Weekend Inspiration

Throwing out some of my favorite links, so enjoy these little gems of the internets:

Animation Backgrounds

Animation Treasures Part One(This one ran out of space and has since moved to "Part Two")

Animation Treasures Part Two

The next one can be summed up by the title, "Cartoons, Model Sheets, & Stuff."

A couple glimpses of rough animation towards the bottom of the page: Click Away

Just because this site needs to always be mentioned more than once: Spline Doctors

Maya People: I don't know how I came about this link, but look at the texture possibilities on this site bit easier then hunting around Google images. ;)

Very handy video footage sites for animation reference:
Animal Footage
Some of the videos on this site can be a little iffy, and sometimes I cannot get them to work, but it's a good springboard for inspiration and when it does work---it's wonderful.

Ocean Footage

Both very good reference, though with both sites and any reference I use, I just use it as a springboard and when I actually animate I go for the overall motion/feeling, not super realism. There are too many examples of animators who solely rely on realistic footage type animation and the results often can't compare with when the animator goes beyond the realism.

Just a couple of my favorites. =) Again, enjoy....

Wish I could share the rough animation I saw last night. Our teacher brought in a lot of animation---Snow White(deleted material, not anywhere on YouTube sadly), Rough Captain Hook animation, Chuck Jones Rough Animation(not last night, but he has in the past), Pinocchio, Richard Williams animation(Thief and the Cobbler mostly), Hayao Miyazaki rough animation(Totoro and Princess Mononoke), etc. and he'll show the clips, talk about them(or it'll have an interview with the animator) and then slow down the animation and show us the breakdown---frame-by-frame. Really cool seeing the pencil rough animations in slow-motion. One of my many favorite things about the class. =) Last night he was mainly demonstrating the differences between shooting on 1's, 2's, and 3's. He also compared underwater scenes from The Little Mermaid, Finding Nemo, and then Pinocchio--breaking down where the strengths and weaknesses were in each....while I enjoy Finding Nemo and find it gorgeous and is certainly one of my favorite Pixar movies---Pinocchio still wins--just amazing how they accomplished those scenes!

Well those links should entertain everybody for the weekend. I'll be pretty much wiped off the face of the planet, hidden away in my little cube. I've got a lot to do(60 Panel storyboarding assignment---unrelated to my film, silhouette cut-out design, fox tail animation, now entirely re-do the snowman animation, finish Girl Interrupted, brainstorm an idea for a feature length animation film*going to pitch this idea to the class in two weeks!*, and more things I'm temporarily forgetting). Well night and have a good weekend...

Once more another shout-out: Hey Oregon gang! Hope you are all staying dry, I'm told it's been a bit cold and rainy up there. Guess it's more reason to stay hunkered down in the animation labs eh? Well thank you guys again for the emails...it's great hearing from everyone! =) Can't wait to actually see what you guys are up to.

And on that note: Everybody go vote for "Defeating Path" when Apple opens up the gallery.