Batman Done Right! ?

It looks like they're starting to do Batman right. The new trailer for the next Batman movie looks great. I hope it holds up through the whole film. I like Morgan Freeman, but I'm not so sure about his roll in this film. Anyhoo, check it out:

http://atasteforthetheatrical.com/deathtrap/default.htm

Ed Catmull Interview

This is a bit of old news, but if you haven't checked out Ed Catmull's interview on Spline Doctors, you really owe it to yourself to do so, it's really good, very inspiring.

Direct link.

Prase for Adam Koford's LOL Cats

Like most people I discovered Adam Koford's(aka Ape Lad) drawings and comics with his series 500 Hobos. At the time I thought it was nothing more then just a lot of fun, but since then Adam has moved on to doing more then that, proving to be a great cartoonist. I check out his blog regularly and I find he's constantly uploading great comics, he's has a great unique style and a strong sense of humor. Recently Boing Boing TV has crated a fake video highlighting his LOL Cats. If you haven't seen his LOL Cats, I highly recommend them. They're done in a great old style, far superior then anything being published in papers today. (Although I did really like last Sunday's Opus.)

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Cat waking me up in the morning

I can relate to this short, cool animation too.



Thanks Mel.

Last Day at Sony

Today is my last day working at Sony Imageworks. It's been fun and they've been really good to me. I'm taking a week off and then I start my new job, at Disney. I'm really looking forward to it. I hear this is how they make their films:

Animation Mentor Fall Showcase 2007

The Animation Mentor Fall Showcase 2007 is here. There's some great stuff in it, check it out:



For a higher res version go here: http://www.animationmentor.com/quicktime/fallshowcase/mov/AnimationMentor_FA07.mov

Pixar Zoetrope

Some buys at Pixar made a 3D Zeotrope. I remember hearing about this when Pixar had their show at MoMa, it sounded cool but you don't get a real idea of how it works until you see it moving. Thankfully someone took a You Tube Video it knocked my socks off. Apparently they've moved it to California Adventure at Disneyland. I must go see this:



thanks to.

How To Cope With Death

Here's a great little film by Ignacio Ferreras. Enjoy:

Wii Remote

I just got my Wii controller working on my tablet PC. I have to tell you it has made doing my critiques for Animation Mentor so much easer.

Here's the software I've been using with my wii controller: http://onakasuita.org/wii/index-e.html

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet

It's just a day for cool you tube links. Check out this cool trailer to a new video game that hopefully will be coming out soon (it's looking for a publisher, know anyone?). It's designed by Michel Gagne, I've been a big fan of Gagne's work, he has a great design sense. I was able to score one of Gagne's original prints about 2 Comic-Con's ago. Anyhoo, check it out:



Thank's Bobby for the head's up.

Sigg Jones

This is kind of an odd short, (in other words, don't ask me what's going on) but it's worth checking out. It has a fun style to it. Apparently it was made by 3 students using 3D studio max. They were attending the school: Supinfocom in France.



There is a higher res version here, the audio might be off on some computers:
http://stage6.divx.com/user/Razorbuzz/video/1435982/Sigg-Jones-by-Supinfocom

A little more about it here: http://www.siggjones.com/

Pidgon at the Con

Jeff Pidgon has some really nice photographs from SDCC:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67896537@N00/976603489/in/photostream/

He especally has some nice pictures of the upcoming Cars Toys from Mattel.

Back from Comic-Con

I made it back from Comic-Con safe and sound. It was a blast, I had a lot of fun. Lots to see, lots to do. I would like to blog about a few things I saw there, the new Pixar Documentary, all the expensive designer toys I bought, Warren Ellis, Cory Doctro, to name a few things. But I need to catch up on work first. That and finish the new Harry Potter:) So more later.

At the Con

Taking a break from the con. Was able to score a MG1 Mini-God with a working speaker. As well as more nerd attire. More later.

Nerd Prom

I'm off to the Comic-Con. This is the first year that I've heard of that they have sold out of tickets. It's not completely sold out, but there's not a lot left. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but it sure is going to be crowded. Over 100,000 nerds and geeks to squeeze though in a hot summer weekend.

Here's a few my own nerdy things I plan attending:

Thursday:
12:00-1:00 Spotlight on Cory Doctorow Room 5AB

12:30-2:00 Drawing Style and Storytelling Room 30CDE

1:30-3:30 Paramount Pictures—Paramount Pictures Hall H

6:00-7:00 UPA Room 3

6:00-7:00 Dumbrella—Artists from Dumbrella Room 10

Friday:

10:30-11:30 Pixar Short Films Collection Room 6CDEF

10:30-12:00 Warner Bros.—Warner Bros. presents Watchmen Hall H

2:00-3:15 Spotlight on Neil Gaiman Room 6CDEF

Saturday

12:45-2:00 Heroes Ballroom 20

3:30-4:30 Futurama—Matt Groening Ballroom 20

4:30-5:30 Spotlight on Kent Williams Room 10

9:00-11:00 Spotlight on Warren Ellis—Warren Ellis ( Room 6CDEF


Sunday

10:30-11:45 Jack Kirby Tribute Room 1AB

As you can see, there's a lot of overlap, so I won't be able to do them all. But it should be fun. Hope to see you there.

