Blabberger

Angry birds, why?

2011-08-30T02:19:00.000-07:00

Translation: "Caged their whole life, wonder why they're angry??"

Walls Notebook

2011-08-13T03:30:00.000-07:00

Fun idea for a present...

Walls Notebook is a notebook / sketchbook that features 80 pictures of "clean" NYC walls instead of blank pages. Write, draw, paste, or doodle on these inspirational backdrops.

Walls Notebook

Drawing surfaces - the head

2011-08-06T02:13:00.000-07:00

Black and white

2011-07-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

Asking the right questions is crucial, learn from the best

2011-07-22T06:07:00.000-07:00

From this week's sketch group session

2011-06-29T13:37:00.000-07:00

Some of the sketches from the session:

"A" is for Always, that's where we embark;

2011-06-19T06:21:00.000-07:00

...from Neil Gaiman's The Dangerous Alphabet

Getting dirty...

2011-06-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

I've been going to Oleg Kuklin's drawing classes for a few weeks now to study proper drawing and anatomy. There is so much to learn, beside understanding the anatomy of the various body parts, how they are built and how they connect to each other...I mean it's complicated, but it's fine. The real frustrating part is though to get a clean line...for god's sake, I feel really stupid when I spend an hour just trying to draw straight and clean lines!! Anyways, don't despair ...

I asked Oleg to do something new for a change...I love to work with different materials, and working with charcoal means getting your hands dirty...I love it :). So here is my first charcoal drawing:

This is during coffee and cookies break, dressing the Ballerina, Kobi's work:

And the ballerina dressed:

Animator's Pride - It's on TV!!!

2011-06-08T03:53:00.000-07:00

It's pretty exciting to see your work come out on TV.

The Road Runner and Coyote episodes in The Looney Tunes Show 2011 were produced by Alex Orelle's Crew972 for Warner Bros and it's being aired on Cartoon Network on Tuesdays since May this year.

This being my first job, I was totally stressed when I started. I felt I forgot everything I learned at school and it's all learning from scratch, a novice again. I learned so much from working on this project and from working with the artists at Crew972. So here are the credits for animation:

Animation

Doron Meir - Animation Director, Character Animator

Shuki Gamliel - Character Animator, Team Leader
Liron Aluf
Guy Weitzman
Ziv Ariely
Shahar Levavi - Character Animator, Team Leader
April Peter
Tsahi Reznick
Daniel Shneor
Gabi Berger
Yonni Aroussi
Paul Wolf

Of course you should watch it on CN, but since it's not available everywhere, I'll use here the uploads by some generous folks on youtube. I'll try to keep the links updated.

The Looney Tunes Show 2011: Silent But Deadly

Episode 2: The Looney Tunes Show 2011: Bubble Trouble

Click Image to see the Episode

Episode 5: The Looney Tunes Show 2011: A Zipline in the Sand

Episode 6: The Looney Tunes Show 2011: Road Runner and Coyote - Fee Fi Fo Dumb

Episode 7: Sail Fail

Episode 8: Unsafe At Any Speed

The dance of the brown duck

2011-02-28T05:13:00.000-08:00

This year my friend and I decided to make this day a real celebration. We picked three nominated movies we haven't yet seen and watched them from the early afternoon and until the Red Carpet ceremony started.
1) King's Speech
2) Black Swan
3) Biutiful
All in all 6.5 hours of movies in a day!!! Won't do it again very soon :)
Our best pick was King's Speech, Black Swan made us properly pissed off and we were rather in pain from sitting too long, by the time we got to the end of Biutiful.

I would not have appreciated the opening montage without seeing these movies though, Anna Hathaway and James Franco totally rock !!! (and the rest of the team who put it together)

... the montage was brilliant:

Congrats to Toy Story 3 and the rest of the winners of 2011!

National Geographic's Photography Contest 2010

2010-12-03T02:56:00.000-08:00

Beauties for inspiration. Many many many more awesome photos here: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture

Moths to Light. Moths attracted to a light in front of my home. (Photo and caption by Steve Irvine)

Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty

2010-11-21T13:33:00.000-08:00

Here is something worth to watch. If not for the content - with which you may agree or not, like or not, the illustration of animator Andrew Park is definitely witty, stylish, amusing and entertaining, adds greatly to the lecture.

