technique

Analysing Animation With My Little Pony

2 Comments / Animation /

YouTube user gbaudette has been posting analysis of scenes from, er, My Little Pony. While some may deride the show and its concept, the fact remains that there are more than a few industry veterans either behind or formerly behind it, so it does make sense to look at it from a technique perspective.

Thus far, gbaudette has posted videos on walk cycles, camera moves and the one below, a complex throw shot.

The nice thing about these videos is that they break things down into their elements, and prove that complexity is not necessarily all that it appears.

The series is relatively new, but has racked up over 50,000 views in just two weeks and is well worth checking out if you’re a budding animator.

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Lauren Payne Calls A Spade A Spade

Animation, Disney /

Via: Technique

Lauren Payne at the Gergia Tech student newspaper “Technique” sums up the 3-D release of Beauty and the Beast and doesn’t pull a lot of punches with this quote:

The marriage of hand-drawn animation and computer-generated imagery seen in the iconic ballroom sequence undoubtedly stirs a pleasant sense of nostalgia, but it also serves as a reminder of the artistic experimentation that has more or less taken leave of Disney’s recent animated features—the fact that the Walt Disney Company has resurrected this piece of work for an additional run conjures an image of a has-been high school football star sipping whisky before a case of old trophies.

I can’t help but agree with her insofar that there is re-releasing a film on the big screen, and re-releasing a film and promoting it as a new release. Disney appears to be doing the latter with this film and the Lion King.

Why they couldn’t simply re-release them as 2-D and avoid the cost of “conversion” is beyond me.

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It’s Time To Stop Making Lists of Top Animated Films

1 Comment / Animation, Opinion /

Yoinked from Animated Review’s Top 100 Aniamted Movies post

Let’s be honest, animation is not a genre. It is, as Richard O’Connor calls it, a technique, and a marvelous one at that. It encompasses as wide a range of genres as live-action, so why do we keep seeing lists of top animated films and not much else?

OK, sure, we see lists of top films all the time, but lists of live-action genres seems to be much more prevalent than animated ones. Granted, there haven’t been as many animated films made over the years, but that in no way precludes people from making them.

For the record, I’m not against general top/favourite lists, it’s just that when it comes to animation, people can rattle off their favourites but when it comes to being a bit more specific, classifying films as Disney or non-Disney is about as specific as you’ll get from most folks.

A potential theory is that animated films tend to be classified as just that. You rarely see an animated film being described as a comedy or a horror, etc, etc. Yes, this is much to do with who makes them but there is no reason for an animated film to be confined to “animation” and not much more.

Let’s see more lists that get into specifics. Like a top 10 of action animated films, or a top 20 of romatic/love stories.

Animated films are squeezed into one category all to often, by both studios and the public alike. Let’s try and separate them out so that we can hopefully see them for what they really are.

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