30 Comments »   posted in CGI, Shorts, Salesman Pete

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Someone posted a rare 1998 cgi test film for an unmade Roger Rabbit 2. If anyone has any background info on this piece, I’d like to hear about it:

UPDATE: Eric Goldberg, who directed this piece, writes in the comments:

Okay, time to put some things to rest.

Rob, Dave, Tom Bancroft, and Eric Guaglione are all correct. It is indeed CGI, from 1998. I directed both pieces, the 2-D and the 3-D, with a view toward directing the animation in the sequel, being developed by Pocahontas producer Jim Pentecost. While time-consuming in 1998 to get this effect, it was, and still is, ground-breaking in my opinion. As we were completing the 2-D with CG props test, I said to Kathleen Gavin, who was heading up offbeat” projects at the time, “Well, everyone already knows the Roger gimmick of tone mattes. Why don’t we see if we can do Roger himself in CG? If we can animate something as fluid and eminently squashy-stretchy as Roger Rabbit, then we can animate anything in CG.” I was also interested in pursuing it to solve the dreaded “foot-float” problem you get when when roto-ing planted feet to an incrementally moving camera. In this case, Roger was tracked perfectly, the same way the dinos in Jurassic Park were tracked perfectly. Whether we would use the technique or not in the sequel, it was to prove that we could do Disney quality animation in CG, which no one had ever attempted before. The Florida team proved me right, in spades, and major kudos to them all.

The next logical step for the studio was to see if we could achieve that kind of animation without pre-animating it as 2-D first. The result was Magic Lamp Theater, now a popular 3-D stereo attraction at Tokyo DisneySea. Again, expensive to do at the time, but this time I did detailed poses, while the CG guys really did the animation, supervised by Jason Ryan. Flash-forward 12 years later, and the tools to do this kind of work are most certainly available, without the need for special expense.

While the Roger sequel never got made, there were plenty of other reasons for that decision as well, involving then-current studio politics. Also, the too-expensive budget that was being considered was based on the original techniques.

Anyway, that’s the way I heared it, Johnny.

(Thanks, Matthew Gaastra)

107 Comments »   posted in CGI, Disney, Roger Rabbit

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Taiwan’s Next Media Animation

September 17, 2010 5:03 pm

I’ve never written a post fully expressing my appreciation for the Taiwanese animators at Next Media Animation who create news segments like the one above, but I’ve been fixated by their work since they made a splash last year with their reportage of Tiger Woods. Using the most basic CG models and animation style, they’ve developed a take no prisoners series of animated political cartoons with a sharp outsider’s point of view on American and global politics. Not every one of them is a homerun, but that is to be expected considering that they often produce two minutes of animation on a three-day turnaround to keep aligned with news cycles.

Looking beyond the simplistic, crudely rendered imagery (I like to call it honest CGI), there is plenty of creativity evident in their work. They pepper their films with visual metaphors and symbolism to make them understandable in any language, and they take storytelling liberties that are possible only in a graphic medium like animation. The work that NMA produces has been improving throughout this year, and they get my praise for being among the funniest and most creative computer animated projects currently in production.

UPDATE:: Brew reader Johnnn points out this article in the latest issue of Wired about Next Media Animation. Haven’t read it yet, but it appears to be quite in-depth.

15 Comments »   posted in CGI, Next Media Animation

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Fruit Snacks by Buck

September 17, 2010 12:05 am

CG has been imitating stop-motion for years, but this spot from Buck, the bicoastal (NY & LA) design and animation studio, had me fooled. It perfectly captures the fun of clay-animation.

Directed By: Buck
Creative Director: Orion Tait
Producer: Kitty Dillard
Character Design: Stephen Kelleher, Kent Mudle, Thomas Schmid
Environment Design: Thomas Schmid, Daniel Oeffinger, Jacques Khouri
CG Supervisor: Ryan O’Phelan
Lead Character Animator: Jordan Blit
Additional Animation: Kent Mudle, Ryan O’Phelan, Pete Hamilton
3D Modeling / Layout Artists: Dave Soto, Pete Hamilton, Ryan O’Phelan
Rigging: Vadim Kiyaev, Ryan O’Phelan, Jordan Blit
Lighting / Shading Artists: Michael Lampe, Ryan O’Phelan
Texture Artist: Dave Soto

9 Comments »   posted in Advertising, CGI, Buck

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iPad Light Animation by BERG

September 15, 2010 5:12 pm

Interface designers BERG used iPads to create an ingenious experiment that combines the device with photography and animation. After building CG models of a typeface, they rendered a sequence of cross sections of the letters—think David Daniels’ strata-cut animation technique adapted to CG. Now, the strata-cut technique wouldn’t typically work in CGI because the calculated precision of the computer disallows spontaneity, but BERG solved that by playing back the sequences on the iPad while dragging it through space to extrude the animation into physical space. Each frame of the film, which is subject to the effects of natural human movement, is a long photographic exposure of three to six seconds. There’s more information about its making on BERG’s blog and behind-the-scenes photos are posted on Flickr.

More than anything, this experiment by BERG is a fine example of environmental animation that breaks the confines of animation’s traditionally flat and square image frame. It points to a day that is not too far off when animation will play a vital role in the real world. Imagine being in an office lobby, and depending on where you’re standing in the lobby, you’d see a different kind of animation superimposed over the physical space to guide you around. Animation need not be restricted to a passive filmic experience, and interacting with animation in our everday lives is within reach as BERG has so cleverly hinted at in this piece.

(Thanks, Dave Follett)

14 Comments »   posted in CGI, Berg, iPad

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Looney Tunes CG Fail

September 15, 2010 5:00 pm

The shape of things to come? Let’s hope not – an ad for McDonald’s from France:

(Thanks, Kurtis Findlay)

47 Comments »   posted in CGI, Looney Tunes, McDonalds

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No Pets Allowed trailer

September 10, 2010 12:05 am

Nicely done test piece for a proposed feature by Headless Studios and Six Birds Productions in Barcelona.

(Thanks, Mike Stanfill)

18 Comments »   posted in CGI, Feature Film

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Deneroff’s Law about Computer Animation

September 2, 2010 8:40 am

Animation historian Harvey Deneroff writes perceptively about animation past and present, and not so long ago, he wrote something about computer animation that caught my attention and which helps to explain the ever-increasing complexity of animation imagery. He calls it “Deneroff’s Law”:

In 1958, C. Northcote Parkinson, famously stated in Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, that, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” And Deneroff’s Law basically states: Given more powerful and complex tools, filmmakers will inevitably use them to make more complex films.” This rather simplistic observation is by no means original and in fact was inspired by a comment John Lasseter made during a phone interview about Toy Story 2. If I remember correctly, he said something like when presented with a computer 10 times more powerful, rather than using the added power to produce animation 10 times quicker, animators will usually opt to make their animation 10 times more complex and expensive.

He explores “Deneroff’s Law” in much greater depth and gives it historical context on his blog which I recommend reading.

9 Comments »   posted in CGI, Ideas/Commentary, Harvey Deneroff

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