cracking animation by thames and hudson

this book starts of with a introductory and am indepth history of animation.

the history starts of with how animation came about and how techniques developed into what they are today.

this book is mainly a guird to the history and techniques of 3-D animation from Aardman animations studio. the book is designed for all ages and targets the different age groups to understand and develop their knowledge of animation techniques and special effects for making films from the most simplest to the most sophisticated animations.
Aardman was founded in 1976 as a low-budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton, who wanted to realize their dream of producing an animated motion picture. Their first big break was providing animated sequences for the children's art series, Vision On, for which they created Morph, a simple clay character.

Inspiration

there was a lot of inspiration taken from you tube, but in almost all stop motion animations that involved people, they never intergrated inanimate objects as well, so my group wanted to incooperate some inanimate objects to the animation aswel

the most ambitious stop motion ever

You've probably all seen it by now, but I had to post about it. I thought this was all CGI to begin with, but this "making of" proved me wrong. It's the new Sony Bravia advert, the third in the series. The previous ones were equally as impressive. The first being a few million bouncy balls tumbling down a street, and the third being huge cans of paint blasted all over a housing estate. You can watch the advert on their website, or check out the youtube one.

this is a great stop motion animation, it must have taken alot of hard work and dedication as well as a lot of people helping out, it features clay models of rabbits multiplying and travelling around the town at first when there numbers are small they move un-noticed by the people in the street, but as there numbers increase and gather together they are soon noticed and the people are amazed at what is happening.



this is also another stop motion movie that i feel is a great piece of animation, this was the first video that i saw to do with stop motion and it influenced my work a lot.

A Day Filming With Stills

Today I took 1024 stills with will and viks for the narrative pixelation project. We explored ideas that can only be made possible with stop motion,we animated still life objects such as chess pieces which appear to move themselves and dominos that seemed to stack themselves up will climbed out of a box that he could never fit into and there was a burger and a pint that ate and drank itself.
we tried old all different types of techniques, we used the human body as well as inanimate objects and animated them to create a impression on the audience

PinHole Camera

Influenced by the brothers Quay

digital works

Film noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The term film noir (French for "black film"), first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the era. Cinema historians and critics defined the canon of film noir in retrospect; many of those involved in the making of the classic noirs later professed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.

Noir—What is it?

"We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric, strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel...."[2] This is the first of many attempts to define film noir made by the French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (A Panorama of American Film Noir), the original and seminal extended treatment of the subject. They take pains to point out that not every film noir embodies all five attributes in equal measure—this one is more dreamlike, while this other is particularly brutal. The authors' caveats and repeated efforts at alternative definition have proved telling about noir's reliability as a label: in the five decades since, no definition has achieved anything close to general acceptance. The authors of most substantial considerations of film noir still find it necessary to add on to what are now innumerable attempts at definition. As Borde and Chaumeton suggest, however, the field of noir is very diverse and any generalization about it risks veering into oversimplification.

Film noirs embrace a variety of genres, from the gangster film to the police procedural to the so-called social problem picture, and evidence a variety of visual approaches, from meat-and-potatoes Hollywood mainstream to outré. While many critics refer to film noir as a genre itself, others argue that it can be no such thing. Though noir is often associated with an urban setting, for example, many classic noirs take place mainly in small towns, suburbia, rural areas, or on the open road, so setting can not be its genre determinant, as with the Western. Similarly, while the private eye and the femme fatale are character types conventionally identified with noir, the majority of film noirs feature neither, so there is no character basis for genre designation as with the gangster film. Nor does it rely on anything as evident as the monstrous or supernatural elements of the horror film, the speculative leaps of the science fiction film, or the song-and-dance routines of the musical.

