Eric Tan's WALL E Posters

These are great. You can buy them here for $165 each. Eric is extremely talented - check out his blog here. (He's also got Indiana Jones posters in the same style! Old school indy, not refrigerator-monkey-alien-Indy.)



I'm off to the Sketchcrawl up by Crissy Field and Fort Point. Hope it's nice and cool up there...

There's a Party in my Tummy!

This is me...in music video form. This show is brilliant.

Kung Fu Panda, 2D style.

If you've seen the film, you were likely impressed by the incredible 2D opening for Kung Fu Panda done by James Baxter. If you'd like to watch a streaming version of the opening, click here. For all you animation nuts out there, Kevin Koch of the Synchrolux blog has been kind enough to create a quicktime file that you can frame-by-frame through.

When this animation first came up on screen it basically took my breath away. I haven't seen something handdrawn that looked this great in quite a long time. The closest thing would probably be the animated bits in Enchanted, (also by James Baxter), but those had the classic Disney look to them and the KFP opening is something completely different. It feels a bit like anime, a bit like Sin City, and a bit like some crazy Chinese graphic novel written by a Disney animator. Absolutely beautiful design, textures, animation, and hilarious writing.

Anyone have any knowledge about the actual production process involved with this project? I'm gonna go ahead and say it looks like full hand drawn animation that was then brought into photoshop and painted frame by frame. Though there are some bits that could possibly be toon shaded 3D work. And other stuff looks like plain old Flash or After Effects cutout style.

You may also notice that in the "Art of" book there are a bunch of unused designs for Tai Lung's army. I'm happy to see that they ended up here in the opening sequence because the designs carry over so well in this 2D style. Also, the book has the storyboards for this entire sequence - they are quite faithful to the final movie.

I have assembled 30 or so still shots from the opening, quite fun to look at. The opening goes so fast (but what a glorious 2 minutes and 28 seconds) that the still frames really let you absorb the design. Enjoy:

Edit: The end credits, produced by Shine and Baxter, are available here. They're great as well!

(They use the flag as a wipe for the next shot - how cool is that??)

(Awesome character designs by Nico Marlet here.)

(Maybe you should chew...ON MY FIST!)

(I love this frame.)

(Look! The bodies make faces!)

(Nice clouds and color!)

Ahhh, great stuff. Rumor has it that there is a 2D Kung Fu Panda short in the works at Baxter's studio. We'll see when the DVD is released.

Looney Tunes - Cheap!

Amazon is having a "Big DVD Sale" (creative name) and I wanted to let everybody know that you can pick up the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 1, 2, and 4 for just $29.95. These are usually $65 new. (Don't know why 3 and 5 arent being offered.) Each collection is packed with 4 full discs of some of the best cartoons ever made...what are you waiting for?!

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 4

Psychedelic Alice

From Buzzfeed: A strangely compelling electronica song (and video) composed of sounds from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. Made by a 19-year-old in Australia, “Alice” kind of lulls you into a state of semi-consciousness filled with Cheshire cats and flowers wielding batons.

I love this. Download the MP3 (and 2 other Alice-related songs) here.

Donald Duck - Donald's Diary

This Donald short takes place in San Francisco! And it's got great background design and color.

Amiga - Disney Animation Studio (1990)

Ohhhh man how I'd love to play with this. Look at that 'morgue' full of Disney reference!! I think with a little hunting I can find this software and an Amiga emulator...

My favorite Wiimote Hacks

Johnny Chung Lee, of Carnegie Mellon University, is doing some amazing things with the wii remote! Here is one where he figured out how to use it for head tracking for desktop VR displays:



And here is another where he uses the wii remote to create a low-cost multi-touch display/whiteboard!



If you go to his website he's got another video where he tracks finger movement with the wii remote...just like in Minority Report. This guy is a genius.

Adventures of Mark Twain Clip

As I was surfing through Digg today, I came across this clip from The Adventures of Mark Twain...a Will Vinton claymation film from the 80's. One of my professors from RIT, Tom Gasek, worked on this film back in the day. This particular clip always freaked me out and is definitely worth a watch.



Definitely not for little kids! You would never see something this interesting and frightening in an animated film today. Thanks for doing something different, Will Vinton! The surprising part is that this clip has over 655,000 hits, 5,000 comments, and has been favorited almost 10,000 times. Who knew this film was so popular?