Make sure not to miss the line "It's women who actually push history forward." - I just couldn't resist not mentioning that :)

Thanks to David Martinez for bringing this lecture to my attention.

Character Walk - Before Polish

2010-10-07T12:32:00.000-07:00

While I was studying and working, I kept telling myself I wish I had time to do some simple excercises to polish up on my understanding in body mechanics. I've got some time now on my hand so beside just wasting it on HBO series (totally addicted) I've done this character walk so far. Feel free to comment :)

No comments :)

2010-09-23T09:18:00.000-07:00

Dave Brain’s illustration

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: A Quick Primer on Values

2010-09-08T03:41:00.000-07:00

Story telling with values...this is an excerpt from an article about values which I found very interesting: Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: A Quick Primer on Values

"Here is the same drawing in three different versions so you can see what a difference tones can make in the feeling and intent of a drawing. In the first drawing a woman reacts to a door opening. She seems startled that the door is opening but not overly concerned. Within the context of a story, maybe her husband has come home early and startled her or something like that. The situation could be dangerous but the image isn't telling you that yet.

In the second one I have added tones to help organize the information and make the drawing easier to read, as well as more interesting. But the story content hasn't really changed. The woman seems startled that someone is entering but not too shocked or concerned.

In the third drawing the door opening has a much more ominous feel, due to the heavier use of tones and the use of contrasting tones. I haven't changed her expression or the staging, and both of those things would be very helpful in heightening the drama of the scene...but I wanted to use the exact same drawing each time to show how much of a difference tones can make by themselves. This time, it suggests that someone dangerous and unexpected is arriving and that the girl is more fearful than just surprised.

To be honest, I admit that I sometimes use tones to convey an idea when I know I should redraw it to get better staging or a more pushed expression. Tones can carry a drawing even when it's not quite there (but you didn't hear that from me)."

Read the full article here:
Temple of the Seven Golden Camels: A Quick Primer on Values

Sketchy - Ice Creams

2010-09-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

I think it's a real skill to be able to tell a simple yet full and entertaining story under a minute. I really enjoyed this one.

Making of "Something Left, Something Taken" by Tiny Inventions

2010-08-27T02:57:00.000-07:00

In this TV article Tiny Inventions give insight on how they made their short "Something Left, Something Taken". Pretty awesome!

RGTV Episode 47: Tiny Inventions from Red Giant Software on Vimeo.

And there is so much more making-of stuff on their blog: http://tinyinventions.com/blog/

Interview with Pascal Campion

2010-08-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

Inspirational Artists: Pascal Campion from Onyx Cinema, Inc. on Vimeo.

My new PC

2010-08-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

For the last three years I've been doing my animation studies on a Toshiba Satellite laptop. It did the work just fine and it even rendered some projects (with a help of a home ventilator keeping it cool). After three years it decided it's too much for him to run Autodesk Maya ... it almost burned the processor...So I decided it's time to get serious and invesed in a PC geared for animation. I set down with a friend and we pulled together the ingredients keeping cost in mind. I know how much of a pain it can be to choose the hardware, at least it is for me, there is just so many options and honestly....who really wants to understand what are the differences... and anyways it's all chinese?!!?!.

So here is what I got and it is working great.

Motherboard: ASUS P7P55D
Processor: Inter Core i5 750 Tray
4GB Memory
Graphic Card: SAPPHIRE VAPOR-X HD 5750 1 GB DDR5 PCI-E
Hard disk: 1T WD 1002FAEX
Op System: Windows 7 64-bit

In addition, I've got a student license for the brand new Autodesk Maya 2011. It's very slick...

Class 5 over and 6 just started...

2010-07-03T00:00:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted for quite a while for a few reasons. I've completed class 5 in the meantime with the old AM curriculum which was for me short film pre-production. Getting a story together so that in class 6 I can then animate it.

