Animation Mentor

Since I seem to be pissing a couple of people off with my hatred for motion capture in feature cartoon animation, I figured I should go one step further and piss off some animators that do it by hand.

Animation Mentor. That online "school" that helps newbies and experienced animators alike get better at their craft has recently released a School Demo Reel.

They are basically showing off the work from the students. Quite a bit of this stuff is top notch. Dare I say, it is even better than some of the mentors own professional and personal work. Not to slam the guys helping the students, but I think some of them are getting embarrassingly lapped by their students. Good for them!

This of course could be a result of the student getting more time to hone their shots than the pro animators get on whatever show they are working on. And of course we know that working on some other directors vision can sometimes be stiffling. Whatever the case, it gives me hope that some of the new guys are going to be half way decent. Unfortunately, most of the other schools are turning out terrible animators/artists/TD's.

Disney Loves Motion Capture

Disney decided to get Robert Zemeckis and his love for motion capture over to the mouse. Now, Imagemovers (Zemeckis' company) will be under the Disney banner and ultimately be John Lasseters responsibility.

I can't help but wonder what Lasseter thinks of Imagemovers and motion capture in general. I'm sure his official line is "it is the story that is important". But, deep down... Does he have a hatred for motion capture that some of us do? I want to think so. If he is into that whole motion capture thing, I can only think less of him.