Friday, January 27, 2012

Sharing Animation - Mindscape (Jacques Drouin, 1976)


This week I'm coming to you with an animation that when I first saw it, when I understood what I was watching, it completely blew my mind!

The name of the animation is Le Paysagiste (Mindscape, the english name) by Jacques Drouin.

I tried for a while to look for videos that talk about this unbelievable animation technique, so before you see this animation you could actually see the process, but I couldn't find any proper video. You can scroll along this video HERE, where Drouin himself is talking (in french) and he has a pinscreen behind him and he sometimes shows something in it. I've watched a wonderful one that I just couldn't find.

Taken from the wikipedia, I found it quite right: "A pinscreen is a white screen that consists of thousands and thousands of pins in small holes. Light shines from the side of this platform causing each and every single pin to cast its own shadow. Each pin, being able to slide easily back and forth through the holes, can cast different shadows. The white screen becomes darker the farther the pins are pushed out. The more the pins are pushed in, the lighter the screen becomes, giving a grayish tone and eventually an all white screen again."

It's really a macro sized thing that can have the whole grey, black and white scale almost perfectly. The pins are so small that you almost can't see them, you just see the gradient.

So as for animation: imagine you push a group of pins until that part of the screen is white, you take a picture and then you have to go to the back of the screen push those pins out again so you can have the white area in a different place, to have the movement when you take a picture again.

Maybe you can imagine that it's a pretty difficult technique! And so this beautiful work I bring to you today it's even more spectacular.
The technique is amazing enough but Drouin managed to make a real master piece out of it!

The best video I found was in the very National Film Board of Canada website, watch it in High Quality, wait it to load, it's totaly worth it. Although the standard is quite watchable it High Quality takes too long.
So here it is, Mindscape by Jacques Drouin.




Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!


See you next week with another incredible animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

My Animations - Five


Here is another project I've been working on.

This is a 20 seconds part of a whole 5 minutes animation project (the biggest I've ever written so far). This semester in university we had to write, storyboard, test, change, test, change again, etc, and make 20 seconds of one big animation. It's a pity that during the semester I don't actually have to finish all the projects I start, since here we were learning to create, produce, direct, and all the rest, a whole short, and one semester is not enough time to finish it.
I see that this is good for learning, but the truth is that I end up with a bunch of unfinished works. When we are done starting and developing it through it's first steps, we already have another project to do, so we kinda have to let the last one as it is. But who knows, right? Maybe in the future, if I manage to make the time, I'll finish it!

This was done in tradicional animation, digitally painted in photoshop. The background has a paper texture. It has an intended rigid and trembled animation style, not at all like Disney's animations.

In very short, the story is about the greed for power and recognition among a society. The five characters, the society, all start as equals, but by various reasons and motivations their importance in the group vary and a hierarchy of recognition is created. With hierarchy comes social difference and more power to some means less power to others. In the end it's a game of power and greed among them, the society that quickly forgets that they were all equals.

This 20 second part (really the introduction and the beginning of the whole thing) shows how the first one emerge just by having the initiative to find food. He would start eating it and the others, showing hunger, would respect him and allow him to be their leader in exchange for food. Since it's an important factor for life the others will respect him for being the provider. So he'll be the first one to grow in the eyes of the society, and in the animation he would physically grow.

Ow, and the name was not quite chosen yet. Five because there's five of them! =P


Sharing Animation - Next (Barry Purves, 1989)

For this (late) week animation sharing I bow to a very very good master stop-motion puppets animator. He has some other incredible works and I'll definetely talk more about him in the future.

But today I come with the one called Next, from the respectable master animator, Barry Purves.

Next was the first animation written and directed (aswell as animated) by Purves, released in 1989. After many years animating for others, he engaged himself in this very ambicious project and I call it ambicious because he chose to represent the "Complete Works" (37 stories) of William Shakespeare in an empty stage, exploring, in his words, body language, taking the puppet to it's limit.

It's amazing to watch how Purves makes many of his animations as actual theater's plays. His use of the stage as the only scenary and the front camera really makes us, viewers, feel as in a theater. But animations are real plays, they are all carefully staged and rehearsed, and we actually are viewers sitting down and watching it. He just makes the connection between animation and real acting even more obvious. No wonder he works in real plays aswell.

Click HERE to access his official website.

His latest animation is called Tchaikovsky. I'm certainly dying to watch it. HERE and HERE you can watch a teaser and the trailer.

So here it is, Next by Barry Purves:




Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!


See you next week for another incredible play!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Friday, January 13, 2012

Sharing Animation - The Old Man And The Sea (Alexander Petrov, 1999)


For this week's Sharing Animation piece, I brought to you one that has amazed me since I first glanced it. So I'll start by saying that it is amazing!

This was done in one of the most difficult types of animation of all, paint on glass. In my oppinion it's such a hard craft that few can actually make it look good. And this incredible painter, this incredible artist, certainly made it.

As some of you may have already guessed, the animation is The Old Man and the Sea, by the, once more, incredible russian Alexander Petrov.

Now there isn't much to say, just watch. The story is beautiful and the graphism even more beautiful. It took two and a half years of tireless work to complete, and looking at the awards that it picked up, it was worth it. Besides the Academy Award Best Animated Short Film Oscar, The Old Man and The Sea won several other awards.

HERE you can find a video where Petrov talks a little bit about this animation and it's dubbed in english. HERE (part 1) and HERE (part 2) you can find another two videos where Petrov is talking about his work flow. It's in russian, so I couldn't understand a word! =) But it's still pretty cool to watch how Petrov makes some frames of the movie (more or less at the end of part 1 and the beginning of part 2), his drawings for the storyboard and some reference images he took for Old man and the sea.

So here is the master piece (in English), please enjoy:




Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!


See you next week for one more incredible inspirational animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Friday, January 6, 2012

My Animations - Rotoscope


This week I made a Rotoscopy animation exercise! It took me about 16 hours to make this 29 second, and was completely made in Flash.

It was actually my first try rotoscoping, and I'm quite pleased with the result. I wanted to make a sort of cinema history, so I started with some classic shots of some old films. A thought is to continue this project and add more classic films that I've watched to this animation.

I wanted it a black and white rotoscopy, somewhat like a sketch book, adding some color in details (the tongue and the dancing bread).

The movies added are 1902 - A Trip to The Moon and 1925 - The Gold Rush

After a while I thought it would be nice to add some detail to it, so I thought adding the smoke texture as I've done in my Music Abstraction animation.

One thing I can say, I definitely rather do "real" animation than rotoscoping! =)


Thursday, January 5, 2012

Sharing Animation - Manipulation (Daniel Greaves, 1991)

I always loved animations that not only tells a narrative but also talks about animation itself. Animations that really show the process, the making of, the material, the essence of animation and present it in a way that it seems we're looking at the animator doing his job!

And on top of all that, what makes the "Illusion of life", persued by all animations, more real then having the life form creation interacting with his creator, the animator? There are tons of animations interacting with his creator, but this one is certainly one of the bests, if only for winning the 1992 Oscar for the best animated short.

The british author, name: Daniel Greaves, and his award winner piece, name: Manipulation.

Here it is, the very amusing animation:



Check out the other short movies from the Sharing Collection HERE!!


See you next week for yet another awesome piece of animation!

No copyright and related rights infringements are intended with these sharings, all these animations are properties from their respective authors or studios always credited in the post.

Animag 2011 Funny Animation Retrospective

Animation Magazine made a funny 2011 kind of Comic Book page with some of the animations that impressed during last year. I thought it was really cool to share with everyone! Of course, credit: Animag!!




Awesome stuff!!