Flip book animation

This was a task we had to do for the Animation Skills module. We had to practice stretch and squash  by drawing pose to pose on flip books. Then we scanned everything in and using Photoshop made a gif. At first I did just a bouncing ball-

then a bouncing ball in arc trajectory  -

and then a bouncing character-

I feel that I could have done better with all three. The first one could use and extra frame when the ball is at the top, otherwise it looks like it is melting, not bouncing. Same goes to the second one. And as for the bouncing character changes volume and it is just not that fluent. But this exercise was very beneficial in terms of practising timing and spacing. It is really hard to get those both right in the first time, and flip book allows you to see how the animation looks in motion and quickly edit it. 

Ladislav Starevich

Ladislav Starevich (1882-1965) was a stop-motion, puppet animator, who even though he was born in Russia, he was raised in Lithuania, Kaunas city. In Lithuania he is proudly considered to be a Lithuanian animator, although there is only a hand full of work he did when he lived in Kaunas. He was offered to work at Disney but refused it because he did not want to be consumed by a company and wanted to shine as an individual.  His animation featured insects and animals, actually he made his famous short film called the Cameraman's Revenge by replacing insects legs with wire and attaching it to their thorax with wax. he came up with this idea while working as a director in the Museum of Natural History in Kaunas. At the time everyone was amazed by his animated insects and called Starevich "The Beetle Tamer". Starevich's animation is considered to be on of the catalysts for Soviet Russian animation.

Margaret Mathison and The Fox and the Mirror

This piece was animated by another CalArts(J.g. Quintel, Pendleton Ward) student Margaret Mathison.
"I did it because I am currently attending CalArts and every year we are expected to make a short film. I Have to say the people in the department are the most hard working insane awesome people before. I am just one of the individuals who accomplish this great feet every year. It’s Awesome! Only now can I appreciate the amount of work that goes into hand drawn animation. So much work for such a short thing. But it means so much! Now I feel like I can accomplish anything!"
It is a classic hand-drawn, pose to pose animation, made with mechanical 5HB pencils and animation paper. It was tested on a light box system, then scanned in, arranged on After Effects and edited on Final Cut Pro.
The short film is a bit abstract and has symbolistic tendencies: the butterflies symbolises the dream which we all pursue and the mirror represents our worst enemy- ourselves. Even though the short film looks like a rough sketch, it translates the message really well and it is easy to sympathise with the main character.

Adam Phillips

Adam Phillips is another Flash animator, who is most know for Brackenwood series, that are published on Newgrounds portal. Apparently he worked for Disney, but left in order to pursue his own interests and became a freelance artist. His flash animations are brilliant and professionally made, but what fascinates me the most, is that he portrays a great understanding of nature. The nature element in his animations is really nicely explored, it can be seen it in scenes with water or trees. The series include inhabitants of a small fictional forrest planet, the characters seem to be based on Irish mythology and cryptozoology. The planet itself is a natural paradise that varies from forests to jungles.

Not bad for a flash animation, eh?

Simon's Cat

Simon's Cat is a really charming cartoon series about a constantly hungry cat. Simon's Cat is animated by a british animator Simon Tofield and it is made on Flash, and it is hand-drawn on a Wacom tablet. It is really brilliantly animated and captures the funny characteristics of cats and their behaviour, even though the main character design is really simplified. The cartoons are black and white, single-lined and there's not much to it, but it capture the attention of millions of viewers and became a viral sensation. Even though there is no underline message to it, it is light, humorous, fun to watch and it features a cat! EVERYONE loves cats!

J.G. Quintel

J.G. Quintel is an american animator famous for the animated TV series Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack and Regular Show, both of which are aired on Cartoon Network. He is a recognised professional in the animation industry and his signature style is very apparent in his work. Quintels first noticeable piece called The Naive Man from Lolliland was inspired by one of the CalArts (institute which he attended) exercises- apparently students would have to write down random words or made up movie titles and draw them out of a hat, then they would make an effort of creating a short film in 48 hours based on the drawn word. The main character from The Naive Man from Lolliland later on appears in Regular Show as a secondary character named Pops. The short is animated pose-to-pose and I personally like the drawing style in it. The second short film that followed was 2 in AM PM. It is also hand drawn pose-to-pose but what is the most interesting thing is that you can see the actual origin of Regular Show.

