20 Animated Features for 2009 Oscars

As reported from Beverly Hills today :

20 Animated Features Line Up for 2009 Oscar® Race

Beverly Hills, CA (November 11, 2009) — Twenty features have been

submitted for consideration in the Animated Feature Film

category for the 82nd Academy Awards®.

The 20 submitted features are:

“Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”
“Astro Boy”
“Battle for Terra”
“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”
“Coraline”
“Disney's A Christmas Carol”
“The Dolphin – Story of a Dreamer”
“Fantastic Mr. Fox”
“Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs”
“Mary and Max”
“The Missing Lynx”
“Monsters vs. Aliens”
“9”
“Planet 51”
“Ponyo”
“The Princess and the Frog”
“The Secret of Kells”
“Tinker Bell and the Lost Treasure”
“A Town Called Panic”
“Up”

The 82nd Academy Awards nominations will be announced on

Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at 5:30 a.m. PT in

the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

Academy Awards for outstanding film achievements of 2009

will be presented on Sunday, March 7, 2010,at the Kodak Theatre.

( btw, my bet is for Coraline to take the gold } -mark

'How to train your Dragon' - trailer

Here's the latest release from DREAMWORKS. The 'How to train your Dragon' trailer.
Very excited about this next Chris Sanders directed film. I have some good friends { and poker players ... when I lived in LA} who are animating on this one. Very good comments from them regarding the story. No details, only to say it is VERY emotional. NOT a crazy paced gag-filled film, but a very emotional film. They love the whole production. As one of them mentioned to me, " I haven't been this excited to animate on a film in years. Because it's so good! "

Princess and the Frog - opening 6 minutes

Below is a new clip of Disney's newest traditional film

'Princess and the Frog'.

The directors John Musker and Ron Clements ,

who I had the pleasure of working for on

their movie 'hercules', opens the clip

with some words regarding the movie.

As they note, this is the opening 6 minutes of the film,

some in colour, some in pencil test form.

Here it is posted from YouTube:

Came across this collection of rough traditional animation for

Disney's next feature 'Princess and the Frog' on Youtube.

Thought I'd post it for people to see.

It's nice seeing this art-form again. Instead of all those shiny textures ;-)

FLASH - my 1st animated scene using FLASH

Here is my 1st scene I animated using the program FLASH.

It's still not completely finished but here it is.
It was while I was at Renegade animation studio in Glendale California working with Darrell Van Citters and crew.

This scene was for their animated series called 'The Mr Men Show'.
This show is wildly popular in England and is being shown at various times in America on the Cartoon Network.
In this scene, I have MR Grumpy settling into his chair as he starts to watch his television. I had to have a bird fly into the scene { as we see though the opened window } and land on the branch. I decided to have fun and make it look UPA-ish ... having the bird just rotate in a complete circle before he lands.
The one thing with shows that have limited time to create the work.... as long as you are making it look good, it's pretty open for ideas.
I really liked the change in look, as an animator. It flooded my thoughts with ideas for animated shorts that i could now do working with FLASH. Maybe quick little moments of just fun animation.
It really was interesting having the scene, once I was done with it, be pretty much what the audience will see on TV. I was really finishing the entire shot. Note that there was a ton of work done by other artists creating all the libraries of 'symbols' or layouts, characters, props etc. that were completed BEFORE I started animating.
But once I was done animating and the scene was approved by the director, it was finished. Only to be edited into the reel.

It really felt like I was making a real CARTOON. Very simple shapes, going into and out of poses...holding the pose, hitting accents with little actions within the main body holds. It wasn't 'FULL' animation as we do at Dreamworks/Disney etc ... but it was using the same principals to make the animation look natural and 'real' even though it was a limited project.

Really thinking out the action, blocking out the main holds and any accents to create the scene. Using such graphic shapes and colours to animate with, in a limited style yet hopefully entertaining way. And I found this to be a shot in the arm creatively, putting fun back into the job. I was really making a silly cartoon.

And having my kids laugh at how 'dumb' the bird looks was only an added bonus :-)

This scene, being my 1st FLASH scene, was at the beginning of my 'learning curve' of learning the program. Knowing the 3D animation program ' MAYA ' and also animating at Dreamworks with their own 3D program ' EMO ' { emotion } , I had a good start with learning another software.

I find each program to be somewhat similar in style, each having their own ' hotkeys ' to creating a ' KEY ' for a certain item { body part or 'symbol' }.

Each program has it's own version of a ' Graph Editor ', where you can adjust the speed of going into or out of main ' KEY ' poses.

BUT, with Flash, that I found to be unique from the other programs was it's way of how it organizes it's different layers of items. With MAYA, EMO etc.... each numbered and keyed body part was numbered and connected to the 'time frame', meaning a 'KEY' on frame 14 WAS meaning that on frame 14, that 'key' body part was 14 frames into the scene. The numbering related to the timeframe.

In FLASH, the 1st level known as the STAGE was also in relation to the timeframe.... BUT once you 'click' into a characters body, the numbering of the different body 'keys' { or as the say in FLASH, 'symbols' } the numbering becomes it's own having NOTHING to do with the scenes 'timeframe' used on the STAGE level.

I know this may sound somewhat confusing, BUT I found that once you simplify the way to look at how FLASH is organized, it is easier than it looks.

It just takes a clear mind to wrap yourself into how it it organized, how it is set up.

Once you start understanding the set up, you'll be moving around the program quite easily.

Memory Lane 4 > Dreamworks Shrek 2

A few of my photos taken during my time at Dreamworks Animation Studio while animating on the feature 'Shrek 2'.
These photos were taken during a quick break as i walked down the hall to my friends Kevin O'hara and Jim Hull's room. This is a typical moment....

FRIENDS.
ROOM 166. Where all the chaos took place. Enter carefully.


Kevin explaining to Jim what Jim should do to his scene.

Kevin responds { once again } that Jim is completely ignoring him.

Kevin responds happily that James Baxter { our supervisor on the film } comes in and breaks up the fight. Kevin calls Jim on the phone to tell him that they can still talk to each other.
FRIENDS AGAIN.

another project ....

As I wait to still settle from my move from LA to Vancouver Canada, I just thought I would post some images from another project that I am on.

Just some character design and rough layout.

The color piece is some first passes with my painter10 program.

I'm very much a novice at using it.

Being somewhat colorblind makes it a bit more interesting as well..lol. hey, trying my best :-)

I'm thinking of signing up with Lynia.com to learn through the step by step videos how to get around the program. So far, I love what i can do with it.... I just need to know HOW to use it.

moving to Canada

Just a quick note to the blog to say that I am moving to Vancouver B.C. Canada.
This is beginning of day 2 of our drive north from L.A.
Myself and my 2 boys and 2 cats.
I'll be able to post more once I cross the border and settle.

-mark