The next iteration of the Legal Squirrels animation. The project is getting near the end now.

There are still many sound problems. Distracting background noise, unadjusted levels, no music, missing sound effects, etc… but the visual quality is nearing completion.

Lo res:

But I suggest this yummy HD version HERE- 35mb (right-click and save-as)


-Tom

Still a bunch of issues to work out… but it’s getting there-

Download it HERE. (31mb)

Right click and “save as”

-Tom

So I’ve been trying to nail down this project. As always, it takes longer than I expected.

Here is a lower-quality render:

Download a little higher-quality file (right-click and save as) HERE. -36.1mb

Feel free to take a verbal swing at it. There are many things missing (text representing the legal end, for one). Sound clips are missing, but the general feel/animation is there.
enjoy!

-Tom

As some of you may know, I am working on an animation that reflects legal jurisdiction issues. The animation uses a metaphor of squirrels living in a big tree…

The audio levels need to be messed with, it’s a bit quiet. And the voice will be slightly higher in pitch.

In any case, I have to animate like a madman if I want to pump out 2 and a half minutes this week. So here is my first whack at the animation- The first segment of the film:

I’m fairly happy with it. I’d love to make the branch shake and such, but I may have to go back and do it later. For now I need to get a bare-bones version done for next week.-Tom

Recently, a friend of mine came across the blog of animator Chris Harding. After a few minutes of reading the blog out-loud (in a less-than subtle way of catching my attention) my friend aroused my interests and I began to read the blog, too (sometimes out-loud as well).

Chris Harding is quite an inspirational animator. His approach to animation as the vehicle of an idea yields work with thought and direction- rather than being some aggregation of punchlines and plot twists. Here is one of his films:

View Harding’s animated short: Learn Self Defense

I’d also like to share some passages of his that I found particularly insightful:

The only way for me to motivate myself is with ideas. If I’m in love with an idea enough, and I can’t communicate that idea by any other method I feel the strong need to animate it. -Cold Hard Flash Interview

What are animated shorts good for in the world? Maybe they make someone laugh for a couple seconds, but so does an ill-timed fart. I hope in the long run there’s a little bit more value to this work than a puff of gas and noise. If not, we should all go be paramedics and put ourselves to better use. - Present Magazine

If you know me you’ve probably heard me quote this from Bertolt Brecht:

Organization

Mr. K. once said: ‘The thinking man does not use one light too many, one piece of bread too many, one idea too many.’

And here is Chris Harding’s take:

The whole goal with short films is to distill an idea down to its essence without being simplistic. So you keep honing until you’re left with all the necessary information, and not one speck more.

So as you see, I was right all along… ;) Well, at least another person out there sees things similarly. I’m thankful that Chris maintains a blog and I hope to see more work from him in the future.

If you want an inspired laugh, read Chris Harding’s About page. It is quite fun (and delightfully satirical).

-Tom

I’ve been really interested in After Effects lately. I animated the following piece in After Effects using the push-pin tool in about a day. It is a fairly intuitive tool.

Here is the vid- no sound- (It is a freelance piece for some online show about losing weight):

-Tom

This is my timing for a weight-lift, roughed out in flash. I’m probably going to scratch the facial expressions, and do a new face later… I sort of stopped doing the face halfway through anyhow. I’m still getting used to 2-D… and I’m not very good at drawing. But I am determined to get better, so I’m devoting this school year to it (at the least). I’m going to take this into Photoshop CS3 and hand-render it… once I figure out how I want to do that.

Anyway, crits are welcome. I don’t know how much longer I plan to spend on this particular peice, but if your suggestion is minor I will probably give it a whirl. If you have some major adjustments in mind, I’ll probably just jot them down for next time.

Hope you enjoy it!
-Tom

I like to check CGsociety’s forums fairly often. Every now and then I come across something there that is fairly inspiring. (Although I must admit, I come across a lot of uninspiring things there as well.)

 In any case, I came across a film made by Tim Marchant called “Tidy Monster”. I think what really inspired me was the simplicity of the execution. You can watch it on Tim’s site and the film is on youtube here.

