Animation Inspiration From The Pros
Steve K
Posts: 3,235
I'm starting to think about a holiday animation, and decided to look for some inspiration in the movies. I couldn't think of a Pixar holiday animation, so I asked the librarians. They found a great one from Disney Animation Studios, not Pixar but executive produced by John Lasseter, the Pixar genius who is apparently sharing time between the two, and is very hands-on. The title is "Prep and Landing", done for a half hour TV show for ABC (22 minutes run time). Very funny bits for kids and adults, plus voice acting by Dave Foley ("News Radio", "A Bug's Life"), Sarah Chalke ("Scrubs"). The DVD has a couple of shorts that add voice acting by Betty White ("The Golden Girls", "Boston Legal"). Here is a preview:
Here is an excerpt from one of the shorts, "Tiny's Big Adventure":
Funny stuff that I'd never heard of, almost as good as my alltime favorite Pixar short, "Jack-Jack Attack" (based on "The Incredibles"). Thanks to the librarians. And no, Prep and Landing are not names of characters, but the North Pole Dept. responsible for readying houses for Santa's visit.
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Comments
Oh, that poor little guy in the second one! LOL
Fantastic inspiration, my friend! Thanks for this. I'm going to have to buy this one!
Have you checked out the animated Star Wars shows at all?
I know my asking that brings up that ol' broken record again. But not only do they utilize some top animation talent, they also have been pretty cool about sharing behind the scenes comments and inteviews and such - something I always find enjoyable and helpful - even though a lot of it isn't directly talking about the actual process of animating.
This is a fun little recap of Seasons 1-3 of the current Disney XD show, Star Wars Rebels, which shows some excellence in animation
It took me a while to enjoy Rebels. First of all being a bit bummed about the premature cancellation of The Clone Wars, and second because of the more rubbery, shiny (plastic) look of the characters, compared to the chiseled painting look of The Clone Wars, which I love, but that look also took some time for me to adapt to.
The big hook that helped me adapt to both looks was the excellence in story telling of both shows. They benefit from a very well structured and organized team of writers whom were all (at least partially) trained by, and had to answer to, George Lucas. The Clone Wars was his last thing Star Wars that he was officially involved in.
The Clone Wars was a gigantic tribute to the amazing conceptual artist, Ralph McQuarrie. They wanted to brind much more of his amazing work to the screen - and they did. "What would Ralph do?" and "How would Ralph approach this?" were common questions mong the whole visual crew - conceptually and through production... and it shows.
An example of why I like the Behind-the-Scenes of this so much, check out this one. The example I speak of is toward the end (starting at 9:41) when they bring Joel Aron into the conversation. He begins explaining how he made the Lava look. Very shortly after he explains how they made the waterfalls and water, using N.C. Wyeth paintings as reference. There are many of these sorts of excellent tidbits in the whole series of Behind the Scenes from The Clone Wars - I love it!
Yes, I was laughing out loud. Another favorite is Pixar's short "Burn-E" (based on "Wall-E"), another poor little guy. Preview below - his problems aren't shown much in the preview, but they are Chaplin-esque:
Not yet, but I will. Thanks for the tip.
I just saw that short (Jack Jack Attack) recently and laughed me arse to forever! I love The Incredibles, and it was really fun to see what happened back on the home front during... well... you know! LOL
Wah! Burn-E was Awesome!!! The clip in your post won't play outside of YouTube, so if someone wants to watch it, just click this link - you'll be glad you did!
As a crazy side-track, these guys are animated, but they're robots who play instruments - Live! If you look closely you'll see a small robot guy operating only the pedal for the drummer's hi-hat! Ladies and Gentlemen, now with their brand new singer, 350kg, let me introduce to you: Compressorhead, from Germany!
Blackstone haunted castle (remake)~ inspired by the Disney haunted mansion.. Originally made in 2012 using daz studio.. But I recently re-rendered it in a 90 day trail of Maya and uploaded it to vimeo for better video quality than what I get from you tube.
Happy Halloween
Blackstone Haunted Castle. -Video link https://vimeo.com/238211072
Wow! So how did you like the trial? Still on it?
I see that you've used the Renderman Engine plugin... how did you like that?
