Myke Chilian and Kali Fontecchio made this teeny-weenie 37-second cartoon for Googy (episode 3) featured on Channel 101 this month. For more info on how fast they made this and why, check out Kali’s site.
Last month, we posted Dog Skateboard by Nate Milton of The Amigo Unit.
Lo and behold, twenty-six days later there’s the release of the viral hit Dogboarding created by the LA-based duo Daniels (aka Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan).
If the Daniels had somehow built on the idea and turned it into something else, it would be less irritating. But they took a one-note gag, redid the exact same thing using a different technique without adding a single idea of their own, and regurgitated it onto the unsuspecting public. At least that’s how I see it. What’s your take?
UPDATE: Daniel Kwan of the Daniels wrote a lengthy comment that says they came up with the idea of dog-boarding in December 2010 and finished the project last December:
I can 100% understand how crazy this sounds, but this is in fact an insane coincidence that we, the amigo unit and ourselves, as two separate entities came up with the same idea at the same time (the internet-influenced collective consciousness is causing us all to come to similar ideas and conclusions? who knows!). We actually finished this project in Dec, but due to some setbacks and misunderstandings weren’t able to release it until now. So seeing as the amigo unit’s video hadn’t come out until a month ago, it would be pretty impossible for us to have copied them.
I don’t want to have to be a stickler about all of this, but we have documents and emails dating back to early december of last year discussing this project. We even have a treatment that says 2010 on it :p. We shot test footage and did effects test, which we uploaded to vimeo as a private link on Dec 13th. We have meta data on our footage that shows that we shot the entire video on location in LA mid december, and even had a rough cut done by the end of dec that we uploaded a private link up onto vimeo to share with people (and we still have that cut up online, still private, but with the text “3 months ago” on it, as in, this video was uploaded 3 months ago :] ).
You can read Kwan’s entire comment below.
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:
Its unique work flow allows one to precisely control effects such as stretch and squash, wrinkles and fat deformations to name a few. At one end, it lets one create cartoony rig with stunning stretch and squash while at the other end, it will allow another to create very realistic fat deformations.
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.
Entertainment Weekly has posted these intriguing images from Pixar’s 2012 release, Brave. The EW post also mentions that the film’s director credit will be shared by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, despite the fact that Chapman (who conceived the film) was dismissed from the project last October.
(Thanks, Adam Blair)
For more about Animated Fragments, see this earlier post. If you want to see all the fragments collected in one place,subscribe to this channel on Vimeo.
Cuckoo by Paulo Mosca (Spain)
Work time by Stuart Bury (US): “A quick animation test in Flash. I wanted to use both symbols and frame by frame together in the same sequence.”
Guardian Pets commercial by Celyn Brazier (UK)
Pole Dance interstitial for E4 by Treat (UK)
Subway Test by BJ Crawford (US)
The Mushroom by Julio del Rio (UK). “The Mushroom” was done while sitting down in a pub on a Sunday afternoon…All frames were drawn directly in a single sheet of paper, and later scanned, cut, repositioned and timed in PAP, inspired by Fran Krause’s great sketchbook animation technique.”
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Our monthly live comedy/cartoon revue, Cartoon Dump, goes on as usual tonight at 8pm. Honoring the “Worst Cartoons Ever Made” with Frank Conniff (MST3K), Erica Doering, Emo Philips as our resident Cartoon Musicology Professor (all three pictured above from last months show) along with me (Jerry Beck), J. Elvis Weinstein, Mighty Mr. Titan and special stand-up comedy guest Michael Rayner at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. • Free Parking! • Advanced Tickets here • Phone: (323) 666-9797 • Map & Directions. Tell us you’re coming on Facebook!
I love the illustrative-collage animation style of Brooklyn-based painter Jonathan Campo and hope he continues to explore this quirky approach to filmmaking. Especially if he applies it to something more substantial than tired “Adult Swim”-esque non sequiturs and awkward pauses.
(via Meathaus)
Who knew that Jim Henson created a TV pilot in 1969 based on Johnny Hart and Brant Parker’s Wizard of Id? Watch rare excerpts above and then read more background about the project on the superbly curated Henson Company blog.
The company is posting other rare historical materials on their YouTube account as well, such as this Aurora toilet paper ad from the mid-Sixties with a delightful pantomime hand by Frank Oz:
(via Mike Lynch Cartoons)
NY-based duo Phantasmic (aka Tripp and Jenna Watt) created this playful and nutty multimedia trip for the band Morning Teleportation:
Created with a vast array of materials, found objects, and crayola marker drawings, this pile of nonsense mixes stop motion, live action, motion graphics, and a little bit of 3D all within one gypsy invention of a carnival ride.
The ‘making of’ vid gives a nice view of their craft-oriented DIY approach:
Marc Loos of the French pop culture site Cloneweb posted this brief recent interview with Andreas Deja in which he reveals his thoughts on his career, doing CG versus hand drawn, and what might come next from the Disney studio.
UPDATE: Marc Loos tells us that the drawing Andreas is sketching is actually Tigger – you can see a picture of it here.
And for our French readers, there is a french transcript here.
(Thanks, Kevin Rucker)
Brew reader and longtime colleague Dana Gabbard (The Duckberg Times) has a side interest in the history of L.A. public transit, and that led to him finding these vinatge animated commercials on You Tube. Matthew Barrett at the Metro Library discovered the original film prints, arranged to get them digitized and placed them on the net.
Lantz veteran Milt Schaffer directed these spots, Bill Thompson (Droopy) does the voices and Disney artists Ed Aardal and Clarke Mallery animated them at studio “ERA Productions for Television” in 1956. Read more about their production in this PDF of an article from The Metro Coach News (June 1956), which includes photos of the people who worked on the spots plus some of the storyboards.
Man, I miss hand drawn animation… someone uploaded one of Chris Sanders’ (Lilo and Stitch, How To Train Your Dragon) Cal Arts student films. Refreshing to watch despite the fuzzy video quality.
(Thanks, Chris Sobieniak)
Hadn’t checked in a while and was curious to see what the most viewed pieces of animation on YouTube and Vimeo currently are. The results are, erm, fascinating and quite reflective of the audiences who use each site. It should be pointed out that Muto, the most viewed piece of animation on Vimeo (3.5 million views) has significantly more views (8.8 million) on YouTube. In other words, good animation does get recognized on YouTube as well, but you have to wade through a lot of trash to get to it.
From a user standpoint, I no longer find it possible to discover new animators or films on YouTube unless someone sends a direct link. Vimeo’s community features are easier to use, and the number of users is still small enough to encourage browsing and discovery. I hope they find ways to maintain the sense of intimacy and community as they scale upward.
Top Animation on YouTube
1. Tootin’ Bathtub Baby Cousins – 151.1 million views
2. Intro La casa de Mickey Mouse – 123 million views
3. The Gummy Bear Song – 115.2 million views
Top Animation on Vimeo
1. Muto – 3.5 million views
2. The Third & The Seventh – 3.2 million views
3. The Crisis of Credit Visualized – 2.5 million
