Midnight doodle
I have not been posting much recently on my blog. That’s a good sign in a way. It means I have been quite busy with lots to do. And also been doodling a lot now and then… More to come soon…
08
Oct
09
Midnight doodle
For years, animated films have been considered as entertainment packages only for children. Sure, your parents might have sat down and watched with you “The Lion King” and really enjoyed it. But they would not watch it on their own if they had to, after all it’s a kids movie.
Ever since Mickey Mouse started whistling, animation has been ghettoized as a children’s medium and its practitioners condemned to anonymity.
Pixar has been trying to change that as they always make films not targetting only the children. However, they still have a long way to go.
I was walking in a DVD store looking for the film “Cars”. I found it in the children’s section. Seriously, all the animated films were available in children’s section. Even a film like “Persepolis” is found in children’s section. Persepolis is no way a children’s movie.
I think stores should organize these movies not in children’s section but in Animated Films Category… Till then, it’s still a long way for people to take this medium of story telling seriously for adult audience…
Why is classical animation so important? Or let me rephrase it: Why animating for CG sucks?
I am sure lot of animators have now realized the importance of knowing classical animation. The knowledge of 12 basic principles of animation.
However, I found tons of animators who have no classical background miss out on one major aspect of classical animation – there is no computer to do any inbetweens. In other words, there is no scope for being lazy.
How many times a CG animator has animated a simple cloth by animating bones? Nowadays, it’s so easy to just do a cloth simulation and bake the keys. However, when you animate the cloth by bones that deform it, you learn a lot.
From my experience in animating, I noticed that whenever I animate something I animated before, it becomes much easier to animate. Duh, right!!! Exactly, my point. The more you animate different objects, characters, etc; the more you collect the information gained in your knowledge bank.
There is another reason for not using computer simulations for objects like cloth, hair, etc. Animation is just a medium of telling your story across. The more we are gearing towards realism in animation, the more at times usage of it becomes impractical imo. It’s an art form! In classical animation, when animators animated a character, they had to animate all secondary objects and these were part of the character. Not a simulated object that you add later on. An example – the cape of a super hero adds a lot to the keyposes.
Lot of good movie rigs have the ability to control the simulated parts by an animator. This is very important!
I will post more on this with examples in future but for now stop being lazy and start animating some secondary objects. You will learn a lot…
28
Apr
09
Why An Aquarius Mind?
Few people asked me why I came up with the title An Aquarius Mind for my blog!
It was just by chance when I was creating my twitter account’s background picture – I put the title “An Aquarius Mind”. I actually wrote the title as a take on the film “A Beautiful Mind” directed by Ron Howard starring Russell Crowe.
Why Aquarius? The Aquarian philosophical and spiritual bent may help the many who have scientific leanings to combine these with the Aquarian yearning for the universal recognition of the brotherhood of man, and to embark on scientific research to fulfill their philanthropic ideals of benefiting mankind. Aquarians are usually associated with technology and the future.
Finally, I myself am an Aquarius.