A more analogous case is that of the screwball comedy, widely accepted by film historians as constituting a "genre"—the screwball is defined not by a fundamental attribute, but by a general disposition and a group of elements, some (but rarely and perhaps never all) of which are found in each of the genre's films.[3] However, because of the diversity of noir (much greater than that of the screwball comedy), certain scholars in the field, such as film historian Thomas Schatz, treat it as not a genre but a "style." Alain Silver, the most widely published American critic specializing in film noir studies, refers to it as a "cycle" and a "phenomenon," even as he argues that it has—like certain genres—a consistent set of visual and thematic codes. Other critics treat film noir as a "mood," a "movement," or a "series," or simply address a chosen set of movies from the "period." There is no consensus on the matter.

The prehistory of noir

Film noir has sources not only in cinema but other artistic media as well. The low-key lighting schemes commonly linked with the classic mode are in the tradition of chiaroscuro and tenebrism, techniques using high contrasts of light and dark developed by 15th- and 16th-century painters associated with Mannerism and the Baroque. Film noir's aesthetics are deeply influenced by German Expressionism, a cinematic movement of the 1910s and 1920s closely related to contemporaneous developments in theater, photography, painting, sculpture, and architecture. The opportunities offered by the booming Hollywood film industry and, later, the threat of growing Nazi power led to the emigration of many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners. Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a psychologically expressive approach to mise-en-scène with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German M, is among the first major crime films of the sound era to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot, one in which the protagonist is a criminal (as are his most successful pursuers). M was also the occasion for the first star performance by Peter Lorre, who would go on to act in several formative American noirs of the classic era.

By 1931, Curtiz had already been in Hollywood for half a decade, making as many as six films a year. Movies of his such as 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and Private Detective 62 (1933) are among the early Hollywood sound films arguably classifiable as noir. Giving Expressionist-affiliated moviemakers particularly free stylistic rein were Universal horror pictures such as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932)—the former photographed and the latter directed by the Berlin-trained Karl Freund—and The Black Cat (1934), directed by Austrian émigré Edgar G. Ulmer. The Universal horror that comes closest to noir, both in story and sensibility, however, is The Invisible Man (1933), directed by Englishman James Whale and shot by American Carl Laemmle Jr.

The Vienna-born but largely American-raised Josef von Sternberg was directing in Hollywood at the same time. Films of his such as Shanghai Express (1932) and The Devil Is a Woman (1935), with their hothouse eroticism and baroque visual style, specifically anticipate central elements of classic noir. The commercial and critical success of Sternberg's silent Underworld in 1927 was largely responsible for spurring a trend of Hollywood gangster films. Popular movies in the genre such as Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932) demonstrated that there was an audience for crime dramas with morally reprehensible protagonists.

An important, and possibly influential, cinematic antecedent to classic noir was 1930s French poetic realism, with its romantic, fatalistic attitude and celebration of doomed heroes; an acknowledged influence on certain trends in noir was 1940s Italian neorealism, with its emphasis on quasi-documentary authenticity. (The Warner Bros. drama I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang [1932] presciently combines these sensibilities.) Director Jules Dassin of The Naked City (1948) pointed to the neorealists as inspiring his use of on-location photography with nonprofessional extras; three years earlier, The House on 92nd Street, directed by Henry Hathaway, demonstrated the parallel influence of the cinematic newsreel. A few movies now considered noir strove to depict comparatively ordinary protagonists with unspectacular lives in a manner occasionally evocative of neorealism—the most famous example is The Lost Weekend (1945), directed by Billy Wilder, yet another Vienna-born, Berlin-trained American auteur. (In turn, one of the primary influences on neorealism was the 1930 German film Menschen am Sonntag, codirected and cowritten by Siodmak, cowritten by Wilder, and codirected and produced by Ulmer.) Among those movies not themselves considered film noirs, perhaps none had a greater effect on the development of the genre than America's own Citizen Kane (1941), the landmark motion picture directed by Orson Welles. Its Sternbergian visual intricacy and complex, voiceover-driven narrative structure are echoed in dozens of classic film noirs.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
On Dangerous Ground (1952)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
Notorious (1946)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
The Wrong Man (1956).

