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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.
November 22, 2010 4:58 pm
Microsoft’s new controller-free gaming environment called Kinect for XBox 360 also doubles as a powerful digital toy for hackers. The open source drivers on the Kinect allow users to hook it up to PCs and push it in different directions like this: The above was created by manipulating Kinect data in realtime through a C++ coding platform called Cinder. The end result makes live-action footage look like it’s gone through a Michelin Man toon shader. Here is another person who is using the Kinect to create 3-D space: 10 Comments » posted in CGI, Ideas/Commentary, Tech, Kinect 
November 10, 2010 11:47 am
A cute concept that doesn’t wear out its welcome, A Robot’s Life was written and directed by vfx artist Elad Offer. Animation supervision is by Jacob Bergman and character animation by Derek Kent. (Just in case it’s unclear, the robot and boombox are both animated.) 7 Comments » posted in CGI, Elad Offer
November 1, 2010 11:52 am
The limitations of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s approach to Tintin is evident from the very first still they’ve released (above). The most glaring flaw—besides the fact that Tintin and Snowy look like zombies and they’ve lost all the appealing shapes in the original designs and everything is drowning in an obscured mess of shadows and excess detail—is the tilt (or lack thereof) in Tintin’s pose. Performance capture can only capture what it records, and the animators are clearly hindered in this image because no human can comfortably run at Tintin’s angle as drawn by Hergé. The ability to achieve the impossible is one of the strengths of cartooning (and art in general), and so remains the paradox of why anybody would be foolish enough to spend a hundred million dollars to create a more inept and less appealing version of something that could be better drawn by artists. This quote by Peter Jackson is particularly hilarious in light of the images that WETA is cranking out:
A couple more stills follow the jump: 158 Comments » posted in Bad Ideas, CGI, Peter Jackson, Steven Spielberg, Tintin, WETA
October 30, 2010 12:03 am
A preview of the latest short from Walt Disney Animation Studios—Tick Tock Tale directed by Dean Wellins. Haven’t heard much about this one although it did screen in Ottawa last week. (via Matt Jones) 37 Comments » posted in CGI, Disney, Dean Wellins
October 12, 2010 10:45 am
This is the trailer for I Want Your Money, an anti-Obama political documentary that opens in theaters this Friday. Like countless documentaries nowadays, it uses animation to help communicate its message. The film’s director Ray Griggs made no secret about why he inserted animation into the film, explaining in an article that, “I promised myself if I was going to make a documentary, it would be one that I’d want to watch and hold my interest, which is a big reason why we have the animation.” I’m not sure who did the CG animation, but the bobble head-style politicians, who include Reagan, Obama, Clinton, Schwarzenegger, and Sarah Palin, are based on designs by Tom Richmond of MAD Magazine. Richmond apparently isn’t overly impressed with the results. He posted images of his original designs on his blog and commented, “Unfortunately Ray [Griggs] had a lot of trouble with the animation companies that did the CGI and frankly the final results leave a lot to be desired. I think the modeling and basic characters look fine, but the talking animation part is rough.” 32 Comments » posted in CGI, Feature Film, Tom Richmond
October 11, 2010 4:22 pm
Solid color and design work in this CG spot for Georgia Power created by Santa Monica-based Three Legged Legs. The extensive behind-the-scenes materials are a veritable crash course in how to produce a TV commercial. 5 Comments » posted in Advertising, CGI, Three Legged Legs
October 5, 2010 7:23 am
Take Ward Kimball’s crazy space creatures from Mars and Beyond, add some computer animation, and voila, you get this fantastic trailer for Doomed, a new series by Pocoyo co-creator Guillermo García Carsí and his studio El Señor. Boy, does this look fun! I love Guillermo’s approach to computer animation, which avoids the cacophonous visual overload of most computer animation by making clear and bold artistic choices. It’s what made Pocoyo such a refreshingly different series, and Doomed appears to be on the same track. According to the site, they’ve just completed the pilot episode. Carsí calls it a biological cartoon that displays the failures of natural selection: “A set of strange creatures whose instincts, instead of focusing on survival, have doomed them to an absurd and comic extinction, in the presence of the astonished gaze of the narrator.” (Thanks, Rohit Iyer)
27 Comments » posted in CGI, TV, Doomed, Guillermo García Carsí, Pocoyo
October 2, 2010 12:05 am
Sintel is an independently produced short film, initiated by the Amsterdam-based Blender Foundation, directed by Savannah College of Art and Design Student, Colin Levy. It is the third film produced by the foundation—the first two were Elephants Dream (2006) and Big Buck Bunny (2008). With initial funding provided by thousands of donations via the internet, this fifteen minute film was produced in the studio of the Amsterdam Blender Institute, by an international team of artists and developers. Blender funds these films primarily to advance their software and improve their technology. For a small team with limited funds, I think this short is quite an accomplishment. For more behind-the-scenes information, check the Sintel production blog. But first, here’s the finished film: (Thanks, Alex Curtis) |
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