Suzie Templeton is the brilliant and amazing animator responsible for the animation Dog, which I previously mentioned. Recently, while revamping my old posts to get videos that were embedded in them working with my newly redesigned theme and newly added implementation of the JW FLV PLayer ( which now, thanks to Flash 9, can play back MPEG4-AVC mp4 video files ), I came across some new work by this animator, whose work I absolutely adore.Her new 30 minute work, Peter and the Wolf, has magically been uploaded to the common viewing ground of Youtube, although it is also available for sale. It is about 30 minutes long and has been uploaded in 3 parts, which I will embed here.

[edit - 2009-01-31: youtube embeds of Peter and the Wolf Removed, due to them no longer existing on YouTube]

By some strange circumstance, I also came across the short film Sweet Salt by Katerina Athanasopoulou, which Suzie Templeton did set design on. It was constructed primarily in After Effects, and the screenshots of it look relatively amazing. ( also available on google photos ).

2 Comments

I was just looking at some videos on MeFeedia.com, and came across this amazing 3D animated short called 458nm.

“It’s midnight. A smattering of moonlight falls upon the forest floor. Two mechanical snails move slowly through the darkness. They confront one another and briefly take the measure each other’s powers before uniting in love play. With mounting ecstasy, their transparent bodies begin to glow, but just before climax a dark shadow looms over them…” (from the twitchfilm.net review).

458nm can be viewed on the No Fat Clips blog.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

The Cags is a short 3D film from Russia, available as a DivX download, and quite amazing to watch.

The Movers and Shakers of 3D animation of 2005 also has some other interesting works, including the previously mentioned 90 degrees.

No Comments

Recently I happened across the animation “Rabbit” by Run Wrake, on the DVblog website (a rather prolifically updated compilation of interesting video). I had seen this screened in SOS: Media by Ruth Hayes previously, but thought I would share it here, as the 3rd post in this little series of interesting and notable “Multimedia Discoveries”.

Here is the YouTube version for streaming.

If you wish a higher quality copy to experience, here is a Quicktime version.
Rabbit

The Owl is a music video for the somewhat post-rock band I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, by the excellent Emmanuel Ho. The interesting thing about this music video is that it was created entirely in After Effects, using primarily the Pen tool.

No Comments

In the following space, I would enjoy presenting to you a collection of excellent short videos and animations that I have come across on the Internet. This collection is arbitrary and non-encompassing; as such, expect more posts of this sort to follow.

Doll Face
A slightly interesting and notable example of a simple conceptual 3D animation by Andy Huang. ( There is also an interesting interview with him about the creation of Doll Face ). Evidence of the importance of conceptual intention in the creation of meaning. Animation is heralded for its ability to convey in a compressed time-space a matching complexity of meaning to long-form narrative works, is it not? Download the Original, or watch the Youtube embed below.

Dog
Shown this 3D stop-motion animation short by Suzie Templeton a long time ago by my associate Brad Hutchinson, and I was blown away by the beauty and intensity of this animation, and would enjoy sharing that with you now. There are a couple other films by Templeton watchable on Youtube, including her new 30 minute epic Peter and the Wolf.

90 Degrees
Shown this animation by my friend Fred Blasdel, I was amazed and inspired by how polished and flawless the work of students could be. Created by students at the excellent Gobelins school of animation in France, this 3D generated short possesses a very interesting element of the synchresis of the sound-design reinforcing the visual aspect and enhancing the conveyance of the narrative / meaning. This walks the line between music video and experimental short film; a delicious line of intrigue. A higher definition quicktime version of this can be watched here.

No Comments

Cyclic Punctilious Recompense is a video project completed in response to the (first) July assignment of the Safe Harbor video production group. All videos produced by members each month are broadcast on the Thurston County Community Television public access cable network two times per week, at 11:59pm on Monday, and 11:59pm on Thursday. The assignmental constraints on the style of the video were as follows: predominance of the color red; preponderance of repetition of objects and imagery; frenetic cutting style; no cut lengths greater than 4 seconds.

The constraint of “no cuts longer than 4 seconds” led me to explore a style of jump-cutting 1 subject with so little change in the jump as to produce the illusion of movement between frames. This in itself is a type of animation, if less manual of a process than creating each frame independently, as is traditional to animation techniques.

The red substance oozing from the mouth of the subject is Oobleck, a non-Newtonian solid.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

No Comments

Here is a short entry for a change. I just did another test key of Lumbar Laura dancing. I was worried about how well her hair would key, because even though I wetted it down with water to reduce the amount of stray hairs flying about, it was still not a solid object. Fortunately, it worked very well. Keylight is amazing! I tried the trick with the blurring chroma information with an adjustment layer, and it does help a little bit, but there is actually a parameter of Keylight which accomplishes the same thing.

Also present in the following video is a very rough composite of some of that gross mud with worms crawling around in it warped with a cheesy liquify effect (I would do this better if this were a serious composite), and some TV static generated with the Bad TV plugin from the excellent Tinderbox plugin collection. This just a very short clip, so don’t spend too much time waching it…
(more…)

No Comments

Tonight I performed an experiment with chroma keying the circuit board footage as a test to see how much of an arduous process I am in for over the rest of my post production. This is a still from my footage:

As you can see, the chroma screens are underexposed, as are the subjects, and as a result the image is somewhat noisy, which doesn’t help matters with the already artifacted DV source. Also, there are lighting inconsistencies in the chroma screen. Also, like an idiot, I decided it would be a good idea to backlight the subjects with a blue-gel; I thought this would make my planned key more believable. I thought that because the blue light was from a source other than spill from the bluescreen, it would be okay. It’s not okay. Blue is blue! That must be kept in mind in the future.
(more…)

1 Comment

Last night (Mon. 04-10), I did another healthy 8 hours of animation, and captured some interesting things, which you can see below. If, after seeing all of the animation I have completed, you are wondering what the hell I’m doing, and how I’m going to combine it into a form that means something, I’m worried too.

Bio-Circuit Social Network

(more…)

3 Comments