Posts Tagged ‘animation’
The Animation genius – Ray Harryhausen turns 90
Animation genius (in paticular stop motion animation ) and pioneer Ray Harryhausen turns 90 this week. To celebrate the occasion an exhibition of Harryhausen’s stop-motion work opens on 29 June 2010 at the London Film Museum. It includes original models, bronze casts and artwork from his Movies.
Movie greats such as George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Nick Park all cite Ray has one of their inspirational heros in the field of animation.
Harryhausen is modest about his elevated status this these Directors, he prefers to give the credit to Willis O’Brien, the visual-effects supervisor on King Kong (1933) and the man who gave Harryhausen his first feature film job, on Mighty Joe Young (1949).
But it is Harryhausen who, on the occasion of his 90th birthday this week, will be celebrated with the exhibition of his drawings, models and film footage at the London Film Museum, and by a collectible limited-edition book called Ray Harryhausen: A Life in Pictures. And it’s Harryhausen who is cited as an influence by film-makers from Steven Spielberg (“I salute him every day”) to James Cameron (“We all owe Ray a great debt”); from Pixar (who named a restaurant after him in Monsters Inc) to Tim Burton (who said Mars Attacks! was a direct homage).
Nick Park, the Oscar-winning animator behind Wallace and Gromit and another avowed Harryhausen fan, says that Gromit’s famously expressive eyebrows were partially inspired by those of Mighty Joe Young. “I remember seeing Ray Harryhausen on I think it was a TV programme called Screen Test. I just got to work straight away in my own little attic studio. I made a brontosaurus out of coat-hanger wire and foam and my mum’s old tights.”
Live long and prosper Ray. We look up to you and celebrate with you on your upcoming birthday.
Animation News – How to train your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon from Dreamworks animation will be in theaters March 26, 2010. Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, America Ferrara, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Craig Ferguson, Kristen Wiig and T.J. Miller are the voice actors in the film. It’s directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois. The trailer is below for your enjoyment. I hope they improve on the graphics for the main dragon, as it currently stands it looks out of place with the other characters and background. While it may well be worth going to see if only for the 3D experience it does not look as good as Pixar’s recent offerings.
UP – 3D Animation Film Review
Conclusion
I don’t like reading film reviews normally because the authors drag out the conclusion to the review until the end. So here is my conclusion on UP 3D the movie.
It was excellent. Well worth going to see (expecially in 3D). Suitable for all ages. Our group ranged in ages from 8 to 44 years old. All agreed it was brilliant. Everyone took something different from it. Now read on if you would like to know a little more. Otherwise just plan a night out and go and see it in 3D.
Synopsis of the story
Carl Fredricksen, the main character is introduced in the opening scenes as a young boy watching a black and white movie in the cinema about a heroic adventurer called Charles Muntz . He dreams of going on such an adventure as he follows his balloon in to an abandoned house some days later. It is here he meets his future wife..Ellie who shares his sense of adventure. They marry later and the first few minutes of the movie runs through their life together in montage form up to the point where they are old and Ellie dies without every going on their adventure to South America.
So we are left with a 78-year-old balloon salesman about to be forced in to a retirement home by aggressive city developers encroaching on the once abandoned house ( as seen in opening of the movie) that he and Ellie renovated and lived in all there lives. But rather than give in to them he decides to go on that adventure to South Africa ( Angel Falls ) and bring his house with him by lifting it in to the sky with hundreds of helium balloons. Once in they sky floating over the city he discovers he has a passenger in the form of an 8 year old boy scout type character or wilderness explorer as he calls himself on the front porch. The boy “Russell” accompanies Carl to south America where they are joined by a talking dog called Doug ( and then dogs) and a twelve foot tall bird which they name Kevin. During their adventure they meet with Charles Muntz, Carl’s boyhood hero. Charles soon disappoints as a hero. It quickly becomes evident that Charles Muntz has become obsessed with capturing this mysterious bird “Kevin” in order to rebuke an earlier humiliation by his peers and the scientific community who claimed such a bird never existed. In his relentless 50 plus year search , Charles now discovers that Carl and Russell know where the bird can be found. Needless to say Carl and Russell try to hide and protect the bird from Charles Muntz and his shotgun.
Carl , Russell and Doug
The adventure picks up pace in these scenes which result in Muntz’s timely demise and the return of Kevin to his family of baby birds! Carl get’s Russell back home in time for his senior Wilderness Explorer badge presentation and all is well.
While this animation seems like a very well executed adventure for children it has very deep threads running thr0ughout. From the first ten minutes you are left in no doubt about the animations deeper messages on life and meaning. Sounds like I’m getting heavy here.( or even worse ..”arty” lol ).but it is surprising to find this depth in a 3D animation. And I, as all of our adult members in our group where taken back by its sophistication. Themes such as “loss – as we see Carl loosing a childhood sweetheart after 70 years of marriage” , “not seizing life , adventure and opportunities”. “Being dissappointed by lifelong hero’s” when Muntz turns out to be a self centered mean spirited egomaniac. Phew..that’s heavy going alright.. but its real.
Anyways..enough..go see it. It’s real.
News- The Princess and The Frog
The first trailer for the Classic story the “The Princess and the Frog” and just been released on Youtube.
While I am more a fan of stop motion animation I have a soft spot for this story. It is an enduring favourite of mine since I was young. This version according to Disney’s Press releases for the movie takes a more modern look at the classic and extends it’s basic concept to examine what happened after the princess kissed the frog Prince. So in that sense it is loosely based on E.D. Baker’s version of The Frog Prince.