When Quintel got an internship at Cartoon Network he met Pendleton Ward, with whom he worked on Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack, Ward would later on use his experience he gained while making Flapjack and go off creating Adventure Time. But the thing with Flapjack is it's very well styled- the textures used in the backgrounds give this creepy, rustic sailing adventure feel, the character design is very simple, but every once in in a while there are these disturbing close-ups of the characters-

This was probably Wards input because these close-ups continue in Adventure Time-

and the since humour is so disturbing, sometimes it makes you wonder "is this supposed to be aired on Cartoon Network?" 

 

But in general, you can notice a pattern of authentic style and humour and it's progress throughout Quintels work. Now he mainly works on Regular Show and it is easy to notice how the show progresses with every season.

Apply: part 2

So as I mentioned earlier that I chose to do the animation Flash and rendered it out with After Affects afterwards. To be honest, I think I could have done better, because the lines are inconsistent, the timing is off, the punchline is not as apparent. It just did not come together because it's not done throughly and I didn't take out more time to everything properly. But you be the judge-

Courage the Cowadly Dog

Courage the Cowardly Dog is one of those Cartoon Network series that my generation grew up with and there is a reason why so many kids used to watch it- even though it was scary as hell it was appealing. But I don't intend to talk about the whole series, just the pilot.
Actually the  pilot started out as a 7 minute short film named "The Chicken from Outer Space" and it was made by John R. Dilworth. The short was nominated as a Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 68th Academy Awards.
I love it that the short has a very unique and unrefined style to it, as a child, for me it seemed something different from all the cartoons, well maybe mostly because of the horror element. But for some reason the characters and color pallet make it really are appealing. And the irregularly shaped backgrounds give it this sort of "twisted world" feel. The character design is really clever, it makes you instantly fall in love with Muriel, sympathies for Courage and dislike Eustace, and as for the antagonist- that is one scary chicken!
Apparently it took 4 years for this pitch to make it into a series, but it was well worth it.

Apply: part 1

We had our final brief for Animation Skills which is Apply, that mean we have to apply everything we learned during this module in the final animation for it. As for the theme of this animation we were given to chose one from seven emotions- surprise, happiness, fear, love, hate, lateness, longing. I chose love because it is one of the most delightful emotions and it was the easiest one idea wise. Straight off the bat I thought of PDA (public displays of affection). It is really relevant because we've all been there- witnessing PDA, and it feels a bit like a smack to the face.

Well I took that last part a bit literally. So basically, the animation is about random people getting smacked by a happy couples PDA and one mighty hero manages to stand up for him self. I chose to do it on Flash, 12f/s, and no longer than 10 seconds.

Pixilation

Pixilation is a stop motion technique, the way I understand it, it is just stop motion animation but with people or actors. We were given a brief ad asked to produce a pixilation exploring one of these relationships-
Predator - Prey
Host - Parasite
Parent - Child
I personally had a really hard time coming up with ideas relating to these relationships AND involving people in to it. But finally chose predator- prey. In nature this relationship is a vital feature of the food chain and prey feeds the predator. But in a civilized sense I think of the predator as a manipulator. In that way, there are various predators in our daily lives, and sometimes we aren't even aware of it. In television for instance, there are subliminal message that manipulate people by leaving messages that only subconscious mind picks up. That makes viewer the prey. But I wanted to explore this topic in a comedic way so I made Subliminal Mexican. First of all I started with the storyboard-

then made the actual pixilation, and added the sombreros and what not on Flash. And after a few painful crashes and mess ups this is what I managed to put together-

Storyboard Refference: Back to the Future

I was interested to look into the pre-production  of this movie because it seemed really innovative for its time, it played a lot with the camera angles and in general the movie got universal acclaim when it came out back in 1985. The storyboard artist for this movie was Richard Lasley and it is interesting to see how well he captured all the characters actions and established really dynamic shots by manipulating camera angles. The drawing style however seems very static and the shading seems very strict and clean.

Storyboard Refference: Lilo and Stich

Lilo and Stitch is a 2002 Disney animated movie and I personally liked the character design and the water colored backgrounds in the movie. This storyboard was  drawn by Armand Serrano and it is really interesting to see that some of the scenes were slightly modified, for instance Mr. Bubbles witnessing Nani singing Aloha Oe to Lilo. This scene in particular is one of the most emotional scenes in the movie and it demands a lot of skill to portray such a tender moment. The drawing style is really clean, dynamic and refined. Overall I loved the movie, therefore I love this storyboard as well.

