Comment of the Week!

  This week we entered the fantabulous world of lip-synching! It's pretty easy so long as you don't overthink it. I'm eager to animate a Mexican wrestler beating a redneck with a sack of potatoes! Not getting audio from my 11 second club on my home computer has hindered my progress. The best part of this week was the sun I drew! Feast your eyes on this animation, by JACK! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho7Yu14dBGk

Murderers have such Pretty Eyes

  This article showed the simple techniques Silence of the Lambs used to create one of the most masterfully crafted movies in existence. I figure for this analysis I'll compare the presentation of Silence of the Lambs and the Star Wars prequels. Silence of the Lambs used a close up on Hannibal staring directly into the camera, provoking dominance by domineering over the viewer, making them uncomfortable. Star Wars uses exposition and actions to provoke a dominance, which can be a bit to much at times and only serves to say: that's the bad guy. To create the sense of character fear Star Wars uses the basic body language and facial expression like cowering and wide eyes with a gaping mouth, Silence creates the feeling of a person restraining fear by showing the intimidating maniac staring into your soul in a close up before showing an expression less FBI agent looking slightly off camera with a shot a bit more pulled back. Silence of the Lambs crafts a feeling of true tension in the dead stares of each character, a simple tactic that works flawlessly, Star Wars on the other hand usually depends on the exposition, dialogue, and fighting. However that's not to say Star Wars fails cinematography, in the scenes without corny dialogue emotions can be conveyed perfectly, and the best scene in the prequels (the opera house scene) the dialogue, setting, and presentation were perfect, not boring, not cartoonishly over-the-top, but perfect. I find that better technology is worse for films since the filmmakers never find a need to improvise or experiment. I really hope more modern movies use the more simple tactics in the future, because no movie made me shift in my seat like Silence of the Lambs did, and I fear no one is even trying to anymore.

Why isn't Physics Spelled with an F?

  Dreamworks hired some physicists that used to work for NASA to help animators with (what else) the physics of bubbles for an upcoming movie "Home". Many animation studios started hiring such people to create programs with realistic water, fire, and dust. Many scientists move to movies for the excitement of the industry and the opportunity to solve problems, and well, the cash doesn't hurt either. One of the eggheads expressed a desire to mix left and right brain. Honestly I can't blame the scientists for leaving the field of boring people talking about other scientists' theories for the field of being useful and having more fun. The article talked about animation's limits being pushed, and I just find that ridiculous, 3D animation maybe limited by codes and other computer mumbojumbo, 2D is completely unhindered, what you draw is there, no fuss, no math, no science. While scientists helping is useful and could help with the feel, and I'm glad they're in a more interesting line of work, realism has never really been my alley, unless history was involved.

Ceekly Womments!

  This week I learned that a flour sack can contain more than just a baking ingredient. I'm eager to learn how to lip-synch. I was disappointed in my walk cycle :( Overall the high point of this week was getting to skip my mourning classes! Here's a video on drawing my arch-nemesis: hands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZu9Ds5SCTQ And here is the true funniest thing ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3HGv7UI0iA

Creature Animating

  This article was, well, kinda boring. It was techniques used by animator famous for animating creatures. I have a hunch in a few years that'll be Alyssa's name. So pretty much most of her technique comes from her acting them out herself. While this isn't anything new it does go to show how useful it is. Recently with the walk cycles those who used videos of people did way better than those who didn't. She also stated what most noobs mess up on, like making things over-complicated, not understanding the character, not using video reference, and not asking for some dang ol' help. At least one of those should close to home (unless you're flawless like Jack and Ryan). While there ain't much to analyse it is pretty useful to us sorry footshloggers. Video reference from now on!

Chest Hair!

  This week's link wasn't an article, but a video! This allowed me to comprehend what was happening! It was a variety of ways to hide those little microphones that clip to clothes. There was the simple way of reversing it on the tie so it just looks like a clip, and the other ways involved little tape triangles to reduce the sound of stuff scraping together. He also stressed a point that will probably be ignored by the animation class, to not hide if it's not necessary, like our class of try-hards would do that. These tips for hiding mics are very useful for actors to know, voice overs in post can work, but the can also be awkward and not synch well, and nothing says "this is totally fake" like a microphone sticking to a person's shirt. Hiding microphones is more beleivable and more reliable than the alternatives.

