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Aug
15
2010
AT-AT Day Afternoon By Patrick Boivin
Posted at 1:47 pm | No Comments

AT-AT Day Afternoon HD Short Film on Vimeo

Not entirely CG related but definitely worth a mention, the animated short film entitled AT-AT Day Afternoon by French Canadian animator and director Patrick Boivin who incidentally also created the CG short Iron Baby.


Making Of AT-AT Day Afternoon on Vimeo

The majority of the film is composited using elements from live action puppetry, where the wider shots are acheived through stop-motion.

The film looks to have been shot in full HD 1080p on a Digital SLR camera such as the Canon 5D MkII

Aug
15
2010
Iron Baby by Patrick Boivin
Posted at 1:14 pm | No Comments

 

Iron Baby Short Film on YouTube in HD

Loving the CG work (and the evil enemy bunnies!) on the excellent animated Iron Baby short by French Canadian animator and director Patrick Boivin The CG/FX was handled by Strob and his 3DS Max model of the Iron Baby is available to download from Turbosquid

Aug
05
2010
BBC Weather Animation: Be One Step Ahead
Posted at 12:42 pm | No Comments

Great new TV trail for the BBC Weather website entitled Be One Step Ahead. The cel shaded animation, which was produced at Studio AKA and directed by Marc Craste is in keeping with their previous titles, such as the long running series of Lloyds Bank adverts in terms of quality of style, character design, animation and storytelling.

Jul
19
2010
Toy Story 3: An IMAX 3D Experience
Posted at 1:00 pm | No Comments

Toy Story 3 Released In UK Today

After refraining from watching any trailers, searching for pre-renders and taking a hiatus from following Lee Unkrich on twitter I can only presume that Toy Story 3 will be the must see film of the year and will be booking IMAX 3D tickets as soon as possible.

Jul
18
2010
The Art Of Toy Story 3
Posted at 6:15 pm | No Comments


The Art of Toy Story 3
by Charles Solomon

A new book in Pixar’s excellent ‘art of’ series is now availiable to order.

May
26
2010
RenderPal Render Farm Software
Posted at 12:32 pm | 1 Comment

After using RenderPal extensively in a project environment, I would like to recommend the software to fellow artists so you can try it for yourselves.

RenderPal is a Render Farm Management program by Shoran Software. Anyone rendering out image sequences will find it invaluable in their workflow. It has added speed and efficiency to my workflow by allowing the submission of scenes to a server to distribute the rendering workload between several CPU’s. (jobs submitted via the RenderPal Remote Controller and each machine accessed via Remote Desktop)

Basically the software connects multiple PC nodes or clients to a server machine allowing for distributed rendering, either on a single sliced image or a full animation sequence with multiple compositing layers.  Several renderers can be used at any one time from the wide list of supported renderers available including Mental Ray, finalRender and V-Ray.  This allows several artists to submit scenes through ‘Net Jobs’ to their chosen renderer without the restrictions of their software. RenderPal also allows for custom renderers.

The software is compatible with many leading 3D packages including Maya, Softimage, Lightwave, Cinema 4D, 3DSMax and is therefore ideal for companies with multiple software packages and renderers in their pipeline. RenderPal is not restricted to 3D as there is support for various compositing packages including After Effects, Shake and Nuke.


RenderPal’s Clean User Friendly Interface


Mini Render Farm Ideal For The Freelancer or Enthusiast


In a Professional Studio Environment Using 100’s of Render Nodes

Features

Click the Features Overview for a comprehensive list.

How To Receive The Software

Download The Software which initially allows you to use RenderPal in Trial mode and is limited to 30 days with 10 clients and 10 Net Jobs.

The Free Registered Version which never expires, just requires you to register via e-mail and includes 3 clients and a 10 Net Job Limit.

RenderPal is available for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux.

Contact

Follow RenderPal on the new Shoran Software Blog and on Twitter

May
20
2010
London 2012 Olympic Mascots Revealed
Posted at 12:52 pm | No Comments

New London 2012 Olympic Mascot Animation

Mandeville and Wenlock In Their Anodised Chrome Steel Look

British Union Jack Flag Version of Mandeville and Wenlock

Design Sheet Detailing The Thinking Behind The Characters

Mandeville and Wenlock, the names of the 2 new Official London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Mascots are named after the Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games and after the village of Much Wenlock in Shropshire, the inspiration behind the modern Olympic Games.

Iris Agency in London were asked to come up with a new and exiting, modern mascot for the digital age. The characters they have created are aimed at children and are reminiscent of classic video game characters.

Warhorse and children’s author Michael Morpurgo was drafted in to create a series of stories for the animated characters. His vision sees them starting life as two drops of steel, which fall from the final girder of the Olympic stadium, forged in a factory in Bolton. The steel is then taken home by a retiring worker who makes the characters for his grandchildren. A rainbow brings them to life and they start to learn various moves and gestures by mimicking Olympic events.

At first I thought woah, what the? but they are kinda growing on me, although I almost expect them to get up and sing ‘I Will Survive’

A coincidence I am sure, but the colours are representative of the new coalition government between the Conservatives and the Lib-Dem’s!
Already, there are many spoof photoshopped images appearing on the web. Thankfully the characters are better than the dreadful Official London 2012 logo designed by the Wolff Olins Agengy

Discover the new Mascots on the official London 2012 Website

Follow Mandeville on Facebook and Twitter
Follow Wenlock on Facebook and Twitter

What do you think of the new character designs?

Apr
26
2010
Own Avatar On Blu-ray Now!
Posted at 12:32 pm | No Comments


Avatar
Dir: James Cameron

Mar
31
2010
How To Train Your Dragon In UK Cinemas
Posted at 12:32 pm | No Comments

Dreamworks new animated feature film How To Train Your Dragon is out in UK cinemas today and will be available to watch in IMAX 3-D

Watch The How To Train Your Dragon Trailer in full Quicktime HD 1080

Should be a great one as it is currently getting some fantastic reviews.
IMDB currently 8.3/10! Rotten Tomatoes currently 97%!

Behind-the-scenes of How To Train Your Dragon on Making of.com (above)

Animation Mentor graduate Mike Stern worked on the film.
You can Follow Him Here On Twitter

Wee Brian who was one of the three animators on Aardman’s The Deadline also worked as an Animator.

Interesting Production Videos collated on the CGsociety Forums.

Animation World Network interview with Directors Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, also includes interview with Head of Character Animation Simon Otto entitled DreamWorks Unleashes the Dragons 

Mar
30
2010
Art Of How To Train Your Dragon Book
Posted at 6:22 pm | No Comments


Art Of How To Train Your Dragon
by Tracey Miller-Zarneke


Art Of How To Train Your Dragon Example Page

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