Potrzebie
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Oktapodi (2007)
Set in Greece, stylishly sun-drenched, this fast-paced French animated short was nominated for a 2009 Academy Award.
Labels: academy awards, animation, france, greece, oktapodi
¶ 2:34 PM 2 comments
Friday, February 06, 2009
Follow the bouncing ball
Labels: animation, bouncing ball, car-tune, fleischer, joy hodges, sing-along, song
¶ 6:19 AM 1 comments
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Walkin' with Larkin #2
Ten days ago, the National Film Board of Canada launched its free online screening room of 700 films, clips, trailers and four features, promising new content weekly from the NFB's collection of 13,000 productions. Here are upcoming titles.
The catalog includes films by the brilliant and inventive Ryan Larkin (1943-2007). Larkin's Oscar-nominated Walking (1968) was one of the memorable artistic peaks of the 1960s, and it's still as vibrant as it was four decades ago. Watch full screen. We posted Larkin's Syrinx here in February 2007.
Larkin's last film, Street Musique (1972), takes flight on the wings of song with strange surprises, psychedelic morphings and magical twists-- animation akimbo and askew:
Chris Landreth's Ryan (2004) about Ryan Larkin won a 2005 Academy Award and numerous other awards:
The catalog includes films by the brilliant and inventive Ryan Larkin (1943-2007). Larkin's Oscar-nominated Walking (1968) was one of the memorable artistic peaks of the 1960s, and it's still as vibrant as it was four decades ago. Watch full screen. We posted Larkin's Syrinx here in February 2007.
Larkin's last film, Street Musique (1972), takes flight on the wings of song with strange surprises, psychedelic morphings and magical twists-- animation akimbo and askew:
Chris Landreth's Ryan (2004) about Ryan Larkin won a 2005 Academy Award and numerous other awards:
Labels: animation, chris landreth, national film board of canada, nfb, ryan, ryan larkin, walking
¶ 5:29 PM 1 comments
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Peter Foldes' Hunger (1974)
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Here is a still from Peter Foldes' Metadata (1971), one of the earliest computer animated films, made a full decade before Steven Lisberger's Tron (1982) and the Cray computer sequences in The Last Starfighter (1984).
Peter Foldes (1924-1977) was a pioneer in computer animation, which he introduced in Metadata, using the National Research Council of Canada's computer. The film was made in collaboration with NRCC scientists Nestor Burtnyk and Marceli Wein, regarded in Canada as the fathers of computer animation technology. To tackle the themes of poverty and world hunger, Foldes again used computer animation in his Oscar-nominated Hunger (1974), doing line drawings of key frames and letting the computer create the transformations from one scene to another. Note similarity of man morphing into auto in Hunger with the Tron riders merging into their light cycles. Made for the National Film Board of Canada, Hunger won the Jury Prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.
Born in Budapest, Foldes moved to England in 1946 and studied at the Slade School of Art. Later, he lived and worked in Paris. His other films include Animated Genesis (1952), A Short Vision (1956), Plus Vite (1965), Visages des femmes (1968), Je. Tu. Elles./I. You. They. (1972), Réve (1977) and Envisage (1977). He also worked on the computer graphics for the 1973 BBC-TV mini-series The Ascent of Man (1973). A Short Vision, his collaboration with Joan Foldes about a nuclear holocaust, was shown on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956.
Foldes explained his approach to Giannalberto Bendazzi (Cartoon: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation, 1994):
1976 interview with Marceli Wein about Hunger:
What kind of computer and hardware were used?
The computer was an SEL 840A - SEL later became Gould. It had wordlength of 24 bits, because it was a realtime computer for command and control and data acquisition. The 24 bits were well suited for 2 analog quantities such as 12 bit coordinates. Memory was 8K words or 24K bytes with 1.75 microsecond cycle time. The computer's realtime strength was in its interrupt system. There was no command line interpreter and all control was from the display, an IDI point plotting display (Carl Machover was VP of IDI). The graphics controller was home grown design and built in the lab at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).
Were there parts where inbetweening was manual and not computer done -- this seemed the case where the woman was dancing?
All in-betweening was by software. The dancer was rotoscoped (traced from actual film) every 12th frame and then software interpolated. They actually filmed a gogo dancer in their building for the occasion.
When exactly was the system and the film done?