New Movie Intermission Animation:

Ratatouille

Ratatouille: Saw it, loved it. Brad Bird's best work so far. The animation was amazing, incredible film all around.

If you haven't seen it already, The Slate has a great sideshow of Brad Birds work up tell now. It has great video clips of all the stuff he's done up tell now. I especially like slide number 5 where it shows a clip of his animatics. I've heard about this. He uses After Effects to practically animate his film before it goes into production.

Check it out: http://www.slate.com/id/2169280/nav/tap3/
click on slideshow

The Hard Sell

So you might notice this isn't an animation related post, but it's my blog so I can do what I want:)

Over the weekend I got to see DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist do their thing with 45's A few years ago these guys got together for a concert called "The Brain Freeze". A CD and a DVD was made of this concert, unfortunately a soundboard recording was never made and only a crappy audience copy exists. But better then noting this CD is really amazing. The DJ's restrict themselves to only origanally pressed 45 records, these spin faster then full size records and are limited in selection. When I heard they were going to do that again I jumped at the chance at seeing them live.

This concert was called "The Hard Sell," it wasn't as good as Brain Freeze but it was definitely enjoyable. I took a couple videos and posted them on You Tube. After I posted them I found other people had videos that looked better then mine. I used a crappy point and shoot camera that kept changing focus (it was too dark for it to focus on anything). But it should give you some idea what the concert was like.

My Video 1:


My Video 2, this one was great they DJs pulled out portable turntables and strapped them around like guitars and walked around scratching like it was an electric guitar solo:



Better Look Part 1


Better Look Part 2

Peter & the Wolf

Congratulations Suzie Templeton (Direction) and Marek Skrobeki (Design) for winning the Annecy Cristal and the Audience Award at Annecy. It's great looking film . Check it out while you still can on You Tube:

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:

Catching Up

Last Sunday the Animation Mentor crew came to my house to shoot a new video lecture for their school. It was a lot of fun. Not only was it fun shooting the lecture but it was great catching up with my old pal Bobby. I've been working on an animation and an outline for the class, which is one of the reasons I haven't been keeping this blog up to date. Over all the shoot went really smooth. I'd like to thank Bobby Beck, Rachel Ito and Micahel Dauz for keeping the atmosphere of the shoot fun and light hearted as well as very professional. And thanks for cleaning up after yourselves, that was supper cool, especially considering how tired you all must have felt. Anyway you can read more and see pictures here: http://bobbyboom.blogspot.com/2007/06/in-la-day-7.html (BTW that's my new Tim Biskup painting "Mutation on the Bounty" in the BG, it was a fathers day present:)

Animation Mentor is doing great and it keeps improving. I've seen some of the new tools they are rolling out, I can't talk about them here, but they'll definitly make my job easer. I'm still teaching for Animation Mentor, in fact we just finished up our last Semester, all my students did great work on their short films. Now I've got a week off before I start the next semester.

Surf's Up has been out in the theater for a while, sorry I haven't been keeping you up to date about that. Didn't do too well in the box office, but the reviews of it are really great. 77% on Rotten Tomatoes. I think the film turned out really well. It's different, it really feels like a surfing film. We watched a lot of surfing films before getting stared on this one. They were really able to catch that laid back feel that surfing films tend to have. At times the documentary style was tricky to work with. (The camera was constantly moving, and the shots were a lot longer then usual for example) But you learned to work with or work around it. In the end I enjoyed the challenge, and it made your shot look that much better.

So that's what I've been up to.

Bunny Vs Football

This is a great looking short, and the fact that it's all CG is really impressive. Lord only knows why they miss spelled "Soccer Ball".

This Kid is Awsome

Photosynth Prototype

Jaw dropping technology of the day. At first I thought: "So what, it's just a zoom tool for photos, but by the time we get to the end I was throughly impressed.

Jack Black Teaches How To Do Film

Like Jack Black? Would you like to learn more about how to make a good TV Show? Check out his tutorals on Acceptible.tv:

http://acceptable.tv/tutorials

Shrek 3 is out today

I'd like to wish my peeps at DreamWorks luck with the new installment of Shrek. I haven't had a chance to see the film, but I love the new add campaign:















These videos are actually Tim and Eric, a great and extremely dry comedy duo who did a series of promotional videos for Shrek 3. I think it's safe to say that they were not payed for by DreamWorks. You can see more here. Found.

Seriously guys, good luck with the new movie.

Back To Life

Believe it or not I might try and bring this blog back to life. It had been so long sense my last post I was surprised that blogger let me back in. I don't think I'll be able to post that often and I plan on posting about a wider spectrum of stuff. But we'll see. Anyhoo this is just a quick message so that you can get your rss feeds back in order. More later.