The Gentlemans Game : Beer Pong

What do you call 20 animators playing beer pong?

drunk.

ba dum chsssss

-ok off to sleep now :)

The art of Grimm

Speaking of Grimm , they updated the website with storyboards , concept art and costume designs from the movie. Go into the art section to check em out , there are some AMAZING drawings in there.

click here

Once upon a time...

So we went to see Brothers Grimm yesterday. I am a huge fan of Gilliam's movies and been looking forward to this since I heard about it. But as time passed i was not so sure due to some of the things I was hearing from friends working on it , such as Miramax changing things at the last minute as if to sabotage the film and various other problems with the director.

Well the movie was pretty fun , mainly due to some exceptional performances from some of the actors. Matt Damon and Heather Ladger both give great performances , and they have that screen chemistry Villiam Vaughn and Owen Wilson seem to have. But to me the best performance was of Peter Stormare , whom I am a big fan of ever since Fargo and Jonathan Pryce who gave the best ever french general performance I have seen. Every scene they were on together is golden. (especially for animation ref)

To make the long story short , Its worth seeing if you are into Gilliam's movies. Its not his best but its definitely not as bad as the critics say it is.

Cintiq review at Cg Networks

Cg Networks reviewed Cintiq in this review: click here


It makes the wait that much harder :(

Ramen is gooood

After playing with one of these babies at siggraph i decided I cant live without one and preordered one. Hopefully getting it in september. Its gonna be so much fun animating directly on screen. I'll post a review as soon as I get my hands on it. Gonna be eating Ramen for a looong while but hey its all for animation! :)

click me

BBC Motion Gallery

BBC motion gallery is one of those things where it makes you think "there must be a catch , nothing this good can be free"

Its a online collection of over 70 years of movie\tv\documentary footage where you can search and download nice quicktime versions. If you are a animator , character td , modeler , whatever you'll find the place invaluable.

Click here to check it out.

Commercials r Us

Here are a couple of hilarious and cool commercials I came across. Use em for reference or just to have a good laugh.

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this one is hilarious:

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Rigging Blog

My buddy Morgan who is a kickass character rigger started his own blog and he is discussing rigging techniques. Head over there to learn a couple tricks:

http://www.loomisanimation.com/blog/

Shadow of the Colossus

Speaking of games ,

The makers of ICO is coming out with this totally amazing game. Words can do it no justice so I recommend you guys check out the videos of it here

This game has some of the best animation i have seen in a game. Especially take a look at the horse animation. Cant wait for october to play this.

-A

God of War

Monsters (check)
Lots of blood (check)
Brutal moves that cut the limbs off your opponents (check)
Awesome storyline based on greek mythology (check)

ladies and gents we have the perfect game!

What started as a simple "i'll just play this for 15 minutes here and there" ended up being "damn is it 4am already?" but it was worth it :)

If you pick up the game make sure to watch the all making of documentaries on the dvd. The documentaries are very in depth and show the whole making of process and their pipeline. I wish more games included those kind of documentaries.

-A

Super Tibetan Racers

And yet another awesome short from Gobelins. No i am not jelaous! :)

Watch it here

La Migration Bigoudenn

One of the best short films this year at siggraph electronic thatre was this short film made by three Gobelins students. I am constantly amazed by the quality and originality of the shorts coming out from that school. Cant wait to compete with them next year :)

you can watch the short here

And here is another short done by students of Supinfocom called overtime , you can watch it here

Siggraph

This siggraph was kick ass! Got to meet and hang out with a lot of friends and make new ones. It was nice to see some of my fellow AM students , finally got to meet Aja and Anthea in person. The highlight of this year for me was Shane Acker's "9" , what a great short film , if you get a chance to see it at a screening near you dont miss it! I am totally inspired after watching it.

I hope next years can live up to this one. I am not thrilled about boston but i guess its an excuse to visit the east coast.

Here is a pic from siggraph with bobby , shawn and raffael.

-A