SF-based Encyclopedia Pictura just released their long-awaited 3D video for Björk’s single “Wanderlust.” The 3D version will be released April 14, viewable with standard blue and red lenses, but for now the first two D’s will have to do.

[Update: They took down the full-length from YouTube for no apparent reason, now all we get is this 30-second preview… but you can still see the full-length High-res Quicktime. Dorks.]

Only the water and some set pieces are 3D; the rest is carefully-composited footage of real live objects, sculpted and built out of actual matter, and filmed in front of good old-fashioned screens of green. This making-of video shows a lot of sculpting and other hard-core stagecraft.

There’s also an awesome interview at studiodaily explaining all kinds of juicy technical details, including the methods used to shoot the video in 3D.

(via Cartoon Brew.)

This article summarizes the use of edge loops in mid-res polygonal facial modeling and related anatomical theory.

Waiting for Jell-O

Faces are weird objects. Mechanically, a face is a nylon sock full of pressurized Jell-O mugging a hydraulic cash register wrapped in sentient rubber bands. It stretches and puckers, slobbers and sloshes, and rattles all around, especially in flap-n-snaps.

Modeling such a thing in 3D so that it looks natural when it’s moving is tricky. There’s a technique known as an edge loop which is useful in this situation, but to use it successfully you must understand the theory behind it.

When modeling for animation, potential motion must be taken into account. Certain shapes allow for certain motions, and other shapes will fight attempts to be animated. In general, edges or boundaries between shapes act as hinges, allowing bending, and extra detail allows expansion without distortion, like the corrugations in a bendy straw.

If available memory and processor power were infinite, an infinite amount of edges and detail would allow for any motion, limited only by the rig — however, here in reality we must find a balance between the amount of detail in the model (aka its weight) and functionality.

(more…)

“Shut Up, Heart” by Dionysos, animated and directed by Frenchman Stéphane Berla.

(via Yannick Puig.)

“Krapooyo,” made by Yannick Puig, creator of I Lived on the Moon, in 2005.

There are a number of charts and graphs online showing relative populations of cities, metropolitan areas, urban agglomerations, and what have you — but those are vague, empty numbers that leave no impression of a city’s soul.

A bird’s-eye view of a city center gives me more useful information. In the myriad buildings and streets, I see pressures of geography and history coming to bear, thrusting buildings up from the very bedrock like towering, quivering stalagmites of willpower, money, and insatiable greed.

So I took a few screenshots and dropped them here: “City Comparisons.” See if your city’s in the roster — compare and contrast!

Calgary, Alberta, Canada, pop. 1.0m:

Houston, Texas, USA, pop. 2.1m:

Here’s the first trailer for WALL-E.

And an observation, compliments of blissbat: “It’s a whole movie about R2-D2.”

Funny she should say that: according to the Wikipedia entry, the sound designer is — bingo! — Ben Burtt, sound designer for Star Wars, which makes him essentially the voice of R2-D2. And to top it off here’s a quote from director Andrew Stanton: “I’m basically making R2-D2: The Movie.”

The lighting and rendering is quite spectacularly realistic. Again, straight from the wiki article:

After directing Finding Nemo, Stanton felt they “had really achieved the physics of believing you were really under water, so I said ‘Hey, let’s do that with air.’ Let’s fix our lenses, let’s get the depth of field looking exactly how anamorphic lenses work and do all these tricks that make us have the same kind of dimensionality that we got on Nemo with an object out in the air and on the ground.’” […] A cinematographer who worked on live action films was hired to advise Pixar on replicating science fiction films from the 1960s and 1970s, including elements such as 70 mm frames, barrel distortion and lens flare.

I think I need to go take a cold shower after that last sentence.

By Supinfocom students François-Xavier Goby, Edouard Jouret ,and Matthieu Landour, in 2005. The title translates to “In Your Arms” and the design and direction are lovely. This is a tricky style of animation — dramatic and serious, using cartoon characters. The result is something quite like anime.

For modeling practice I just went back to “The Hobbit Guy” Dave K’s poly head modeling tutorial, which I’ve been referencing periodically since it first went up back in ought-two.

I’ve recently been digging on Casanova, drawn by twin Brazilians Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon, so I decided to try to make a cartoony villain à la Bá using some tricks from the Sergio rig to keep the lines clean and sharp. The result looks a bit like a Peter Chung character, which is close enough. Those cheekbones could be sharper, especially from the three-quarter angle.

Keeping everything quads while making good edge loops is a huge pain. I know I left a bunch of 3- and 5-sided polys in there. And yes, I bailed on the ears. This is actually my second try: I had a great ear, and Maya crashed during a smoothing attempt and somehow retroactively borked all my incremental saves. It’s just as well — I got a better nose the second time, and everyone knows noses are more important than ears.

