From one coffee addict to another

I don't smoke, I drink only occasionally and I don't ever touch drugs. If you don't count caffeine, that is. :)

This little animation, by Stephanie Marguerite and Emilie Tarascou, based on a song by the French band Oldelaf and Mr D, describes very clearly what my day is like. It's a caffeine fueled crescendo. :)

Progress reel so far from class 1

These are some examples of what we have been up to so far in class 1 of animation mentor. There are a lot of bouncing balls here, as we are learning the fundamental principals of animation. SO... better keep it simple, stupid!  The "real" characters are coming up in a half year or so...  :-)

Nice to do life drawing when you have a talented model

Here are some more sketches from the life drawing class I'm taking outside the AM curriculum. I stick to charcoal pen, trying to concentrate on body shape, line of action, proportions...  But when I look around me among my classmates, who are pretty much more advanced than me and work in all kinds of different techniques and materials, I really feel like a hopless beginner.  :-)
They are sooo talented, some of them! I hope I will develop some kind of drawing skill too, eventually.

The process behind Freakish kid's awesome "cluckie the vampire chicken"

When I started out playing around with animation as a hobby some years ago it was absolutely 2D that interested me most. And since I'm not a very good drawing artist - can't keep volume from drawing to drawing ! - I soon found 2D CG animation to be the most suitable way to go for me. I have been using a software called Anime Studio Pro (former known as 'Moho') and found it to be quite nice app, at an affordable price too. It's kind of pity that so few professionals use it... If you look it up on youtube you mostly find amateur's clips... which aren't too convincing.

But there are exceptions!

This is a good example of good use of the software AND a visual style that I like, "Cluckie the vampire chicken" by Freakish Kid:



There are clips in better resolution at Freakish kid's site. I highly recommend you go there and watch them instead!

And when you have watched the clip go here and read the story behind the production! Very interesting, I promise!

I first became aquainted with the work of this studio when I was browsing the forum for users of "Anime studio Pro".  (BTW, don't let the name fool you, it's not just for anime, it's good for all kind of styles.  It's a nice 2D / CG vectorbased animation system with bonerigged models, FK and IK, which makes it a kind of tool somewhere in between traditional 2D and 3D CG apps. A little lacking on the pipeline bells & whistles, more suitable for small studios).

Freakish kid (former "greykid") is one of the best examples of good, professional use of this piece of software that I know of.  They are based in London, UK and in Hungary and I know that they have produced a lot of stuff for Nickelodeon.

Take a peek into animationland

Got the tip about this youtube clip from a friend's blog. I just had to put it up here too, for all you people who DON'T know what CG animation is about. Take a seat in the customer's chair and go for a ride to animationland.....

Some nice tutorials from Randolf Dimalanta

Woohoo, class 1 of Animation Mentor has just begun, and I'm stunned to see how many really amazingly good artist's there are among the students. I really, really have to develop my drawing skills! :)

So, beside the standard curriculum of AM, I will continue trying to get some extra life drawing exercise.

Here are some good tutorials I found from Randolf Dimalanta's site. Good for a noob like me to watch.


Lifedrawing Demonstration: "The Gesture" from Randolf Dimalanta on Vimeo.

And if you click on this picture to the right you'll be directed to another nice life drawing tutorial at his site. 
There are some Maya stuff there too, so if you are interested in that go to the site and check them out. Have fun!
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a weird thing...

I just went to the first life drawing class of my entire life yesterday. I have never been to one of those occasions before. It wasn't uncomfortable or embarrassing - it was nice. And I even ran into an old friend there.
But still it was somehow weird! Maybe you get used to it after a little while, but there is just something odd about the whole situation; 10 or 15 people flock together in a room, most seem aquainted and the the friendly small talk is on, people socialize normally, nothing strange is going on. Then suddenly one person takes off his clothes and gets up on this podium - completely naked.

I mean... that doesn't happen very often in everyday life  :-)