 Before I go on, I’d like to clarify what I mean by “simplicity”. I guess the term could be interpreted in many ways. I certainly do not mean that the film was simple; I mean, rather, to emphasize the fact that the visuals did not try to overpower or convolute the idea behind the film. Given the dialog in “Tidy Monster”, I think many animators/filmmakers would tend to try to cram as many insane visuals into the piece as they could. It is this kind of thinking often leads films deep into the ground. Humor me as I indulge in an analogy:

Let’s say we were making soup. First we should probably decide what kind of soup we want to make- we may call this the idea behind the soup (I know… reaaaaally subtle). There are numerous possibilities as far as types of soup, but for the purposes of this metaphor, and because I am a vegetarian… we’re going to make some delicious broccoli cheddar soup. Now we heat up some water, we prepare the pot and we put in the basic ingredients- essentially we give the soup a basic structure and context. So far so good…

Now its time to really make it taste gooooood. So what do we do? We find EEEEverything we like and we toss it in!! You like hot-dogs? In they go! How about some pancakes with loads of syrup? Throw’em in! I know, FRIED snickers bars… they’re all the rage- what the hell- toss a dozen of those in! And ice-cream goddammit… loads of ice-cream. Oh man oh man oh man oh man YEEEESSSSS!

Anybody want some soup?

The point I’m trying to make is putting a lot of “cool” stuff together does not make a good soup… errr… film. As much as we love those fried snickers bars, we need to cut them out if they do not point the audience toward something vital to the film’s idea. The idea is key… and sorry, no amount of technical goodies will ever replace the idea. At least not for me.

Anyway, I’m going to go vomit.

Our labs at school got the updated Adobe Suite (which now includes Flash), and I finally had a chance to really mess around with some of the new features in Photoshop CS3. One feature in particular really got me excited: Timeline Mode.

For those who edit video, timeline mode will probably look like a lame iteration of After Effects. However, coupled with onion-skinning and video layers, the timeline mode in PS CS3 presents some 2-d animation opportunities that could arguably induce salivation.

Basically you can import video as a layer and create empty video layers in much the same way that you would import an image and create regular empty layers. The main difference between a regular layer and a video layer being that the image on video layer is linked to the position on the timeline (no more making gif animations with a layer for each frame!!). So now hand-rendering animation, video, 3-D animation, or even other rough 2-D animation is easy- all of those familiar photoshop tools functioning over a timeline.

Here is a quick ball-bounce I made using the timeline mode in Photoshop CS3:
Download link 

This summer I participated in the FJORG! Iron Animator event at the SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group Graphics) convention in San Diego. The event was really fun, I met alot of really fantastic animators and I managed to create an animation I am happy with (with, of course, the aid of my two amazing teammates: Jacob Gardner and Jim Levasseur).

Our animation actually ended up winning 1st place. My team was really surprised, and the onslaught of questions and semi-publicity was not something we were used to. Some publicity I found endearing, but some attention was odd to me- for instance, we were asked “How do you feel?”, “Did you think you would win?”, “What is it like to win stuff?”. I find these questions, on the whole, a waste of breath. We worked hard AND we were damn lucky. And I’d say 98% of “winners” fall into a similar category. How did I feel to win? I felt LUCKY and maybe a bit tired. Disappointment in their blood-shot eyes… What did they expect? Should I have beat my chest and yelled “I’m ooooowwwaaaaaaAAA-SOME!”?

Any accomplishment can be found enjoying a cigarette in bed intertwined with lady luck- with that in mind I think winners should rejoice, but also remember who they slept with in order to get where they are. Or, if my analogy has run amuck: be humble, we are not so powerful that we completely control our successes and failures. This is not to say we shouldn’t work hard to take advantage of what luck swings our way, but when someones asks “Did you know you would win?” it’s hard not to just smile sadly and say “My friend, I am a very long way from knowing anything at all.”

Unfortunately, what I actually did was grin stupidly, squint and say “Uhhhh… I… know?”

If you want to read some interviews with interesting questions, try the following links:

Andrew Gordon, Spline Doctors interview

and

Keith Lango interview

Oh yeah, if you want to watch our animation it’s here.

And a neat documentary of FJORG! here.

-Tom