the brothers Quay

a compelling animated documentary of Svanmajer's work, the cabinet of Jan Svanmajer: Prague's alchemist of film, was made in 1984 by stephen and timothy Quay, twin brothers born in Philadelphia, USA, but working primary in Britian. the brothers Quay, as they are known, owe much to Svankmejer's inspiration and their films, which include Nocturna artificialia (1979) and the street of crocodiles (1986), present a complex vision of a dusty, decaying world where the overpowering feeling is one of claustrophobia and Kafkaesque confusion.
for all their originality, the Quay brothers' films acknowledge the eastern European heritage of puppet film-making, a tradition which itself springs from the long and distinguished heritage of the puppet threatre

(taken from wikipedia)
They reside and work in England where they moved in 1969 after studying illustration at the Philadelphia College of Art , now, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, to study at the Royal College of Art [1] There, they made their first short films, which no longer exist after the only print was irreparably damaged.[citation needed] They spent some time in the Netherlands in the 1970s and then returned to England where they teamed up with another Royal College student, Keith Griffiths, who produced all of their films. The trio formed Koninck Studios in 1980, which is currently based in Southwark, south London.

The Quays' works (1979-present) show a wide range of often esoteric influences, starting with the Polish animators Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica and continuing with the writers Franz Kafka, Bruno Schulz, Robert Walser and Michel de Ghelderode, puppeteers Wladyslaw Starewicz and Richard Teschner and composers Leoš Janáček, Zdeněk Liška and Leszek Jankowski, the last of whom has created many original scores for their work. Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, for whom they named one of their films (The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer), is also frequently cited as a major influence, but they actually discovered his work relatively late, in 1983, by which time their characteristic style and preoccupations had been fully formed.[citation needed]

Most of their films feature dolls, often partially disassembled, in a dark, moody atmosphere. Perhaps their best known work is Street of Crocodiles, based on the short story of the same name by the Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz. This short film was selected by director and animator Terry Gilliam as one of the ten best animated films of all time, and critic Jonathan Romney included it on his list of the ten best films in any medium (for Sight and Sound's 2002 critics' poll).[citation needed] They have made two feature-length live action films: Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life and The Piano Tuner Of Earthquakes. They also directed an animated sequence in the film Frida.

With very few exceptions, their films have no meaningful spoken dialogue—most have no spoken content at all, while some, like The Comb (1990) include multilingual background gibberish that is not supposed to be coherently understood. Accordingly, their films are highly reliant on their music scores, many of which have been written especially for them by the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski. In 2000, they contributed a short film to the BBC's Sound On Film series in which they visualised a 20-minute piece by the avant-garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Whenever possible, the Quays prefer to work with pre-recorded music, though Gary Tarn's score for The Phantom Museum had to be added afterwards when it proved impossible to licence music by the Czech composer Zdeněk Liška.

They have created music videos for His Name Is Alive ("Are We Still Married", "Can't Go Wrong Without You"), Michael Penn ("Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)") and 16 Horsepower ("Black Soul Choir"). Some people mistakenly believe that the Quays are responsible for several music videos for Tool, but those videos were created by Fred Stuhr and member Adam Jones, whose work is influenced by the Quays. Although they worked on Peter Gabriel's seminal video "Sledgehammer" (1986) as animators, this was directed by Stephen R. Johnson and the Quays were unhappy with their contribution, believing it to be more imitative of Švankmajer's work than truly distinctive in its own right.

Their work also includes decors for the Theatre and Opera productions of director Richard Jones: Prokofiev's The Love for Three Oranges; Feydeau's "A Flea in Her Ear"; Tchaikovsky's Mazeppa; and Molière's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.". Their set design for a revival of Ionesco's "The Chairs" was nominated for a Tony Award in 1998.

Before turning to film, they worked as professional illustrators. The first edition of Anthony Burgess' novel "The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End", features their drawings before the start of each chapter. Nearly three decades before directly collaborating with Stockhausen, they designed the cover of the book Stockhausen: Conversations with the Composer (ed. Jonathan Cott, Simon & Schuster, 1973).


