DreamWorks first personal art publication, Moonshine, was conceived as an opportunity to highlight the breath of artistic development talent at Dreamworks. This short documentary gives you a sneak peek into the personal works from the artists.
This documentary refreshingly shows that just because we work with computers all day, that doesn’t mean we only work with computers to create art.
Sorry I’ve been away for a bit. Production! But I came back to share with you this is really excellent short with some simple, but exceptionally well done, visual effects and animation. Plus it has dancing skeletons in it, so it’s fitting for this spooky Halloween season.
It’ll also get a song stuck in your head, so watch out!
This 3-D Typography experiment that the interface designers at BERG in London came up with is absolutely beautiful. I particularly like the pixelated style of the text, even though it’s getting a little over used. It just makes it feel like the sci-fi flicks I loved watching growing up in the 1980′s. Adding to it’s appeal is the simple technique that’s used to create the, as I’ll refer to it from now on, “magic transparent floaty text”.
The formula goes a little something like this. iPad + 3D to 2D image slices + persistance of vision = magic transparent floaty text. A simple movie, slice by slice frame by frame, is played on the screen of the iPad in front of a camera with it’s shutter open. And the result is a brand new take on the whole light writing phenomenon of the past year. But that’s only the first part of the process. They then repeat those steps over and over again until they get close to 3,000 frames which then makes up a shot in the video you’ll see below.
It’s total manual work too. Just a guy, holding an iPad, and moving it in front of the camera. But I wonder what type of effects could be achieved if you combine this with a high tech motion control rig. Or dare I say it…stereo cameras. Gasp!
Think about that as you watch the video below. Some really cool stuff.
P.S. On a site centric note, if anyone of my readers are in fact STILL reading this blog that is, I’m currently in the long stop and go process of redesigning this site. Once I finally sit down and just bang it out, this blog shall live again in a shiny new form. So if you are still reading this, one…thank you. And two, your patience will be rewarded.
Stay tuned!
For those of you who couldn’t make it to this years Siggraph Computer Animation Festival, I’ve got some good news for you. Lucas Martell’s animated film, “Pigeon: Impossible”, has finally been released for all to see on YouTube!
It’s a really charming short, expertly done, and is honestly just as good as anything Pixar has to offer. Big words I know, but watch the video below and I think you’ll agree. Especially when you get to the credits and realize only a handful of artists we responsible for creating it! Also, if you haven’t already, check out his video podcast series he did awhile back too. He takes you step by step from story development, to animation, to rendering, to final edit. I’ve featured it on this blog before, but I’ve relinked it below the featured video just in case you all want to check it out again! Just like “Pigeon: Impossible”, it’s a really high quality series and I think we can all learn a lot from it.
Great work Lucas! I really loved it.
The Short
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The Vlog
Check out this amazing animation done for the BBC called ‘Tree of Life’. It aired during the ‘Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life’ special in Feburary and it has a really awesome ‘Jurassic Park’ vibe to it. Mostly because the narrator sounds spot on to John Hammond.
But besides the awesome narration, the concept they came up with for taking you through each branch of the evolutionary tree was really nicely thought out. They kept the elements simple, with the lines branching over and over. But just like a great musical score they evolved those elements in unexpected and really interesting ways. I especially loved the transition from water to land. Very beautiful stuff.
Check out the video and link below!
The Tree of Life video was shown as part of ‘Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life’, which was broadcast on BBC1 on Sunday 1 February 2009. Narrated by Sir David Attenborough, the programme was part of the BBC’s Darwin season. You can buy a DVD of the programme at the BBC Shop.
Alright everyone, drop what you’re doing and check out the new and REAL trailer for James Cameron’s “Avatar”! Fans have crashed the Apple Movies site for the 1080i HD trailer, but traileraddict.com is up and running. So check it out below and let me know what you think in the comments below! Looks like we’re in for something special come December…
Check out “District 9” Director Neil Bloomkamp‘s 1998 VFS student reel. It has a big time Michael Bay, a’la “Armageddon” vibe to it. But you can really see this Director’s love and, more importantly, understanding of a strong visual language and cinematography.
I really can’t help but wonder what student reels from my graduating class at SCAD will be dusted off in 10 years.
My favorite thing about this reel though has to be the “special thanks” to the now defunct Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. SGI will always hold a special place in not only my heart, but also every VFX artist past and present.
I vividly remember watching a special behind the scenes video tour of the server room at ILM during “Jurassic Park”. And that room was just packed to the gills with those beasts. And it wasn’t just at ILM! Any self respecting VFX studio back then had at least one system from SGI. Those machines were Cadillacs to visual effects artists back then, and I really miss that.
“Oh memories…out the corner of my mindddddd…such precious memories……of the way…we werrrreeeee…”
Check out this amazing music video using old school Praxinoscopes that production company Blinkink did for musician Moray McLaren. 2D Animation done by director David Wilson.
Using both praxinoscopes and the technique of matching up the frame rate of the spinning record to that of the camera, no computer super-imposing was used; what you see is what rolled off the camera. The transitions between each section of animation was created by simply cutting or wiping between the bits of footage.
Praxinoscopes were the forerunner of the more well known Zoetropes. Both of which are the proud parents of modern animation.
Moray McLaren is a Scottish singer-songwriter, born and raised in Edinburgh. When a disk of Moray’s rough recordings fell into the hands of producer Jonathan Shakhovskoy (U2, Patrick Wolf), he suggested they make an album together. The pair are currently in the studio recording. Moray’s debut album will be released on Lash Records this summer.
The stunning 3D building projects you just sawwere made by a company called NuFormer in the Netherlands. The process of how they create such amazing animations isn’t widely known for obvious reasons. But if I had to guess they start out by talking a series of photogrammetric images, allowing them to them model a fairly exact copy of the building facade inside the computer. They then can test real world projection camera placement, and refine the animation in this digital sandbox. Now I could be totally wrong and they could just be using magic or something, but that’s at least how I would do it.
You might have actually caught a still from one of their projections in last weeks Photo Dump #4. Which honestly was a totally unintentional. It was just an image that I came across and I thought had some clever photoshopping done to it. I had no idea that it was a still from a real art installation! But once Jess sent me this video I just had to write a quick post about it! Because I’ve honestly never seen anything like the work that NuFormer is doing. Sans the goofy pop music of course, ha.
What do you all think of it? Anyone in the Netherlands actually seen this in real life? Let me know in the comments section below!
xperienced, innovative (always busy with the newest technological developments which are directly being applied in our projects) and especially creative.
Out-of-the-box thinkers with a good eye for customer orientation. Each time again the empathic capacity is being used to provide a tailor-made job. And of course the creativity is housed in a professional organisation for the businesslike sides of the projects.
Our teams’ motto is quality to be primary to professionalism, creation to be distinctive and always in balance with technique and objective.
Sorry for the lack of posts over the past few days folks. Been pretty busy. But I have a few minutes free so I’m spending them with you. And to tell you, I like these videos from Japanese artist Makoto Yabuki…
Makoto Yabuki works as a director/ art director at Tokyo ,Japan.
He started his career as a visual designer in 1997 ,and joined TANGRAM.co.ltd at its establishment in 2003 as director. His artistic range is expansive; among his recent works are “scope” ,”MANAKAI”,and “CONFINE(S)”. His works have been presented in film festivals such as SIGGRAPH, onedotzero, artfutura, ARS Electronica.
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I’ll be posting like a machine very soon. Stay tuned!
