Do you need reference for an awesome drummer?

- found @ dvorak

Salesman Pete Trailer

Thanks Uri for the tip!

Great trailer by the students: Anthony Vivien, Marc Bouyer and Max Loubaresse.

Love the style! How about a movie like that???

Salesman Pete Trailer from Salesman Pete on Vimeo.

Animation and Visual Effects 2010 Ten Second Reels

A lot of very talented animators are posting best-ofs of their reels for the AAU. Head over here to watch them and make sure to website the artist's website in order to see all of their work. Here a few samples of the strong work!

10 Second Reel - Lisa Allen - Animation from AAU ANM + VFX on Vimeo.

10 Second Reel - Joshua Slice - Animation from AAU ANM + VFX on Vimeo.

10 Second Reel - Stefan Schumacher - Animation from AAU ANM + VFX on Vimeo.

10 Second Reel - Chutinart Warunyuwong - Animation from AAU ANM + VFX on Vimeo.

10 Second Reel - Shaofu Zhang - Animation from AAU ANM + VFX on Vimeo.

Reactions to Greyson Chance's performance and ... Lady Gaga?

In case you haven't seen or heard of this, Lady Gaga Lands Record Deal For Internet Protégé. Greyson Chance sure is talented (holy moly) but what was interesting to observe as well, besides his powerful ending contrasted with his restrained re-sitting and look up, were the reactions of the girls, especially once he starts to sing. The stares, the disbelieve, the wonder, the giggles, the mouthed "wows", etc. Have a look!

Faces

Some sites just crack me up with their posts. I frequently visit filmdrunk and iwatchstuff but filmdrunk has so many awesome images either on their site or their sister sites that you could easily start a facial reference library. :)

11 Second Club March Competition Winner

Head over there and watch the winner, nice work!!

Animation Progression Reel

The Animation Progression Reel blog is fantastic! Found it via @atsbomb

Here's the latest post, head over there for more animation reels:



... like this one:

gorimosu - 2D animation tests

Thanks Omer!



And there's more when you follow the links after the clip is done:



And this one:

Awesomely bad acting

Watch this awesome "Wormhole Remote Preview" clip for sweet cheesy overacting. It's not super over the top, but just enough to make it "creepy" (as engadget says).

I watched "How to Train Your Dragon"...

... and I was blown away by it! It was so good! I loved it! It's my new all time favorite animated movie!

The story was so engaging, epic, funny, heartfelt and entertaining! Nothing took me out of the story, no silly jokes or pop culture references (although I laughed when the kids enter the arena the first time - that was straight out of "Gladiator"). The character design was fantastic! I love love love the look of the vikings and dragons. The renders were amazing! I loved the overall color tone and feeling of their world. The animation was really really well done and the acting choices were great! The voice acting was also fitting and I got used to Hiccup's voice right away (only thing that I wasn't too sure about from seeing the trailer).

One fantastic aspect I loved involves SPOILERS! so highlight the text below if you've seen the movie already or don't mind:

I was so happy to see that there are consequences to people's actions in their world. When you think that Hiccup is dead I was actually wishing that he was. When will an animated movie be so bold to kill off their main character (it would have been great for Shifu to die in Panda). But of course, Hiccup lives, hell hasn't frozen over yet. BUT BUT! He looses his foot! So people are NOT indestructible. LOVED IT! It would have been sweet to hint at real consequences at the beginning of the movie to set the tone, but that surprise was still great.

End of SPOILERS.

I bow down in awe and can't wait to see it again. Please go watch this movie! Give it the success it deserves!

How to Cheat in Maya 2010: Tools and Techniques for the Maya Animator

I highly recommend this book by Eric Luhta to every animator starting out in this field. There are nice little tips for seasoned animators as well. What's really great is that this is purely about animation in Maya. It's not a Maya book that covers the software and has one little chapter about animation, it's an animator's workflow in book form, covering everything you can imagine that has to do with animation in Maya. So go get it!

Movieclips

@azizk got another great find (thanks!), this time it's a site called movieclips.com. Not too sure how this works copyright wise, but either way, it's a great resource for quick little acting clips. Great for reference, great for inspiration, great for audio clips, etc. It lets you even embed the clips and all kinds of other options. It's also cool that they different categories, like "most popular" and "iconic lines", two sections you should avoid in terms of using them as audio clips for your reel. :)

Very sweet, I hope it gets out of beta soon. Go check it out!

Emotions of a mistake

Great tip by Jeffrey Lee:

Don't know if you're keeping up with the Olympics but i found some awesome reference. This coach told his speed skater that he was in the wrong lane when he was in the correct one. The camera is on the coach the whole time and you can see him go throw so many emotions realizing he just cost his player the gold metal. Check it out if you have some time~

http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/assetid=3ca60d44-adcd-47d5-b353-1a7a20504d59.html#coach+ends+tears

It's brutal to watch though. Poor guy.

Animal Locomotion for Animators - by Stuart S. Sumida

There was a great tip by @riggingmentor for the #animtip Tuesday session. A 105 pages long pdf about Animal Locomotion for Animators. Go check it out!

Disney's Prep and Landing

Watch it on Hulu! It's AWESOME!

Sergio Pablos rough animation of Doppler

Think what you want about the movie, but the animation is great!

Sergio Pablos rough animation of Doppler from Haylee Herrick on Vimeo.

Variations on a theme

valleydweller linked to a great clip for #animtip Tuesday. Imagine that was an assignment. To come up with multiple ways of entering a room while opening a door. :)
I like how halfway through the clip he starts to find a specific way.

Le phare

Awesome short (Gobelins rules!). I love the atmosphere of it, the score is great! (thanks Saul for the tip!)

Elemental Magic: The Art of Special Effects Animation

I haven't seen it yet, but from the looks of it so far Elemental Magic: The Art of Special Effects Animation sounds like a very cool book. Check out the blog for it which has a lot of cool animation clips. You can get the book at Amazon.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - Reel by David Gibson

David Gibson does it again! Check out his reel and his explanations to how he approached his shots. Thanks for sharing!