Just a little John Lasseter

You have to bow to a master, you just have to.

My Animations - Animation Mentor Class 01: Basic Foundations

And here I have it! After three months, those amazing 12 weeks, in my first Class in the incredible online animation school, Animation Mentor, I have my first "progress reel"!
What is a progress reel? Is a little movie where I put (from the newer to the older) all the animations I did in this first term.

This term I had as a teacher the one and only amazing animator and teacher Anthony Wong, and boy, am I happy that I chose him! He has worked through out the industry in everything there is to work in animation, games, commercials, TV shows (the Simpsons) and feature films (he worked in Walt Disney studios in films such as "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and is now working at Pixar, and has worked on Ratatouille, Cars2 and some more and is now working on Monsters University).
I don't know exactly how are the other mentors at Animation Mentor, but Anthony Wong has certainly put a high standard of quality in the teaching. Never in my life was I part of such a learning environment, it was great, it was perfect. But I'm quite confident about my next mentor as well! He is great and I hand picked him for the next term. His name is Marlon Nowe and he is currently working at Walt Disney Studio (worked in Tangled, Wreck-it Ralph and the short Paperman, as far as I know).


I'll just explain, in order of appearance the animations I have here.

• The first one is the last I did, I actually completed it last week, and the objective of it was to refine and finish a walk with personality with that little character.
• The week before, the next shot that look fairly the same, was just a "blocking" stage, where we create some poses with that 3D character, and come up with a timing and show it to our mentor.
• The two after that, I had to go through a blocking stage again, but now for a normal walk, what they call a vanilla walk, which is the character just walking, with no personality, so the two are blocking stage and refine stage after that.
• The one next was Tailor, this little character that resembles a squirrel. That character is there so we could learn more about animating that tail, overlap actions it is.
• After tailor I have a pendulum like thingy, which was the introduction to overlapping actions, that pendulum like arm, lifeless, as opposite to Tailor's tail.
• The little ball going all around was an obstacle course ball, for us to learn the principle of squash and stretch.
• The two different balls, as you can imagine, are different weights balls, so we can learn more about the difference animating something heavy and something very light.
• And the first one was really a normal ball (football or basketball) jumping, the animation every animator had to do at least once in his life!

The truth is, this last three months went by in a rush! Animation Mentor is truly super intensive! And in this last week of the Basic Foundations Class, this is what I ended up with.





Probably in the future I will update this video, with better renderings of the animations, and better to look at, but for now I'll leave it like this.
I can't wait for the next term to start, but for the next two weeks I'll be able to take a little rest and enjoy family and Christmas!

So I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Sharing Animation - Franz Kafka's Country Doctor (Koji Yamamura, 2007)

And here I come again with another animation to share with everyone! This week I chose a somewhat dark environment, but it is a very well done and very well conceptualized animation.

The director nowadays is like a guru of animation and a very well know artist. Besides the godlike animator and director Hayao Miyazaki he was the only Japanese animator to receive a Oscar nomination (this honor with the short called Mt. Head).

But this week's animation short I'm here to share is called Franz Kafka's Country Doctor (Kafka Inaka Isha), by the japanese independente animator, Koji Yamamura.

Apart from the downer mood, it really is a very recomended watching!

HERE you can find Yamamura's website.


Here it is, Kafka's Country Doctor, by Koji Yamamura. (It's divided in three parts because it was in better quality)

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

See you soon with another great sharing (next time more happy themed)

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.

Sharing Animation - The Aroma of Tea (Michael Dudok de Wit, 2006)

Today I wanted to share with you all a short animation that has widely influenced me, and I love it so much that I actually used it's unique graphic quality in one of my works.

This very short animation is called The Aroma of Tea by Michael Dudok de Wit. This is the third short animation that I share by this great artist, which can really show my love for his masterpieces.

This one very much simpler than the others, but still you could find a very deep meaning in it. But in the end it's a very "sit back and enjoy" kind of film, so I don't have much to say about it. Well it was painted with tea! =)

First I want to share this interview about the artist:




And here is this wonderful art:

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

See you next week with another 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.

My Animations - Traditional Animation Project

Today I want to wrap up, finally, my university animations here in my blog. So there's only one more to talk about and this one was the one that took me longer to get as far as it is. Just because it's a 2 min short all done with traditional animation, so for those who have experienced something like this, they'll know how long this can take for one person alone to make. And that's why in some parts it isn't finished. Maybe in the future this will be one more project for me to finish, but not right now, as I'm busy with another even more awesome stuff like learning animation from the top animators in the world!

This project was a personal short that intended to honor the animation world. Not only its history and how it grew to be this spectacular art form we know today, but also to make reference of some of the most influential artists in the area.

