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.

You Are A Menace To Animation Society!

I stopped working as an animator many years ago. Therefore, the following rant has absolutely nothing to do with fear of losing my job. It comes from what I see as a menace to animated films.

If you are an “animator” working on a motion capture film and you are tweaking graphs, cleaning up data, etc, etc. Shame on you. Quit your job and get a real animation job because you are doing nothing but hurting or even blowing your chances of getting real employment as an animator where hand-keyed work is valued.

Your colleagues look at you as second-rate data manipulators and will never give you props if you go seek a job at a studio that relies on hand animation. You are only contributing to the nonsense that drives these producers to use motion capture in the first place.

You are a menace to animation society.

Do these words piss you off? Good! I hope so. I hope they piss you off so much that you prove to me and everyone else that you are an animator worth a piss and will get on a project where you animate everything, not just relegated to cleaning up a computer's mess and leave motion capture behind -forever-.

Stand up! Prove that you are a real animator and turn down these jobs. Are you so desperate for work? Do you really think that motion capture is animation? Do you really think that you are respected in our industry?

Maybe you are in such a financial position where you have to take on these jobs. Maybe you even like the whole motion capture idea or look. That’s fine. Just don’t call yourself an animator or expect props from those the real animators that laugh behind your back.

Year of the Toon

I wrote an article called "Year of the Toon" for CGCHAR. Nothing special, but give it a read. Something must be wrong when I'm writing for another website while my blog goes almost un-updated. (End of post)

Pixar Running on Fumes

Cars was an incredible bit of lighting, textures, shading, and animation. Too bad the story was boring and putting people asleep. For the first time in a Pixar film, I heard kids paying attention to everything but the movie. Standing up, walking around, talking, totally not into the film. My wife was shuffling as well with her head propped up against her hand in boredom. I even caught myself daydreaming.

The lighting and realism was pretty breathtaking. But I ask myself, "Is this really what I want out of an animated movie?" It was different and technically impressive. Everything else left me uninspired.

Watching animated cars for two hours was too much. Maybe I needed to be a car fanatic to watch this thing. But, I couldn't care about about any of the characters.

Everything felt forced. This was Pixar's first crapper, if you were to ask me.