CalArts Teaches MoCap

It's not secret that most traditional animators hate motion capture (often with good reason). Well, the good traditional animation minded folks at CalArts decided to have some fun and produced this video as the opening for the school's annual showcase of student showcase last week. It's pretty funny and apparently got more laughs than just about anything else that was screened.

Via Cartoon Brew.

Michael Bay Gets In To Machinima

Looks like Michael Bay and his Digital Domain FX shop are the latest Hollywood players to jump aboard the Machinima bandwagon:

As foreshadowed by the studio's "Mad World" Gears of War TV spot, Digital Domain won't be using game engines for just games. Also on the agenda will be a series of teen-targeted animated features, which will utilize machinima er, a "new" cost-effective animation method. Does Hollywood actually have anything to offer the games industry? Or are Bay & co. just hopping over the fence 'cause the grass smells greener? "I make world-class images," says Bay. "Why not put those images into a game?"

It'll be interesting to watch this play out. Thanks to Brian for the link!

Conan O'Brien Gets Motion Captured

Conan O'Brien recently paid a visit to Lucasfilm and among other things spent time goofing around with ILM'sreal-time motion capture system , which looks really impressive (the motion capture segment start about halfway through the video above).

Link via Cartoon Brew.

Why Machinima Is Different

Peter Rasmussen - an indie filmmaker who crossed in to Machinima and is now producing a feature length Machinima film called Stolen Life - has written an interesting piece called Why Machinima Is Different that's worth a read. I especially liked the way he compares the current state of Machinima to the miliseconds after the Big Bang, full of pieces that are very basic but very powerful.

Via Overman's Blog.

ANIMAC: Digital Puppetry in the 1960s

A dancer performs using ANIMAC - likely the world's first digital puppetry system - in 1962.

ACCAD at Ohio State University offers a course called A Critical History of Computer Graphics and Animation (link via BlenderNation). As you might expect, the course examines the history of the computer graphics, which stretches back much further than you might expect. The course section that I found to be the most interesting-looking was part twelve which looks at the work of Lee Harrison III, an computer graphics pioneer who in the 1960s developed ANIMAC, which was probably the world's first digital puppetry system.

A .pdf file with additional information about Lee Harrison and ANIMAC is available here.

The End of Red Vs. Blue

Pioneering Machnima creators Rooster Teeth Productions have announced that they will be ending their insanely popular series Red vs. Blue with the series' upcoming 100th episode. Red vs. Blue is significant for many reasons, not the least of which was that it was a huge viral hit that put Machinima on the map. Six episodes left to go and if you've never seen the show before now seems like a great time to go check it out and see what you've been missing.

Via Thinking Machinima.

One Puppeteer's Journey From Puppets to Pixels

The fence that divides puppetry and animation is a pretty low one and lots of artists like Phil Vischer, Karen Prell, Mike Quinn, and Nate Pacheco (to name just a few) find themselves jumping from one side to the other mid-career and Craig Crane is another of those puppeteer/animator hybrids.

Craig started his career in the 1990s doing a lot of ground-breaking work in real-time animation and performance capture as well as conventional puppeteering on various projects in England, France and Isreal, but these days he's an animator for Double Negative, a British effects shop. Craig discussed his transition from puppetry to animation in a two part interview with 3D World Magazine last fall (click to read part one and part two).

Craig seems to be pretty happy in the animation world these days, but I really hope he keeps a hand (no pun intended) in the puppetry world. He really is a brilliant puppeteer; you can check out is Real-Time animation demo reel above and his preschool puppet reel is a lot of fun too.

Cross-posted from The PuppetVision Blog.