Update: Today’s the last day to enter. See below for instructions. Tomorrow I will announce the Christmas Give-away!

I’m pretty amazed at how this blog is developing. Through it, I’ve met so many amazing people. Blogging is something I enjoy doing when I can find the time, and I’m glad I’ve found so many people that enjoy the same things I like to share. Now that the Christmas Season is upon us, and people are using the aStore a lot more than usual, I think it’s about time for another give away, possibly two, don’t you? So in an effort to grow the community and show my appreciation, I’ll be giving away a copy of Eric Goldberg’s Sketch Book, “Enjoy It While You Can, Kid.” Hopefully we have time for another giveaway before Christmas.

So, how do you get your hands on it? Same drill as before. Just scroll to the bottom of the page and join the community via Google Friend Connect. If you’re already in there, you’re already entered. I’ll randomly select someone on December first and mail them an early Christmas present. I’ll announce the winner on my Twitter feed. Oh, and by the by, it’s signed by Eric Goldberg too!

The more people that use the aStore, the more I’ll be able to do these fun giveaways. I’ve never intended to make a profit from the blog, so once the maintenance costs (server, domains, etc) are covered, the rest goes back into the site. Here’s to a bright future.

I’ve decided to invite some artists to contribute to the blog on a regular basis. But before they start posting, I thought I’d introduce them. I’m starting to get a respectable readership (thank you!), and I want to make sure this place continues to inspire people. I have a vision to keep this place positive while giving readers many different perspectives from artists all over the industry. Who knows if that will ever happen, but this is the first step towards that goal. So without further adieu, here’s the first two contributors for On Animation. Give them a warm welcome in the comments section.

Kyle Kenworthy

Kyle Kenworthy is an animator at Schell Games. He’s worked on projects like Toy Story Mania, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean Online, Disney’s Toontown Online, and he’s currently working on The Mummy Online. I first discovered Kyle’s blog back in January. I just stumbled onto it one day and really enjoyed his Acting Reference posts. I asked Kyle to post some similar content here. He’s a machine with this stuff, and it’s always so inspirational. Kyle’s also an excellent animator, so I’m sure whatever he posts will be right up your alley. Here’s a sampling of his skills:

Michael Ruocco

Michael J. Ruocco is currently a 4th year traditional animation student at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His name might sound familiar. He’s recently made headlines on many blogs for his passion for the art form. Michael generously shared his recent gem of an eBay find with the community, a rare pencil test of Timothy Mouse from Dumbo. He also created the following side by side comparison of the Disney short, Orphan’s Benefit:

He clearly shares my passion for traditional animation, and as an added bonus he brings to the blog a much needed east coast perspective.

Both artists are extremely passionate and hard working, and post the kind of content I like to read. I’m really excited about seeing what they choose to share with you guys on the blog. I also really want to encourage you to visit both Kyle and Michael‘s blogs. Chances are if you like this blog, you’ll like theirs too.

I have a couple more artists lined up to contribute, but nothing is totally confirmed with them, so I’ll leave their introductions for another post. I’m trying to fill gaps, and get people (that are passionate and willing) to post about topics that are being missed on the animation blog sphere. I’d like to get an international perspective, so I’ll be on the look out for someone to fill that role in the near future. Here’s to the continued success of the blog, and building a passionate community of positive artists.

Last night I had my very first Cirque du Soleil experience. It was very cool, and I couldn’t help but think about it from an animation perspective. It was really neat to see some modern day mime theater entertainment for one thing, but it was also a great chance to see the upper limits of human body mechanics being pushed to the extreme. It’s quite incredible what these contortionists and acrobats can do with their bodies. I recommend the show to everyone that gets a chance. It’s a great mix of comedy, music, and acrobatic entertainment.

The coolest part of the show:

These girls are insanely flexible:

It’s my birthday today! Here’s a hilarious piece by Austin Madison that made me laugh:

I stopped playing video games years ago. The last system I played was a Nintendo 64, and the last game I played was Diablo 2. When I decided to go cold turkey it was because I considered them a waste of time, and there were so many other productive things I’d rather be doing. I haven’t played any of the more modern systems, but they’re becoming a little ridiculous. It seems we’ve now come full circle and have rendered video games obsolete. Can someone tell me what the point of scanning your skateboard into an Xbox (so you can skateboard just like in real life) is when you could just go out and skateboard? Wasn’t the point of playing video games to sit on your ass and do nothing but have fun? Someone is going to re-invent that concept when people get too tired of playing all these active video games like Wii Tae Bo. It’ll be perfect timing as soon everyone has forgotten what it’s like to sit down and use a controller. I understand that it’s all about promoting better habits amongst adolescents, but come on people, get outside and be active. It’s so much more fulfilling. What do you think?

