Saw today a great short directed by the master Ward Kimball: Dad, can I borrow your car?

It's amazing how he manages to make everything brilliantly, making history both in animation and jazz! This funny short is another proof that this "old man" is a genius. The image which illustrates this topic is from one painting that he made: "The Comitee", found on Jim Clark's blog.

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The Annie Awards nominees are out. I'm very happy to see that the excellent Surf's Up had its well deserved recognition by receiving 10 nominations. In number of nominations it's in second, following the masterpiece Ratatouille.

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And a great tip from Djalma Madureira: animation produced by Bitstate to the band Plastic Operator.

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Now... back to my little project while I'm still on vacation. =)

This blog is looking a little abandoned, heh? It has been a week since my last post. =P

But don't think this blog is dying. It's the opposite, actually. The lack of updates is due to a reason: my vacation! =)

And you know what's the best thing to do when you're on vacation? To work. But work on personal stuff. That ones that your job don't let you do.  =)

For the past days (and next ones) I'm doing a short animation. It's a bit of an elaborated exercise on weight, acting, timing and mixing 2D and 3D.

After months of trial and error, I finally put my cheap Aiptek Tablet to work properly on Ubuntu. The process involved compiling the new SVN driver from source, applying a patch and recompiling the X server. Not what you can call "plug'n'play", but now everything works like a charm. A piece of advice: if you want to buy a graphics tablet, go Wacom. Don't make the same mistake as I did. =)

With my old new tablet, I've painted the backgrounds on Gimp and I'm using Bassam Kurdali's ManCandy rig, because it's really good and I didn't want to spend my precious time developing another character. 

So... soon I'll bring you fresh new animated stuff!

It is planned for late 2008 the Madagascar sequel, called "The Crate Escape".

Here is a promo image for this new movie. I really hope DreamWorks make a good movie, and don't just another uninspired sequel like Shrek the Third.

Saw it on Animated News.

Every now and then I post something pointing to Victor Navone`s blog. =)

This time I suggest two of his posts, both talking about planning our shots:

• first, his thumbnail gallery of drawings made for planning his shots on movies like Ratatouille and The Incredibles;
• second, he says some words on his planning method, answering some questions made by animation students.

It's good to know about some of his methods on his daily routine at Pixar.

Yes... you read it correctly. =)

Michel Courtemanche is a great comediant that can teach us, animation students (after make us laugh out loud).

How?

Watch this video and notice how he can make we believe that he is lifting a extremely heavy weight. It's exactly the same thing we have to do with our drawings and/or puppets.