Damon Bard

Damon Bard is an artist whose work just gets better and better. I would love to work with him sometime and learn a thing or two about sculpting. Check out more of his work on his site: http://www.bardsculpturestudio.com/

Objectivism

I'm seeing a resurgence of a philosophical phenomenon known as 'Objectivisim'. This is a term Ayn Rand used to label her view-point taught in her two books "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged",(written in 1957 it is strangely enough being made into a movie to be released in 2009) . It's also the same thinking Aleister Crowley taught and that Rock and Roll helped promote through out the 60's. Basically it's everyone for themselves. A Darwinian mentality that tells us we aren't accountable to others and if you can't make it, too bad.

I don't know what it all means and perhaps I'm only paranoid but we are already too selfish. Yet I hate to say it but many people feel the world owes them a living and I don't know how it's going to go down when others suddenly start to see them as a drain and labeled 'looters' of society. I'm a little scared!


Aleister Crowley on the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album

Viewmaster

Here is a cool picture of Joe Liptak sculpting a scene for the Viewmaster reel of Peter Pan.

I've been playing with stereoscopic drawings and went hunting for information on how the Viewmaster Company made their very cool 'drawn' reels. We all know the company made sculptures and photographed them with a 3D camera,(Animated GIF of Tigger), but how did they do the drawn ones?



Some were your typical drawings cut up into planes like most anaglyph printing of artwork. The best had depth that bent back into space and appeared to have actual round edges,(Animated GIF of Space Mouse).



If you have any information on how they created theses astonishing images please contact me.

Jessica Hippo

I love it when life becomes surreal.

Jim Woodring

If you've never seen Jim Woodrings work, you have probably dreamed about it. Jim is a Seattle artist with a cryptic wit and an otherworldly ability to realise those intangibles that lurk in the soft grey folds. He has a cool blog here: http://jimwoodring.blogspot.com/

3D Orange Nude

If someone hit you on the back of the head with your eyes crossed would they really stick that way? This is what my mother would tell me, but it's something you need to do to see this free-view style stereoscopic picture that I did.  Cross your eyes and focus on the image that forms in the middle.  I hope no one hits you in the back of the head while you're doing that.  Let me know what happens if someone does.

Click on image to enlarge.

Claymation

Kevin MacLean has posted the 1978 film "Claymation" that first made me want to work at Will Vintons' Studio, (which I did for thirteen years!).

See Will with a full beard and long hair! The second part is on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbc5Nc4GQ5c&feature=related

More 3D

Yet another free-view life drawing of mine. Click on image to enlarge

Free View Color

I thought I would try adding color to one of my stereoscopic images. Click on image to enlarge.

Free View 3D

I’ve tried making anaglyphic stereoscopic pictures but the exporting of them has always skewed the colors making the blue and red lens glasses useless. A more ideal method is called free-viewing and is harder for some people to do but you don’t need glasses. It requires the viewer to cross their eyes and focus on the image that forms in the middle of the two images. For those who can do it, here is my life drawing that I’ve make into a stereo picture. Click on the image to view as a larger version.

Self-effacing

Maybe this should be called self-defacing. I wanted to do a bearded character with more expressive mouths than just some squiggly lines. “I’ve got a beard!” I said to myself, “You call that a beard?” I replied idiotically and with a full grasp of the obvious used myself as a model to do some mouth studies. Well these digital sketches are more realistic than the character mouths, (which ended up as squiggly lines), finally turned out, and really look nothing like me, (I’m much cuter and look more like an old demented Gerber baby). But I thought they might raise a smile if I posted them. Boy was I wrong.

Laughing Sal

Sally Cruikshank has put her delightful work on YouTube including my fave “Quasi at the Quackadero”. Find them here: http://www.youtube.com/user/laughingsal

Sally has a feature that's been baking in her brain for years. I hope one day we all get to enjoy it.

Brad Birds' Nine Lessons on Innovation

This comes from The McKinsey Quartlerly. What Brad said was so good that I've posted all nine lessons below.
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Lesson One: Herd Your Black Sheep

The Quarterly: How did your first project at Pixar—The Incredibles—shake things up?


Brad Bird: I said, “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door.” A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well. We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here.

Lesson Two: Perfect is the Enemy of Innovation

The Quarterly: What sorts of things did you do differently?


