FCKH8 (Warning - you will be offended)

Out of Sight

I was completely blown away by this amazing short film

Sintel is out!

Great work!

Animation Mentor Showcase 2010

It's always a pleasure seeing the work of all these talents. I think this year is extremely superb.




Click here to see it

Another short film worth mentioning

It's super short, and the story is almost non existent, but the mood and the personality of the main character is fantastic.

Land in Sight from Gabriel Prezoto Animation on Vimeo.

Well done!

This made my day!

What a fantastic piece of fun!

A bear film

This is a really cool short film. Sometimes I think I'm going to do that too :D

a bear film from kris anka on Vimeo.

Helium

Funny short film by Daniele Zannone.

Helium. from Daniele Zannone on Vimeo.

Brad Bird to direct Mission Impossible 4

Now this is something that gets me excited!

After the terrific work in The Incredibles and Ratatouille without forgetting the fantastic Iron Giant, Mr. Bird is going to direct Mission Impossible 4. I'm sure is going to be a huge hit with lot of adrenaline.

Can't wait!

How to train your dragon

It's rare for me to see a film twice at the cinema. I did it for The Incredibles (more than twice) and I just did it again.

This film is really a rare pearl. The pacing, the characters, the direction, the story is all so well balanced that it grabs you gently in until you are breathless.

Congratulations to everyone who has worked on this movie. IT IS AWESOME!

Now I want a dragon :P

Megamind from Dreamworks

 

Trailer

This could be quite an interesting film. There was a spot in the trailer where I think the facial animation was just SUPERB!

Having said that, what about Despicable Me ? Seems almost on the same storyline to me. We'll see.

For now I can't wait for How to train your dragon. The art book is awesome!

Later.

Elk Hair Caddis

Great short film by a bunch of students of the Animatin Workshop in Denmark.

Elk Hair Caddis from peter smith on Vimeo.

It's a crazy story I admit that, but I love the mix of stop motion and CG and how they did the mouth on the various characters.

Well done!

The world is full of animation!

Sometimes artists and animators struggles with fresh ideas.
I don't know if this is caused by the industrialized process of our jobs or by cycles in the moon, but whenever I'm in that mood, my solution is always to stop and look around me.

It's really beautiful to see such diversity in the world and yet everything is part of a whole. It's pure magic to me.

Looking around the net I've found this crazy video about North Korean traffic cops.





Such a reference for such a unique move is unbelievable (I wonder how they feel at the end of the day though). Look at the walk when they change guard.

The script is ready!

In the last year, I've had this crazy idea about an animated short film that was continuously popping into my mind.

I've worked on it in and out without too much commitment, simply because it was a little bit difficult for me to focus on it. What I have been doing though, is gathering ideas and tons of reference material. I've come to a point where I felt I had everything I needed to start.

Today I've finished the second draft of the script. I'm probably going to do another iteration before starting to storyboard it. I also know that after the first pass of storyboard I'll have to go back and refine the script again. It's part of the process and as Andrew Stanton always says "writing is re-writing!".

I'm also working on character design and a style guide document to help me with consistency, and also to identify possible problems.

This short film for me is all about learning and improving. I want to learn how to tell a story through images and suck people into it, as well as going through all the various phase of a production. I remember my AM short film was fairly unsuccessful at the time, and I really wanted to come up with something good, but I had no experience, nor time unfortunately.

I believe that this time, to achieve the quality I'm aiming for, is going to require at least 2 years, which is a pretty long time, but I'm really excited about the idea.

I'm going to post more as things develop, just I don't want to give out all the details right away.

Pivot

Amazing short film.

Pivot from Pivot on Vimeo.

Check out their web site as well:

http://www.pivotthemovie.com

iPad, iPhone and games

I'm a Mac guy!

Even though a lot of times I look at the other side, I'm still an happy owner of a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.

As you all know, Apple has recently announced its latest creation: the iPad.
I was really interested in this mobile device, mainly because I was looking for something similar to a tablet pc, to use as a digital sketchbook and to get rid of my notebook.