The project was started in 1969 and Nestor Burtnyk was the senior person reponsible for much of the software. Because he changed career directions he disappeared from the scene in the graphics community. The paper describing computer assised key frame animation was presented at the Fall 1970 SMPTE conference and appeared in the SMPTE Journal in March 1971. They made an experimental film with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Peter Foldes in 1971 - Metadata - then started working on Hunger. The work was completed in 1973 but the optical work at NFB continued until the release in 1974. Peter Foldes commuted from Paris for three-week stints leaving the technical people to work on software enhancements between visits.
What were the prizes that it won and were any related to the technology as opposed to for the film in general?
The major prizes included: Cannes Prix du Jury, Academy Oscar Nomination, a prize at the Berlin Festival and five others. All were for artistic achievement. The Ontario Science Centre and the Film Institute gave them an award just last fall for the technical side of the work.
Here is a still from Peter Foldes' Metadata (1971), one of the earliest computer animated films, made a full decade before Steven Lisberger's Tron (1982) and the Cray computer sequences in The Last Starfighter (1984).
Peter Foldes (1924-1977) was a pioneer in computer animation, which he introduced in Metadata, using the National Research Council of Canada's computer. The film was made in collaboration with NRCC scientists Nestor Burtnyk and Marceli Wein, regarded in Canada as the fathers of computer animation technology. To tackle the themes of poverty and world hunger, Foldes again used computer animation in his Oscar-nominated Hunger (1974), doing line drawings of key frames and letting the computer create the transformations from one scene to another. Note similarity of man morphing into auto in Hunger with the Tron riders merging into their light cycles. Made for the National Film Board of Canada, Hunger won the Jury Prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.
Born in Budapest, Foldes moved to England in 1946 and studied at the Slade School of Art. Later, he lived and worked in Paris. His other films include Animated Genesis (1952), A Short Vision (1956), Plus Vite (1965), Visages des femmes (1968), Je. Tu. Elles./I. You. They. (1972), Réve (1977) and Envisage (1977). He also worked on the computer graphics for the 1973 BBC-TV mini-series The Ascent of Man (1973). A Short Vision, his collaboration with Joan Foldes about a nuclear holocaust, was shown on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956.
Below: part one and part two of Hunger:
Foldes explained his approach to Giannalberto Bendazzi (Cartoon: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation, 1994):
The art of the 20th Century is cinema. The language of the 20th Century is technology. In my films, I made metamorphosis. Visages des femmes was a perpetual metamorphosis, created by handmade drawings. With a computer, I can still make metamorphoses, but with greater control over each line of the drawing, which I can move as I please. And I work faster, because the machine frees the artist from the fatigue of labor. A miniaturist can work for seven years on a single work; nobody says that Rembrandt’s paintings are less beautiful only because he spent less time on them.
1976 interview with Marceli Wein about Hunger:
What kind of computer and hardware were used?
The computer was an SEL 840A - SEL later became Gould. It had wordlength of 24 bits, because it was a realtime computer for command and control and data acquisition. The 24 bits were well suited for 2 analog quantities such as 12 bit coordinates. Memory was 8K words or 24K bytes with 1.75 microsecond cycle time. The computer's realtime strength was in its interrupt system. There was no command line interpreter and all control was from the display, an IDI point plotting display (Carl Machover was VP of IDI). The graphics controller was home grown design and built in the lab at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC).
Were there parts where inbetweening was manual and not computer done -- this seemed the case where the woman was dancing?
All in-betweening was by software. The dancer was rotoscoped (traced from actual film) every 12th frame and then software interpolated. They actually filmed a gogo dancer in their building for the occasion.
When exactly was the system and the film done?
The project was started in 1969 and Nestor Burtnyk was the senior person reponsible for much of the software. Because he changed career directions he disappeared from the scene in the graphics community. The paper describing computer assised key frame animation was presented at the Fall 1970 SMPTE conference and appeared in the SMPTE Journal in March 1971. They made an experimental film with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and Peter Foldes in 1971 - Metadata - then started working on Hunger. The work was completed in 1973 but the optical work at NFB continued until the release in 1974. Peter Foldes commuted from Paris for three-week stints leaving the technical people to work on software enhancements between visits.
What were the prizes that it won and were any related to the technology as opposed to for the film in general?
The major prizes included: Cannes Prix du Jury, Academy Oscar Nomination, a prize at the Berlin Festival and five others. All were for artistic achievement. The Ontario Science Centre and the Film Institute gave them an award just last fall for the technical side of the work.