A lot of people have been e-mailing me and leaving comments asking about my “CalArts status.”  That is, whether or not I’ll be attending this year. Before I start belaboring on, I’d like to explain why I’m posting this. I made a public appeal for money, and I feel I have a responsibility to let the public know what happened to that money. For my peace of mind at the very least.

The kids that applied for this September have all been notified if they’ve been accepted or not by now. For those that don’t know, I deferred the first year I was eligible, and planned on attending this September. I’ve held out as long as possible on making the decision because it hasn’t looked good, and all I could do was hold on and hope I could pull it off. But it’s time to move on. Even with my savings, scholarships, and donations, I couldn’t come close. It’s time to let go and re-focus. As I posted before, I will be teaching myself from now on, and if CalArts becomes a possibility in the future, I’ll be sure to post about it.

I’ve always wanted to go to the school, and I thought that if I could afford AAU, then I could afford CalArts. But the truth is I attended AAU and I couldn’t afford it. Granted I did receive better loan support for AAU than I would have for CalArts, but I couldn’t keep it up at the rate I was paying for tuition. The way it worked out with my government’s student loans program was, I would have to wait until half way through a semester before the paperwork would go through and they would release the funds to me. So there were times where I was carrying a $10,000 tuition balance on my credit card for months until the funds were released and I could pay it off, which is pretty stupid. But hey, I really wanted to go. And it’s not like I knew it was going to be like that going into AAU. Since CalArts costs more, and I would receive less in loan support, it’s just not possible even with what I have saved up.

The #1 Question: What happens to all the donations?

The donations I received from Cartoon Brew readers in response to Amid’s post on my behalf have gone to Help the Hodges. I kept the money for the past year and change as I’ve been holding on to the hope that I still may attend CalArts. It was uncomfortable for me to ask for assistance, and it was uncomfortable for me to have the money sitting in a Paypal account waiting to be used. I have contacted the donators and asked for their permission to re-direct the the donations to Help the Hodges (crediting the original donators and not myself).

So there you have it. It unfortunate, but it’s not the end of the world. I’ll just have to work a little harder on my own, that’s all. Nothing I’m not used to. I don’t want this to be a soap box post or something that reflects poorly on any of the schools I have mentioned. This is my personal situation, and no one is responsible for it but me. Needless to say I’ve learned a lot in this process, if that’s what you’d call it, enough to be a resource for others. And since I love to share and help others (the reason I started this blog all those years ago), I’d be happy to help anyone going through similar situations by answering your questions. Just shoot me a message.

I’m back from an unexpected break. It seems I was working so hard my wrist decided to stop working again. I’ve been dealing with RSI problems on and off for the last ten years. I’ve always just taken time off rather than face the problem. I’ve tried all sorts of easy fixes, like buying a new chair and physiotherapy and chiropractic care, but it seems my “injury” is at a stage where I have to make life style changes in order to continue doing what I love. I started by taking about three weeks off (so the swelling would go down) and starting a new strength training routine. This along with many other things I’ll write about later seem to be working, and I’ll gradually be getting back to spending hours in front of the computer a day (yay…).

In my spare time I’ve been reading up on this debilitating condition, talking to fellow sufferers (Eric Luhta has been an amazing help), and enjoying the Stanley Cup Playoffs (Go Canucks Go!). As mentioned above, I plan to put together a helpful post about this often misunderstood injury. I had to dig to find good information for myself, so I thought it would be another good resource to add to the site. I’ll get some testimonials from industry people that have dealt with the problem and find out what worked for them in overcoming it, and how they live with it and work through it every day. If you would like to share your own experiences, just shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment. I might include your insights in my post.

Anyway, I’ve also watched a few movies in my absence, and I’ve always wanted to start an acting reference section to the site. Watching all these movies really spurred on that desire. You really can’t get enough of this stuff as an animator. So following in the foot steps of Jean-Denis Haas, and Kyle Kenworthy, here’s my first entry to the brand spanking new acting reference category…

This clip is from The Count of Monte Cristo, one of my favorite films (and books). This is the moment where Edmond Dantes realizes his friend is screwing him over. At this point in the story he’s not very smart, and doesn’t know how to react. Look at the way he acts out his repetition of, “Complicated…”. There’s so much anger and misunderstanding going on under there, yet the movement in the face is so subtle. CG animation is capable of this kind of subtlety. It’s a matter of the animator having these observations stored away in his/her head in order to think of them in the moment.