Brad Bird: I had to shake the purist out of them—essentially frighten them into realizing I was ready to use quick and dirty “cheats” to get something on screen… I’d say, “Look, I don’t have to do the water through a computer simulation program… I’m perfectly content to film a splash in a swimming pool and just composite the water in.” I never did film the pool splash [but] talking this way helped everyone understand that we didn’t have to make something that would work from every angle. Not all shots are created equal. Certain shots need to be perfect, others need to be very good, and there are some that only need to be good enough to not break the spell.

Lesson Three: Look for Intensity


The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation?

Brad Bird: Involved people make for better innovation… Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.


Lesson Four: Innovation Doesn’t happen in a Vacuum

The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team?

Brad Bird: I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person… I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together…

Lesson Five: High Morale Makes Creativity Cheap

The Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.


Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. [what’s true for a movie is true for a startup!] If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Lesson Six: Dont Try To “Protect your success”

The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?


Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. … “You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

Lesson Six: Steve Jobs Says ‘Interaction = Innovation’

The Quarterly: What does Pixar do to stimulate a creative culture?


Brad Bird: If you walk around downstairs in the animation area, you’ll see that it is unhinged. People are allowed to create whatever front to their office they want. One guy might build a front that’s like a Western town. Someone else might do something that looks like Hawaii…John [Lasseter] believes that if you have a loose, free kind of atmosphere, it helps creativity.

Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

Lesson Seven: Encourage Inter-disciplinary Learning

The Quarterly: Is there anything else you’d highlight that contributes to creativity around here?


Brad Bird: One thing Pixar does [is] “PU,” or Pixar University. If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. [and more creative].

Lesson Eight: Get Rid of Weak Links

The Quarterly: What undermines Innovation?


Brad Bird: Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.

Lesson Nine: Making $$ Can’t Be Your Focus

The Quarterly: How would you compare the Disney of your early career with Pixar today?


Brad Bird: When I entered Disney, it was like a classic Cadillac Phaeton that had been left out in the rain… The company’s thought process was not, “We have all this amazing machinery—how do we use it to make exciting things? We could go to Mars in this rocket ship!” It was, “We don’t understand Walt Disney at all. We don’t understand what he did. Let’s not screw it up. Let’s just preserve this rocket ship; going somewhere new in it might damage it.”

Walt Disney’s mantra was, “I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.” That’s a good way to sum up the difference between Disney at its height and Disney when it was lost. It’s also true of Pixar and a lot of other companies. It seems counterintuitive, but for imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.

Dr. Pepper

Awhile back I tired to teach myself how to use a sound software program so I could do my own soundtracks for animation. The program allows multi tracking and lots of filters to modify sounds. I couldn't resist taking some of my crappy original songs and goofing on them. I lost everything in a computer crash before I could do a final mix but the rough tracks were saved and compiled into two pages of MySpace here: http://www.myspace.com/ludwigvonbrinkerhoff and here: http://www.myspace.com/ludwigvonb

You may not think too much of them, (I don't), but it's just too easy to stick stuff on the web anymore.

Timing

I'm so glad students of animation and working animators are putting terrific posts online of what they have learned. This was taken from Victor Navone's Online Gallery blog http://www.navone.org/blogger/2007/09/3-speeds.html and I thought it a very good study for why we should look for opportunities to get variation in timing into our animation.

Robin Ator

I don't know who posted this piece on my friend Robin Ator but it is a pretty impressive interview and shows a little taste of what Robin can do. I wish his philosophy on drawing were true because I struggle. But a key to Robins' amazing talent may be that he has a photographic memory,( he kind of alludes to that). Winsor MaCay had a photographic memory and his work is brilliant and so is Robins'. It would be worth your while to Google Robin and also check out his Flickr pages.

I think my presumptions of Robin having eidetic memory are too dismissive of his mastery of art and should emphasize his daily and almost every minute of time spent drawing. It’s a discipline I need to develop.

Puppetry and Me

My buddy Eric did a post on ventriloquist Shari Lewis that you can read here: http://www.sabudesign.com/cattywampus/?p=224

Beautiful Shari Lewis with Lamb Chop and Charlie Horse

It made me appreciate my childhood and the things I experienced that have now become obscured or forgotten.

In the early days of television, before c.g. and limited animation became the norm, puppetry and ventriloquism were viable entertainments that variety shows, commercials and network programming offered.

The Marionette driven Howdy Dowdy was so popular that the only thing dethroning him was Disneys’ “Mickey Mouse Club” featured in the same time slot of a competing network.

Howdy Doody & Buffalo Bob


Ventriloquist Jimmy Nelson with Danny O’Day and Farfel the dog pitched Nestles Quik in commercials. Actor and voice talent, (Tigger, and others), Paul Winchell hosted a show with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smith, as well as Shari Lewis with her Lamp Chop and crew.

