Did you ever dream of flying?

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

Wow....

I saw this on Keith Lango's site and it was so interesting I had to post it here. Give it a chance. It's pretty amazing.

Richard WIlliams Stuff

A fantastic documentary about Richard Williams. Too bad the quality is poor. If you don't have the time to look at the whole thing at least check out the beginning of part two where he's analyzing people's walks.







There's a lot of documentaries popping up on youtube lately about him that I haven't seen before. Do yourself a favor and do a little search for them.

It really is a shame what they did to his life long project The Thief and the Cobbler. There's a recut version floating around out there and I was fortunate to get a copy on DVD. If you can see it, do it. It's not perfect, but there is some AMAZING animation that wasn't put into the film. I really wish they'd release a director's cut of this gem.



And of course, just in time for the holidays ;)

Evolution of Video Games

A very interesting article on the evolution of video game graphic design. Yeah it's a lot of pictures, but it's still fascinating. My only gripe is that they don't show any pictures of Zork....

Oh wait.....

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2008/12/video-game-design-between-1990-2008/

Great post about John Cleese

Worth looking at just for the cool picture at the top ;)

http://badbanana.typepad.com/weblog/2008/08/silly-walks-and.html

E-Dog!

So I'm doing this directed study with a really nice guy named Everett Downing. He's a wicked animator, and even though he doesn't have any animation on his blog (wink wink nudge nudge) you should go over there to see the comic he's working on as well as other wonders and delights!

His blog is located at http://www.edowning.com/

Make your own luck

http://www.rd.com/advice-and-know-how/how-to-get-lucky/article27664.html

Fishies!

My thesis...

Recently I've been spending day and night working on my thesis for my final review this December. I feel like I should be posting some animation here, so here's four shots I animated and then decided to discard from my thesis. I hesitated in posting them because I feared it would give away the story of my short. But I think I'll just settle for saying SPOILER ALERT! If you'd prefer to be surprised when you see my final film, don't look at these clips!

I stopped working on them when they were all pretty much in progress, so there's not a lot of polish here. But I do like a lot of the distortions and shape changes I was able to get from the rig. Most of that stuff is on ones! Can't let the computer do all the work, now can I?

Again, there shots are not examples of finished animation. They're more examples of how I work. I've put them in sequence according to my old storyboards. Enjoy!


Unused Thesis shot 1 from Graham Ross on Vimeo.


Unused Thesis Shot 2 from Graham Ross on Vimeo.


Unused THesis SHot 3 from Graham Ross on Vimeo.


Unused Thesis Shot 4 from Graham Ross on Vimeo.


Unused Thesis Shot 5 from Graham Ross on Vimeo.

Sabrina's artist bio!

My girlfriend Sabrina has been recognized by ASIFA-SF! Here's a link to her artist bio:

http://cablecartoon.blogsome.com/2008/11/06/pencil-pusher/

and here's a link to her Q and A:

http://cablecartoon.blogsome.com/sabrina-cecchini/

And while you're at it, swing by her blog and check out her lovely thesis film:

http://sabrinacecchini.blogspot.com/

The Curious Explorations of Jasper Morello

I hope I spelled the name right ;)

Someone showed this short to me a while back, and although I haven't had time to sit through the whole thing, the style and tone of it is really amazing. It has a dark edge to it that reminds me of Poe or maybe Slow Bob (a stop motion short from the days of Liquid Television). But I also love the Steampunk elements of it as well.

Please check it out!

Really excellent slow motion stuff

Researching a jump and found this on youtube. Really interesting to study how the body moves and compresses through space.

Dog Studies

Some studies I did while watching Animal Planet.

New show on Discovery - Time Warp

Great animation reference!

http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/time-warp/time-warp.html

Eight Rules for Writing Fiction...

Eight rules for writing fiction:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

- Vonnegut, Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons 1999), 9-10.

--Found through 9 Rules and here.

Bryce-A-Roni

My buddy Bryce game me some crap about not posting as often as I should. I took my camera to school and snapped a few pics of what I've been drawing lately. Happy Bryce?

I've been having a lot of trouble getting the WHOLE figure down on the page. I'm not really sweating it though. I feel like my slowing down and appreciating the model has made me...well...slower! But I am recording what I see more accurately now. And each week I'm getting a bit more down on the page than last week.

I think it's really a matter of editing...and elaborating...and choosing. So at this point I need to learn how to do these things. The more I practice them, the faster I'll get.

BTW, while you're at it check out Bryce's awesome blog here.

While these aren't some of my best drawings, I felt that I hadn't posted some of my work in a while, so I picked these few favorites. I've been pushing full steam on my thesis, so I really don't want to post anything until it's close to finished.

Incidentally, the maquette is the main character from my thesis. I have to go back and re-sand him to smooth out some rough parts, but he's almost done so I thought I'd post a pic anyways ;)

Two posts in one day?

I'm busy working on my thesis, but I do find time to look for inspiration!

Check out this blog:

http://www.artofthetitle.com/

At the time of writing this, they just put up a great breakdown of the Kung Fu panda opening title sequence. Great place to learning about storyboarding for sure!

Great quote....

"Take your profession seriously; don't take yourself seriously. You really only matter to a certain degree in the whole circus out there. If you take yourself seriously, you're not going to be able to move forward. You're going to be hampered by always wanting to look in the mirror and see if you have enough tuna oil on your hair or something like that."

--Clint Eastwood from this article.

Don't Vote

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.