[edit] Filmography
Feature Films

Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life (1995)
The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes (2006)
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (TBA)
Short Films

Nocturna Artificialia (1979)
Punch And Judy (Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy) (1980)
Ein Brudermord (1981)
The Eternal Day Of Michel de Ghelderode (1981)
Stravinsky - The Paris Years (1983)
Leoš Janáček: Intimate Excursions (1983)
The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (1984)
The Epic of Gilgamesh, or This Unnameable Little Broom (1985) aka Little Songs of the Chief Officer of Hunar Louse
Street of Crocodiles (1986)
Stille Nacht I: Dramolet (1988)
Rehearsals For Extinct Anatomies (1988)
Ex-Voto/The Pond (1989)
The Comb (From The Museums Of Sleep) (1990)
De Artificiali Perspectiva, or Anamorphosis (1991)
The Calligrapher (1991) - an ident commissioned for the BBC2 television channel, but never broadcast
Stille Nacht II: Are We Still Married? (1991)
Long Way Down (Look What The Cat Drug In) (1992)
Stille Nacht III: Tales From Vienna Woods (1992)
Stille Nacht IV: Can't Go Wrong Without You (1993)
The Summit (1995)
In Absentia (2000)
The Sandman (2000)
Duet (2000)
The Phantom Museum: Random Forays Into the Vaults of Sir Henry Wellcome's Medical Collection (2003)

digital/ speed painting

the reason i put up alot of speed/digital painting is because this is something i am very fond of doing and i would love to be able to create pieces of art to these artists level of talent. each artist has he or she's own skill and technique in there type of digital painting wheather that fantasy on future realistic imagery.

list of helpful sites

http://www.pisoga.com/


http://www.wikipedia.com/


http://www.youtube.com/


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge


http://www.google.com/


http://www.conceptart.org/


http://www.fengzhudesign.com/


http://www.ballisticpublishing.com/books/dartiste/concept_art/


http://www.animationtrip.com/index.php


http://www.mattepainting.org/


http://www.seb4d.com/tutorials/Mattepainting/mattepainting_english.htm


http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/cst01.html


http://www.thunig.com/


http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/applications/psbrushes/

Tutorials

Concept art

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56806

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=46462

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14035

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=14119

http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=9873

http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

http://tutorialfire.com/?p=96

Flash

Eadweard Muybridge

Eadweard Muybridge who, in 1872, began producing a series of studies on human and animal life, photographed infront of a plain. calibrated backdrop. the photographs, shot every few seconds, revealed what the human eye can not register: the true complexity involved in the mechanics of physical locomotion.

A photographic sequence by Eadweard Muybridge, whose 19th century experiments have been of priceless help to later generations of animation.

In 1880 Muybridge conducted one of his most sophisticated experiments, when he photographed a running horse, using 24 still cameras set up alongside a race track and triggered by a series of trip wires. Muybridge photographs of horses, dogs and the naked human form would become an indispensable aid to later generations of animation.

first day of term

one of my favorite mutlimedia softwares is photoshop i spent alot of time developing my photoshop skills, and then i started getting acknowledged but my firends as being good at photoshop alot of my mates are in bands or in media, so i started getting askd to design stuff like cd sleeves for there mix tapes etc, this is one of the first cd sleeves i designed

i found these on a old cd. these are some drawing i did a few years back.still lookin for my up to date drawings but i through i would post these up

this is me and my fiancee when expecting to have the wedding in a few years after we have travelled the world

first post

this is the first post.just set blogger up as much first assignment strange but ok im willing to go with it. wel my names danny if you didnt know and im studying multimedia at nottingham trent. me girlfriend is about 200 miles away and im missing her like crazy...she the person who had faith in me and told me to apply for uni and what you know she was right.so i owe alot 2 her.she had faith in me that i would do well in life so this first post is dedicated to her. thank you bby...