Jimmy Neslon with Danny, Farfel and unknown

Paul Winchell, Jerry and Knucklehead


Puppeteers were features in commercials, educational films, and network shows such as animator/director Bob Clampettes' original “The Beany and Cecil Show”. The Bil Baird Marionettes did commercials, industrial films and entertainment. They also appeared on shows like Ed Sullivan who presented the little Italian mouse Topo Gigio as well as introduced Jim Hensons’ Muppets to television viewers.

Bob Clampettes' Beany & Cecil

Cora and Bil Baird


Bairds'"Party Lines" (color, 15 min., 1946) was produced for the Bell Phone Co.

Topo Gigio


Ed Sullivan with Topo: http://www.sofaentertainment.com/sullivan-presents-topo-gigio-friends-p-116.html

Jim Henson and Kermit

You can still find information on these guys on the Internet but it was wonderful having them as part of my regular viewing pleasure as a kid. Their influence was one of the reasons I’m in animation today.

Thanks Ollie

The last of Disney's Nine Old Men, Ollie Johnston, passed away today at the age of 95. Thanks for everything.

Quote from Roy Disney…
“Ollie was part of an amazing generation of artists, one of the real pioneers of our art, one of the major participants in the blossoming of animation into the art form we know today. One of Ollie’s strongest beliefs was that his characters should think first, then act…and they all did. He brought warmth and wit and sly humor and a wonderful gentleness to every character he animated. He brought all those same qualities to his life, and to all of our lives who knew him. We will miss him greatly, but we were all enormously enriched by him.”

The Eyes Have It

I never intended this blog to be a teaching tool or to impart any techniques for animators. But I did come across an interesting article on 'reading' people and thought it might help animators to convey more emotion and thought processing into their characters. These kind of read like party games and are not guaranteed sure fire rules that will deliver 100% results, but they may strengthen your scenes. Try them on your friends and see what happens.
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Eyes Down and Left. If a person looks down-left they are thinking about how something makes them feel. If they are visibly happy then they may be thinking about the happiness that they feel. Ask a person how they feel on their birthday and they should look down-left before they describe it to you.









Eyes Down and Right. A person looking down-right has internal dialog going on in their head. They may be talking to themselves, reciting a conversation, or thinking about what they are going to say. Ask someone how their last conversation went and you will see them looking down-right.









Eyes Straight Downward. A person looking straight downward is showing that they are submissive and uncomfortable. People will often look downward when they are shy and do not wish to have a conversation. Moving the eyes straight downward is often a sign of shame or embarrassment. In some Asian cultures it is customary to look downward and not make eye contact when talking to someone.









Eye contact. Consistent eye contact is a sign that the person is interested in the conversation. Prolonged eye contact can mean that the person is trying to intimidate and/or may not trust you. Brief eye contact indicates that the person is anxious and/or not interested in the conversation. While a total lack of eye contact shows great disinterest in the conversation.










Eyes looking straight up. Rolling the eyes upward is a gesture that often indicates contempt, sarcasm, boredom, or annoyance. If someone is rolling their eyes at you it is not a good sign. Sometimes people look straight upward when they are referring to a god, but in most cases it is meant to be condescending. If their eyes roll back into their head and stay there… heh… make sure they aren’t having a seizure.










Eyes to the Upper Right. Someone who you see looking up-right is visualizing a remembered image. Ask someone to tell you the color of their car or describe what someone looks like and they should look up-right.










Eyes to the Upper Left. When you see someones eyes move quickly up-left they are constructing images in their head. A person looking up-left is using their imagination to put a picture together in their mind. Ask a person to imagine a large blue house filled with marbles and they should look up and to the left.










Eyes to the Right. When someone moves their eyes to the right they are recalling sounds from their memory. Ask someone to remember the melody to a song or to remember the sound of their alarm clock and they will look to their right.









Eyes Left. People construct sounds when they look to the left (1st person right). When someone imagines new sounds like an unheard voice, or puts together a new melody they look to the left. Ask someone to imagine the sound of a car horn underwater and they should look to the left.

Ruby Rocket

My buddy Sam has been running a parallel course with me trying to find a good digital way of doing traditional animation. His blog documents the process and his insights might be helpful to anyone interested in pursuing paperless animation. There are many good programs offered for this type of work which might simplify the process, but Sam is using a hybrid approach using several soft wares. I'm interested in what his final conclusions are. Follow his development here: http://rubyrocketpi.blogspot.com/

Hot Topic

These are some unapproved designs of a character made of fire for a commercial I can't mention. I did these with a digital paint program called ArtRage. It's got some nice features I hope to learn.