So in the end what I chose to represent were some of the objects that preceded animation itself, objects that created the illusion of movement through images before it went out onto the screens. Many objects like the thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, zoetrope/praxinoscope, mutoscope are here represented but also the film and paper itself are shown here as methods of creating motion. The whole animation is representing and simulating other objects, but in the end it was made in paper, everything was drawn, so the paper itself cannot be forgotten, that is the reason that the main character, an illusionist, since he is creating the illusion of motion, the illusion of life, is drawn in such a sketched way, and organic drawing that is moving for it's own, has a life but still is a drawing. That is also the reason that the last thing animated is the paper itself.

Not only the objects and methods of animation are represented but also animators and their work. The first representation is a generic bouncing ball, and it's there because it is one of the first exercises a person learning animation must do, so is an exercise that every professional animator has done one way or the other.
Then some artists are referenced, like Winsor McCay with Gertie the Dinosaur, Norman McLaren with Blinkity Blank and Pas de Deux, and also traditional animation studios like Walt Disney Studios with the enchanted broom of the Sorcerer's Apprentice part of Fantasia, and 3D studios like Pixar and Dreamworks animation studios with Luxor Jr. and the fishing rod/line.

(all the links are to images search in Google and Wikipedia, I think all the animations I refer above can be found in the internet if you search for it)

Of course there were many other artists and studios that were equally, if not more, important for the development of this art form, but this was a personal choice, having in mind that when I first planned this short, I was starting my animation studies, so the references are not as knowledgeable as I could have make them today. And also, this was to be just a quick reference to a very few group of artists that were/are in fact important for the evolution of animation. Another interesting aspect of this animation is that some parts I animated when I haven't really animated almost nothing at all before, so I was even more an amateur than I am today, and other parts were animated almost two years later, so the quality in movement is clearly better.


To finish up this rambling, I want to mention that although many parts are made as references to other animations, all the animation in this unfinished short was done by me, and no method of copying animation, like rotoscopy was used at all.

So here it is, the most time I spent, ever, in any kind of project, and still needing more time (maybe in the future, who knows?), one of the animations of my last year of university, this traditional animation project.



Tradicional Animation Project from Rodrigo Costa on Vimeo.


For now on, the animations I'm creating are for the online animation school Animation Mentor which I'm currently in week 6! So stay tuned!

Sharing Animation - The Silence Beneath the Bark (Joanna Lurie, 2010)

Hey animation lovers!

This week I would like to share with you a quite recent, beautiful and very deep short animation I found some time ago when I was in university. We were to look for animations that had different techniques, and I chose to talk about simplicity in different techniques and simplicity in different ways. This short has a simplicity of it's own, mostly in the main characters that although are CG three dimensional characters, are so simple yet so expressive.

There are many aspects of this short that I just love. One of them is the obvious good taste for composition of the creators. Another thing is the incredible script it has, another way to show that no words are needed to tell a good story.

This hybrid animation with CG and traditional mixing together in a perfect and pleasant composition has great texture and it really is a good piece of art.

So enjoy the 2007 Annecy Judge Award Winner short The Silence Beneath the Bark (Original title: Le Silence Sous L'écorce) by Joanna Lurie.

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

See you soon with another beautiful animation short!

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.

Sharing Animation - Gertie the Dinossaur (Winsor McCay, 1914)

Here we are for another short animation for you to enjoy, and since last week I posted a recent one (2010 Love & Theft), today I'm posting a really old one (actually, the oldest in my list!)

So, as a really old one, and really influential one, I wish I could give it a special attention and really enhance the incredible work this animator did. His name is Winsor McCay and this animation is called Gertie the Dinosaur.

Before this animation, McCay had already done two other animations, one called "Little Nemo" (which Google celebrated in a Doodle this week) and other called "The Story of a Mosquito". This last one had a problem with the audience, that tought the mosquito was moving through wires (imagine in the very early 1990's thinking that was actually a moving drawing). So in the next animation McCay decided to animate a dinossaur, to prove his drawings were moving.

Ten thousand drawings of Gertie were done for this animation. This is the first time a character is actually given life in a screen, with real emotions and real responces that people recognize and have empathy.


After this animation he made several other animations, including another one with Gertie in 1921, but this one went out to be his masterpiece and one of the most influential animations of all time.

Enjoy Gertie the Dinossaur by Winsor McCay.

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

See you next week with another influential 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.

Sharing Animation - Love & Theft (Andreas Hykade, 2010)

Hello peeps!

Since I started AM I haven't actually kept my promise of sharing a new inspirational animation every week, but hey, I'm trying to do my best and today, although I'm quite late with my assignment, I thought I could come and share some other special animation with you!

