Living and learning...

A feature I always wanted to see in Blender was the possibility of tracing the arcs on our animations. But the fact is that Blender ALREADY HAS this feature since version 2.43!

I lived all those days without noticing that button... =/

Sometime ago I started a new animation project. In the beginning I thought about doing a very simple exercise, but I could not resist to the temptation of making something a bit more elaborated.

The starting point was when I was still on vacation, november 26th to be very precise. Now, nearly two months later I'm happy to say that I reached the exact middle of it. That's why I found it interesting to talk about the short, since some of you could think I gave up on it for the lack of updates.

Today the short have exactly 41 seconds. If I keep going like this, I'll probably be finishing it in mid April. I must say that I'm not in a hurry to finish this up, since my main intention is to end up with something good, not only something 'done'.

I'm trying to exercise some things with this short: timing, camera use, acting, weight, composition, creation of a logo and some additional graphics.

I didn't want to spend time on creating another rigged character, so I chose the great ManCandy and Ludwig to be my stars. =)

All tools I'm using are open source: in addition to Blender, I'm using Gimp and Inkscape a lot, and Audacity for audio editing. Along with the short, I'll release the production files for download (that's right, my own "open movie"). I'm already saving for making an upgrade on my hosting plan.

For now, I'll show you just some screenshots and let the videos for later on, to keep the surprise.

As you can probably notice, I'm trying to achieve visuals that are a bit different from the uber-clean "traditional 3D". I hope I can give it some kind of a 2D touch, but avoiding cel shading.

Well... basically its all I can tell you today. Soon I'll bring you more updates on this.

Now... back to work! =)

Character designer Harald Siepermann, who has a curriculum with movies like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Mulan, Tarzan and Emperor's New Groove wrote about where he found inspiration for his beautiful work on Enchanted:

No less than Alphonse Mucha. =)

I remember my college classes on Art Nouveau when everyone was shocked with so outstanding artwork, even more when we realized that those beautiful pictures were made with lithography!!

Talk about influences...

Do you already have your Ratatouille DVD? If you do, you have certainly watched Your Friend the Rat. As I said before in this blog, it was the first 'non-3D' Pixar production.

I brought him again into the chat because of the blog from one of its directors, Jim Capobianco (the other is Nate Wragg, which also has a pretty cool blog with his great personal artwork).

There is a lot of stuff on this little charming production, like the production photos. It's nice to know, for example, how the blackboard scene actually used one instead of some sort of digital mimic.

For those who are interested, Amazon is selling the "Little Golden Book" about it for only U$ 2,99

Today I saw two posts on Cartoon Brew that made me think about the influences we have on our work.

The first one was about director Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch) making comic strips, while the second pointed to an interview of storyboard artist Enrico Casarosa (Pixar) given to GhibliWorld.

On the comments section in the post about Sanders, many readers pointed similarities between his strips and Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes. I agree that the influence is there. After all, I think that the only ones who are not influenced by Watterson's work are the ones who doesn't know it at all! Actually, I think that these influences are among the good qualities of Sanders' comic strips.

Being influenced doesn't mean you are copying, and Sanders doesn't seem to be copying anyone. He had just absorbed what he considered to be good (not only in Watterson's work) and applied his personal touch in something I consider very promising.

In Casarosa's interview, it's very interesting how he talks about the influence of Miyasaki's work not only on his own production, but also in John Lasseter and Pete Docter ones.

I don't need to talk about how talented all those guys are. It's something that - along with their influences - makes possible the creation of great pieces of art: whether animated or not.

It's funny that this is the second post in a row that I feel the need  to point out to John Kricfalusi's blog, which has two cool articles about influences:

The importance of having a lot of influences and Influences won't help you without skill.