I just discovered These beautiful Pixar’s Little Golden Books! and at 2.99 a piece, I am buying all of them!

I will justify this purchase by saying that I am buying these for my daughter…and we will just leave it at that.

In animation, careful attention to detail is essential to giving a character life and making them feel as if they really exist on screen. It’s important to remember when animating a human face, is not simply a matter of moving the eyes, and mouth. There are a large number of factors to consider in even the most simple of moments.

For example, when a character furrows their brow. Its not simply a matter of lowering the eyebrows. A great animator considers that there are muscle groups in the forehead that tighten in a specific way to cause the skin (and thus, the eyebrows) to slide over the skull in specific way. Additional, muscles on the side of the face tighten almost involuntarily which causes the eyelids to draw closer together as well as causes the cheeks to tighten up. The skin on the top of the head may be drawn forward slightly as well, causing a persons hair to shift forward.

The human face is a surprisingly…malleable surface. Not convinced? Check this out.

This video serves as a perfect example of the surprising way the human face responds to “input”. Something to consider next time you set yourself to animating a furrowed brow…or a punch to the head.

We have begun redeveloping our innovative Doctum™ Learning Platform in order to better serve our clients by giving them more control of the learning development process. Currently, Iona’s design staff is working with our clients, our designers, and developers who use the platform to provide the improvements which lead to more efficient eLearning development. The new Doctum™ 2.0 platform promises to allow Iona and our clients to work more efficiently and effectively towards delivering effective learning solutions.

Iona’s Doctum™ platform is a standardized development tool which supports the design, production, and implementation of highly effective learning solutions. Doctum™ also allows clients to collaborate on course content in real-time. By using Doctum™, clients have greater control over their projects through the ability to make updates, revise scripts, leave comments, and provide feedback instantly to course developers.

Improvements planned for Doctum™ 2.0 include:

• Reinvestment in our core technologies
  • Increased stability
  • Modernized infrastructure
• Increased usability
• Developer utility
• Eased module creation
• Standardized system implementation
• Strengthen template design
• Modernize codebase
  • Transition to Flex and Action Script 3
  • Allow for easier templating from Flash, Illustrator, and Photoshop Designers

The Iona Group assisted the Museum of Science and Industry in producing a high-definition video presentation that connects with real time data to inform museum visitors of the environmental impact they have by using the new grey water reclamation system recently installed in the museum.

The presentation uses Adobe® Flash® platform technology to load high definition video and then connect to a web service containing usage data from a Sloan® Water Reclamation system being used in the restrooms at the museum. The data is then overlaid on the video with high quality motion graphics and informational illustrations to form a complete presentation.

All of this is shown on a high-definition 52” 1080p display that is mounted on a wall and connected to an unseen PC that handles all the display logic. The presentation shows live usage metrics coupled with water usage facts to provide the museum visitor with actually being a part of an educational experience

It was a good day. Rob from EDE brought in a physical mock up of the display going in at Shure’s corporate headquarters. We plan on continuing with the work and unveil the project in the near future. The application software uses some motion tracking and Red Five linked Flash apps. running on some very large touchs creens. More details to follow on this one!

We ended up shooting some very nice make-up tests today for the flashback scenes of the Oresteia. The crew made up some principals and tested blood and treatments on characters to get an idea of how we might render the pieces in the media sections of the play. We also staged the murder of principal for playback and are working to get some comps up in the next week. We need to lock in some aesthetic choices for the filmic sequences and then move into production ASAP. The second act rewrite should be finished by Sunday, as well. Moving along…

Katy Onuma took the plates from today’s shoot and put together a rough sketch of what the murder of Agamemnon. We were hoping to do a couple of things from today’s sketch. The first was to do some off-speed work using a 720p camera shooting at 60fps. The second was to work on blocking for the murder scene to see if we could get the action and emotion to play in some type of silhouette. The second half of the scene shows the murder of Cassandra. We shot this on a very small screen and know that for the final plates we will be on a larger stage. We will be processing the work quite a bit in the coming weeks to get the look and then figure out how this is all going to look as a physical composite given the scrim that we will be putting in front of the projection surfaces. The final version will be set in a bath with fluid effects, atmospherics, and arterial spray!

The crew did a great job and the multimedia peeps did their best to act, but we will be very pleased to get our cast on screen for the real deal.

We had a good working session last night and made progress on two specific fronts. The first, with some guidance from Chad Udell, was an investigation of Processing as a platform/application for motion tracking. Drew Browning also sent notes on PD/Gem and shared his camera info., as well. David Needham, Mike Watson, and NIck Carrington spent time with Processing last eve. and should have another prototype tracking four light sources that will be affixed to the Furies in the second half of the play. The plan is to build a real time graphics module that will augment the puppet performances in real time. I also worked on a sketch of a video element for the dream/horror sequences that built off of a still posted a couple of days ago. It is extremely gratifying to work on these bloody sequences, but am trying not to regurgitate every NiN video that I have watched in the past years.

We finally wrapped principal photography for the Oresteia. We did some pseudo bullet time photography, still, and HD work. We will be scrambling to get post complete for tech runs that start next week, as well. This shot is from the post-murder montage of Agamemnon and Cassandra.

Interview with Pascal Campion

The Character Design Blog (a personal favorite site of mine) brings us a nice, lengthy interview with animator and illustrator Pascal Campion. Pascal has made a name for himself for his unique and highly impactful style. I find his deceptively simple character design and his saturated, monochromatic color schemes to be simply breathtaking. His work is stunning and his blog absolutely worth bookmarking.

Interestingly enough, Pascal echos some of what I discussed in a recent post concerning motivation and self development. I’d like to believe that this is an example of “great minds think alike”…yes.

He says:

LOVE what you do. Have fun doing it. Remember why you like art…if it’s for the stories, the emotions, or just the technical aspect of it.. always remember what you like and go for it.

It’s too easy to get lost by learning all these different techniques and tricks. You’re only going to use a few anyhow to do what you want to do, and chances are, you’ll have to create them yourself in order to accomplish YOUR vision.

Don’t wait for someone to give you the go ahead to do something. Just do it. I know it’s cliché, but I’ve met so many great artist that never do anything else BUT the work they are commissioned to do because they feel like they are not giving the right opportunity. I don’t believe anybody is ever going to give it to you, you just have to go and do it If you want to do a short film, make the time for it, if you want to do a graphic novel, take the time to do it.

The sooner, the better!

Enjoy the interview!