Labels: animation, BBC, computer, drawing, foldes, hungary, hunger, lisberger, metadata, national film board of canada, tech, tron
¶ 6:28 PM 2 comments
Friday, January 02, 2009
Alicia Minor
"Cannibal Holocaust" is an animated tapestry by spiritual Vermont artist Alicia Minor with music by Mister Rourke. Alicia's artworks, animations and fabric designs are a splendiferous salmagundi of Mayan mandalas mushrooming into a psychedelic afterbirth.
Watch full screen for complete cartwheeling ecstasy. Earth to Sun Ra: Please return to this astral plane ASAP.
Alicia Minor, aka A.Minor, is a seventh generation Vermonter and artist who specializes in psychedelic poster art, reviving the revolutionary artistic attitudes of the 1960s with a tech touch both modern and mystical.
Since the early 1980s, she has created vibrantly colored wall hangings, art quilts and scarves from her own hand-dyed fabrics. In the late 1990s, she began working with digital imagery, incorporating ancient Mayan designs, sacred geometry and fractal theory, then applying her experienced quilting eye to deconstruct and reconstruct her work into kaleidoscopic, prismatic patterns for the 21st Century.
Minor is currently at work on new animations and a graphic novel based on the autobiography of her great-great-great aunt, Marie Louise Menard Clemens, who was born in 1863 in St. Albans, Vermont.
All art ©2009 Alicia Minor
"Cannibal Holocaust" is an animated tapestry by spiritual Vermont artist Alicia Minor with music by Mister Rourke. Alicia's artworks, animations and fabric designs are a splendiferous salmagundi of Mayan mandalas mushrooming into a psychedelic afterbirth.
Watch full screen for complete cartwheeling ecstasy. Earth to Sun Ra: Please return to this astral plane ASAP.
Alicia Minor, aka A.Minor, is a seventh generation Vermonter and artist who specializes in psychedelic poster art, reviving the revolutionary artistic attitudes of the 1960s with a tech touch both modern and mystical.
Since the early 1980s, she has created vibrantly colored wall hangings, art quilts and scarves from her own hand-dyed fabrics. In the late 1990s, she began working with digital imagery, incorporating ancient Mayan designs, sacred geometry and fractal theory, then applying her experienced quilting eye to deconstruct and reconstruct her work into kaleidoscopic, prismatic patterns for the 21st Century.
Minor is currently at work on new animations and a graphic novel based on the autobiography of her great-great-great aunt, Marie Louise Menard Clemens, who was born in 1863 in St. Albans, Vermont.
Labels: alicia minor, animation, fractals, mandala, mayan, sacred geometry, sun ra
¶ 11:07 AM 0 comments
Saturday, November 15, 2008
John Semper's The Crypt of Creeporia (episode four)
©2008 John Semper
Kommerina DeYoung is a talented actress who brings a razor-sharp sense of comedy timing to her role as Creeporia in John Semper's The Crypt of Creeporia. In his entertaining online series, Semper combines live-action, puppetry and digital animation for a spooky spoof. To see the earlier episodes, go here.
Best known as the producer and story editor of the animated Spider-Man series, Semper did the English-language dialogue for Miyazaki's Laputa and Kiki's Delivery Service, and his writing for the Static Shock series brought him a 2004 Emmy nomination. His live-action credits include co-scripting the Kid 'n' Play comedy movie Class Act. His Walter Lantz documentary, Walter, Woody and the World of Animation (1982) recently resurfaced on disc one of The Woody Woodpecker and Friends: Classic Cartoon Collection (2007) DVD.
I asked him for some background on the creation of Creeporia, and he responded:
Kommerina DeYoung is a talented actress who brings a razor-sharp sense of comedy timing to her role as Creeporia in John Semper's The Crypt of Creeporia. In his entertaining online series, Semper combines live-action, puppetry and digital animation for a spooky spoof. To see the earlier episodes, go here.
Best known as the producer and story editor of the animated Spider-Man series, Semper did the English-language dialogue for Miyazaki's Laputa and Kiki's Delivery Service, and his writing for the Static Shock series brought him a 2004 Emmy nomination. His live-action credits include co-scripting the Kid 'n' Play comedy movie Class Act. His Walter Lantz documentary, Walter, Woody and the World of Animation (1982) recently resurfaced on disc one of The Woody Woodpecker and Friends: Classic Cartoon Collection (2007) DVD.
