Alyssa's Animation Mentor Blog » Inspiration

Student Showcase 2012

aleeCO — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:10:14 +0000

The new student showcase is up! A lot of talent from the acting and creatures classes.

http://www.animationmentor.com/campaign/showcase-2012/

Live at the Heart of Daydreams

aleeCO — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 21:45:36 +0000

On my trip back home to Colorado, my dad gave me a book he was reading to improve his creative writing, The Art and Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb. There are several great excerpts and takeaways that translate into creativity in any field, not just literature.

In one of my favorite sections, she suggested to nourish the Creative Spirit:

1. Read. Reading is the food that sustains the discipline whether you read adult or children’s books, poetry, magazines or newspapers.

2. Explore the arts. Movies, plays, art exhibits, concerts.

3. Heed the three Ds: Desire, discipline and determination.

4. Set goals, whether time or pages written.

5. Embrace the process.

6. Honor the mystery and magic. There is an element of surprise, of ideas appearing out of nowhere and connections leaping out of dreams, that cannot be accounted for in the daily living of our lives.

7. Seek the universal, which is grounded in the particular experience of a particular person at a particular moment in time.

8. Daydream. As children, most of us were admonished to pay attention to the task at hand and stop daydreaming! Yet vision and fantasy, creativity and imagination, live at the heart of daydreams. Welcome daydreams.

9. Dare to experiment, combine unexpected elements, play with words, break the rules. Seek out the laughter in desperation and the humor in pain.

I feel like I could write a short story and expand on each of these points. I bet you can too ~ those whom are used to creative thinking can each think of times how each of these have enabled creativity. Or times in which we’ve craved one of these things…

I actually read number eight wrong at first. I skimmed it and read “live at the heart of daydreams.” Though she was referring to creative and imagination. I think that quote alone stands pretty strong of how a person can maintain the correct mindset needed to create

Ideas of how to approach your sketching

aleeCO — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 23:18:54 +0000

Some sketchbook tid bits from Mark McDonnell

Live lip dub proposal

aleeCO — Thu, 24 May 2012 20:37:02 +0000

I always get a kick out of lip dubs. Coordinating and keeping the energy and excitement up with a group of people can be a challenge. This one got blown up pretty quick ~ certainly cute and well-executed. Hats off this creative, spontaneous group of people!

Animated Movie Remixes

aleeCO — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 20:59:47 +0000

Pogo’s new remix:

Nick’s (Pogo) pieces have incredible editing and attention to detail in his works. Fascninating how simple dialogue lines (not the lines that everyone associates with the films) can be presented with a new feel and sound, but still be recognized from the film that it came from. The visual editing of clips of the movies themselves increase appeal as well. Great work all around. Here are a couple more great pieces by him:

Toyz Noize:

Uplar:

OK Stop and Go

aleeCO — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:35:17 +0000

OK Go’s End Love:

experimental stop motion and slow mo — interesting play with timing. Making a video like this outdoors can add a time stress, but instead they took advantage of the change of lighting/atmosphere of the passing day. That isn’t easy!

Valentino

aleeCO — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:22:45 +0000

The planning and choreography of this music video is incredible. Fresh — love seeing innovation come together (especially when it requires the participation of many people). You’ll be seeing more of these types of videos from me

Early effects in music videos

aleeCO — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:44:17 +0000

Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer:

The Brothers Quay who provided claymation, pixilation, and stop motion animation for the music video. Innovative. Especially for it’s time.

thought of the day…

aleeCO — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 03:18:25 +0000

“There is no particular mystery in animation…it’s really very simple, and like anything that is simple, it is about the hardest thing in the world to do. ” – Bill Tytla, at Walt Disney Animation Studios (1937)

Great quote I found on Scott Owen’s page:

http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/anim0.htm

Beauty of One Second

aleeCO — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 07:59:09 +0000

Ben Fischler shared this link.

The Beauty Of a Second – 3rd round compilation (Instant Bliss) from The Beauty Of A Second on Vimeo.

This is wonderful as a stand-alone.

We can learn from this as animators. The power of one second — think about how much information can be told with proper staging. Capturing the bliss and selling the beauty in any moment. A second long shot with the same impact is one heck of a demo piece.