While the iPad looks amazing, and seems rather interesting, my main problem is that there's no pen device for it. I mean there's the Pogo Sketch, but there's also no pressure sensitivity, and this limits the iPad use quite a lot.
I may try the Pogo pen on my iPhone just to see how it feels (is a pretty cheap piece of hardware), but I'm not really convinced it will be a good choice. We'll see once it enters the market.

What the iPad will be great for tough, is games I think. Recently due to my work at Eurocom, I'm really enjoying playing games again. There was a time when I was 16, that I dreamed to become a game developer. I used to write my own little games on the Amiga, drawing sprites and writing code (anyone remember AMOS ?).

So today, I started to delve into iPhone game development. I don't want to start a business or anything, just have some pure old fashioned fun, together with my girlfriend, that really enjoys little games like the iPhone usually has.

We'll see with time what I'll come up with!

Lee Unkrich auction for Haiti Relief

Lee Unkrich, the director of the upcoming Toy Story 3, has an auction on ebay to help the people of Haiti.

There's an incredible amount of material and I'm sure that all the Pixar fan around the world will help as well.

Just click here to jump to the auction


Well done!

A must see

As an animator, I'm also interested a lot in character design. My drawing skills are not that good, but I know that as any other type of art, I really need to focus on it and do it every day. It's tough, but I'm getting there hopefully, and anyway the desire to create and give life to my own characters is always driving me.

A immense part of this difficult journey is also played by inspiration. Inspiration is always around you, but also in a lot of art books. I really like flipping through all those pages and be amazed by the brilliant work of every artist. The choice out there of art books is really wide and finding the right one can be difficult. Fortunately there's a blog that is specialized in art book reviews:

http://parkablogs.com/

There are hundreds of books reviewed in there, but the best thing is that every review includes not only pictures of the book but also a brief video in which the author flips through the entire book, so that you can get the feeling of it.

It is great. It is a must have for every artist.

Bookmark it!

It's finally out!

It has been a hell of a ride. I really enjoyed working on this game, my first one. The team is really amazing and the game is a lot of fun (plus I have the record on Ski Jump!)

The events I've worked on are Luge, Ski Aerials and a bit of Snowboard (mostly fall and reaction animations). A lot of it is mo-cap, but there's also a lot of keyframe animation in there, especially on Ski Aerials where all the routine are hand animated. Now that I mention it, I had to go through a lot of study to understand the mechanic of the air routine. It's fun, but I'll never do it myself.

Enjoy a little bit of adrenaline!

Xbox 360 Games - E3 2010 - Vancouver 2010 - The Official Game of the Olympic Winter Games

Official website here:

http://www.olympicvideogames.com/vancouver2010/

The story so far...

I'll try to keep it short, but I just wanted to give a little heads up on what happened in the last few years.

After a lot of time spent as a ballroom dancer (almost 20 years), I decided to stop due to personal reasons. I switched to the computer world, my other passion, only to find out that I enjoyed more the right side of the brain. The artist in me didn't want to give up yet!

At that time I was really passionate about computer graphics and animation, but studying something like that in Italy was almost impossible. I tried to teach myself, but I also had to pay the bills and so everything remained just an hobby.

Fortunately for me a group of crazy animators from major studios started a new adventure in 2005: Animation Mentor. My soul clicked! I had the opportunity to finally study animation (online via webcam, which at that time was a miracle!) while still being able to work.

I decided to invest one more time into myself. After all I've been doing it for a life already :D

So at 32 years old I started school again. The course lasted 18 months. It was really difficult, especially at the end, when my health started to suffer. I had to work for 8 hours and study for at least 4 hours during the day and all the weekends. It was hard, but it paid off.

One of my piece was chosen for the school showreel. I couldn't believe it! I still remember clearly that day.

After graduating I found a job in Pisa, on two television series: Birds Band and Taratabong! It was an amazing experience. I really loved the job, the place, the people. At the end of the production (almost 2 years) I had an interview with a videogame company in Derby, UK.

I'm still working in that company, and living in Derby. After 10 months I've been promoted to Lead Animator, and once again a new adventure starts...

...TO BE CONTINUED.

1st Post

Finally the blog is set up. I still need to play a little bit with the layout and the template, especially colors and images.

Stay tuned for more!