Happy ending for ‘Happy Feet’

Happy Feet may have tap-danced its way to the Oscar, beating Monster House and Cars, but, without launching into full Pixar-fanboy mode, I genuinely think Cars earned that trophy.

The other two relied heavily on motion-capture, which is fine, but Happy Feet started to feel visually monotonous: penguins singing, penguins dancing, penguins everywhere. The constant white Antarctic backdrop looked cool at first, but by the end, my eyes needed sunglasses.

Monster House, meanwhile, feels like a film that didn’t need animation at all. With mostly ordinary human characters and a plot that could’ve been live-action, the only real justification for animating it was the house, and that could’ve been handled with VFX in a live film.

Cars, on the other hand, is born from animation. A world run by automobiles? That concept only works when animated - Pixar squeezed personality, emotion, and humor out of metal and headlights. The environments are gorgeous, the story flows, the emotional beats land, and not a frame feels wasted. What more does an animated film need to win - an unnecessary “message”? Hopefully not.

All respect to the teams behind every film, but if anyone deserved to ride off with the knight holding a sword, it was the crew on Route 66.

Animation tips

I am listing some of the animation tips I got on web recently, but some of them are old ones.......
I found them to be very useful...here we go

Jeff Lew's tip:

Happened to see the sneak peek of Jeff Lew's 3d character animation DVD. He advises not to have a bone joint in the chest area, and reasons it out very well. The rib cage is stiff and does not bend itself. Having a joint there will allow for bending which will look unrealistic and too 'spliney'.

Stefan Henry's tips :

It was good to dig this one out. Its a very old one, but definitely stands true till now and will stay that way for ever. In his article in Gamasutra titled Anatomically correct character modeling , he discusses the placement of bone joints effectively that will help proper posing of characters and will animate correctly, all explained with clear images.

Jeremy Cantor's tips :

His article over at Zaayats.com discusses various pitfalls in cg animation and offers solutions to them. Good one !

Pixar-ization of Disney

Image source : http://www.cartoonbrew.com/

There were/are apprehensions over the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. Most were concerned at the future of Pixar under the mouse house. But the news coming out of Burbank and Emeryville are more than encouraging. Disney is sure benefited under the leadership of Lasseter and Catmull, especially by the restructuring of hierarchy and the efforts to bring back directors who have left Disney recently.
Pixar had been on the right track and doesn't need much changes. In fact, the starting of recently dumped Toy story 3 after the merger has brought in a lot of positive energy into Pixar ( not as if there was a dearth of it before).
With both Disney and Pixar working together, they will surely stay on top.

Read Story HERE

A good animator vs a great animator

Carlos Baena (Pixar Animator):

So...between a good animator and a great animator. For me, it's the difference between a good actor and a great actor. The animation skills themselves, with time, you learn them little by little. The acting part of things...the choices you have your character do. That's where the true skill relies. I think it takes a lot of studying to get there. Not necessarily animation studying at this point...but acting/drawing/craftmanship/mime/comedy studying. Also your personality has to do with it sometimes. Something you think may be funny, may not be necessarily funny for other people. It's tough. But in the end, and to answer to your question, it's all on the acting. Some animators at Pixar, I don't think of them as animators anymore...I think of them as actors. Purely. Mark Walsh is a great example for me. He has done some of my favourite acting shots in this company, and the best part, his acting is sincere and comes from his heart and experiences. That's what blows me away personally.


Source : Shaun freeman animation tips