Pixar’s “Your Friend the Rat,” featuring Rémy and Emile from Ratatouille, just won the Annie for Best Animated Short. Here’s a musical excerpt:

Max Fleischer of the Fleischer Brothers, animation pioneer and inventor of the Rotoscope, also patented the Rotograph, a turntable upon which rested multiple layers of scenic elements, rotated behind cel animation to provide amazing 3D background effects.

The clip below is a montage of Rotograph shots from two of the Fleischers’ films: “Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor” (1936) and “Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves” (1937).

(via Joel Brinkerhoff)

Just bumped into this commercial from back in the day: it’s the Compaq Bird!

(Quicktime)

Excellent rhythm in this one. The character of the bird is communicated in the first few frames, in the way it stands up straight and looks around. Jolly good form!

(more…)

Aardman’s Pearce Sisters has been passed over for an Oscar nomination, so the short has been released online. I’m not sure how that works; I know that for a short film to be considered it must either premiere in a theater (in LA County, per the rules) or win a gold medal at an approved festival before it is exhibited anywhere else, but I believe that’s already happened. At any rate, I’m very glad to finally see it, poor quality though it is.

(via Cartoon Brew.)

Notes and background info at pearcesisters.co.uk.

The film’s technique relies on some very peculiar 2/3D combinations. Director Luis Cook describes it as a kind of self-rotoscoping: setting up shots in 3D, printing out the frames and drawing details and facial expressions over them, then re-importing the 2D work back into the 3D. Some animated textures were added, and it was all comped together.

The result is definitely both 2D and 3D. The hold cycles of the 2D are clearly visible; so is the precise depth of the 3D. In fact, the 3D sticks out a bit; every other aspect of the piece is so old-school and grungy. It’s difficult to dirty that essential 3D-ness up at all, especially in an otherwise thoroughly expressionistic world. That would involve some intentional perspective- and shape-skewing.

Other interesting details: The piece contains 180 shots. The visual design is influenced by artists such as Ben Nicholson and Alfred Wallis, who founded the St Ives artists’ colony in Cornwall, the south-western-most tip of England, in the late 1920s.

Oh yes, and it has a plot, which is nice. Very similar in tone and content to Snow-Bo. Frankly — though I feel a boor to say so — the effect of the visuals so thoroughly overwhelmed the plot that I believe I’d have preferred nine minutes of fishing, and other quotidian, littoral tasks. This is certainly because I grew up in a bucolic seaside town, and since moving to the city have grown to loathe the elaborate, all-engrossing civilization I once craved.

Keep up the good work, Luis!

More Gobelins from Annecy 2005: something funny’s going on here.

“Chachachat”

It’s the dancing scene — her head and the cat are hand-drawn but I believe the rest of her body is 3D… but it blends really well. The Gobelins kids have shown themselves to be quite good at mixing the two techniques, as seen in “Le Building.” This is a rare feat, indeed.

One more from Gobelins for Annecy 2005, with “Gnap Gnap,” featuring classic Mobius stylee, excellent sound design, and decent 2D+3D, which should be called 5D.

And here’s Quicktime with stereo.

The song on the record is the song sung by the man in the shower in “Le Building,” thanks no doubt to the sound designer for both pieces, Olivier Crouet.

I believe “Gnap Gnap” translates roughly to “Nom Nom Nom.”

Today on Gobelins Appreciation Week: “Le Building” for Annecy 2005.

“Le Building” in high-res on Stage6.

Excellent in every respect. They pulled off an extra-nifty trick here you don’t see done well very often.

(more…)

These remixes at Fong Songs have been making the rounds lately, but nothing approaches the brilliance of the 1972 original:

According to the wikipedia entry, there were 11 versions, one for each number starting with 2; the above is a compilation of them all. They first aired on Sesame Street in 1976, and along with Drummer Hoff hooked me on a particular sensibility I’m not yet qualified to elucidate. Suffice it to say in some situations I believe “style over substance” is a false dichotomy.

Man that was a weird book.

(via Motionographer.)

Pascal Campion, champion short-attention-span animator, has some of the tightest timing I’ve seen anywhere. His work is clear and effortless, even in scribble-form, zooming past in fractions of a second.

From the main page of his site, pascalcampion.com, select the “Animations” link to view his gallery of wonders. He also has a blog which he apparently updates in his sleep every night.

He’s currently in California, but spent formative years in France, where there’s apparently something in the l’eau.

These two flash-snacks by the trendily-named Hobo Devine tickled my fancy.

The second piece features the first lines of “Daddy” by Sylvia Plath. The quality of the recording and timbre of the speaker suggests that the voice is the author herself.

Hobo Devine is Jamie Mason.

Squashin’ and stretchin’ to the max, super-low frame rate notwithstanding. By far the best piece to come out of the mysterious The Nursery.

(via Drawn.)

Breakdown!

(more…)

Hans Bacher has been recreating Disney animation backgrounds from screen grabs of pans in Disney dvds and posting them in full rez to his blog Animation Treasures.

Bacher is a Disney alum, and worked on a number of animated features in the 90s doing backgrounds, color design, and character design.

Update 02/01/08: Bacher’s blogs all seem to have disappeared. Oh my lost youth!

by Vera Brosgol and Jenn Kluska.