Inspiration: Kristen Mccabe

There are sooooo many great artists posting inspiring things. I’ve discovered the works of Kristen Mccabe and just love her stuff. She has a little touch of Mort Drucker to me and a huge sense of humor. Check her stuff out here: http://kristens-sketchblog.blogspot.com/

Midlife Crisis #09

I'm in a rut, yes another one. It's like I want to redefine myself. These quick drawings were an effort to break out and loosen up. Be prepared for some really awful stuff as I try anything and everything, (in art).

Learning Paperless Animation

TV Paint Opening Logo
This posting is about my trying to learn the program TV Paint. TVP originated in France. It’s heavy software with more features than I will ever use and can do effects and compositing like an Avid. It also has 2D capabilities that I wish they would break out and make a separate module. There is a 460 page manual poorly translated and not arranged in any usable manner. The terminology is cryptic and not intuitive, (to me). So I chucked the manual and started pushing buttons. But having said all that, I find I’m beginning to like it.

These tests show color pencils normally used in roughing out things, (in my case very rough). You have erasers for each color so you can be discrete. Also you can turn the whole drawing into a solid color and draw with a different one on top.



The animation didn’t warrant going as far as I did because of sloppy inbetweening and just being bad but no one was paying me to do this and I wanted to learn to paint. So after playing around I found it easy to do a colored line and went for the old school ‘self traced’ line I’ve always loved. I also found ‘toning’ to be very easy too so I threw in shadows with no highlights because I found I could do it and that was all I cared about. I still haven’t tried panning and zooming and I still don’t know how to make an exposure sheet or how you would get other people involved. I think I’ll keep playing with it and it is kind of nice not having all that paper lying around. All those wigglies are driving me nuts, I may have to go in and fix those.

Paperless Comics

In March of 2006 I posted some of my original “Kibble & Bits” comic strip. Well March of 2008 ends with the digitally drawn RETURN OF! Yes, I’m sorry to say I wanted to see how a paperless strip might work. The line quality isn’t quite there yet but the lettering is more legible. Now if only it were funny.

Click on image to enlarge.

Bruce Bickford

Bruce Bickford is a Seattle animator who gained notoriety when Frank Zappa discovered his unique style and commissioned animation for The 1979 music video "Baby Snakes". A compilations of Bickford works was released in 1989 as "The Amazing Mr. Bickford" and a recent 2005 documentary called "Monster Road" is now on DVD.

Mr. Bickford came to the Portland based Will Vinton Studios,home of Claymation, during my time there and considered doing some commercial directing. He later concluded it was too restrictive.

His work has always awed and frightened me. Check out his website here: http://www.brucebickford.com/

Click image to enlarge.

Robots Robots Robots

Here's another segment of "The Mr. Men Show" someone posted on YouTube with more of my animation. I did the sequence up until the orange diagonal wipe, and some other shots toward the end when Lazy returns with the broken robot. My friends Sam Niemann and Ben Burch juiced up my stuff with nice effects like dust and bubbles. I have a feeling CN will have these removed when and if they find out about them so check em out while they last here: http://www.youtube.com/user/dwaskemo

Triangle of Interest

I hate to keep bringing up the same sites again but K. Koch has another great lesson about eye movement in animation. I first noticed Pixar characters eyes scanning as they thought and although the idea was used in traditional animation it seemed to give these plastic c.g. entities immediate humanity. They became thinking beings. Now everyone seems to be using this technique but the reasoning behind doing it is well explained in this lesson found here: http://synchrolux.com/

Thanks Kevin for another great article!

Bolt From The Past

Aint It Cool has a tiny peek at what the Disney film "Bolt" would have looked if it had stayed as Chirs Sanders' "American Dog". Check it out here: http://www.aintitcool.com/images/dog.mov



Thanks AinItCool and Abel Salazar

Mr. Men on YouTube

I don't expect this to last. Someone has posted segments of the new "The Mr. Men Show" and this portion has some of my animation in it. If you like M&M check out more before they are removed here: http://www.youtube.com/user/dwaskemo

James Batxer Podcast

While paroozing Kevin's site I saw this two part interview with James Baxter and felt the second part had some great insights on how this Master of animation works. Find it here: http://animationpodcast.com/archives/2008/03/02/james-baxter-part-two/