The Animation Survival Kit DVD

It looks like the Richard Williams book "The Animation Survival Kit" is being turned into a DVD. A trailer for the DVD just hit the tube:



Here's the website: http://www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com/ It doesn't say when the DVD will be coming out, I guess we'll have to wait tell next week to find out.

I think the idea of a DVD is promising. The book is excellent, but it's hard to show moving examples in a book. I'm hoping that the DVD will be more interactive and will let you see what he's talking about.

The Animation Survival Kit is one of five books that I always recommend that my students get. It's one of the books that I feel should be on every animators bookshelf:

The Animator's Survival Kit

The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation (It's good to see this one is still in print)

Cartoon Animation (The Collector's Series) (I do prefer the tall paperback editions but this volume has all the books together.

Timing for Animation(This is a must read for any animator.)

Animation: From Script to Screen (I put this one on the list because of Chapter 3 where he talks about getting into the animators state of mind.)

There are many others that are good, but these are the five standard ones. If there's something I missed please feel free to leave me feedback.


They've updated their website, it looks like the set will be sold for just under $1000 USD but only if you buy it before November. No word on what region it is or if it's in PAL.

Thanks to Brew for pointing it out.

3D games for the Wii

Attention Wii Game developers, watch this, and make me a cool looking 3D game. This looks awesome!



BTW You can get the source code to do this for free off his website:
http://johnnylee.net

Doing Nothing

It's an old acting trick. Tell a student to get on stage, don't give him any direction just have him stand there. If you watch him, he won't know what to do. He'll fidget, and look around at the other students for support. His body will be a quiver because he's trying to figure out what to do. Now give him some direction, any direction. Tell him to look into the distance like he sees a bird. Now watch his whole body transform. All that fidgeting and nervous energy vanishes, now he has something to do.

We've all been assigned the shot where a character does nothing. He stands in the background and watches the main character do something. Even the main character stops and does nothing once in a while. It's one of the toughest assignments to get. But the easiest way to tackle it is to give that character something to do. Preferably something that fits in with the scene or story.

This is a clever video that Pixelsurgeon made, he calls it the day without news. He made it by editing together photage of BBC news anchors waiting for their cue start talking.

It's clever and funny, but that's not what interests me. These news reporters know this acting trick and they're using it. They're trying to give themselves something active to do so that they look good on camera. It's really interesting to watch, there's a lot of life in the way that they wait. It's worth watching a few times to see how good these people are at doing nothing.

Interview I did for Animation Mentor

I'm the featured mentor this week for Animation Mentor. You can check out my interview here:

http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0508/feature_mentor.html

And check out the rest of the newsletter here:

http://www.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0508/

(BTW I'm currently at Disney not Sony Imageworks, that's a typo;)

The Fall

WOW, how did I miss this one. I don't usually go for films that are more about the visual eye candy then good story. I think I'll make an exception for: "The Fall." This website has a great collection of clips and pictures:
http://toysrevil.blogspot.com/2008/05/little-blessing-in-disguise-fall-videos.html

And there's the official website:

http://www.thefallthemovie.com/

Why I love Spike Jones

This is the into to a film called: Fully Flared directed by Spike Jone. It's a skateboarding fim made for a shoe company named Lakai. I haven't seen the entire film, but I love the intro.



Spike Jones is known for his award winning commercials and music videos, I love the way he uses "in camera" effects in most of his work. He lets things naturally play out instead of trying to control every element. The result is great. Check out the video and see for yourself.

You can see more of his work here:

Ikea video, this lamp has as much personality as Pixar's Luxo, but with no animation, fancy camera work and lighting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsQXQGaasUg

Such a simple idea, such a powerful image, a man on fire running down the street:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPT7q825gwI&NR=1

This one is amazing, he filmed all the actors doing their actions backwards:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmNIvlVt40M

This is probably his most well known video, he won the MTV Music awards for it (that year he beat Madana's video, she spent millions on hers and reportedly was very pissed off when she didn't win):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqrDWKq9gGU

Mr Lux

This is great, love the style, love the animation.



Found via Cartoon Brew.