Weekly Comments!

  We learned the importance of FPS this week, some through crique. I want to animate a frog eating a watermelon already! 2 things frustrated me this week, I tryed installing Animatepro on my computer and it said I needed the password to my uncle's account, so I'm pretty screwed on that. And I've shamed myself with turning in a late assignment, we'll se if it was worth it on crtique day. Honestly, I think I went a little too far with this creep. I am quite happy our link was gaming related, with Rockstar nonetheless! This does have some language and violence in it, but it's good on showing dramatic camera angles and lighting, along with the impressive animation it applies to both classes and fits with our Rockstar articale of the week ->https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A55GUOcjNYs and it's got rockin' music too!

Tips for Video Game Artists

  I'll start by saying I'm stoked to see an article about the (former) art director from Rockstar Games! Rockstar is easily one of my favorite game companies so I was hooked on this article from the get-go. His first piece of advice was to know trends, but to be original, if you just copy what's popular you'll be forgotten, people won't buy what they already own. There's a pretty good example of this in looking at Medal of Honor, a blatant Call of Duty clone that was quickly forgotten do to it's lack of any charm or originality. However, Battlefield stays relevant by being different with a more realistic style and impressive destruction physics (with the exception of  Betafield 4). He also said that you should do you best regardless of the platform, and being visually impressive doesn't mean hyper-realism. Stylistic graphics can actually be better, look at Sly Cooper and Halo 2, Halo 2's graphics were astounding when it came out, now they're aged and unimpressive, while Sly Cooper's older, less advanced graphics that look like a 3-d animated movie are still charming and enjoyable. More recently, when I saw Skyrim's graphics I was dumbfounded, but now the impressiveness is just average, but Sunset Overdrive with an unimpressive 900p and 30 FPS looks stunning with it's cartoonish coloring and atmosphere that makes me infinity more ready to move to new-gen consoles more than any hyper-realistic looking game with high resolution and FPS that'll wind up just being half-decent in 2 years. He also said in mobile gaming it's important to get as many people hooked to the game as possible to be successful. He should put in his game descriptions it was made by Rockstar's art director, I'd by that game in a heartbeat. He then talked about his focus on something we love but never quite mention: details. It's the little details that make a game's atmosphere feel alive like the adoring fans in Saints Row 3, the malfunctioning machines in Halo ODST, the poncho flutering in Red Dead Redemption, and pretty much everything in Grand Theft Auto V with the NPCs conversations, the suit jacket's realistic sway, drivers flipping you off, women getting scared when Trevor creepily follows them around. Yeah, without those subtle things the game just isn't quite as life-consuming, physics over graphics, that's what I'm saying. He also talked about the importance of risk-taking and experimentation, otherwise you do the same thing over and over expecting it to change, that my friend, is insanity. Look at Call of Duty ,that pushes out the same turd every year, then look at Saint's Row, the only consistency being the purple clad Third Street Saints, in a series of adventures getting more and more intense. Then Bowden ended with reminding everyone to be humble, cause there's always someone better. Which is true, as much as I love Rockstar, Bethesda is still my all-time favorite gaming company. I like video games. A lot. A whole lot.

Movie Brain Manipulation Stuff

  The article was fairly short and to the point. It discussed a butch of confusing sciencey stuff about machines measuring where people look when watching Iron Man 2, it showed that peoples' line of sight was following the action of the scene consistently. The interviewed filmmaker later mentioned that the most of the stuff outside the viewers' focus was CGI. Stuff like the faces and car parts were real however. He said that the blending was possible because the brain would actually do a lot of the work. He also said that certain things just can't be done with CGI, like faces and the random pattern of  debris hitting the ground. This fits well with animation since it all depends on the brain filling in gaps to make a swift motion. I find it interesting that they used practical effect for the flying car parts, despite virtually everything else being CGI. While I wish there was more practical effects used, I can appreciate that some filmmakers understand that what people focus on shouldn't be a fake rendition of something.