For this week I bring a recent short animation called "Love & Theft", that is one hell of an artistic piece in my opinion. The creator, director and animator of this wonderful animation is Andreas Hykade.

I think this animation is highly illustrational, and the way he explores the loops is just great! It's somewhat fast, but you can clearly see most of his references to many cartoons of many kinds and also (I've read this in a news blog) some other animators, such as Bill Plympton). Among the many animations that are referenced you can find Betty Boop, The Hat, mickey mouse and donald duck, his own Ring of Fire, Sponge Bob, Droopy, and many many others.

Please enjoy this wonderful digital animation "Love & Theft" by Andreas Hykade.

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

See you next week, or soon =P, with another great 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.

Sharing Animation - The Band Concert (Walt Disney Studios - Wilfred Jackson, 1935)

Hello again dear fellow animation lovers!

Finally my longe holidays are over and I'm finally back on studying! And what excitement it is to be in one of the top schools of animation in the world! That's right, yesterday I started my fantastic one and a half year animation learning at Animation Mentor! The happiness I'm feeling right now is quite incredible and indescribable!

But enough about that! Since I'm back to work, I thought it would be a perfect time to get back with the animation sharing in my blog!

So to get back from this long absense, I'm here to show you one of the most powerful short animations I've ever seen and certainly my favorite from that studio!

The fantastic studio, as we all know it, is the Disney Animation Studios, and the wonderful short is the 1935 The Band Concert, directed by Wilfred Jackson.

Starting with the well known "Silly Symphonies" was the goal of achieving a great relationship between music and animation. In the book "The Illusion of Life", chapter 11: The Disney Sounds, there's a paragraph I would like to quote about this short.

<< In those first symphonies, the actions had been simple, staying with dance steps and runs that easily could be made to follow the beat of the music. But with Walt's insistance on humor and personality, the films built quickly into stories that demanded the acting match the tempo, too. This reached a peak in 1935 with the Band Concert, which combined well-known music with strong personalities and a situation played entirely in pantomime. It was rare combination, reflecting still another use of music as language. As one producer said, "Who else would take a band concert out of Walt's boyhood, mix in 'William Tell' and 'Turkey in the Straw' and a Kansas cyclone, and come out with a performance that would enchant Toscanini?" (Tipical of Walt, he did not stop there but began thinking of an ever bigger use of the same principle. He called that one Fantasia.) >>

This short for me is the perfect demonstration of in which levels can music and animation come close together. This is a highly inspirational short, as far as I'm concerned.

Enjoy The Band Concert by Wilfred Jackson and the fantastic Walt Disney crew!

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

See you next week (when I'll be in week 2 in animation mentor!) for another awesome 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.

My Animations - Pepe Le Moko Intro

Alright! After this long holidays (maybe my last) that are about to end, I've put myself together to update my blog, finally! Yes, they're about to end because I'm in the countdown for the most expected learning experience of my life! Well, if you're tuned you'll be hearing a lot from it in the next 18 months!

For this post I wanted to talk a little about my latest and last work for university, and the one that I'm most proud of, and yes, this one is completly finished. I've added a whole page for the process of creation of this animation, but it was all in Portuguese, because it was a follow up of an exhibition I had the pleasure to make with this animation. But still if you visit the tab "Exibição" there's some images to be looked at, scenario designs, character designs and lettering choices. Also there's a video with animation tests, the animation side by side with the animatic (in motion storyboard, sort of).

So this animation is a intro shot for the movie Pepe Le Moko (Link to IMDB), a movie about a gangster that is imprisoned in his own tries to scape from the police. He is a wanted criminal that lives in a labirinthic city where the police can't reach, but he wants much more to his life than just be a fugitive in that overcrowded city. So one day when he meets a beautiful woman from Paris, he can't stop thinking about his old days of liberty and running away with the woman.


For this animation I decided to use the wonderful style created by the Master animator Dudok de Wit in his beautiful animation called "The Aroma of Tea". With the style I tried to create a narrative told only with little balls moving around in a painted (with China Ink) claustrophobic city. In the whole intro shot there are 21 painted scenarios.

There were two main concerns to me in this short, first was how to have different characters when every single one of them are little balls. And the second, how to tell a story using only those circles. It was not my intention for the narrative to be completely understandable, there was much of an abstract feeling in it, but still the main drama was to be told and understood, and I hope that goal was achieved because it took me long hours to animate all those little balls and to make it mean something.

With this project I won a funding to make an exhibition with the animation and the artistic pieces created in the production. It was a huge honor to me and I hope I was able to pass along a little of my passion for animation.

Finally, I proudly present the title sequence for Pépé Le Moko.




I'll be posting in the next days other works that I made in my last year in university! See you soon!

