Jason Ryan ~ Webinars with a major studio Supervising Animator

Jason Ryan is a supervising animator at major feature film studios. His resume includes working at Disney and Dreamworks.

Australian animators have the opportunity to discuss animation topics and solve animation problems in a series of live webinars.

Second year students at SBIT, just think about it... What a great way to continue building your show reel / demo reel after graduation. Each month potentially having an improved animation piece to replace student stumblings.

Other Jason Ryan posts on the ARC (find out why this bunch of Brisbane animation students are so excited*). Find out more about Jason Ryan.

*Ian said (previously), "I’m chuffed that there is a way we can teach 3D and keep drawing central to the process. Thankyou Jason Ryan. :)"

Lovesong ~ James Fearn-Wannan

Creative Industries Award for Best Film: 2007
Graduating Class of the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation, Queensland University of Technology (QUT)

The animator's show reel is linked to his web site.

Varmints

I got to tell you, I am in love with these small(ish) commercial studios who make short films on the side. They go places that their big feature making cousins fear to tread, exploring looks, concepts and themes that are fresh and original. Studio AKA are probably my favourite of all, and a preview for their new short film Varmints is up online. If your new to the work of Studio AKA you should stop by their updated web site, so much cool stuff, they are truly top shelf.

Acting choices for key poses

What do you think of the acting choices in this animation?

Do the key poses/ frames communicate clearly?

CHEVisodes "Stressing Out"

The file is a Quicktime movie so you can study it frame-by-frame, which is really fun!

Blur

For years now I've been thoroughly entertained by the short films, game promos and ads from the Blur animation studio. So it warms my heart to hear that they have won a crack at a feature film. This article in Hollywood Reporter says they will be working on a film adaptation of the comic book The Goon.

I'm sure you have seen much of it before but check out some of Blur's fine work.
Gopher Broke - A Gentleman’s Duel - In the rough
And some of their game promo's
Warhammer - Empire earth III - Transformers

Kung Fu Ponder

What made this film appeal to animators? There are some that are putting KFP in the same league as "The Incredibles" (That's just a bear scratch below "The Iron Giant"!).

Here's a few knowledgeable comments: Read more

So what did you knowledgeable animators reading this blog think of Kung Fu Panda? What impressed, what grated? If you found the animation, story or design appealing, why?

Peppy

Ever wonder why teachers are always getting students to animated walks. Just look at how much of this film is told through characters walking, and how every walk has an attitude and purpose.

Cable

In terms of the different looks and feels that can be achieved with 3D animation, this film covers more ground in 12 mins than the main stream 3D feature film industry has covered in the last 10 years.

And for once its nice not to be pointing out great art direction for a film where the animation isn't that great. Not only dose this film look amazing, in every shot the character moves with weight and attitude. Best online work I've seen in a while.

Video Referencing - add it to your toolkit

"Each animator finds his/her groove when it comes to tools such as video planning. Some shoot their own video reference, and some gather video reference from all sorts of different sources. Video planning is as unique as the animator using it. However, there are some things to keep in mind when it comes to video planning and reference material," says the quote from the AnimationMentor Tips & Tricks blog.

Video referencing links nicely with the Jason Ryan techniques being learnt by the current 2nd years to create and ENJOY better 3D animation.

Ian even went down to the physical movement faculty gym with some second years (Steve and Cassie) to film walks on a treadmill for video reference material. Combining video reference with traditional 2D planning is an empowering (for the student animator) and powerful method (for the animation teacher) to create appealing 3D animation. What do you think of using live action reference?


And just to bounce your brain another way: "...you can learn more about line-of-action and dynamic posing by spending ten minutes in a good comic book than you can by watching hours of movie reference." Who said this? No, it wasn't Terry Oberg.

So what do you use for your animation reference material?
ARC InDepth post: Ian uses video references in a jumping ramble.
p.s. Read the chapter on "Reference Material" in the Tips & Tricks eBook.
p.p.s Remember Eaduard Muybridge? Some great movement reference here. Ref: "The Human Figure in Motion"
p.p.p.s Dr. Harold Edgerton. Ref: "Stopping Time".

Tiji

This ad for a French childrens TV station is pretty much a short film in its own right. Very nice.


Found at: Motionographer

UEFA Euro 2008

Check these very slick football ads.




Found at: Motionographer

E.T.A

Rabit?

I wish my Internet connection was this fast :)

Found at: FEED

Red Feather

Maybe I'm just tired, but I almost missed the punch line in this one. A nice little tale though.

Found at: No Fat Clips

Alienated and A Pugs Life

Students films from the UK and Canada.



Found at: No Fat Clips

TSM Guy and more.

The other day I found a great blog with heaps of free Maya Rigs on it. Its called Animation Buffet and while many of the rigs are the same as those on Highend 3D its great because you can search for rigs by categories (male, female, cartoon, realistic, creature etc).

While there I found one rig that I like in particular called TSM Guy, he strikes an excellent balance between stability, ease of use and flexibility. He is very easy to use, has fully scalable body parts, IK to FK and even bendable limbs so you can really push that Line of Action through the pose.

There are some great video tutorials on using him provided by his creators too, check em out: Stretchy Bits...Spine Controls ...Smart IK to FK...Arc Control...Proxy Parenting (this is cool)...Anti Twist Control

This is an excellent rig for creating the broad physical animation you would typically produce for a games show reel. The scalable nature of the rig means you can make him fat, thin, muscly, short or tall, you just scale up or down the body controls and there are input values for arm and leg width and length in the channel editor when you have the hand or foot controller selected. Its is a shame he doesn't have a face for dialogue, but we could rig up something simple I think. Enjoy.

Fallen

A nice original concept for a short film, with an inevitable sad ending.



Found at: No Fat Clips

The Switch

At Southbank we invented these things called EAPs this year. An EAP is a scene containing an Essential Animation Principle, or at least the main principles that a potential employer is likely to want to see in a reel. We divided these up into three main categories, physical actions (body mechanics stuff), walks and runs, and scenes that use sound (dialogue, moving to music, reacting to sound fx). Every students major project must contain at least 5 EAPS with at least one from each of the three categories.

This film is a testament to how well a narrative can be tailored to demonstrate these kinds of things. The Switch is one of the best animated films I've seen from the Vancouver Film School, if you cut the credits off its about 1 minute and 45 seconds long and it is absolutely overflowing with EAPs.

De Blob

A fun and slick Wii game promo. This was made by THQ who have a studio right here in Brisbane. I know they have done some toony stuff in the past, so I wonder if they worked on this one. Looks like it would have been a lot of fun.

Found at: No Fat Clips

Moment

A nice little spin on the whole pushing a heavy weight thing, and well executed too.