The Neverhood

This is a game I grew up with and it will always have a place in my heart even though it was terrifying as hell at some points.
The Neverhood was released in 1996, it was developed by Neverhood inc. and published by DreamWorks interactive. It's a point and click adventure game with over 60 puzzles to solve in order to progress in the story line. The game starts out with the protagonist Kleymen waking up in a land that may have never existed and explores the Neverhood revealing hints and artifacts about the history of his surroundings. In addition he discovers terrifying monsters, strange machines and just in general bizarre stuff. The whole game has a really creepy  vibe and the unique soundtrack adds even more bizarre feel to it. It is a really original game both puzzle wise and animation wise. Actually it's claymation which mean everything in the game was shot frame by frame with a digital camera. Everything in the game is animated really well and you can actually see some of the principals of animation take place- squash and stretch, anticipation, secondary action and such.
Even though the game creeped me out as kid, it also excited me because there were some unexpected twists to it and the claymation concept really stood out in the range of games at that time. It really is a brilliant and unique game. Or maybe it's just me. I don't know.

Journey

This is one of those creations that changes the way you perceive one or the other thing, in this case- games. I used to think that games are just for people who have an unfulfilled desire to be destructive (with all the action games and such) or for kids, or just to fill the time. Every game I tried felt like a waste of time and brings this guilt that I could be doing something productive instead. But not this one.
Journey is an indie game developed by Thatgamecompany (nice name by the way) in 2012 and I like to think of it as not a game but rather interactive art. The game allows the player to control both the main character and the camera angles, which is really beneficial to the experience because the background design is just mind blowing. There is no dialogue, destructiveness or losing for that matter. The game takes the player through a journey towards a shining star in the mountains, as the character goes towards the star, it discovers an abandoned city that once was a thriving civilization which is sort of a parallel to the protagonists journey. It is the kind of game that you come back to play again every now and then.

A Walk in The Woods

This is one of my favourite Flash animations and it's so wrong on so many levels but it's so good at the same time. I found it on newgrounds.com (which supports original Flash files and uploading to it saves the trouble of exporting to video format) and it was created by somebody called Weebl. There really is no underline message to it and it is one of those things that when you come across it, you just watch it and forget about it the next day. But the thing is, no one can watch it with a straight face and that is the single purpose of it. The plot is about a rabbit going for walk in the woods and get chased by a bear. It made my day, hope it makes yours-

MTV Idents

Back in 2009 MTV launched a series of Idents (stations or networks identifying themselves on air) that helped the channel gain a consistent look throughout the globe. MTV has 64 channels around the world in over 160 countries and with so many branches around the world MTV struggled to Identify themselves as and international brand. These Idents helped reboot one of the worlds largest TV brand. Most of these Idents are animated and all of them are short but really well made. They gave MTV this unique, modern and refined look that they needed in order to stay on top of the newest TV trends. I've noticed a while ago that MTV logo commercials were all different and unique and really well animated, well that is because they were made by different artists or collaboratives. These idents really define the new look of the channel therefore they really communicate that to the audience.

I especially liked "Group Hug" which was from the ident series of  2011 themed "Close and Caring". It shows these blobby creatures colouring the forrest with every gentle touch and it sort of warmly welcomes all the viewers to the new season. It was created and directed by Mate Steinforth. It is made in 3d animation and the software used for this was none other then Maya.

There is even a making of video in Behance-

https://www.behance.net/gallery/MTV-Group-Hug/3534139

Dumb Ways to Die

This animation started out as a advertising campaign for Metro Trains in Melbourne to prevent rail related injuries and accidents.  But due to its success it went off to be a viral sensation. In 2013 it scooped the Cannes Lions award for being the best TV advertisement campaign in the world.
The advertisement shows 21 different bizarre and stupid ways of dying using black comedy. It is really nicely animated and has a really catchy song to it, but above all else the message that it delivers is cleverly rapped up in such a (dare I say) cute and humorous way. Since it became I viral sensation, that fact alone is proof of the advertisement getting the point across and capturing the audiences attention. When I saw it, I didn't actually know that it was an advertisement campaign, so I assumed that it was a video clip for the song, so I didn't expect it to have Metro Trains message in the end, which really came across as an unexpected punch line.
But overall the animation does the job and does it well- it gets the message across various range of audiences, captures attention and actually made a change- "According to Metro Trains, the campaign contributed to a more than 30% reduction in "near-miss" accidents, from 13.29 near-misses per million kilometres in November 2011 – January 2012, to 9.17 near-misses per million kilometres in November 2012 – January 2013."