Vintage: The Wizard's Duel

The Sword in the Stone is one of my favorite Disney films. Well, that's a lie...I really only like certain parts of it. Namely, the part with the squirrels, the part where Merlin packs his house into a bag, and this part...the wizard's duel. I found this at a flea market on the Cape a few months ago and snatched it up for the awesome illustrations inside. I've created a .pdf of the book and uploaded it to Scribd. That site is awesome! As you can see, (I hope), it allows you to share documents easily. I would like to start some sort of animation library on there, much like a Flickr pool, except for documents and books. So scroll through the pages, then if you like you can download the .pdf through Scribd. (When you open it in Acrobat, or FoxIt as I prefer, you can view two pages side by side, just as the book intended.)

Surf's Up!

So after being hounded by fellow animators I caught a matinee of Surf's Up today. Wow! What a surprise! When I first saw the previews and posters for this film I had zero interest in seeing it. MORE penguins?? But to even try to compare it to Happy Feet is ridiculous. This film had everything Happy Feet was missing - character designs, a great story, fun music, actual animation done by real animators with a ton of personality...If you are thinking about seeing it, you should. You won't be sorry. (There were a couple of poop jokes in there that were unnecessary, but they DID get big laughs from the kids.) As Brittney said, it has a whole lot of heart in it. (Something Happy Feet was also lacking.) Now the film to really compare it to would be next week's Ratatouille. I have seen both films, and honestly I think they are both great and worth seeing. Ratatouille was a little more appealing to me right off the bat, and I think it has some really impressive performances and animation. Surf's Up was consistently funny and really made me feel for the characters...see them both! Now!

And while you're at it, go check out some of the sweet pics Marcelo Vignali has been posting on his blog. Marcelo was one of the designers on the film and he is great! He also worked on Open Season. If Sony continues to get better and better (this film was waaaay better than Open Season, imho) I think they just might give Pixar a run for their money.

Daumier Sculptures

Honore Daumier was a master of caricature. While moving across the country I stopped in Chicago for a couple days and was able to visit the Art Institute there. What a beautiful museum! Probably one of my favorites that I've ever been to. I found this tiny room tucked away in a corner, full of Daumier sculptures and a couple drawings. These sculptures are relatively rare, as they were used mostly for reference in drawings, not as final art pieces to be sold. I love the exagerration and rough quality of the bronze casts. I searched the gift shop for a book with these sculptures in them but I don't think they are anywhere in print. So enjoy them here!

Of course when he did a self-portrait he was a little more forgiving:


A couple sketches:

George Pal: The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

I've got a treat here for all those George Pal fans out here. If you are not familiar with Pal, go out and rent the Puppetoons DVD right now. (Also, it's only $10 on Amazon.) You won't be dissapointed! Pal was a Hungarian-born animator who was nominated for 7 Oscars (of which he received one, for his work with the Puppetoons. He also received another for special effects, but I can't seem to find evidence online that he received any others. The page from this book shown below states that he won 6 of them!)

I found this book at a flea market in Rochester, NY. It is a short companion to Pal's feature film, "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm," as well as to the technique of "Cinerama". If you are unfamiliar with the process (as I was) Cinerama was a moviegoing experience developed in the 50's that was akin to IMAX or other large format film screenings. Check out the wikipedia entry on it - it explains it very well. There is also an illustration from the book explaining the projection setup. Anyone out there ever see a movie in Cinerama??

Front Cover: I love the eyes on that dragon!

Cinerama setup.

I think these little portraits of the film's stars are pretty sweet.

There's some puppets!!

I have yet to see this George Pal film, as it is mostly live action. I believe that the sequence with most of the animation is "The Cobbler and the Elves." (above)

Apparently the Cinerama camera is an insanely massive thing that shot three cameras simultaneously to create the ultra-wide format of the film. Seriously, check out the picture below...it looks like a refrigerator!! You should also read the notes there on what they did with it, including rolling it down a hill in a drum and mounting it to a 30 ft scaffolding inside the Rosenburg Cathedral!


Also, did you know that 18 year-old Ray Harryhausen got his first job animating at George Pal's studio? Cool! Let me know if you like this kind of stuff. I have a few more books in my collection that I should scan in. (And as a side note, did you notice how nicely this book is laid out? The fonts, photos, illustrations...and it's in really good condition too.)