The Rocketeer 20th anniversary

The Rocketeer 20th anniversary from John Banana on Vimeo.

Snoopy On The African Queen

Kind of like Jungle Cruise, but the Boat is more accurate to The African Queen.

Hand Drawn Fan Made Superman Animation

My first dabblings in jquery

Check out my first dabblings injquery animation:

http://dev.sakraft.com/jquery/slidingdiv.html

The Future Soon

Jonathan Coulton's The Future Soon animated in World of Warcraft = hilarious!

Steamboat Willie: Cat Mouth Positions

More Donald Duck Drawings

More Donald Duck Drawings, originally uploaded by sakraft1.

I draw some more Donald Duck from model sheets. Hands are hard, esp. cartoon duck hands, esp. cartoon duck hands drawn by Disney animators...

Donald

Donald, originally uploaded by sakraft1.

The trick to Donald is that his beak is really squared off kinda. Before I really understood the structure of Donald's beak, my drawings looked awful. When he is angry, his eyes are more like triangles than ovals. And he always has messy hair, which is more interesting than a plain round head. I really appreciate all the work that those animators put into Donald, he is pretty detailed for a major character. Oh yeah, and those eye arches extend above the top of his head.

Ancient Animation!

from boingboing:

A 5,200 year old piece of pottery from Iran has been discovered to embody the oldest known animation in the world -- a wild goat eating vegetation

Link, [via]

Cough Medicine

If you can't laugh at yourself...

Today's links...

http://tonymaticus.blogspot.com/

http://www.animated-news.com/

Animation Backgrounds!

http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com/

Psyop event at Hofstra

Just got back from the Psyop event at Hofstra. It was part of a continuing education lecture series, or something like that.

The reps from Psyop were specifically from Mass Market, Psyop's photo real effects arm. They had some cool stuff on thier reel. They showed some of the more general Psyop stuff, including an awesome short film they did for Coke. It was longer version of the "Happiness Factory" commercials you might have seen. That was pretty much the highlight of the presentation for me. They did the usual college lecture Q&A moderated by a professor about how to get a job, yadda yadda yadda. I've been to so many of these things. The students and professors always ask the same questions about tools and what you need coming out of school. The pros always give the same response about having passion, and they always work in drawing skills as a minor point. These guys in particular emphasized the ability to tell stories.

Other than that, it was slightly on the boring side. But it was free and they really don't show animation anywhere on a big screen on Long Island, so I'll take it. Plus, there was [sic] chicken fingers (all you could eat!!!).

Click here to see the Happiness Factory short

Click here for Psyops

World Animation Day

October 28th is World Animation Day... ...at least it is in Canada.

The National Film Board of Canada has a cool piece by Theodore Ushev on their website for the event/day. Just another reason why Canada is totally awesome. I wish there were some big animation festivities/festivals on Long Island.

More Squash and Stretch + Facial Expressions

Squash and Stretch on the Head

I am finding that I have to do warm-ups, like in figure drawing or running track. My first bunch of drawings at the begining of a session are really bad, then they get better as I loose myself in the drawing.

Taking lessons from John K and Preston Blair

Head construction. Yeah, that looks good. But I wasn't drawing that well a few hours ago. I think I learned the concept of the Head Construction spread quite well, but it took a couple of sheets of paper (and I should probably do more) to grasp what was really going on. The main points to hammer into your head are perspective, solid construction and placement of features. My heads were getting good and solid and tight by the time in stopped about half an hour ago. You learn more stuff the more you do it. Doing it is definetly better than reading about it.

Click Here to see my the full page of "More Head Construction." If you must, click here for my first page of Head Construction.

John K's Animation School Revisited

The wikipedia article on John K no longer has the convenient list of links to his animation lessons, so here you go:

John K's Animation School Lessons
Lesson 1:Construction of the head
Lesson 2:Squash and Stretch on heads
Lesson 3:How to check your copies-Proportion
Lesson 4: Legged Characters
Lesson 5: Line Of Action, Silhouettes
Lesson 6:Construction of the head (Advanced)
Lesson 7:When Generic is a Good Thing
Lesson 8: Proportions affect design-Contrasts
Lesson 9: Hands-Simplifying complicated things
Color Theory
Color Theories for Cartoons- Garish versus Warm
Color Theory: Pee and Poo colors versus Colorful Greys
Color Theory- look at the sky before you paint a sunset
Color Theory- good color without a lot of money - Art Lozzi HB
Color Theory - does cost equal quality?
Color Theory - eye relief
Color Theory - steal from anime if you can't think of anything yourself
Color Theory - neutral or natural colors
Color Theory- Art Lozzi - Interview - Early Days At Hanna Barbera
Color and BG Painting Reference-Old Golden Books
Color Theory-Art Lozzi on Bob Gentle-Skeeter Trouble
Art Lozzi- scooter looter-paint technique-BG painting
Color Theory- Art Lozzi explains some technique
Color Theory- color isolated from detailed technique-Yogi Bear "High Fly Guy", 1958
Composition
COMPOSITION For Layout and BG artists - part 1 - Framing
Composition 2 - Intersection
COMPOSITION 3 For Layout and BG artists - Clear Staging
Composition 4 - Staging Groups Of Characters
Composition 5 - EXTREMELY IMPORTANT CONCEPT! Negative VS Positive space
Composition 6- Avoid The Middle, Asymmetry is more natural and interesting
Composition 7 - compose your poses together - also very important!
COMPOSITION 8 For Layout and BG artists - form over detail, lettering, study other artists