Very cool, Ivy! I still wish I could have got you to try out Carrara!
yes I used renderman-lite, its a cloud render engine, they also offer metal ray and vray cloud plugins as well. . I have about 35 days left. I wouldn;t mind the cloud version if it wasn;t for having to authienticate everytime I start it. . I really I love that it has renderman lite and how I can render with RIB files effortlessly . But I dunno about paying $39 a month to continue to use it though. plus they also charge you for each additional plugin you add to your cloud . the good thing I noticed is all the scenes I had built in daz4.9 & FXB over I only had to fix a couple of things. and the Maya Texture auto-conversion made transistioning scene settings much easier if I had a huge project It maybe well worth the money to use the Maya cloud. but for messing around like I do I can't justify it.
About carrara . To be honest if Daz would show continuing support for carrara I would have invested in it a long time ago. But I am afraid as soon as I start putting time and money into it that daz will discontinue it leaving me holding a empty bag
Very nice, Ivy. I especially liked the sword fight toward the end, was that done with Dartanbeck's mocaps?
It brought to my mind the PC game "Duke Nuke 'Em", on which I spent many hours so high praise (note the label "unregistered shareware", remember that?)
I can totally understand that. Luckily for me, I don't really have a need or want for anything more, so Carrara will never be an empty bag for me! ;)
Of course, that doesn't mean that I'd still like them to continue to keep it up-to-date with the latest OS offerings at the very least.
I liked it too - especially the wonderful use of sound! But, nope... those aren't mine. Perhaps Posermocap?
Ha Ha at Duke nukem . wow that really makes me feel old.
Yes I used some old Posermo caps "knight-sword fight BVH files" it came with the sword props & sheilds too.. & I used a M4 skeleton' models and dressed them with pirate and the Knight & used some home made rendered trans-maps to make the ghost look see through. I might have gotten better results if I had messed with the lighting angles too. Maya's presets are wicked easy for setting up goble lighting. in the witch flying over the castle scene that was a good natural effect. because I could customize the color for each pin light that had volumetics settings to the light. super easy set up. .. IMO Maya cloud clost alot for hobby use.
OK, not an animated movie, but some impresive CGI. Roger Ebert (3.5 stars out of 4): "You would think a freight car loaded with heavy metals couldn't fly very high into the sky, but you'd be wrong. This is a sensationally good action sequence ... " The movie is "Super 8", I think a little background is needed. A group of young teens is trying to make a movie with Super 8 cameras for a contest/festival, and sneaks out to shoot at a train station at night. Their improvisational efforts ("Production Values!" when a real train is coming) are spot on to me as a veteran of one live action 48 Hour Film movie. What happens is another movie intrudes into their little amateur effort. With a bang. The YouTube excerpt is 8 minutes, but pretty amazing to me:
That is a very cool clip!
A good choice of words. The "Making Of ..." items on the DVD included stories about Director J.J. Abrams and Producer Steven Spielberg making Super 8 and 8mm movies, resp., as young students. They were very cheesy, with obvious plastic models flaming with lighter fluid, etc., but they both obviously recall them fondly. There were also some behind the scenes shots during the filming, including one with a real (non-CGI) huge nighttime explosion as part of the train wreck scene above. A big boxcar blows to smithereens, with pieces going everywhere. Abrams is standing a short distance away, sort of by himself in the foreground of the shot, turns to the camera and grins, saying "Cool!"
Cool! I love that stuff!
(Drifting farther away from animation) I'm always looking for clever plot devices to use in my short animations. I recently watched "Sullivan's Travels" (1941), just because its on the AFI list of top 100 movies, not expecting to find any clever ideas that I could use. [Moderate Spoiler Alert] But as I watched it hit the 80 minute point (of a 90 minute movie), and with the hero in very deep difficulties, plus everybody who might help thinking he's dead, I actually was thinking, how is Preston Sturges (writer/director) gonna get him out of this in ten minutes? Literally at that moment, the hero (a big time Hollywood movie director, BTW) says, "If ever a movie needed a plot twist, this one does." I almost fell out of my chair laughing. You can guess the rest.
Just picked up the Clone Wars seasons 1-5 on blu ray for rediculously cheap in the Black Friday sales. Never seen any of them, but Dart is always quoting from it, so it's gotta be good!
Fasten your seatbelt, my friend!
...and May the Force be With You!
Da Force (dForce?) will have to wait though, cos I just had to send back my new blu ray player as faulty
(thank goodness for Amazon returns!)
cute one
Argh! Why can't stuff work right out of the box, eh? Is that too much to ask?
Wow! Very nicely done!