I asked him for some background on the creation of Creeporia, and he responded:
Creeporia is shot in the living room of my townhouse here in Toluca Lake. I shoot it, record the sound and light it. To shoot it, I use a cheap, $200 Canon DV home-video camera whose greatest attribute is that it allows me to record sound using an external microphone. Creeporia wears a small, black, clip-on, wired microphone. We run the wire down through her dress, and it comes out the bottom and runs to the camera. For our relatively few long shots, where we can't hide the wire, I use a shotgun mike instead.
On the days we shoot, it's usually just me and her - with a brief appearance in the morning by the pro makeup artist, Rachel, who gets Creeporia into the full regalia and then leaves. We did one day where we were joined by Hans (Eric Von Mayhem) who shot all of his scenes for both his episodes in about two hours. When the shooting is over, I edit the rough cut and later record my voices and do all the animation and post-production myself on my computer. I mostly try to keep it all fun, so if I'm not in the mood to work on the series, I don't. It takes a loooong time and I frequently burn-out, but eventually it gets done.
For me, this is the fulfillment of the dream I've been chasing ever since I was fooling around back in the old days with Super 8. Simply put, I want to create movies involving as few people as possible who can get in the way and muck up my creative vision. Now, thanks to all this digital technology, most of which isn't even all that "cutting edge," I can finally do it everything myself - from beginning to end.
Labels: animation, creeporia, crypt, kommerina, miyazaki, semper
¶ 6:15 PM 0 comments
Thursday, November 06, 2008
SIGGRAPH 2007-08
Control click heading above to hear The Mickey Mouse Theater of the Air as broadcast March 13, 1938 on NBC. Walt Disney was the voice of Mickey.
Here is Alejandro Meludis' The Moving Eye, created for a Mexican arts festival and shown at SIGGRAPH 2007.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), founded in 1947, did its first computer graphics conference in 1974 in Boulder. Known as SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques), these conferences are held annually in different major U.S. cities, and this year SIGGRAPH branches off with an additional conference outside the U.S.
Above is a preview of the first SIGGRAPH Asia Computer Animation Festival upcoming in Singapore on December 10-13. An international display of state-of-the-art animation, it features animated shorts, visual effects, interactive CG art, scientific visualization, machinima, games, real-time graphics, lectures, studio presentations, panel discussion and an awards presentation. For better resolution on the preview trailer, go here.
SIGGRAPH 2008 was last August in Los Angeles. Here's the Maxon demo reel shown at that fest:
Here is Alejandro Meludis' The Moving Eye, created for a Mexican arts festival and shown at SIGGRAPH 2007.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), founded in 1947, did its first computer graphics conference in 1974 in Boulder. Known as SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques), these conferences are held annually in different major U.S. cities, and this year SIGGRAPH branches off with an additional conference outside the U.S.
Above is a preview of the first SIGGRAPH Asia Computer Animation Festival upcoming in Singapore on December 10-13. An international display of state-of-the-art animation, it features animated shorts, visual effects, interactive CG art, scientific visualization, machinima, games, real-time graphics, lectures, studio presentations, panel discussion and an awards presentation. For better resolution on the preview trailer, go here.
SIGGRAPH 2008 was last August in Los Angeles. Here's the Maxon demo reel shown at that fest:
Labels: acm, animation, asia, cgi, disney, maxon, meludis, mexico, mickey mouse, siggraph, singapore
¶ 8:10 AM 0 comments
Friday, August 29, 2008
Gahan Wilson's Diner (1992)
Gahan Wilson's Sunday Comics was his newspaper cartoon feature of the 1970s. Initially launched with unrelated cartoons, it soon grouped them thematically, as seen here with the books and libraries theme. The feature began March 3, 1974 and continued until 1977, syndicated by the Register & Tribune Syndicate. See Allan Holtz' Stripper's Guide for another Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics. Also check into The Gahan Wilson Virtual Museum.
© Gahan Wilson
Gahan Wilson's Sunday Comics was his newspaper cartoon feature of the 1970s. Initially launched with unrelated cartoons, it soon grouped them thematically, as seen here with the books and libraries theme. The feature began March 3, 1974 and continued until 1977, syndicated by the Register & Tribune Syndicate. See Allan Holtz' Stripper's Guide for another Gahan Wilson Sunday Comics. Also check into The Gahan Wilson Virtual Museum.Labels: animation, diner, gahan, monsters
¶ 10:18 PM 1 comments
