Actual Glass Animation

Through BoingBoing, who incorreectly daated this as from 1984, I came across Inspirace (Inspiration) by Karel Zeman, from 1948. Somehow I had never heard of him, Wikipedia describes him as a Czech film director, artist, production designer and animator, best known for directing fantasy films combining live-action footage with animation.Because of his creative use of special effects and animation in his films, he has often been called the "Czech Méliès".

2D Animation for Cinephiles

Gkids distribution, which brough the hit "Belle" to cinemas last year, has released a trailer for their upcoming 2D animated movie "Pompo the Cinephile"

Once again via BoingBoing

Reality Capture with AI

There has been much development in the field of Machine Learning and 3D scene reconstruction. A recent paper, highlighted in Communications of the ACM, show promise: Technical Perspective: Neural Radiance Fields Explode on the Scene

The application is described and shown in a video on this post on BoingBoing: "NeRF" turns 2D photos into convincing 3D scenes.

Stop Motion Animators and their Puppets

Very interesting thread on Twitter

Not Stop Motion

This reached me through multiple channels. It was made in Blender

Uncanny Valley Cans

Now here is an intersting use of 3D printing: 3D-printed cremation urns of the deceased's head to hold their ashes (on BoingBoing)

Oscar Worthy Animations

Looking for something to watch while confined to home? How about this, reported by OpenCulture.org: Watch 66 Oscar-Nominated-and-Award-Winning Animated Shorts Online, Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada

This includes the full version of Chris Landreth's Ryan:

You can of course also go straight to the source, the YouTube playlist by the National Film Board of Canada, which contains both animation and live action actually, or their website

Here is a stop motion animation (with some real eyes) favorite of mine that is a bit on the long side to show in class: Madame Tutli-Putli, directed by Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski, from 2007:

Creepio PSA

Via Boing Boing

Fundamentals of Animation Course

With the COVID-19 crisis roaring, aome on-line resources have been made free of charge, like this Fundamentals of Animation Course

Red Giant After Effects Plug-ins now free for students

Red Giant Complete is now free for students and educators at a high school, university, or college. Complete includes Trapcode Suite, Magic Bullet Suite, Universe, VFX Suite, and Shooter Suite. Read the article on No Film School

Animal AniDoodle

For those of you taking 2D Animation

From Geoffs Doodles Blog

Breakdowns Galore

Cartoonbrew recently posted what it considers The Best Breakdowns in VFX Right Now.

Maya 2019 released

Autodesk used to have the annoying habit of releasing the new version of Maya just before Fall semester starts. No more! They just released Maya 2019, right when the Spring semester starts. I have not seem any explanation for the almost half year delay, this version does not seem to be a complete overhaul, although most improvements may be under the hood.

Read the release blogpost at the Autodesk blog

We will NOT be installing this new version in the labs this semester. Not only do new Maya versions tend to be pretty unstable until the first update is released, we are in the middle of group animation productions and switching software versions during productions is usually not advisable.

3D Model from Video

Science posted this interesting research:

Source: Watch artificial intelligence create a 3D model of a person—from just a few seconds of video

Read the paper on arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04758

ANNY presents Dec Bijou

The next screening of Animation Nights New York will take place on Wednesday, December 14 at 8PM.

Details can be found on the ANNY blog.

Blizzard Art

For your enjoyment this Thanksgiving: Blizzcon 2016 : All Concept Art and Key Art

Meet Franklin

This announcement on Animation World Network alerted me to a new freely available rig. I have not yet tried it out, but it looks promising: Artella | Free Character.

Artella | Free Character from Artella on Vimeo.

It does require a special plugin which makes me worry about protability: that plug-in may or may not work for Maya 2017. Which is not out yet, but will be soon I assume.

RIP Bowie

I was looking for an animation angle as an excuse to post about the passing of David Robert Jones, but Cartoon Brew already did that. Too bad though they end that post with one of his worst songs. But it has animation in it.

Zootrope Anyone?

Melting POP from Alexandre DUBOSC on Vimeo.

Found on Colossal via FB / Alain Chesnais

Another chance to attend SIGGRAPH 2015 for free!

SIGGRAPH 2015 just launched the Vine Contest:

Create a Vine film highlighting what SIGGRAPH means, has meant, or will mean to you. Your 6-second film should be creative and embrace the constraints of Vine’s short format, looping and stop-motion capabilities.

Details on the conference website