This is the second music video from “Dr Tom ou La Liberté en cavale.” The first clip was posted two weeks ago. Wonderful work once again, especially in the color design.

What a beautiful film! Way better than I thought it would be. The animation was superb. Mind-bogglingly good. Literally blew my mind with some of stuff they pulled off, especially with Maximus, the horse. One thing that really stood out to me was the quality of posing and expressions, especially in the hands. Watch the scenes with Flynn and Mother Gothel gesturing with their hands. Brilliant stuff. Nice to hear some Menken songs again, though the Mother Gothel songs really echoed Ursula singing to Ariel.

What was with the previews early in the year? They setup a completely different expectation for this film. Anyway, congratulations to everyone involved. You must be so proud! Disney has really made a leap here. This is the closest I’ve seen the traditional aesthetic transformed into CG. Bravo!

What did you think?

Can’t beat this for value. From Victor Vinyals Vimeo Page (Say that five times fast! ):

This is the teaser of Dreamwork’s animator Mike Walling webinar for Jason Ryan Animation site. He animated Skyscraper, the character I built and rigged for Jason Ryan’s iAnimate.net school.

Pick up your copy here.

Just saw this on Facebook and had to post it immediately. Uli Meyer recently did this fantastic St. Trinians animation test in Ronald Searle’s beautiful drawing style.

On September 22nd I presented a 25sec animation test featuring a St. Trinian’s schoolgirl to the creator of those classic British characters, Ronald Searle himself. Searle has had a few bad experiences when it comes to animation -his drawing style is extremely difficult to adapt and apart from a few short pieces of animation done by Ivor Woods in the 70s, he hasn’t been impressed by any attempts. Nevertheless, I thought I’d give this a go and am delirious to report that he loved it! He even commented that it was the best he’d seen since Ivor: a truly wonderful compliment.

Click here for the rest of the entry. Also, check out Uli Meyer’s post on his blog.

Here’s a great look at what learning stop motion animation at Sheridan is like. Looks like they have a great setup. You can see another fifteen or so videos on the “official” YouTube page. Stop-motion animation is a true love of mine. I briefly experimented with it back at AAU, and it’s probably the most fun I’ve had dealing with the technical side of animation. I documented a bit of my brief stint here, here, here, and here.

From my limited experience, I can tell you that if you ever wanted to explore this amazing art any further, and you don’t have the cash to join a great program like Sheridan, then I’d suggest you get a copy of this book (which is shown in one of the Sheridan videos above). It’s amazing, and tells you everything you need to get started. You might have to search around to find a copy though, as it’s quite rare now.

Kevin Parry‘s, The Arctic Circle is another brilliant stop-motion short from Sheridan. This one has a great story, fantastic animation, and I absolutely love the title cards. A breathe of fresh air to start the day.

Update: There’s a great interview with Kevin here, and a post about his encounter with Tim Burton.

Found at Ron Doucet’s, Flooby Nooby Blog.

Lots more here!

Ok, so the narrator said that part, but it’s true! A real treat to watch Chomet animate, and very interesting to see the way he holds his pencil while doing so. Up until now I’ve only seen/done it that way in figure drawing classes.

Stellar weight animation. This film just looks beautiful!

Arnie Fenner just posted some great advice on the Muddy Colors blog that I think everyone should read. I think the first rule should be shown to a number of animation journalists online. This video is mentioned in the post, and while it’s quite heated it cuts straight to the point, and can be applied to any artistic medium freelance or not. As new as I am to this industry, I’ve already experienced some of what he’s talking about.

Recently I’ve been enjoying reading Jim Korkis’ latest book, The Vault of Walt. It’s entertaining in as much the same way as Walt’s People and Working with Walt (A new volume of which will be released soon), except it reminds me more of the stuff that doesn’t make the final edit.

Having had a bit of an insider’s look at the process of putting these kinds of books together, I can tell you ( based on the interviews that I’ve transcribed for Walt’s People) that there’s a ton of little anecdotes, and casual conversation points that don’t usually make it to print. Didier often tells me just to transcribe the really interesting stuff for Walt’s People (sometimes he’ll give more specific instructions). But the problem I have with this is that I find it all so interesting, and usually just end up transcribing everything and let him choose what the edit out. As I said, a lot of the really casual stuff gets edited out, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s often just as enjoyable to hear/read as the stuff that makes it into the final published volume.

This is why I’m enjoying The Vault of Walt so much. It’s such an easy read, and the stories are so enjoyable. Having read dozens of books on Disney history, it’s always amazing to constantly find new stories to read. I look forward to any subsequent volumes from Korkis and thoroughly recommend this to everyone interested in Disney Animation History.

Since a good Disney book review is not complete without a good Walt Disney quote, I’ll offer up this one from The Vault of Walt. This quote is one of the parts in the book I have read elsewhere, so I guess if you want to see the “new” stuff, you’ll have to get a copy.

By nature, I’m an experimenter. To this day, I don’t believe in sequels. I can’t follow popular cycles. I have to move on to new things. So with the success of Mickey I was determined to diversify. We kept fooling around with The Silly Symphonies until we came up with The Three Little Pigs. I could not possibly see how we could top pigs with pigs. But we tried, and I doubt whether one member of this audience can name the other cartoons in which the pigs appeared.

I know I can’t. Make sure you check the posts by Didier Ghez and Mark Mayerson concerning this book.