Feels like I'm Alice in Wonderland.

This week in our Maya training we were given a model of a robotarm and our assignment was to pick up a green can with the arm and place it on the box on the right.

It looks simple when you see the finished version - but for any of you who, like me, are newbies to 3D animation, let me tell you that it's like falling down a rabbit hole when you start looking behind the pretty pictures and actually try to build a thing like this yourself in 3D.

This is what my finished assignment looked like:



But THIS is what it looks like on the inside:



All these curves represent movement of different objects and parts of objects in the animation. And the animator spends a lot of time looking at these curves when he is animating.

It's a little like this:



Which makes me feel like this!:


No wonder that I love animation! :-)
.

Get out

Here is another short I stumbled upon the other day. There's something in this clip that is making me think of the previous one I posted here a couple of days ago... ("out of a forest"), something very similar between the two...

I challenge you - can YOU find out what that similarity is?

Get Out
by Esma-Movie

Site Officiel : http://www.getout-lefilm.com/

Réalisé par : Charlotte BOISSON, Julien FOURVEL, Pascal HAN-KWAN, Tristan REINARZ, Fanny ROCHE

Voix : Gary - Philippe PEYTHIEU
Le Psychiatre - Jacques BRIERE

Enregistrement et mixage : Studio des Aviateurs
José VICENTE
Yoann PONCET
www.studiodesaviateurs.fr

Musique :
Composition : Guilhem ROSA
Flute : Hélène VAILLANT
Violon : Cédric BOUBET
Récitante : Julie CUCCIARO

Ecole Supérieure des Métiers Artistiques. Montpellier. France. ©ESMA. 2009

Impressing stop motion: Out of a forest

Another breathtaking animation short, this time found from Cartoon Brew.

"Tobias Gundorff Boesen’s Out of a Forest is a stop-motion effort out of Denmark’s The Animation Workshop, the same school responsible for Vegeterrible, which was featured on the site a few days ago. A lot of Out of the Forest was shot on location in forests around Viborg, Denmark, and the presence of prim and proper bunnies in this natural setting lends the film a magical flavor. The film was animated by Katrine Kiilerich, Frederik Villumsen, Christophe Peladan, and Tobias Gundorff Boesen, and the song,” Slow Show,” is by The National."

Out Of A Forest from Tobias Gundorff Boesen on Vimeo.

Two not very bouncy bouncing balls

The Maya springboard course is well on its way and I am learning new stuff every day. In this preparing course we only focus on the 3D tool itself - and I can tell you; there's points and dots and curves and tangents and a billion buttons and menus to get aquainted with - behind every simplest tiny little motion. I'm on a steep learning curve here. So I'm really happy to stick to these bouncing balls for another couple of months. :-)

The frogumentary

A "making of"-insight into Disney's "the princess and the frog".




Part two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RezHckg1yc
Part three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?videos=oEZ_8L5mbe4&v=cbZQ8CmL7yk
Part four: http://www.youtube.com/watch?videos=oEZ_8L5mbe4&v=ABroz5l2W9M
.

The danish poet

This is the kind of story I love to watch. AND a kind of simple style of visual storytelling too, that I admire. I like the funny little observations that unfold in the situations of almost every scene... and being a scandinavian/nordic citizen myself there's so much that I recognize... This is an amazing little story.



WINNER OF THE 2007 OSCAR® FOR BEST SHORT SUBJECTS ANIMATION
A film by Torill Kove Narrated by Liv Ullmann
More on Torill Kove and the making of the film here

Inspiring animated music video

Have a look at this! Totally awesome!
Boing Boing presents a music video from the N.A.S.A project:
"Spacious Thoughts," featuring Tom Waits & Kool Keith, directed by
Fluorescent Hill.