More Splashing

A few posts back I was prattling on about FX animation, and as an example I animated a splash.

So have you seen the new Schweppes commercial, talk about excellent reference material right on cue. Apart from being a gorgeous ad (a real step up from other schweppes bits), you can really study the way the water moves here, all be it under highly controlled circumstances. If you look closely you can see that each splash has an overall shape, but is also made up at any given time by individual elements moving in seemingly random directions at seemingly random speeds. Beautiful.

Vancouver Film School

OK the pic is a hook. But I had to capture Zac's and Cory's (SBIT students) combined attentions. The film shot is from a student show reel at the VFS. It looks a lot like what many in my class draw. But can you animate it? It's worth a look to see what they produced.

It's interesting to me, as a student, to see other student work and how the courses are structured compared to ours. And I like the tune in these words, "No matter the potency of today's technology, the core elements of animation remain constant: character, environment, and motion."

You can see more of the VFS animations here and 3D animation here.

VFS traditional animation facilities and equipment (pictures) How does your school compare? Where is Vancouver?

Digital Domain

Check out the web site for Digital Domain, there are a whole bunch of clips to watch here covering character animation, through to map painting (why do they still call it that?) and compositing. Nice work.

Pet Punk

Check out this cool showreel from European freelance design group Pet Punk.

Click the pic to play-->

Stan Winston

You may not know the name, but you probably grew up watching the amazing special FX of Stan Winston. He has had an amazing career, spanning both old school model FX and newer Digital stuff. Here is an interview he did recently with XSI Base.

Click the pic for the link

Flash FX

Check out this cool FX animation made in Falsh by a guy called Jake Macher. I found it on the Cold Hard Flash Site.

300 Set Visit

Here is a great article about a visit to the set of 3oo.

Click the pic for the link

Silver Surfer

The first Fantastic Four movie looked so bland in the preview I couldn't even get excited enough about it to get it out on DVD, but the second one looks much more interesting.

The Wizard of Speed and Time

A few days back when I posted some Pixelation Lisa commented that "The Wizard of Speed and Time" was worth a mention, and I found a clip from it on Youtube. Its a whole feature length film that tells the story (from my fading memory) of a lonely animator who transforms himself with the magic of animation so that he can get his girl and make an amazing movie..........

Waaaah!?!?!?

Well its further evidence that great animators don't necessarily make good story writers (just my opinion), the animation is pretty cool though. Here we get to see the Wizard speeding around the world to a cheesy 80's soundtrack, defacing landmarks left right and center, and whisking away with strange women from the side of the road (surely that's illegal).

What a guy!

Transformers

As a general rule I try not to nerd it up too much, and as a live action movie the Transformers is bound to have one of the most implausible plots ever to come out of Hollywood (and that's saying something). But come on! Its the TRANSFORMERS!

I know its mindless, recycled American pulp, but the little boy within is jumping for joy!

SPIDERMAN!

Sam Raimi is one of my all time favourite directors, and after trudging away at low budget (but still great) films for so long, its great to see him getting to play with the big bucks. This looks way cool!

300

Sam pointed this out to me,
holy manoly it looks amazing!?!?!?








click the pick for the link