some cool animations i found while browsing.

funny Russian cartoon from the 80s.


I don't know why I like this...It's really simple and sweet.


This is really good, though I hate it when cute things turn sad at the end ;_;


More awesome 3d animation.

Also...I can't wait for this!!! 5 years in production, Madhouse are going to inject pure adrenaline into my eyeballs and its going to be amazing style over substance.

artsss

Heh, thought I should update my blog with some recent art. This guy is around 9k tris. God, the lighting is so terrible, not sure how to get it to look decent, makes the skin look like plastic. Looks better with a viewport shader.
The most successful thing about this was the hair alphas, after the clusterfuck that was the hair on my last model. It works better if they're made in chunks, and thin strands are overlayed over thick pieces. Looking at the hair on the FFXIII Lightning model was super useful.
Ah, I wish my laptop was powerful enough to run Marmoset...Does anyone else have it installed?

RIP Satoshi Kon

"It's not that anime will never be the same with Satoshi Kon gone. It's now much more likely that anime will always be the same." - Jeff Betteridge on his twitter.

I love this quote, Kon's animation was true art not just throwaway trashy entertainment like 99% of anime. Perfect Blue is a masterpiece. Hopefully his works will inspire new directors to not just waste the medium on recreating reality and push the limits of 2d animation!
Time to catch up on the Kon works I missed, hopefully they'll make a box set or something.

Taxidermy art by Polly Morgan.
The metaphor/parallel may be obvious, but I really like this piece and I've been kind of fascinated by taxidermy since I went to the Natural History museum. I like how the animals are posed in such lifelike ways, especailly birds as they're so fine-boned and delicate, I thought it would be impossible to stuff them and open their mouths like that. Its amazing! I don't think the work is morbid, its more optimistic and quaint in the choice of materials, especially in the whole spectrum of comtemporary art where the theme of death is extremely common place. I saw her on a documantary recently called Art is Child's Play, talking about how closely linked our play as a child is to what we call 'creating art' as adults. I don't think what we do is as relevant to this theory, as our kind of art is less concerned with experimentation and self expression as it is with 'get good or fail'. Saying that, I have no desire to do a fine arts degree, and Game Art is infinitely more satisfying to my brain - making at it, not looking at it, however.

Just wow. The power of circle lenses and false eyelashes is a force to be reckoned with. Also I love how the men comment on these types of transformations with things like 'you lied to us!!!!11'. Mhm, you could say that. There's also an amazing Japanese makeover show where they transform men into very convincing and glamerous women..!

So I entered the Never Ending Story redesign comp at Gameartisans, been a while since I did a mini.

Dreamy Theatre high poly weirdness

Ew ew ew, the PS3 add on for Hatsune Miku Project Diva [a Japanese rhythm action game] really creeps me out. Its way too uncanny valley and makes me think that anime doesn't work in 3d at all unless its got some kind of cell-style/toon shader on it like Valkyria Chronicle. Its mainly that model used with that animation that bothers me, its mo-capped and everything but it looks so unnatural. I think the PSP version of this game is totally cute and charming and its one of my favourites. The PSP forces everything to be in flat colour, so it makes things look more like a cartoon and not like some creepy doll. The 'realistic' cloth and lighting in Dreamy Theatre kills the stylisation for me. Segaaaa, why do you do this?



PSP -