Final Crit for Art 352 Animation

Let's put on a show! If you can get your final projects to me by noon, Monday, December 7, I'll put together a compilation DVD we can watch in Meese auditorium for our final. That will be Tuesday, December 8 at 6:30 p.m. If Meese is booked, we'll come up with an alternate location.

Final Crit for Comics & Picture Books AND Art 450/496

We're on the home stretch, so we'll basically just be doing studio days from here on out. I'll be around to help with technical junk, therapy, and self-esteem issues as needed. Heck, I can even provide feedback on your actual work too. Why not?

Our final critique will be on Monday, December 7 at 6:30 p.m. in MA 101 (and the lab to look at web stuff). We'll make an unholy Frankenstein mix of Comics/Picture Books and Art 450 Special Projects (and 496 Capstone!) I'll bring the pizza. Plan on having your finished product whatever that may be--web site, final dummy, individual illustrations, etc. As always, keep your blog updated! Electronic existence is good for your stuff.

Good Stuff - 3 Cheers For Phil McAndrew

I forgot who sent me this, but I think it is wonderful. Go check out Phil McAndrew's work!http://www.philintheblanks.com/comics/manenough.html

More nifty links

Check out these lovely stop-motion delights.

Muto - A wall painted animation

Strawberry Swing

Final Project - Art 352 Animation

Hey, let's do a final project! Come up with a concept or treatment for the project, put it on your blog and we'll look at 'em on Thursday.

Here're some links that might help get you going:

The Blackheart Gang! Make sure to check out Tale of How and The Making of the Tale of How.

Michel Gagne. Some concepts for Ratatouille, really nice post on pre-production work for Iron Giant, and his nifty silhouette animations which I'm pretty sure were done with Flash.

Good Stuff: LeUyen Pham

I picked up some good stuff from More Fun last week. Including Prince of Persia, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. She's done some beautiful picture book work as well. Those of you considering illustration, ought to take a gander at her website, this interview, and well, uh, this other interview. Good stuff here on college years, getting started in the field, and her technical/creative approach. Read and learn.

How to make a scrolling background! And how to do Swap Symbols!

Here are Miles' videos for making a scrolling background for your walk cycles. Enjoy.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4
Video 5

Here's a simplified Symbol swap video too -- useful for setting up a character for lip synch.

Jeff File for Animation Class-- lip synch with phonemes and flash symbols

Animation students, click here to download the Jeff.FLA file (if you dare). It's a 9 mb zip file, so it might take a bit to download. Patience and all that. Anyhow, you can analyze to see how I worked with nested symbols and "swapping" for the phonemes. Quality. Regular folk, can click the picture to see the swf file.

How to loop a SWF

1. Create a new layer, call it "Actions" and insert a blank keyframe on the last frame. See below--click on the images for higher res.

2. Make sure you are on the timeline on the blank keyframe you just made. Click Window > Actions
and then type:

gotoAndPlay(1);

Yer done.

Enbed Code For Your SWFs

Here is the embed code for putting up your own swf files:

<object height="230" width="395"> <param value="yourfilename.swf" name="movie">
<embed src="http://yourremotesite.com/yourfilename.swf" height="230" width="395"></embed></object>

DON"T COPY AND PASTE THIS CODE. IT WON'T WORK!!!!

Do download this .rtf that has the code for you to copy and paste!

Enter the correct height and width fit your actual movie size! (look under Modify > Document in Flash to get the dimensions. I've also found it works to make a copy of your movie and make a shrunken version that's under 400 pixels wide.

Walk Assignment

For Tuesday, October 27 have the following up on your blog.

1. A walk cycle including arms and legs.

2. A walk cycle with a panning background.

Remember:

1) Pans look better on ones (24 fps or 30 fps).

2) Arms tend to hit their extremes at different keys than the feet. For example, feet hit extremes on 1 and arms hit extremes on 3.

“Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero” at U of O!

Beg, borrow or steal a ride up to Eugene to check out “Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: The Art of the Superhero” up at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. It's up until January 3rd, so see it; it could change your life. . .