrong' scene I got to play around more with character animations which was a lot of fun. Yet the attention to detail was still there in this scene as well (I love the ship that flies by right as Han kisses Leia.)

Here is the original clip:

One of the challenges of replicating this scene was that there are a lot of human movements that are difficult to recreate using 2D characters. For example, right at the cut Leia spins around to look at the door. This movement is almost impossible to achieve the way I typically animate, so I had to do some "frame by frame" animation to achieve the look. If I had had more time I would have liked to add a few more tweens in this sequence.

I got lucky with Han, I could pretty much fake all his motion with only one 2D character.

Here you can take a closer look at the backgrounds. I had the most fun making these environments simply because they are so visually perfect that when you replicate them they are bound to look good. I put the frame around it because I wanted my final video to remain compositionally close to what the original was, and 16:9 simply wasn't cutting it.  Once again it's all in the details, I especially love the light that comes in from the ceiling and splashes on the wall.

Lastly, my final challenge was to make Han talk. I have never really done lip syncing in any of my Mean Mug & Slim work, but I had recently seen a tutorial and wanted to give it a try.

Below is the tutorial and an image I was working from to help create the different mouths.  I am pretty happy with how it came out, the only thing I would do differently next time is add a few more mouth variations.  There were a few occasions where I felt like none of the mouth shapes worked.

An Afternoon Sketch

Just sketching out my Halloween costume idea...

Cartoon Network turns 20

Well, she's not old enough to drink yet, but she's more than legal. Seeing as how this one channel had a great role in molding me into the person I am today, I felt obligated to post this awesome music video Cartoon Network has created to honor their 20 years of existence.

The Past Re-imagined As The Future

Came upon a wonderful little video contest today that involves two of my favorite things: audio tracks from Free Music Archive and video from the Prelinger Archives. I don't see the point in explaining much further when someone has taken the time to create an awesome video that does so.  However, for more information check out their site here. Deadline is November 4th.

Photo of the Moment - Untitled

Untitled, a photo by Clemens Fantur on Flickr.