While at the Game Developers choice award show in San Francisco, there were so many indie titles that hoped would show up on home systems. But when it came to Shank, I prayed more fervently than for any other. One of the reasons is that Shank is one of my most personal favorite genres; 2D side-scroller. You don't see many of those anymore, especially one this beautifully animated. Click ahead to read more.

This short post demonstrates the use of low cost high speed video recording as a method for improving the recording and analysis of animation reference.  Results using two CASIO EXILIM cameras are discussed and links provided to recordings made at 210 frames per second.

Autodesk is taking over Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for the week to stage Autodesk University.  The event is mostly dedicated to training Autodesk’s customers in their wide array of products, particularly people interested in AutoCAD, Revit, and Inventor.  In addition, there’s a trade show as well as keynote addresses and other special events that makes this more like a yearly Autodesk conference than just a week of training. 

Over 5500 people found their way to Las Vegas this week for over 500 classes.  An additional 20,000 will attend virtually.  People started arriving on Monday for various related events, such as the developers conference, but the main conference started on Tuesday with the main keynote.  Being Las Vegas, the keynote started with none other than Elvis Presley (or a reasonable facsimile) singing the disclaimers to the tune of “Glory Glory Hallelujah.”  After that, Autodesk CEO Carl Bass took the stage and talked a bit about Autodesk’s future direction.  A lot of this centered on the idea of the computing cloud, centralized high powered banks of servers controlled by remote workstations.  Users would interface to this computing power by Autodesk software running not only on high-end workstations, but also net-enabled devices such as netbooks and iPhones.

©Disney PIXAR

Write me the next “Toy Story”!

Oh, and did I mention there’s only $25,000 for the script?

Maybe I was in a bad mood when Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs came out. Maybe I just resented the idea of taking one of my kids’ favorite picture books and pumping it up into a full-length feature, so I passed on it in the theaters.  Meatballs was true to the book’s title, its idea of food falling from the sky – and not much else. Not that there was much else to ditch, admittedly, but at the very least I would’ve liked to have seen at least one visual nod along the way to Ron Barrett’s meticulously cross-hatched original illustrations that gave the book’s outlandish premise a real-world solidity.

Last Thursday night was the annual Visual Effects Bake-off held at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Theater in Beverly Hill.  This screening was open to the public and has increasingly become more popular over the years. However, the toughest ticket traditionally has been for the Kate Mantellini’s Before Party.  Wildly popular among the visual effects set this party has progressively grown more expensive as the years pass. This year it cost a mere ninety dollars to achieve entry. For your ninety bucks you can expect to be packed together in what was called by my drill instructor during boot camp as “balls to butts.” That’s very close. There wasn’t even standing room.

Conservation, inpainting and preservation to production cels and background from Walt Disney’s 1948 feature film Melody Time. Art gifted from Walt Disney to Hardie Gramatky, ex-Disney employee and author of the children’s book: Little Toot. Collection of Kendall & Linda Gramatky. Image courtesy of the Archive of Ron Barbagallo, Animation Art Conservation. Melody Time - © Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Once upon a time animation art wasn't worth the celluloid it was painted on. Art that would now be worth tens of thousands of dollars was washed or thrown away – and what was saved often handled thoughtlessly or just forgotten about. Things have changed since then, changed a lot. People now realize that animation art is exactly that - a thing of beauty in its own right, and a cultural heritage to be cherished and preserved. (The fact that original cels, concept art and similar items are high-valued collectibles that are transitioning to museum art hasn't hurt either.)

Preservation is where Ron Barbagallo comes into the picture. Even the most carefully preserved original art cannot escape the inevitable decay of the materials that went into its creation, and clients on the order of the Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera and even individuals like Roy E. Disney have turned to Ron's Animation Art Conservation practice for rescue and restoration projects that often border on the miraculous.

Ron's been at it for nearly 25 years. While his work has focused on the preservation of hand-painted cels and backgrounds, his work also includes physical objects like Mary GrandPré's Harry Potter pastel art book covers, Batman's suits from the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan movies and a four-year preservation effort for the long-term care of Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride and James and the Giant Peach puppets. Ron's skills have even led him to the shattered remnants of the World Trade Center.

Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest, an animated short, is about Ms. Ingrid Pitt, a young Jewish girl and Holocaust survivor.  When she was 8 years old, Ms. Pitt miraculously escaped the Stutthof concentration camp with her mother, surviving in the forest until the end of the War.  I have the great honor to be invited by Beyond the Forest director and producer Mr. Kevin Sean Michaels and two-time Academy Award nominee Mr. Bill Plympton to be the sole animator for this film.  We must know our past to move on into the future, so I believe it is necessary and important to educate today’s children about the Holocaust so that similar tragedies will not happen in the future.

   Just a few weeks ago, when I was thinking about different topics for the blog, it dawned on me, that HDRI is the basis for a lot of different visual effects assets, but a lot of people don't know what it actually is or how it works.

So what is HDRI?

HDRI stands for High Dynamic Range Imaging. Simply stated, it is a term that describes image formats and techniques to create formats that support a higher dynamic range than the "standard".

Special Guest: Adeline Colangelo

This week on the Frenzer Foreman Animation Forum, Alan experiments with the fine art of circular breathing and Joel achieves a record-setting number of "nows" while both puzzle over the continuing misappearance of the FFAF computer. Then, after some hard-battled man-powered guest-summoning, screen writer and Troma film starlet Adeline Colangelo enters the Forum to dish about writing for animation, how one stumbles into being a professional writer, and the finer points of like, ya know, mumble-core.