The movie will be in cinemas on December 24th, 2009. Disney describe it as an animated comedy set in the great city of New Orleans. The prince named Naveen from Maldonia has been turned in to a frog by a voodoo magician, Dr Facilier. The frog mistakes Tiana for a princess and asks for a kiss to break the spell.
The Princess and the Frog
As I mentioned the story surrounds a beautiful girl named Tiana and her interactions with a frog who wants to be human again. However after that fateful kiss ,Tiana finds herself turned in to a frog! In another twist the princess for the first time in history in this story .. is black (about time!).
The animators behind The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, the famous team of John Musker and Ron Clements return to the hand-drawn animation form in this movie. As a result it definitely has the look and feel of the original Disney animations.
The music is composed by Oscar®-winning composer Randy Newman. Worth a visit to the cinema for the nostalgia alone.
Image Properties for your Stop Motion Frames
I have to admit to also not reading the manual when I should or not following the instructions accompanying a self assembly piece of furniture. So when I get questions which are answered on our site either in the FAQ or the video tutorials from users of the iKITMovie software I have to give a little smile to myself. I never mind answering these questions because they are firstly easy to answer and secondly our customers are always glad of the assistance. Also it’s great to get feedback and know that our software is being used by creative individuals of all ages around the world.
One common theme that runs through the majority of the hand full of support calls is to do with image resolution. Especially when users are capturing their still images with a digital still camera. Most digital still cameras capture images at their maximum image resolution by default. So I have come across users who have captured their stop motion images at 3648 x 2736 and then loaded them into iKITMovie and wondered why it runs slowly. We step them through how to reduce them in size but it could have saved them time if they had viewed the Getting started video tutorial online. Even if they had viewed the tutorial it is common to find that most people do not know how to check the size or resolution of the capture images once they have copied them to their PC.
It’s not generally known that it is very easy indeed to check the resolution of the images. By simply floating the mouse cursor over the thumbnail of the image on their PC the screen resolution is shown ( as seen in the image below )
Screen Resolution
Depending on the power and memory available on their PC we recommend at least 640×480 image resolution. 800×600 or HD 960×720 can also be used if they have say 3gb of RAM. We are considering creating a filter on import to automatically change the resolution size for users. They would be prompted if the image size is too large and suggested that they reduce the size to a predefined choice.
More later..bye for now. ,Diarmuid
Animation Near to Home
Drawn animation and to some lesser extent CG animation is alive and well in my native Ireland. There are a number of very successful Irish companies based in Ireland and abroad making significant contributions to the world of animation. Here is a sample listing of those in business in Ireland.
Animation – Irish Companies
http://www.monsteranimation.ie/
http://www.rocketanimation.com/
http://www.pricklypearproductions.ie/
The recent launch in 2005 of the Irish School of Animation at Ballyfermot College of Further Education has three courses on offer, A BA in Animation, a HND (Diploma) and a course called Animation Drawing Studies. According to their website their emphasis in on drawn (2D) animation..
The core of the Irish School of Animation is a focus on animation drawing and character animation coupled with an emphasis on strong visual design.
Browsing their students filmreels is testament to that emphasis. There are some exceptions. “Ben Harper” , a recent graduate of the school displays some of his CG work on his showreel below.
Showreel from Ben Harper on Vimeo.
It is a pity there isn’t much evidence of Stop Motion work at the school. 
or at least none that I can find. But hey..there work is top quality and it’s still creative and enjoyable.
Stop Motion – A Journey into the unknown.
I’ve been thinking of starting a blog for sometime now but never seemed to have the time or inclination at the end of a very busy day. But, today is different. Today everybody seems happy and two customers in California and one in New York seem to be particularly happy. Got some great feedback on iKitMovie, actually we have been getting very positive feedback since we launched it last Winter but three in 12 hours is particularly nice.
Let me introduce myself. My name is Siobhan O’ Reilly and together with my husband and now business partner Diarmuid Brennan,we developed an idea our then 10 year old son had ie,an all encompassing stopmotion software program. Like I said it was my son’s idea. He was a crazy stopmotion enthuaist /animator back then 2006/2007, but after 18 frustrating months trying and buying everything he could find on the Web, he decided he needed to develop his own software that would allow him to make a complete stopmotion animation movie, with all kinds of sound effects and editing capabilities. So he gave us a list of what he wanted and here we are now in 2009 with iKitMovie, what he considers the ultimate stopmotiion movie making software product for 8-14 year olds.
Now iKITMovie has been tried and tested by a whole bunch of kids since the first beta version came back from the developers. everything from the variety of “Farts” in the sound effects section to the blue and yellow interface to “Cecil” our cute guy who pops up now and then on the website has been chosen by kids. At times I thought it looked a little “young”, that something more neutral would be more appealing but I was always overruled and reminded that now I’m on the wrong side of forty “I know nothing”.
As I said earlier, this whole enterprise which has now turned into a full time business was my son’s idea. The only trouble is he turned 13 last November and stopmotion animation no longer takes priority, but his new found rock buddies and his rock band “The Vision Project”. Check out his Youtube channel, Matthew Brennan and subscribe.
So here I am “the reluctant company director” writing my first blog, and thinking its been a crazy 2 years, a massively steep learning curve but most of all very gratifying to know that we’ve got something in iKITMovie that kids and adults too, get a kick out of.
