Computer Animation Arts

Okay, so I was procrastinating this afternoon by checking out any unseen trailers, and as I watched the preamble for Toys in the Attic - an animated film of which I'd never heard - I thought to myself, 'this is like Toy Story as approached by the likes of Svankmajer or Jiri Barta'... and guess what? This is a Jiri Barta movie - yes, him of that oppressively dark version of The Pied Piper of Hamelin - actually released originally in 2009, but now given a USA make-over featuring the voice talents of Joan Cusack and Forest Whitaker!

Here's a short article I came across about how environment artist, Christian Davis, spends his lunch breaks. This Blastoise was made using Z-brush, Maya and Photoshop in Davis' spare time and in under 5 weeks. Click Here for Articl e Sammy Butler

This is a message for all our about-to-be Year 2 CGAA students:  if you email me at pgomm@ucreative.ac.uk  from your personal emails (i.e. the ones you used to set up your individual blogs), I'll use it to make you a named author on the group blog, which means you won't need to login via the 'Class of 2011' password etc. Blogger will issue you an invite, which you'll need to accept. Spread the word!

A six minute history lesson - enjoy!

Hey guys hope your all doing well. I have had this problem pop up and it's starting to really bug me. The image planes in the back ground are messing up/glitching out and I can’t get them to go normal again. This has been happening to everything in the scene including the torso and has spread to other scenes in different projects. However the textures show in render but not in the view port. I have refreshed, re-saved even re-edited the texture files. As of yet nothing has worked. I even started a new project and it is still happening. If it’s technical I don't know what to do.  I first noticed it happen a while ago while doing a tut. It happened a couple of times and lasted a couple of seconds (like a glitch).  Recently though its been a lot more, sometimes I would have to close the project and then reopen it again. i haven't used maya for a little while and i cam back to a project and it was just keeps happening. it won't go away no matter...

If my previous Visitations were from 'beyond the stars', these alternate manifestations of time + light + 35mm are most likely from beyond the grave. Or maybe they're angels? Or demons. Once again, I take only limited credit for the results. Long exposure photography is a dance in the darkness and these even more so, for this time it was the light sources that remained stationary, while the human figure ebbed and flowed and turned as if to smoke. There is something inherently spooky about photography, the way a photographic image is sometimes able to capture what wasn't present at the time of its taking. I'm sure the luckless photographer, Keith Jennings, would agree. When I look at these images - especially the first two - there are things appearing out of those woods that I can't readily explain - and I was there. When I was a child, I had an encyclopedia of unexplained phenomena, which I pored over, drawn always to the photographic...

Hi Phil, I was wondering whether the 3rd year timetable has been put together yet, as I need to know from now which days we will be in. Thanks

Something new from concept artist Feng Zhu...

There hasn't been a ' TheTune' for a long time! I listened to this earlier today on BBC Radio 4 and really enjoyed it. It's a fairly technical discussion about how European classical composers like Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg influenced Hollywood film scores from the 1930's onwards. Catch it while it's still available! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01m0lv4 "Young British Composer Tarik O' Regan tells the story of how the tradition of Western classical music, its composers and maestros, underpinned the golden age of Hollywood film score. More or less the entire Hollywood music scene, as it blossomed in the 1930s, looked to serious European and Russian composers for film score composition. Stravinsky, Schoenberg, two of the greatest composers of 'serious' 20th century music, both lived and worked in LA - much to the consternation of the European classical music establishment. Many composers on the run from Europe i...

Maybe it's the quality of the dark or the size of the spiders, but for whatever reason I find my Summer holidays in rural France fire my imagination and turn my thoughts to phantasmagoria.  The photographs that follow in this home-grown Supplement were taken in the Summer of 2011 and 2012 using 35mm film of varying speeds. Using very primitive kit - an ancient Praktica, a household torch, LED camping lights, a mosquito net, bamboo canes, plastic water bottles, vine leaves, recycling sacks, a paper lampshade, a green football, a hurricane lamp - I set about formulating some kind of creative response to the primal dark and cinematic expanses of stars that characterise this location. There is something properly magical about long exposure photography. I am entirely absent from these images (the one visible figure is none other than 'Photoshop Phill' ), and yet I am nonetheless in all of them. It was me whirling those comet trails through the night. It w...

We all know as a CG course how sitting all day long in front of a computer screen can be exhausing. Most people would think it's actually less tiring working on a desk as it doesn't require much physical activity but in reality it can cause a lot more health problems than any other job. What triggered me to post this is my recent visit to a doctor who found a small inflammation on  my kneecap (nothing serious) which was caused by..my lack of exercise!I don't mean to scare anyone but just to pass on some advice about how to keep healthy and therefore work effectively. There are  alot of ways we can keep ourselves healthy and still work in front of the screen. There is no need for very intensive exercise or an expensive gym membership to keep  active. Even small ways of moving about like taking the stairs instead of the lift or taking a break to walk can help.There are a lot of ways to exercise like working out at home, jogging or even cycling- whatever the individual ...

Congratulations to  Ruben 'Class of 2012' Martins   whose work has just been profiled in  Digital Arts  magazine's 'freshest creatives' showcase.  Check out Ruben's website  here .

Today I visited Tom Beg's Masters of Arts installation at the LV21 Lightship moored at Gillingham Pier and wanted to share my experience. What an extraordinarily un-rectangular, idiosyncratic venue!  Once on board the bright red ship - which looked almost surreally radiant under the fierce glare of the midday sun - I had to descend into the bowels of the boat, my curiosity piqued by the enticing blue glow from below...   What awaited me were a series of softly undulating projections comprising vibrant colour, caustic-inspired textures and LV21-centric data expressed through pulsing lines of morse code.  At times it was like being in some large tropical fish tank - somehow submerged and floating amongst shoals of vivid fish. There is something inherently magical about projection mapping, the way complicated surfaces and spaces can become precision-engineered canvases for moving imagery. The photos below can't really do  Tom's efforts justice, because ...

BAIDIR is TV animated series project in progress created by : Slimane ANISS, Charles LEFEBVRE and Thierry RIVIERE. "One morning Nayah is playing hide and seek with her big brother Baidir, when suddenly the room is destroyed and Nayah has disappeared. Baidir sets off on a wild quest in a fantasy world." . Like always it easy to recognise the work of some former Gobelins students, because they just always have this exclusively artistic trait of their works. BAIDIR from slimane aniss on Vimeo .

Here is a bit weird and interesting music video of the "Liars" with some interesting motion capture stuff going on. It is funny how completely broken skinning and glitchy animation can still work for this. Director: ian cheng choreographer: madeline hollander producer: christian de vietri performers: david yijae, max van der sterre, ade chike torbert assistant animation: mike liu motion capture services: motion capture nyc, steve day, henry brito.

Just caught this article on Empire and thought I should share it. A very lovely variety of concept art from different Pixar films has been put together here , so take a look! :D