The Spirit - Teaser trailer

Hi,

Again to post something besides actual doing animation work.
The Spirit, movie scheduled for next year, based on Will Eisner comic character, has been given a teaser trailer.

I cannot describe how enjoyed I was to learn that movie would be made, and while Frank Miller was not as bad choice as it could be I was a bit worried.
During the wait, Miller promised to honor the character, but now after seeing the teaser, I'm a bit disapointed. You can watch it here:

The Spirit teaser


Why? Because, although it looks cool, it screams Sin City. I don't want another Sin City episode (featuring Spirit, anyhow) I want noirish, campy, light, 30-50s comics Spirit.
Although Eisner did use latest 'technology' while creating the character as Miller states, in look it was noirish version of Superman.

I hope that the movie will in look honor Eisner and Spirit. As for characters, all major characters from Spirit comics are here, so it should make a entertaining movie.
Still visually I hope it moves nearer to the actual comic.

Your comments please :)

Vintage Oskar shorts

Hi,

I'm latlely missing from my blog for which I'm sorry.
Situation is that I'm redecorating my flat, working, and having trouble with financing, so I have no time and energy for anything else.

Still, I was surprised today when I found out this link.
It's a collection of Oskar short animation winners from 'Three little pigs' on to today.

I thought you would appreciate it.

http://porphyre.livejournal.com/669473.html

Thanks to the original poster, I can now enjoy vintage animation :)
See you soon with some new animation I hope!

Book resource

Hi guys,

I just received 'Illusion of life' through mail last week and I am so delighted by this book that I decided to put Amazon recommend widget on the blog.

I intend to put all literature that might help and I find interesting.
You can use the widget or just get ideas for later. Ether way, if it helps I'm happy.

In the next few days I'll post another animation exercises, until then I'll read upon my new book! :)

Walking .. again

Here are some videos of walk I showed in the post before.
First is shot from the side, and below it is almost frontal shot.
Walk seems a bit jerky from the side, so I'll check and try to repair it.




See you soon, with new post

Walking.. The process...

Hi,

I thought to give some examples of drag, but I ran into some problems. While I figure them out, I thought to make my first video of how I do things.

Maybe some could give some pointers, or I could help some one else. Anyhow, I thought to give it a go.
This is video of my first walk. I did translating of the body from one end of the screen to the next, showing only body and the legs.

Arms and head would come next as a secondary motion.
Feel free to watch :) and comment (please comment)

You can download SWF file here (just choose save as... option)




Refinement of the process will be following, hopefully very soon.
This is Low-max rig for the 3ds Max with head, hands and instructions hidden. Many thanks to the author!!!

Stretchy and squashy

Well, first of, I wish you happy holidays, and happy New Year.

I've been rather busy with Christmas and holidays in general so I practiced a bit with squash and stretch.

As you can see in the example with bouncing ball, there is no sense of weight and ball seems to float up and down.

In this example I introduced squash effect and motion is more believable, IMHO

Now, to summarise squash and stretch is an exaggeration effect, used in animation to describe mass of an object. Light object don't stretch too much. Also, since it describes mass, it is used to describe all properties of mass, primarily inertia.

Inertia is a property of a body to continue in state it is in, until force is introduced to the body.

Squash and stretch are used to describe inertia when speeding-up (stretch) a body or slowing-down (squash).

When body is still and there is no speed to the body, S&S effect is not needed.

Well this is all for today. Now I'm off to welcome a New Year! All best!

Different dimension?

When I started this blog I intended to do series of examples in principles of animation.
These examples are aimed to improving my skills and developing new that I don't have.

I wanted to do it old school: 2D animation and 3D as an upgrade of skills.
I from start in my animation, used 3D, and never tried doing 2D animation, since I found scanning lot of drawings tedious.

But, with tablet in hand, I dared explore animation from its foundations up. At the very start I'm at a theoretical question:

What is the difference in process between 2D and 3D animation?

Yesterday I watched Jason Ryan's video and seen 2D process.

Cells are drawn in, on one's, two's or with any timing you see fit. Spacing of objects gives the speed to animation, as well as spacing between in-betweens :)

Ease-in/out is done by placing in-betweens, without changing the exposure time of each cell. If need be, you can adjust exposure later.

So, can this be copied to 3D as is?

In 3D, Ease-in/out is done by changing property of objects' curves (keys). Computer does in-betweens.

So only timing decision is where to put the keys and what frame rate it will be. There is no question, will animation be on one's, two's or three's.. Or is there?

Well I think its interesting question, I will try and find the answer to. As always any help is appreciated.