Let there be Sound!

I am very honored that Jef Nassenstein, my former coach, boss and colleague from the Netherlands Film and Television Academy has created a soundtrack for my animation. I just sent him a bunch of comments. It's not easy to critique one's mentor!

Jef is now an animator himself, since his retirement he has created two animations, the first one ("Match") made it straight to the Venice film festival. He recently sent me a copy of his second animation ("Shells") which has almost painterly backgrounds that created by a clever use of textures, transparency and an enormous amount of reflections. The image on the right is a still form that great animation (FIVE times as long as my latest piece... )

Got Balls?

I am teaching a 3D Modeling class using Lightwave this Spring. Basically the same class I taught last Fall, but now I also have advanced students doing animation. They have to create the standard first assignment in animation for the next class: a bouncing ball. Here is what I created as a test.

Done! Almost...

I did not actually drop off the face of the earth, but did finally finish my animation. That is: there are a few compositing issues to correct and there is no sound yet, but the edit is final at a whopping two minutes and five teen seconds! Barely made the festival deadline I was working towards.

Hope to return to life and blog a bit more. I did live as a tourist for a week when my parents came over for a visit (Statue of Liberty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the whole none yards: see Flickr). Classes start again next week, so you can expect a post or two with Lightwave stuff.

One but last shot...

Have not been blogging again lately, but did make progress on my animation. Had to conquer quite a few rendering issues with scene number four, but came out on top! I am now (still) working on the final scene, which only has two shots, albeit long ones. The video below shows my character misbehaving once again, swimming of like an evolved artificial creature:

Rats!

Daniel Maskit of Digital Domain was right to put Pixar on trial for making an animation that is just too good (Drat, More Rats!). Finaly watched "Ratatouille" and the quality of the animation is depressingly high. The story doesn't completely suck either. And there are no Randy Newman songs in it, another reason why it is way better then "Cars"!

Despite that discouraging DVD viewing I'm still moving along with my animation. Rendering scene 4, animating the final scene (#5).