Example Flash Site

Found this website this morning and thought I'd share.
It's an information site for a video game themed restaurant in Tokyo.

It's called the 8bit Cafe, if you'd like to look it up yourself.

http://8bitcafe.net/index.html

Animation smears - Squash and Stretch

REACTING to ANIMATION SMEARS - These are SO WEIRD!!

at 2:00 skip to 2:52

This is video is from a Youtuber that specializes in art and creation. This video, he shows different animation smears from various cartoons and studio. Animation smears are also referred to as the Squash and Stretch Rule. Through that process, you can see how animation change throughout time. I enjoy this video because it shows you the different styles of smears you can use and how detail crafting an animation can be.

Blizzard Animated Short - Dragons

About Blizzard Entertainment:

Blizzard Entertainment is a game company based in Irvine, California. Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans. Blizzard created several other video games, including Warcraft sequels, the Diablo series, the StarCraft series, and in 2004 the massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. Their most recent projects include the first expansion for Diablo III, Reaper of Souls, the online collectible card game Hearthstone, the seventh expansion for World of Warcraft, Battle for Azeroth, the multiplayer online battle arena Heroes of the Storm, the third and final expansion for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Legacy of the Void, and the multiplayer first-person hero shooter Overwatch.

Animated Short - Dragons

https://youtu.be/oJ09xdxzIJQ

Storyboards and Animatics

By Celeste Arguello

Storyboards are an integral part in any visual storytelling. It allows you to understand what shots you need, from what angles, and how you want them to move. Artists may take a script and translate it into a storyboard or skip directly from an idea to the visuals. Dreamworks offers a few tips from their style guide to help creators make dynamic shots and help understand where your key images are in space and in relation to others.

https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/10-tips-for-creating-storyboards-from-dreamworks/

Animatics take storyboards a step further by setting these shots to motion. A rough animated sketch could really help the members of the production understand exactly how shots flow into each other or help express difficult movements that would be confusing on paper alone.

Animatics have grown popular in fan communities specifically, taking characters from established media and telling stories through music from either the same or alternate sources. It’s a good way for fans to share their ideas without having to spend the production costs for a fully rendered scene.

https://omegafrisk.tumblr.com/post/180965435875/song-x-i-still-cant-believe-i-finished-this

Here for example, they used basic shapes for both the characters and their surroundings, and only included the essential parts of the background, as drawing too many details may become confusing in this sketch style. There are a few shots that keep appearing with slight differences to better show the change happening in between. The fight cuts much quicker between shots, showing more varied angles, depth, and closeups compared to earlier in the scene. It makes use of some of the tips listed above too, using over the shoulder looks, items at different levels in view, cutting on relevant lyrics or action, and making full use of the area by allowing Seam the cat to travel through the depth of the scene on multiple occasions. They keep faces off centered and looking to one side of the camera, or in one particular case, looking at the camera as Jevil, the smaller creature, crouches threateningly.

From the get go, you can tell their cuts are motivated by the music and they fit very well, as especially seen when the song gets more intense and the visuals must step up to keep pace. The main character, Frisk, travels from the right side of the screen to the left, showing them reverting to a dangerous and hurtful path away from what is right. Arrows help clarify the motion throughout. At one point they included a grid to clarify the distance Frisk stands in an over the shoulder shot. As a primarily black and white animatic, they make use of shading and spots of color to portray meaning or draw attention to key elements. The shot where Frisk screams up to the heavens is probably my favorite because the music is building up to this and you can feel it with the dark tendrils wrapping about both them and Chara in the background, and this shot just shows so wonderfully that breaking away. You can tell this is a turning point and the low angle makes the movement even more grand.

Lost and Found (Twice!)

Wabi Sabi Studios gives us a very heart-wrenching stop motion animation short "Lost and Found" featuring two knitted animals. The 7-1/2 minutes of cuteness overload is delivered with a strong storyline. The animation uses all kind of camera angles and panning and zooming and spinning to upside-down shots and everything you can think of. 

   

The effort is backed by Screen Australia, a government agency that supports Australian film work. 

Wabi Sabi Studios is made up of a fair-sized cast of creators, led by;

Animation by Samuel Lewis

Written by Bradley Slabe

Directed by Andrew Goldsmith and Bradley Slabe

Production designer Rennie Watson

The credits fail to tell us who knitted the animals.

This story is a twist on the classic hero tale where the hero, (a knitted dinosaur) must sacrifice himself by unraveling to save his knitted love, the toy fox. The little fox tries to thwart his attempt and the tragic events that unfold are underscored by the dramatic background music. Event sounds are well cued to help create a believable world and actions.

I found this film on a YouTube channel called Short of the Week, a great place to find some wonderful animation and other film work.