In this example, his eyes maintain the same menacing/clueless expression, whilst his mouth moves up and almost smiles in a sort of sick desperation. It quickly drops, and that’s basically it. The effect is achieved. Tell me honestly, if you had to animate this shot, would you have thought of that? I wouldn’t have.

Lots more to come for this category, but as I said I’ll be taking it easy, gradually working my way up to the hours I was doing before. That’s enough computer for today…

I looked like this guy a minute ago.

I hit one of those walls where my creativity exceeds my ability. It happens all the time so you’d think I’d be used to it. Nope. I was going to get frustrated (because that’s the easy thing to do). But in moments like this I always remember the great words of Glen Keane in his interview on Animation Podcast. Something to the effect of when this happens, it’s not that you’re a lousy artist, it’s just that you’ve hit the edge of your knowledge, and you need to get out there and become a student again and figure it out. I always marvel that those words came from such an esteemed artist. At this point I come full circle emotionally and set out to learn what’s missing.

The next time you hit the wall, think about it like this and you just may avoid all that awkward self-loathing.

So now that the Winter Olympics are over, and an estimated 40,000 people are leaving Vancouver today after the party of all parties last night, I think I can get back to work. I’ve honestly never watched Olympics this much before, but there’s something about it when it’s all around you. It’s infectious, and your heart just glows.

I was fortunate enough to get tickets to a bunch of events for Christmas, something I would never have been able to afford myself. The hot ticket in town was yesterday’s big hockey game. People were lined up outside the ice rink before puck drop offering lucky ticket holders $10,000 for their tickets. But those lucky enough to get a seat didn’t bat an eyelid, as they would rather experience the gold rush, and they did. Canada’s pride was saved when we won the big game. It was a close one, props to the United States. What a game! With the win Canada set a new Olympic record for the most gold medals won at the Winter Olympics. Nobody hear expected to beat the mighty United States in the total medals column, but for us to get third with 1/10th the population, is remarkable to me. I’m really proud right now.

Throughout the broadcast of the Olympics, CTV, one of our national networks, aired a couple of “Video Essays” that were put together by The Globe and Mail’s, Stephen Brunt. I thought these video essays did a good job of summing up the sentiment and pride this nation has shown for the past two weeks. I thought I would share one of them with you.

I just spent the day downtown. Today I learned how much cooler the Olympics are when they come to you. There’s such an electricity in the air. I’ve never seen so many people in Vancouver. I actually felt like a tourist in my own town. Props to VanOc for doing such an amazing job with the organization as well. It’s very impressive to see how smoothly everything is running. I love this town. It’s great the world gets to see just how amazing it is.

Do you have a lot of animation books? I do. I have way too many.

I guess if I had to make a resolution this year it would be to cut back on buying every animation book I see. I have a massive collection. If an animation book came out in the last ten years, I probably have it. And the thing is, I don’t need them, it’s just impulse now.

But now I’ve gotten to the point where I’m really picky about the books I buy. This is a necessity brought on by the change in times. You see, there used to be a time about ten or fifteen years ago when there wasn’t fifty new animation books released every year. It used to be that when an animation related book came out it was probably pretty good, and worth the fifty bucks you have to spend to get it. Now there’s so many of them, that you have to start judging quality over quantity. Or else you’ll go broke.

The difficult thing about judging that is it can be hard to find a lot of these animation books at your local Chapters or Barnes and Nobles. You have to go to specialty book stores, and pay specialty prices. Either that or buy it blindly off Amazon, where the “Look Inside” feature generously (insert sarcasm here)  shows you the Table of Contents and Index in order to try and entice you to buy. Close, but no cigar…And skimming through the out of print gems before you buy is next to impossible. How often do you think you’ll find one of those at your local used book store? But the library is good sometimes! Too bad you can’t buy those books.

So what do you do? How do you filter? We (animation artists) need some sort of enthusiast to review “art of” books and give us a better glimpse of the books we intend to spend our hard earned money on to make sure we’ll get plenty of eye candy for our dollar. Because the truth is, once you’ve read one animation art of book, you’ve read them all. The same goes for most of the behind the scenes features on DVD. We all get how animated movies are made by now, this is our passion. Tell us something interesting, and specific about the feature you’re writing the book on! That is, if you have to include text. What I’m personally after is lots and lots of glorious art. Great art speaks for itself, and the truly studious get more out of that than words. That’s why I’m in love with the new Disney series on Story and Animation (I wonder what will be next, Layout maybe?).

