What a fantasic animated short. I’m certified bilingual, but I have no idea what’s being said in this short. It doesn’t matter though. This brings me back to the days of seeing NFB shorts on TV as a kid. So much of the animation back then looked like this, and it’s part of who I am, and what shaped me as an animation artist today. Thank you Monsieur Elissalde!

If you haven’t seen this film yet, follow the link below or click the image to behold this treat

http://www.filmsdelarlequin.com/fr/thenoir.htm

Much of Richard Williams’ animation work, as he’ll tell you himself, isn’t available to buy and enjoy like most of today’s top animators. A lot of his more experimental work was done on the commercials he worked on, and he’s said himself his best work is in Thief and the Cobbler. I’ve already posted what I’ve found on YouTube, but that site isn’t the only source on the internet.

I’ve been able to find over an hour and a half worth of his work, a lot of which I’ll begin sharing with you shortly. In order to maintain the quality the files sizes will be large. I’ve also taken on the burden of converting the files to Quicktime for frame by framing fun. I’ll be hosting these files myself for all to enjoy. Here’s a teaser; some fantastic animation for the introduction to a Pink Panther movie. I’ve yet to see any of the Pink Panther films (but I do plan to) so I can’t tell you which movie this is from.

http://www.nineoldmen.com/onanimation/richwilliams_pp.mov

This movie is definitely worth seeing, especially in 3D. It was the first animated film I’ve seen in 3D, and it was a pretty neat experience. I can only imagine what it must be like for the animator’s to see there ugly render tests polished up and bulging out of the screen at them. They must be proud.

Overall I thought that it was the best Disney CG film I’ve seen so far, and they’ve made strides towards catching up with Pixar in that department.

Check it out if you can. It’s worth a look.

I fed off Wednesday night’s gesture session, and stayed loose for my first 1 minute warm-up. Unfortunately, it all went down hill from here.

I also finally produced a full set of color pieces worth posting. Who knows, maybe one or two might make it into the portfolio.

Here’s a couple gestures from last night. I decided to work in charcoal. It’s the first time I’ve been able to get this loose with the medium. It’s pretty exciting.

I never really achieved that sense of flow for the rest of the night, but here’s two more that show a little emotion. It felt like the model always had his back to me, no matter where I sat. When I finally got to draw his face, I got so excited at the rare opportunities, that I bombed them completely.

Here’s a festive color spread from Tuesday morning.

Off to my Thursday morning session!

There’s a great mini-interview with Richard Williams at Spline Doctors:

http://splinedoctors.com/2008/11/richard-williams-spline-cast/

This is almost identical to the stuff Richard talked about when he came to Vancouver recently. It’s great that it’s all online now. I knew it would end up online eventually, as he mentioned he was on his way south to California, where animator’s are smarter, and carry recorders with them everywhere

I got off to a good start this month with posting, but it’s been a while. Here’s some of the work I’ve done since last post. This first one’s my favorite.

I like the composition of this one:

The expression in this one:

The looseness of this one:

The expression of this one:

And the color of this one:

I’m putting together a gestures spread for my portfolio. This is not an easy task. I’ve been narrowing down nine months of gestures to a two-page spread. In the process I discovered some gestures I haven’t posted before. Here they are:

As I venture into pastels, this is great stuff to look at. The simplicity of it is what strikes me the most; So much with so little. I find it easy to get mucky, and confused with this medium. But these drawings teach me to take the time to analyze the pose so I can reduce my line count and express raw feeling.

It’s all there, what’s missing isn’t necesarry:

Here’s her website:

http://www.patriciaahannaway.com/