Class 5 was pretty amazing for me. My mentor was Jed Diffenderfer, he worked in Dreamworks on Kung Fu Panda (and many others) and showed us in class a lot of material from the character and story development process. He even put together an entire website with supporting material to complete the lectures and AM notes. He's totally awesome! Class 5 was my first encountering with 'story' and while I know to appreciate a good story and good story telling I never thought of myself as being a story teller. So this class was my first try on putting together my own little story and now in class 6 animating it.

Now class 6 started and I haven't prepared all my files and shots to ensure that for the start I can just focus on animating. Luckily I was recommended an open source Pipeline add on for Autodesk Maya openPipeline (http://openpipeline.cc/).

It bothers me a lot if my files and everything is messy so it was very important for me to know that I have an organized workflow that I can see through it easily and its flexible for updates and changes (knowing myself I will continue changing the set, the cameras, etc.). I've set up my project now with openPipeline and it really does the job great. There is even a tutorial by Peter Ruschel talking about using openPipeline for AM projects and especially for short film production. I really must drop by him and say thanks for the great tutorial...:)

That's all! Better start blocking now....

Collecting References from Youtube

2010-03-15T04:48:00.001-07:00

I just found this website that helps downloading an flv from youtube.

Many times I find great video references that I want to keep. I used to have some free software that installed all kinds of junk on my computer which I really dislike (so I removed it asap). I like to keep videos and not links so I can open them with media player and browse through frame by frame. Also easier to keep things organized...

So this is the site:

http://keepvid.com

Just enter the link of the video on the top and it'll give a download link for the flv file.

Tim Brown on creativity and play

2010-01-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

Preparing myself for Class 5 - Short Film Pre-production

2009-12-24T04:29:00.001-08:00

In preparation for my short film, I made a collection of student short films that I found exceptional. This is the play list I put together so far.

The second thing was ordering the book "Story" by Robert McKee which has just arrived!

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address

2009-12-23T13:21:00.001-08:00

some motivation for in between terms...if you haven't heard this speech, it's a good time to see it now!

Getting closer to final ... Week 11

2009-12-15T02:28:00.000-08:00

Return to the Animated Musical

2009-12-07T23:59:00.000-08:00

This featurette made me even more excited about this movie. I still don't know when it will be screened here but can't wait!

Week 8 Class 4 - ... splining continued

2009-11-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

This week I mainly worked on the second shot. I also implemented the feedback from my mentor Dana Boadway. I'm not so happy anymore with the acting choice in the last shot, luckily it's very short and I already have some new ideas to add. So here is where I am this week:

- shot 1: fixed camera so it's in movement when the shot starts - much better this way!!

- shot 1: worked on the stopping of the girl

- shot 1: f15 - fixed the pose

- shot 1: fixed tension spots between the two characters

- shot 3: fixed camera so there is no tension between main character and safe action borders

- shot 3: fixed eyeline of main character

Week 7 Class 4 - Starting to spline!

2009-11-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

Camera finalized. Cuts finalized. Key poses finalized.

Week 6 in Class 4

2009-11-08T12:53:00.000-08:00

New pass on camera and blocking. Final version to be expected in week 11 - well, one week after with final revisions :-).

Princess and the Frog Trailer

2009-11-06T11:10:00.000-08:00

Looking forward to see this one!

Class 4 Week 5 & 6

2009-11-04T05:18:00.000-08:00

We started to work on a new piece of dialog. Two characters and multiple shots! I won't include all the video reference that I filmed - but want to thank my friends for helping out! Here is my first pass on layout and blocking (main poses).

Final Render - Week 3 of Class 4

2009-10-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

Facial Expressions - Week 2

2009-10-06T02:49:00.000-07:00

Class 4 Begins!!!

2009-10-06T02:47:00.000-07:00

We just started Class 4 - advanced acting. Wow, this is going to be a tough one I expect! I have Dana Boadway as my mentor, heard a lot of great stuff about her.

First exercise - complete facial expression for the previous assignment. Week 1 - block out facial expressions + lip sync.

