Wow, this blog’s been dead for a while, eh? I thought I should try to get back into the swing of things here. So what follows is a WHOLE ton of stuff that I’ve neglected to post.
First, go check out Cameron Fielding’s new demo reel for Turok. It some really amazing stuff. He has an incredible understanding of weight, balance, and force. For a little insight into some of the things he thinks about to accomplish these animations, browse through his older posts for some quick tips (some examples would be: less is more, feet first, and pyramids ).
Next, go check out Carlos Baena’s updated website. I know this has been posted all over the place, but once more won’t hurt. He’s got all sorts of great book recommendations on just about everything you could possibly correlate with animation. He’s also got some cool tips and tricks now, updated demo reels, artwork, and some live action stuff he’s been doing, just to name a few. Definitely worth a look… and a bookmark.
Next, the Kung Fu Panda website has been updated, complete with brand new trailer. The trailer has gotten quite a lot of negative response on cartoon brew. While I have no desire to continue the long argument here, I just want to say a few things in defense. Many have complained about the story, based on the trailer. You’ve seen a minute or two of choice shots that marketing feels are the best way to promote the movie (and saying nothing of the villain) and suddenly you’re an expert on the entire plot? The trailer tells you that, yes, it is an ‘unlikely hero’ story… so I guess there’s no need to see it since you’ve already seen Armageddon, right? A couple of oil drillers save the planet? Get out! A panda learns kung fu? No way! And for those of you that are now thinking that Kung Fu Panda is equivalent to Armageddon (eww) because of my lame comparison, lets not forget that Star Wars IV, A Few Good Men, Forrest Gump, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, (just to name a few) are all ‘unlikely hero’ stories, AND were all nominated for Best Picture of the year when they came out. (again, my point is not that KFP is equivalent to those movies either, just that the story of an ‘unlikely hero’ does not automatically make it a bad film) Next people are berating Dreamworks for using the song “Kung Fu Fighting”. I’m willing to bet you that kids eat it up, I bet entire families do too. In fact, most of the people outside of the artistic (animator/filmmaker?) community that most of my friends consist of will love it too. It’s just us that get incredibly annoyed with it. While I don’t agree with the music choice in the trailer, I suppose I can’t blame them? Anyway, in my personal opinion I think it’s probably the best story DW has made to date. In short – I can’t wait til the rest of the world gets to see it.
Lastly, I’ve been having HORRIBLE problems with spam comments on many of my blog posts (plenty per day) and its been quite a pain trying to delete them as fast as they come up. So I’m trying out this new spam prevention plugin. It means you might have to do one of those image-question thingys. Someone try it out and let me know if there are any problems. Hopefully this will help the situation.
Also, I will try to get back into posting a bit more regularly. Laters.
