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TAG FOR “CGI”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
April 24, 2011 5:05 am
Just in time for Easter, Christian Broadcasting Network has announced a computer-animated remake of their 1980s series Superbook. If CGI doesn’t turn today’s kids devoutly religious, there’s still one last hope: 3-D! 53 Comments » posted in CGI, TV, CBN, Christian Broadcasting Network, Superbook 
April 13, 2011 11:57 pm
Once in a blue moon I see a piece of animation that plain knocks me out. “The Pirate by Trollhättan, Sweden-based Meindbender is one such piece. Masquerading as an innocuous Cartoon Network station promo, it is a boundary-busting achievement in CG animation. The marriage of realistically shaded/lit environments and madcap cartoon distortion (particularly in the bird character) suggest new avenues in computer animation that are worth exploring further. Here’s some background info about how Meindbender achieves its organic looking CG aesthetic. CREDITS (Thanks, Jorge Gutierrez) 30 Comments » posted in Advertising, CGI, Meindbender, Olov Burman, Sweden
March 28, 2011 5:29 pm
To paraphrase Patrick Henry, Give me squash and stretch or give me death. As an outsider to the CG animation production process, I’m struck by how inefficient industry-standard software seems to be in accomplishing basic animation principles like squash and stretch (or squish and squash, as some enlightened animation execs like to call it). From what I’ve read and seen, Matthieu Fiorilli’s fStretch, his Maya plug-in for Windows and Linux which just came out with a 2.0 version, appears to be a decent solution to tedious blend shapes and allows riggers and animators to achieve squash and stretch more intuitively:
If you have experience with fStretch or just want to talk about CG squash and stretch, share your thoughts in the comments. An fStretch demo vid is below. Go HERE for a detailed ‘making of’ for the fun Albert Einstein facial animation at the beginning of that demo. (Don’t worry, I didn’t know it was supposed to be Einstein either until after I read the making of.) To learn more about the plug-in or download a demo, visit CGAddict.com. 22 Comments » posted in CGI, Tools, fStretch 2, Matthieu Fiorilli, Maya, Rigging, Squash and stretch
March 9, 2011 9:48 am
Need to do some pre-viz work at the coffeeshop or airport but don’t have your laptop with you? Verto Studio 3D is new modeling software for the iPad created by Micheal L. Farrell. It may not be the first such iPad software on the market, but according to Marc Lougee who wrote this positive review of Verto Studio 3D, it’s the best to date. Lougee cites its relative ease of use (only 15 buttons) and fairly sophisticated feature set as selling points. The other selling point is it’s $7.99. 17 Comments » posted in CGI, Tech, Tools, iPad, Verto Studio 3D
March 3, 2011 6:39 am
A promising first look at Tron: Uprising which will begin airing on Disney XD in summer 2012. A ten-part micro-series will precede it this fall. Charlie Bean (Ren & Stimpy, Samurai Jack, Robotboy, and of course, this short) is directing and exec producing, and the amazing Alberto Mielgo is also contributing to the project. (via Super Punch) 37 Comments » posted in CGI, Disney, TV, Alberto Mielgo, Charlie Bean, Tron, Tron: Uprising
March 2, 2011 4:27 pm
Matatoro takes on “the hermetic world of bullfighting and its public, here reinvented and reinterpreted.” The short was made at Supinfocom Arles last year by Mauro Carraro, Raphaël Calamote, and Jérémy Pasquet. The music was composed by Pierre Manchot. The film is ambitious stylistically: its nonphotorealistic rendering style mimics ink and watercolor to good effect, and the stylized animation and layouts emphasize the theatrical nature of bullfighting. There’s never any doubt that the film was made in CG—the smooth perfection of the camera gives it away—but the filmmakers’ application of the watercolor technique allows for some of the most exciting color I’ve seen in any recent CG short. The imagery in Matatoro is thoughtful and thoughtprovoking. The filmmakers draw visual metaphors between bullfighting and flamenco dancing, carousel rides, and the circus, but in the end, the film asks viewers to reconsider whether it resembles any of those other less violent pastimes. 15 Comments » posted in CGI, Shorts, Student, France, Jérémy Pasquet, Mauro Carraro, Raphaël Calamote, Supinfocom
February 21, 2011 5:17 am
A new episode of Adventure Time airs tonight on Cartoon Network, and the show will feature a 5-1/2 minute long computer animated segment. The segment was modeled, rigged and animated by one person—Ke Jiang—who graduated in 2009 from the CalArts Experimental Animation program. This is a link to a preview of the CG episode and below is Taxi, a student film Jiang created a couple years back with a mesmerizing visual style: (Thanks, Sarah Pocock) 30 Comments » posted in CGI, TV, Adventure Time, CalArts, Ke Jiang
February 15, 2011 1:10 pm
The Animation Workshop, a school in Viborg, Denmark, has posted this year’s crop of student films onto their Vimeo page. The school has embraced the model of successful French animation schools, like Gobelins and Supinfocom, that encourages students to work in teams. Like those schools, the Workshop’s films exhibit the same strengths (incredible production values and technical craftsmanship) and weaknesses (stories lacking point of view and personal voice). I haven’t watched all of The Animation Workshop’s graduation films yet (the program is 3-1/2 years hence the mid-year debut of these films), but among the ones I have seen, The Backwater Gospel is a visual standout. The film offers a fresh look that I haven’t seen before, although Luis Cook’s The Pearce Sisters could be considered a stylistic forefather. The Backwater Gospel filmmakers—there’s eight of them—made a sincere attempt at stylization, not only in how they textured the characters and used flat lighting, but how they fused that together with a restrained style of movement that doesn’t immediately yell out, “I’m CG!” In particular, I love the stylized mouth shapes of the hobo character, which have a nice sculpted look. Drenched in grim atmosphere, every frame looks like a fully rendered illustration; the effect of seeing the characters move through space so effortlessly appeared jarring at times because my eyes didn’t expect to see illustrations moving like this. Terrific use is also made of Flash, which is seamlessly integrated into the CGI. |
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EVENTS
RECENT BREW TV EPISODES By Sitji Chou. A man tries to understand the futility of creating human connections when they’ve been impeded by the microcosmic void between material particles.  By Nikolas Ilic. A story of a Scottish sheep farmer who shears his sheep and tosses them cliff side…  By Dylan Hayes. Lesson 1: Everyone gambles, not everyone loses. Lesson 2: The world is full of traps. Lesson 3: You cannot win if you don’t take risks.  By Jean Yi. A personal and humorous exploration of being the ‘Nice Girl’ and coming to terms with the label and all its different meanings.  By Ferg Brennan. A lonely fisherman catches an unusual fish, which he decides to keep as a pet. |