Not to be confused with, but worth checking out, is another animated film with the same title:

This "Lost and Found" features a boy trying to help a lost penguin find home. It is based on a children’s book by Oliver Jeffers.

Very interesting to see the development between the book and the film! A typical length picture book (32 pages) is, in this instance translated to a 25 minute film. The lovely, but fairly simple drawings from the book are translated into richly detailed 3-D work. Amazing! 

How a Stop-Motion Animation is Planned & Worked Out

The previous blog I posted explained about the process of filming a claymation. This one is more of an explanation of how a stop-motion movie is worked out during the process of filming.

In this video, Daniel Alderson, a stop motion animator, explains the process of working on creating a stop-motion animation movie. In the video, a stop-motion animator explained is like a transition from the characters to real life to tell the story (Example of movies like Fantastic Mr. Fox, ParaNorman, The Box Trolls, and even Kubo and the Two Strings, which is shown). They have a schedule put together as a path to creating a film as a puzzle. The start of the process begins with the editor and the director to get the idea of a scene put together on how the story is created, and then once given, they act out the scene as reference to get the idea on how it’s worked out. Once done and with a reference for the filming, they work on the puppets to determine the rigging for the animation (Example in the Video: Weight support on the rig). Once ready, the filming begins working with the team to get the frame by frame performance on camera, positions, and the shots as planned, moving the puppet to get the movement for the scene. The facial animation if used during the process of filming is already worked out beforehand from a 3D printer, and they have a schedule layout of the scene for when the facial animation needs to be changed. The filming has an emotive process to it and that the people have an understanding of what the character is going through.

How the puppets are built in the movie ParaNorman:

Animator/Illustrator RDR

RDR at this time has created three fan animated music videos on his/her YouTube channel called 람다람 ( "Ram Durham" google translate). The creator seems to be more of an illustrator than an animator of information I was able to find. Not much is known of the creator and the programs used to create the animations but can be achieved in Adobe Animate.

Both RDR's  "Soda City Funk"(Song by Tim Legend) and Two time-meme( Song Two Time by Jack Stauber) uses photographs, his/her artwork and animation to create a interesting video that captures the retro feeling the music evokes. most of the animations use movie clip symbols.

Soda City Funk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhIScvlFn2

Two time - meme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LLCz1FCWrY

RDR's older animated music video  "Ghost town meme"( Song by Veorra & The Tech Thieves - Ghost Town) used less photographs and less special effects. but included moving 
foreground and background elements.

Ghost town - meme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX955_LTQPA

RDR's illustrations can be found on twitter.
람다람 Twitter page:
https://twitter.com/rrr001222

Mystery Skulls Animated - Ghost

This animated music video is rather interesting. Coming out back in 2014, it was something that is rather different with the characters all moving to the beat of the song throughout the video with their heads bobbing up and down. From what I've gathered, the music video, and the others that some after, are done by Ben Magnum or "MysteryBen27" which is his youtube account. As of now the man behind Mystery Skulls actually has claimed at least one of Ben Magnum's music videos as official.

What I found quite interesting about it was how well it does at visual storytelling, and also the fact that these characters have been inspired by Scooby Doo with the dog, the van, and the characters wanting to find ghosts and solve mysteries. It is done in such a way that when watching it multiple times, you find there are details that you have missed. Also, this all culminates into using the song and turning it into a story. As mentioned before, there are other videos done using the same band and each of the different songs are used to make the story more intriguing, and so far those are based around the songs "Freaking Out" and "Hellbent". Unfortunately each video takes around two years to make so we won't see anymore of the continuation until 2020.

Ghost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlEb3L1PIco

Here are the continuations to the story:

Freaking Out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUYM5WNdNGc

Hellbent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN_Kbltsqx4

Inside Out

The film Inside Out is made by a Vancouver Film School student Rachel Mouawad. Vancouver Film School is a private school in Vancouver for so many fields: 3D animation, acting for film and TV, Game design, classic animation, VR&AR design and so on.

This film Inside Out is a classic animation which means she drew everything in this film and animated it. This film is a little bit creepy but it has a nice atmosphere and I really like it.



Their website is really nice too. You can check out their programs.
Vancouver Film School: https://vfs.edu/

They also have a Youtube channel and it has so many films done by the students.
Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5MkxrHWkLDDnToq_ZTYGlA

Lonewolf is a pretty popular music video director/creator in the new generation of rap and has played a part in several rappers careers by giving them pretty unique videos that appealed to the masses and gave the artists attention.His style of editing is what set Lonewolf apart from the other creatives with his unique cuts and paper effects. His style of editing is replicated with many videos giving away the secrets of his techniques, but he does not mind he and others such as cole bennett have influenced the style of trendy music videos and expanding the boundaries of whats possible, very inspirational and different in their style which inspires thousands.



Lonewolf's reel