Greed

This.
Is.
Awesome!...



Made by Alli Sadegiani
This link will take you to an Interview with the creator and the making of!

MAGI Synthavision

After discovering the Where The Wild Things Are animation by Lasseter and co, I found out which studio (as well as Disney) helped to achieve this. It was MAGI Synthavision and here is there 1984 show reel. It's actually really good, except for the walk cycle they show, and from 2min35sec - 2min41sec it really made me laugh!...

Where The Wild Things Are, by, Disney??

I recently discovered that back in 1983, before Pixar, John Lasseter created an animation test with Disney for Where The Wild Things Are. Back then Disney owned the film rights to the Where The Wild Things Are books... they didn't use them, though, so they lost them.

While he was working on “Mickey's Christmas Carol”, another movie titled “Tron” was under development in Disney. John happened to watch some of the early tests and was excited, not for the quality of the stuff but for the 3d feeling it generated. He found tremendous possibilities with the use of computers and knew it was the future. Lasseter wanted to create a 3d world where the 2d characters could move around. Together with Disney animator Glen Keane and Tom Wilhite, Head of the Production, he made a 30 second test film titled “Where the Wild Things Are”, where they combined the hand drawn images that Glen did with a computer generated background. They moved the camera like a steady cam shot for the first time in animation, following the animated character in and around objects.

Check out this amazing test, which combined traditional hand-drawn, 2D animation with then-state-of-the-art 3D computer animation!

"Their next dream was to make a feature in this fashion and they selected the story of “The Brave Little Toaster", by Thomas Disch. Lasseter made contacts with people in the Computer Graphics Industry which included Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith of Lucas Film Computer Graphics Group. Lasseter started his works to make the dream true. But things went wrong when he unknowingly upset a few superiors in his effort to pace their dream project. When Lasseter presented the idea it was turned down and in a few minutes time he got the information that he was fired from the company.

But the man joined Lucas Film with Ed Catmul and Alvy Ray Smith to create the first complete 3d animated short "The Adventures of Andre and Wally Bee".It was followed by other shorts like Luxo Junior, Red's dream, Tin Toy and Knick Knack before moving to make his dream of making a fully 3d animated feature true."

From Here It Begins.blogspot.com

Useful Animation Tips (keep 'em close!)

From the official Frank & Ollie website. This is what John Lasseter said at the SIGGRAPH '94 conference...

"When I was an animator at the Disney Studios, I had a xeroxed list of simple notes from one of the great Disney animators, Ollie Johnston, pinned to my drawing table. The list was originally written down by another great Disney animator, Glen Keane, after working as Ollie’s assistant for a few years."

"These notes have been an inspiration to me for years. Even though they were meant for hand-drawn animation, I believe that they still apply to computer animation."

1. Don’t illustrate words or mechanical movements. Illustrate ideas or thoughts, with the attitudes and actions.
   
   
2. Squash and stretch entire body for attitudes.
   
   
3. If possible, make definite changes from one attitude to another in timing and expression.
   
   
4. What is the character thinking?
   
   
5. It is the thought and circumstances behind the action that will make the action interesting.
   
   Example: A man walks up to a mailbox, drops in his letter and walks away.
   
   OR
   
   A man desperately in love with a girl far away carefully mails a letter in which he has poured his heart out.
   
   
6. When drawing dialogue, go for phrasing. (Simplify the dialogue into pictures of the dominating vowel and consonant sounds, especially in fast dialogue.
   
   
7. Lift the body attitude 4 frames before dialogue modulation (but use identical timing on mouth as on X sheet).
   
   
8. Change of expression and major dialogue sounds are a point of interest. Do them, if at all possible, within a pose. If the head moves too much you won’t see the changes.
   
   
9. Don’t move anything unless it’s for a purpose.
   
   
10. Concentrate on drawing clear, not clean.
    
    
11. Don’t be careless.
    
    
12. Everything has a function. Don’t draw without knowing why.
    
    
13. Let the body attitude echo the facial.
    
    
14. Get the best picture in your drawing by thumbnails and exploring all avenues.
    
    
15. Analyze a character in a specific pose for the best areas to show stretch and squash. Keep these areas simple.
    
    
16. Picture in your head what it is you’re drawing.
    
    
17. Think in terms of drawing the whole character, not just the head or eyes, etc. Keep a balanced relation of one part of the drawing to the other.
    
    
18. Stage for most effective drawing.
    
    
19. Draw a profile of the drawing you’re working on every once in a while. A profile is easier on which to show the proper proportions of the face.
    
    
20. Usually the break in the eyebrow relates to the highpoint of the eye.
    
    
21. The eye is pulled by the eyebrow muscles.
    
    
22. Get a plastic quality in face — cheeks, mouth and eyes.
    
    
23. Attain a flow thru the body rhythm in your drawing.
    
    
24. Simple animated shapes.
    
    
25. The audience has a difficult time reading the first 6-8 frames in a scene.
    
    
26. Does the added action in a scene contribute to the main idea in that scene? Will it help sell it or confuse it?
    
    
27. Don’t animate for the sake of animation but think what the character is thinking and what the scene needs to fit into the sequence.
    
    
28. Actions can be eliminated and staging "cheated" if it simplifies the picture you are trying to show and is not disturbing to the audience.
    
    
29. Spend half your time planning your scene and the other half animating.
    
    
30. How to animate a scene of a four-legged character acting and walking: Work out the acting patterns first with the stretch and squash in the body, neck and head; then go back in and animate the legs. Finally, adjust the up and down motion on the body according to the legs.

Music: K.D. Lang - Bird On A Wire

Nine Old Men and the 12 Principles of Animation

Recently I found out about these important figures in the animation world and what they contributed and I found it really interesting so I had to post something...

Nine Old Men was the name given by Walt Disney to his core team of animators (even though they were in their thirties or forties at the time) who created some of Disney's most famous works, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs onward to The Rescuers. All members of the group are now deceased.


Les Clark (November 17, 1907 - September 12, 1979)
Ollie Johnston (October 31, 1912 - April 14, 2008)
Frank Thomas (September 5, 1912 - September 8, 2004)
Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman (June 26, 1909 - May 22, 1985)
John Lounsbery (March 9, 1911 - February 13, 1976)
Eric Larson (September 3, 1905 - October 25, 1988)
Ward Kimball (March 4, 1914 - July 8, 2002)
Milt Kahl (March 22, 1909 - April 19, 1987)
Marc Davis (March 30, 1913 - January 12, 2000)

The Nine Old Men also refined the 12 basic principles of animation ( a book now on my christmas list! ):
Squash and stretch
Anticipation
Staging
Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
Follow Through and Overlapping Action
Slow In and Slow Out
Arcs
Secondary Action
Timing
Exaggeration
Solid Drawing
Appeal


Music: John Scofield & Pat Metheny - The Red One