Now you could go to the specialty stores, find out which ones you just have to have, and then buy them online for much less…OR you could check out this great blog I just discovered: Parka Blogs. This is the enthusiast I was talking about. He’s got a very popular blog where he shows you lots of pictures, and even a virtual skim through video of every book he reviews. He also ranks his favorites, and he’s reviewed a lot of books so far. Next time you’re thinking about buying an animation book, take a look at this blog to see if it’s worth your money. From this blog, I can see that I’m in store for another beautiful art of book filled with Nico Marlet work in The Art of How to Train Your Dragon. It looks like that book might just make the cut onto my Amazon Wishlist.

On top of limiting the amount of books I buy from now on, I’m doing the same for the ones I currently own. I’ve been slowly selling off all the books I don’t absolutely need. I can’t believe how many books I have that I’m just not that impressed with anymore. There’s only a handful of animation books out there that I consider permanent fixtures on my book shelves. These are the magical books that I’ll be able to read year in and year out, and always learn from. The rest are just personal preference, and I’ve narrowed my massive collection down to a half a book case worth of books I just won’t part with. At least not yet. An animation career can take you far and wide, and I’ve heard from many an animation veteran about the difficulty of moving all those books from place to place. A couple boxes is enough for me. I wouldn’t want things to get out of control.

These pictures I’ve been showing you aren’t even my books. My collection is big, but not quite this big. They belong to a friend of mine, one of the aforementioned animation vets, and they represent a fraction of his collection. On one hand, it’s pretty cool. I’d love to nose around and look at the books I don’t have. On the other hand, it inspires me to keep my own library of inspiration to a minimum. That’s a lesson I learned big time when I first started trying to sell some of my books. You never get the money out that you put in. Art books are notoriously expensive, and unless you’ve kept them in brand new condition, people will only pay pennies for them. Next time you go to buy a book, really think about whether or not you have to have it.  Just my two cents.

If you haven’t already noticed, I have removed both the Famous Artist Course and Composing Pictures PDFs from my blog. I removed the former because, although I didn’t receive a request from the Famous Artist School to do so, I was notified of the more ridiculous and unnecessary measures they took to spread the word that they were not happy about it.  A simple e-mail would have worked, but everyone has their methods. Suffices to say, I got the message. I’m not here to cause controversy or break any laws. I simply followed in the footsteps of others by posting materials I assumed were unavailable to the average Joe. And especially the average Joe from South America.

So why me, why was I singled out after so many before me have done the same? Because when I did one better than the aforementioned “others before me” by providing complete scans, I supposedly ventured into copyright violation territory. That’s the easy way to explain it. The better, and I think more accurate way to explain it, is that a complete course is a mighty find for a would be artist. Once the word spread, my blog started getting some very heavy traffic, up to two thousand people a day. A lot of these people were kind enough to leave a comment, sending the comment count from 50 to 250 in one day. Some of the nostalgic stories in those comments are a great read, and I suggest you check them out. So what does all this mean? It means the response was overwhelming, and someone started seeing the dollar signs. What I was offering for free with the best of intentions was no longer acceptable. And that’s fine with me, it was fun while it lasted. Besides, I didn’t create the course. I just gave the school the exposure it needed to announce it’s releasing a new course in a down loadable format. At least, I’d like to think I did.

As for Composing Pictures, I’d like to think I played a similar hand in it’s upcoming re-printing. I took it down to avoid any further copyright issues. Whether I contributed to it’s re-printing or not, it is fantastic news. Between The Famous Artist Course and Composing Pictures, there really aren’t better alternatives to learning the world of art. So I’m thrilled that I was able to contribute, in however tiny way I did, to bringing these great old texts back into mass circulation in new and advanced formats.  They honestly should be permanent fixtures in every artist’s library, whether digital or tangible.

The point of this post is really to reply to the mass e-mails I’m getting asking me to put the course back up, which I will not be doing. The post pages will remain on my blog as a record of the exposure it received, but I will not be providing those PDFs again. I must respect the wishes of the Famous Artist School.

I will also not be providing materials of this nature in the future. I’m just a struggling artist myself, and I don’t need the headache. This one is in the books now, and I’ll never reference it again. It’s forgotten. Let’s move on. I sincerely hope this leads to better things for the Famous Artist School, and artists everywhere around the world that have benefited from it.

To art.