Hmm.... It looks like the blogger editor changed and there is no option to upload a video?! In Any case, I'll post the video of my first week assignment later. --- Ah, I found it was the new blog editor, they just forgot to add the Video button! I switched back to the old one and here is the upload!

Polished Dialog - End of Class 3!

2009-09-14T03:15:00.000-07:00

Class 3 Week 11 - Polishing the Dialog

2009-09-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

Last week is coming up in this term. I'm now working on the polish of the dialog assignment. This is what I have so far...next week end of term + Rosh Hashana!

This rig doesn't have much facial expressions, that'll come next term.

New Logo, New Site, Launched!

2009-08-31T07:33:00.000-07:00

We launched our new website today! Check it out and feel free to drop us a line to let us know what you think! In October we will be updating our demo reel, so look out for new updates from us.

Week 7 Class 3 - Monolog Blocking

2009-08-17T04:58:00.000-07:00

Start of a new animation assignment...waiting for feedback from my mentor Nicole Herr.

Final Render

2009-08-10T01:23:00.000-07:00

Wanted to publish the final render of my elevator assignment. There is a lot more I can point out for fixing but it's time to move on. And in general I'm pretty happy with how the animation looks :)

Week 5 - Pantomime test - Done!

2009-08-04T01:25:00.000-07:00

Here is the finished assignment for Week 5 of Class 3 in AnimationMentor. It's still a playblast but with finished animation. I'll do a full render sometime this week. What you don't see in this playblast is the light going off and flickering which will set the athmosphere. Stay tuned! :)

My mentor Nicole Herr was really great working with me through this shot.

Week 3 in Class 3 - Animation Mentor

2009-07-23T01:32:00.000-07:00

So here it is the next stage of the pantomime assignment. This is now in refining, working out overlaps, secondary motion, cleaning up those arcs and nailing down the timing.

For those not familiar with Animation Mentor's curriculum, there is still two weeks to refine and polish the animation (a bit less now but I'm posting this late).

Illustrating a Cowboy in Photoshop and Illustrator

2009-07-23T01:08:00.001-07:00

I always appreciate when someone shares not just their final work, but the process of the making. It gives so much, such a great material to learn from. Thanks for sharing this Jelle!

Illustrating a Cowboy in Photoshop and Illustrator from Jelle Gijsberts on Vimeo.

A recording of me illustrating a cowboy entering a saloon in Photoshop and Illustrator CS4, using an Imac and a Wacom Intuos3 A5 wide.

The original rendering process took me around 5 hours, and it’s sped up here to about 15 minutes.

For more, check my portfolio site: www.jellepelle.nl

Tim Burton's ALICE IN WONDERLAND - Can't Wait to See it!

2009-07-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

First trailer from http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41773

Still looks like WIP but is a very promising combination, the story, the director and Johnny Depp!

NOTE ADDED: Aaaahhhhhh!!! What a bummer. It's been taken off already! I should have screen cap it!

Some Personal News

2009-07-18T03:07:00.000-07:00

There are two things that I wanted to share today.....I'm excitedly counting down the moments (right now 2 more days to go) for my new Wacom Intuos 4 to arive home safely from the US.

The other news I wanted to publish is that Liron and I have opened our boutique animation studio. We called us Carla Animations and you can find us at www.CarlaAnimations.com.

We were looking for different names trying to be smart and innovative, when we came across a website that generates names...you know the one you put in your name and it throws something back at you. I don't remember which site it was but it produced pirate names and maffia names. From one of them (I think the maffia one), came out Carla, The Chainsaw. We both found it was hillarious. For business considerations, we have temporarily removed the nickname but it shall have its comeback.

That's all for now. With the words of many american presidents: "God bless us all".

God bless Carla Animations. :)

Model Drawing Course - Session 1

2009-07-17T01:31:00.000-07:00

I signed up for a model drawing course at Tel Aviv Museum. It's a short course of 4 meetings each 5 hours.

We started with some warm up sketches each 5 minutes (I'm not including them here...). For these we used charcoal on thin shiny papers (I will look up the proper name)

In this drawing, we had 5 min, then we switched and worked on our neighboor's drawing for 5 min and so on. This was the drawing I started....I drew the lower body which I think came out not bad at all :)

Then we experimented with black paper and white chalk. We had half an hour for this part.

