11 Second Club

I'm thinking of entering the 11 Second Club contest this month of November of 2009... I listened to the clip yesterday and it's been stewing in my brain...

Art on Buildings - Murals in Toronto

I stumbled across this image in a flickrpool and I love it... It's a mural on a building outside in Toronto, at the Redpath Sugar Distributer on Queens Quay... Near or on Jarvis and Queens Quay. I want to find more outdoor building paintings, especially in Toronto since I live here and I could easily go check them out, but anywhere really is cool... When I try to think of more paintings/murals on building a couple come to mind, there's the Flatiron building downtown, a very unique building with flowing curtains painted around windows at the back. This building is located at the intersection of Wellington and Front Street. The painting was done by Derek Michael Besant. The awful (sorry) woman's face on the side of For Your Eyes Only comes to mind... Oh yes, and there is another stunner on the side of an art gallery on Queen West... I could find that one... And of course there's the big spot that Apple always has new highly realistic painted ads at Spadina and King St. If anyone knows of any such building paintings, please leave a comment and let me know which ones you know!

With a search I just found Art Side Murals, the website of Tiborr Hargiati. I'm not sure if all the artwork is his or just some of it. It seems like it is all his but that it might also be mostly his work and other artists are brought in if needed. The site boasts a lot of great photos and not much text. If you like murals or paintings, please check it out. The work is gorgeous! Now I want to paint my home!!!

rough animation test

it's a work in progress...

also, I have two stellar animators doing some animation for me!!! Katie Shanahan and Sean Bartlett both graciously agreed to help me out. They are saving my face from many stress zits. Plus I know they'll make my short look delicious.

I plan to get my short in the mail on Thursday the 8th. Then I'll probably be taking a bit of time away from the blog but next chance I get I have some good animation lessons to post and a stellar book on emotions which is gold for animators to write about... Review on it's way, I'll have to finish the book first.

Another BG test

wrinkles - character lineup

I don't really have time to clean this up right now, and since it's just me drawing up the key poses it's unnecessary. I have a roatation done for each character in the lineup. I was impressed with myself when I got all four rotations done in one Saturday... Sunday was the day to do my bg's but I got a massive migraine that day and had to settle for some leica tweaking in the morning and then 19 hours in bed. Bg's got done during the week when I felt better and ate into 2 days of my animation long weekend... Argh! BG's took me longer than I thought they would.

Here's an animation scanning tip: Don't settle for 'removable magic tape' to secure your peg to the scanner. It's NOT good enough.

Waking Sleeping Beauty premiere at tiff

This evening I saw Waking Sleeping Beauty, (review by Animation Magazine) a documentary by Don Hahn about the era from 1984-1994 at Disney. The film is quite honest and was so inspirational for me. Being in the theater, there was that magic- I was remembering my own childhood experiences of seeing Disney flicks on the big screen. I think I really feel at home, in the theater. The animators are not really the core focus of the film, rather the film provides a look behind the mask of the face of Disney animation. But the animators are still very much there and the footage of them is great stuff. A lot of artists stuck it out at Disney during those times when they could have left.

There was a good deal of focus on Jeffrey Katzenberg and it was new for me... I listened to a lecture by Katzenberg at Sheridan in 2005 and I've seen bits and pieces of him here and there in 'making of' segments accompanying animated flicks. It's very interesting (and nice) to see him react to situations and try to make things work for the studio and himself in this film. There's lots to learn about Peter Schneider as well. I knew less about Schneider than Katzenberg and he's a pretty key player.

After the screening I shook hands with Don and Peter- telling them both thank you for making the doc and that I enjoyed it and threatening Don that I would be seeing him the next day at his lecture at Sheridan College armed with my copy of Drawn to Life ready for an autograph.

Waking Sleeping Beauty is hoping for an April 2010 wider theatrical release. Don and Peter will continue to show it at festivals and push for some buzz in January/February by showing it as many places as they can.

Rough (rough) test

This is Danny starting her childish galumph down some stairs, salmon replacing stairs for now. It's low res and just a test of two drawings to see if I'd like the look before investing a lot of time in it.