Speaking of sharper cheekbones from the three-quarter angle: has anyone done anything with automatically varying a model depending on camera angle? Back in school I had a character called Back-Hand Man, lost in an unfortunate lab accident (the only character I’ve ever had stolen; the culprit took the whole RAID), with a pompadour which I tried to script to always be perpendicular to the camera. It was… kind of finicky.

Music video for “Curare” by Bogdan Irkük (aka BULGARI) from “The Distant” EP on Rollerboys Recordings, directed and produced by Swedish mograph house Pistachios.

(High-res Quicktime)

The contrast in styles works pretty well for me — more of either would have been too much. The visual treatment of the 3D matches the old-school electro sound nicely, and the video’s progression matches the song’s perfectly.

Curare is a type of poison used for darts in South America. Pistachios claims inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe and Swedish artist Hans Arnold.

“Codehunters,” directed by Swiss comic artist Ben Hibon (bio here) for the MTV Asia 2006 video awards.

(High-res Quicktime)

I hesitate to post this because the animation’s so stiff and the acting’s so clichéd, but there are glimmers of brilliance inamongst all that posturing. The art direction is nice, with feature-level detail in the style of Moebius, Bilal, et al.

There’s some tech info at Animago available as well as a CGSociety feature.

The real problem here, again, is progression: dynamics. This piece has none. The whole thing is either slow establishing reveals or slow-motion action — every shot is a money shot.

The music follow suit almost exactly. The score has two modes: plodding, and waiting. Between action sequences, during shots featuring slow-motion or other apparently dramatically significant moments, there’s a sort of ambient freeze-frame music, as though we’re waiting for a shoe to drop. During action sequences, we get the same walking-pace beat in the same key throughout, with no modal progression at all, like credits music. One is left with the impression of a highlights reel, or a recap, or a flashback, as though nothing that’s happening is truly significant.

I think it’s telling that over a quarter of the running length is credits — one of many traits “Codehunters” shares with Matrix: Revolutions.

Happy Leap Day!

Robert Hodgin has released a video accompaniment to “Lovely Head” by Goldfrapp in a style he calls “Solar,” made with Processing, “an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions.”

Details on Solar.

(via Motionographer)

The first teaser for the stereoscopic film adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline from Laika. Portland represent.

(via Joel Brinkerhoff.)

The Neighborhood released this video to accompany their new website.

Made with Illustrator, 3DS Max, and After Effects. Cute making-of video here.

(Via Feed.)

The “Plankton Invasion” series — now numbering two teasers, a trailer, and an episode — is a concept production from Tinkertree Studios. The trailer follows.

The series is apparently contract-bait, and from the looks of it they’ve got a good shot. Joeri Christiaen, a Belgian animator whose credits include Les Triplettes de Belleville, seems to be the ringleader.

There are some extremely high production values here; it’s made with messiah:studio, and Christiaen’s enlisted the help of experts on particles, lighting, and comp.

Sadly, it’s still boring. Maybe not as boring as some of my own work, but for the same reason: there’s not enough engaging plot progression. Whereas “Space Bunnies” lacks an adequately coherent through-line to lead the viewer along and maintain interest, the “Plankton” through-lines are so fat, slow, and predictable that the joke is over before the punch line finally hits.

At least Christiaen knows it. In this Frederator interview he admits that writing is his magical weak spot. Elsewhere he describes how, whenever he described the plots to anyone, they persisted in suggesting alternate scenarios. Kudos to him for recognizing this excellent warning sign, and for running it by somebody in the first place.

Regrettably, to mitigate these deficiencies they’ve decided that the series will henceforth “feature” script-writing by submission, aka a public joke contest, sure to result in more of the same. Go bears!

At YouTube: Teaser 1, Teaser 2, Episode 1.

(via Motionographer.)

Correction: We reported that Christiaen enlisted the help of experts on particles, lighting, and comp. This is incorrect, and was due to a mis-reading of an interview. We also incorrectly reported that the series was boring. We regret the errors.

Dreamwork’s upcoming Kung Fu Panda looks to be another lowbrow dork-fest but the design and animation — at least in the trailer — looks pretty good.

Randall Sly found some beauty shots that fell off the back of a truck and posted them right out in public.

The character designs read very well from both far and near, which is no mean feat in 3D, especially on anything with fur. Up close, there are enough small distinctive details to keep the forms from de-resolving, and from a distance those details aren’t prominent enough to distract from the major forms. The rhinoceroseses are a particularly good example of this balance.

One good way to keep characters distinct is to keep the number of base colors, or hues, low in any given character. This is another old comic-book trick. From afar, these characters are nearly monochrome, which makes them easily identifiable and separated at a distance. It also allows them to be lit in many ways without any color clashes or design conflicts. (E.g.: If the only thing that differentiates your middle-aged mutant samurai eels is the colors of their eyemasks, if they’re ever in red light you’re going to have trouble.)

Trailers at rottentomatoes.com.