This was the last drawing. This time with pencils. We had one hour for this last drawing.

AnimationMentor Class 3 - Week 2 Assignment

2009-07-14T02:19:00.000-07:00

Okay!!!.....I'm back to AM and this is the blocking for our first assignment.

360-Turn - Blocking

2009-06-08T11:19:00.000-07:00

This is a practice I'm doing in preperation to returning to AM studies.

Don't be shy to comment!

Blocking 1 - Stepped

Blocking 1 - Stepped with clamped keys (just changed keys to clamped to see how things flow)

I've started to clean up the blocking and move to splined mode. This is the current version:

O2-Vodka Commercial (3dtv.co.il)

2009-05-28T11:06:00.000-07:00

Hand Animation Study

2009-05-09T23:01:00.000-07:00

Cortex Product Demo

2009-03-21T02:58:00.000-07:00

This promo is designed for auto-stereoscopic screen that 3DTV Ltd. offers. Some design elements may not make sense here - on a regular screen.

2009-03-18T03:17:00.000-07:00

This is my first character animation project for the company I work for (3dtv - we make auto-stereoscopic screens). This animation is designed for the company's auto-stereoscopic display (47" 3D LCD), so the final 'feel' is different from what you see here on an 'old fashion' flat screen. You can actually feed the giraffe with your hands when she sticks her head out!

I had 2 and a half days for the actual animation.

Credits: Original giraffe design, model and rig was given. I made improvements (turned the giraffe to female) and rig fixes. Animation, scene set up is fully me.

AnimationMentor - Class 2 Progress Reel

2008-12-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

AnimationMentor - Class 2 Week 11 - Weight Lifting

2008-12-14T08:13:00.000-08:00

My initial plan proved to be rather long and complex. I cut it down (for now) so that the assignment includes the main 'thing' - weight lifting. For some reason the rendering didn't come out very good. The animation is unclear because of the shadows. I'll give it another run tomorrow. Because of today's deadline this will be my 'graded' version.

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #9

2008-12-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

For the second week of this assignment we're supposed to bring it to a level where the blocking includes most of the breakdowns (and of course has all the fixing from the previous).

After adding more of the breakdowns I needed to adjust lot of the timing as well and realized that much needs to be cut out to fit the animation within the given frame limit (250). This is the full version that I'll edit:

We have another two weeks to complete this project. That means now to go over all the arcs and refine them, making sure that stewie looks really alive and the box looks really full of heavy gold bars (or cash)! Refine all the poses, timing, etc. Lot more to do! Also I'll try to fix up the set and of course the red alert. And the mask for stewie seems like a must.

Vray

2008-11-27T04:33:00.000-08:00

I've been contemplating for some time to get down and learn vray. So the moment has arived.

These are the first tests I did:

I also did some modeling and here are my clay shoes! :)

Week 8-11 Assignment - Push a heavy object

2008-11-20T10:54:00.000-08:00

We are now in week 8 and starting a new assignment.

I've put down the initial poses of the planning stage so that the story is clear. The next step is to go over the entire animation and clean up the timing and the current poses. Also to build the set. I'll get to it just now...

Almost forgot, the story goes like this. Stewie is in a desperate financial situation (depression 2008) and decides to rob a bank and get all the gold bars from the safe. The quickest way to get the gold to the truck waiting downstairs is through the plank he set up for this.

Week 4-7 Assignment - Jump up on a box

2008-11-20T10:45:00.000-08:00

Sneaking

2008-11-03T05:24:00.000-08:00

Animating physicality is rather complex so I decided to do some volunteering exercises based on material from the Animator's Survival Kit. The sneaking reminded me of the pink panther so I colored stewie - the AnimationMentor rig - to match :)

*Blocking stage with clamped tangents*

Demo Reel 2008

2008-10-31T01:30:00.001-07:00

Week 4 Assignment

2008-10-31T00:11:00.000-07:00

Here is the final version of my side step

This is it!

