Sunday, March 6, 2011

Love and Theft by Andreas Hykade

First year animator Jac and I were having a discussion in class the other day about animated video clips we had seen at festivals. I thought we were initially talking about the same film. We weren't.

The one Jac meant is posted on her blog; Ausschnitt by Maurice Hubner.

The clip below is the one I meant.

Interestingly they are both European based animation, and both by German animators.

Australian animators can be influenced quite strongly by mainstream United States style animation. But it is equally apparent that Japanese animation has a strong influence. If an animator has grown up watching the ABC, their influences, may be from the United Kingdom through imported BBC programs.



The excitement of being an animation student is to research and experience the wealth of the global animation experience. Sometimes finding the best animated film ever made (KJFG No.5).

Thanks to Trent Ellis from the Animators Alliance Australia, who hosted International Animation Day in 2010, for introducing me to this, I think, amazing film. It highlights what poets, playwrights and songstresses teach animators about finding a rhythm in our storytelling.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Shaun the Sheep Animatic


2nd years are working through their storyboarding sessions toward producing an animatic for their major project narrative (and community project as a group). The animatic (above) was created for an episode of Shaun the Sheep.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Margarita by HAMPA Studio

A 'making of' a traditional 2D animated film. It shows the planning including character designs, animatic, storyboard...

Monday, February 28, 2011

The Lost Thing based on a book by Shaun Tan

This post originally went up in September 2010 and was re-posted in January 2011. In January the news was that "The Lost Thing" has been nominated for an Academy Award.

Well it won.

The achievement deserves a re-posting of this article among the other things like a gold statuette.

Artworks is a good place to point one's ears. Today they talked about Shaun Tan. He is an illustrator and story teller.

Shaun Tan, like Tim Minchin (who voices the film) and author Tim Winton, are from Perth, Western Australia. So am I. So my ears get particularly crinkled when the limestone dust and salt is stirred in my soul. Shaun now lives in Melbourne.

The Artworks program reminded me of an email that I had from Michelle earlier in the year with reports of Australian animation success at the 2010 Annecy Festival. Animators will note that Michelle talks about Passion Pictures in the UK on her blog. They develop the Gorrilaz music video clips. They also co-produced "The Lost Thing" with Screen Australia.

There is an interesting post and link to a video interview on the Ozanimate site about Shaun and the success at Annecy.

Which brings us back to Shaun Tan and the film "The Lost Thing" animated by Leo Baker



I'll hand it over to you to research some more. Second years may find it interesting how Shaun presents himself online with the design of his web site. How many EAPS did you count in that animation trailer?

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Monday, February 21, 2011

Pixar - Animated Logo - Animato

Second year animators are working on the "Animato" project in their Create 3D Digital Animation subject.

The "Animato" project is where the animators form the word 'Animation' from letters modelled by 7 different studio teams for the Create 3D Digital Environments subject.

It will be a 5 to 15 second animated clip that can be used as a base design for an animated logo to attach to their animated work.

Some animators are struggling to find their animated logo. The minimum requirement is a bouncing ball and being able to clearly see the word "Animation".

The Pixar Studios animated logo lasts 13 seconds, has a bouncing character, displaying the animation principles, interacting with the letters in the environment. It should serve well as inspiration.