Sharing Animation - One Minute Puberty (Alexander Gellner, 2011)

So I've been out for quite a while now finishing university and a little trip and all. Well but I must continue to share the animations!

For a quicky then, since it is too a really short animation, I'll share with you one of the first animation that I added in my list for sharing (yes, I have a list), that funny enough was so recent that only this year it could be nominated for awards, and it was nominated, for a big one actually.

The name of the animation is One Minute Puberty by Alexander Gellner, and was nominated for the latest annecy festival!

Not only this surprisingly good animation was his graduation project, but also it was in a university that didn't have any animation department, HTW Berlin, in Germany, so he did it really confident, which is amazing.

Since the first time I saw it I loved it, so I hope you enjoy it.

One minute puberty by Alexander Gellner

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

See you soon, hopefully next week, for another great 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.

Sharing Animation - Vincent (Tim Burton, 1982)

Although I'm very busy at this time with university I couldn't skip one more week in my sharings. So I'm bringing today another stop motion animation, this one made by Tim Burton.

The name of the animation short is Vincent and is about a young who wanted to be like the actor Vincent Price and his legendary characters. The actor is the narrator and is reading a poem written by Tim Burton.

HERE is the link for the poem.

The mood and the elements of the whole short are, of course, signed with Burton's caracteristic eye.

And so, without having much else to say,
I leave you with Vincent, by Tim Burton.

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

See you next week with another inspiring animation short!

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.

Sharing Animation - Neighbours (Norman McLaren, 1952)

It's really weird that I've never talked and shared anything about one of the greatest and most innovators animators of all time! He has so many experiences, so many new looks to animation and so many innovative ways to look at frame by frame images, that I guess I didn't know how to start!

Since I'm thinking in making a very short experience in Pixilation Animation (for those of you who don't know it by the name, you'll see what I mean in the end of the post!) I thought I could share with you the first McLaren short I've seen, and it's in that technique. The 1952 short called Neighbours.

McLaren was one of the big pioneers of the NFB of Canada. There he produced many animations as you can see with a simple google search.

Well, Norman McLaren has many incredible particularities, and in this short he shows some of them. He made animations not only for his country, but to all the world, with messages of peace and understanding among other cultures. Another thing is that he loved to explore not only new techniques but serious contemporaneous issues, and in this animation, made in the middle of the Cold War, clearly shows his thoughts about it.
And yet another thing, one of the most wonderful and crazy (so to speak) things about him, the music in it. McLaren made animations that he actually painted (or scratched) directly in the film instead of photographing it. That alone was quite innovative, but then he started painting his own sounds.
The analog film have a bar by the side of the image frames that corresponds to the sound that is played in the theater. It is represented by waves. What McLaren did was figuring out how to draw especific notes in the right time to correspond it with the actions that were already animated in the film. It's incredible really. Better than explaining it maybe you should see this two youtube videos that explain both the drawing in film and drawing sounds:






After that, here is my actual short sharing, Neighbours by Norman McLaren:

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

See you next week with more inovative and pioneer 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.

Sharing Animation - Screen Play (Barry Purves, 1992)

Today I was with some freaky excitement about stop motion animation, I was even looking for prices to buy one to try some myself (I added the link of the stop motion site where I found the puppets in the awesome animation link list down below), and so, I figured I should share with you a stop motion puppet animation!

And for that I'll refer to one of the bests (if not the best), one great artist that I've shown here before with the animation short "Next". Barry Purves with another genious animation, Screen Play.

As I sad in the last post it's quite curious how he represent his animations in actual stages, and this one is even more evidently a play, since it has a narrator (voice: Michael Maloney) and a beautiful movable stage. This was another highly awarded animation, and surely a deserving one. You may notice that until the animation reaches more than nine minutes, I doesn't have a single 'cut', it's the same shot for almost the whole short, really like we're in a theater, and astonishing work by the animator.


I guess all I can say is for you to watch! Enjoy it very much! I would love to have a puppet like that to play around!

Screen Play by Barry Purves:

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

See you next week with another exciting 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.

Sharing Animation - Donald in Mathmagic Land (Luske, Reitherman, Meador and Clarks - Walt Disney Studios, 1959)

Hello there again!

As promised I bring for the sharing a more cheerful animation! A nostalgic one again! I just love this one! It's incredible and funny and... well you got the idea.

Directed by masters like Les Clarks, Joshua Meador, Wolfgang Reitherman and Hamilton Luske (the most animation addicted know where it comes from by now), here it is, Donald in Mathmagic Land, for the magic people at Disney.

Well, about the animation there's not much to say, you all know their work right?
I just love it, so I hope you'll enjoy it!

Supervised by Luske, directed by Les Clarks, Meador and Reitherman, here is Donald in Mathmagic land.

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

See you next week with another amazing 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.