What I've been up to

Here's a press release on Yahoo about the CarsToon project that I've been working on for the past 6 months or so. I've been up at Skywalker Ranch this week working on the scoring and sound-mixing, which is a whole other adventure in itself, in addition to trying to complete a bonus fourth CarsToon (more on that some other time). It's been a huge learning experience for me, and I look forward to talking about it more here after the shorts premiere in October.

New Old Thumbnails and Radical Clip

I finally got around to posting some more images to my Animation Thumbnails gallery. Nothing from WALL-E yet, I'm sorry to say; I think I'll have to wait until after the DVD comes out to get clearance for that. The new images are drawings I did back on Cars, and looking back I was kind of surprised that I did so many. I remember a lot of the animation on that film was about timing and texture (like with the Muppets), and less about posing. Then again, those characters were basically abstract faces on wheels, so we had to design the face poses very clearly. Kind of a fun challenge, and something that I'm dealing with again on my current project (which I look forward to posting more about next month).


And on a completely unrelated note, here's an amazing video (follow the link to the higher res "HD" video):

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

It's totally awesome in its own right, but I'm sure there are lessons for the animator in there as well. Watch how the skaters can steer the boards with subtle shifts in their center of gravity, and how the different poses help them accelerate and decelerate. Or just sit back and geek out on how crazy these guys are!