2008-10-14T02:32:00.000-07:00

AM Class 2 - Assignment Week #2 - Take a step to the side

2008-10-11T06:54:00.001-07:00

In the last three weeks of the previous semester I was pretty much travelling so I'm redoing all those assignments. This is how I'm spending the last few days of freedom. This meaning, it's time I decided to look for a job!

And of course in the meantime class 2 started. As I gathered from the class curriculum, there will be only 2 main final assignments this term. We drill down into the very details of the workflow and the actual animation, from taking reference, planning, blocking out the shot, revisiting all the time, cleaning up the shot with squash and stretch, overlap, etc. I'm finally done with the blocking part. It changed greatly from the initial reference to make the shot work for ballie.

Animation Timeline by Clay Kaytis

2008-10-06T03:45:00.001-07:00

I found this chart through the Animationpodcast website and I think it's really cool. Beside the content it's also a neat and useful little application by dipity.com

Class 2 Started!

2008-10-01T10:28:00.001-07:00

Just to show how cool it is to study at AM...This week's QnA session I did from a camping trip. Took my laptop and connected via the cellphone to the session.

Life is good! Cheers!

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #9

2008-08-31T08:44:00.001-07:00

This is the cleaned-up version of Ballie's vanilla walk.

The next and final assignment will be a walk with character. I'll try to do something like cakewalk (from the beginning of the 20th century). I'm collecting reference at this stage.

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #8

2008-08-30T06:31:00.000-07:00

Week 8's assignment is blocking out a basic walk (also called Vanilla Walk). Then next week, we'll create the final, cleaned up version of the walk. It's quite brief, only 48 frames - it was the requirement for the exercise.

Here is the blocking stage:

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #8 - Reference

2008-08-20T04:15:00.001-07:00

This week we need to sketch poses representing "physical strenght". This is my reference.

....

Ok, ok. Just joking :)

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #7

2008-08-17T23:28:00.000-07:00

We are more than half way through the first class and the assignments are more and more fun.

In this week's assignment we animated a jump of the one leg character and/or jumps of tailor, the ball with a tail. Lots of overlap/drag/arcs in this exercize.

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #6

2008-08-11T23:20:00.000-07:00

Things are getting more and more excited. This week's focus was on Overlapping Action and the exercise was to animate a pendulum where the driving force is the block from which the pendulum is hanging from. Of course all must stay within required frame limit up to 150 frames.

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #5

2008-08-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

Ok. We are still perfecting our bouncing ball skills and now we added the principles of Squash and Stretch, plus rotated the ball. The exercise is follows: the ball has to start and stop within the given frame limit 120 frames.

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #4

2008-07-31T04:58:00.001-07:00

.. more bouncing ball. This time a light and a heavy one.

AnimationMentor - Assignment Week #3

2008-07-23T07:36:00.001-07:00

Two tasks here were 1) put STU into a pose that communicates excitement and 2) ... back to basics, back to bouncing ball.

AnimationMentor - Week #2 Assignment

2008-07-21T02:41:00.000-07:00

Assignment 1 was to observe different poses around us and draw some sketches then put STU (AnimationMentor's character) into one of the poses. I was at the post office that week, this was my observation.

Status Meeting - Hasifa 2008

2008-07-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

This short was prepared for my studies end-of-year happening at Open University / Hasifa. This is my first movie with a small story, camera movements, music made specially for the animation, etc. It was really fun to get this together. Feel free to comment!

Project to be presented in Hasifa Happening Summer 2008

2008-06-30T02:35:00.000-07:00

Meet the planet-life-monitor team. They're responsible for tracking down any signs of life from the planets in the solar system.

movie is coming up in a few days...

My First Walk

2008-06-25T03:34:00.000-07:00

I created this small animation while learning the CAT plug-in. The character is designed for an upcoming school project.

Doll Model

2008-06-25T03:11:00.000-07:00

This is a model I created for a project I was planning to do. It's a fake Barbie style doll.

Roller Coaster - My first 3D project

2008-06-25T02:43:00.000-07:00

This was the first project I did for my 3ds max class at Open University / Hasifa. The exercise was to build a roller coaster.