Animation Mentor - Online School

This is a very cool animation school, and the entire programme is run solely online.
I want to come back and take a more detailed look at this one, as I heard an interesting podcast article about how the students learning experience varies greatly from a traditional school, being far more collaborative. The mentors that give classes and field questions and answers sessions are some of the best animators in the industry, and to provide access to them to such a potentially wide and diverse population of student animators is amazing.

Animation Mentor

Interactive Wall

This flexible surface is computer controlled, so that it is in effect a 3D screen, capable of projecting three dimensional effects along it's length.

Diesel's Liquid Space Holographic Fashion Show

Just got back from Florence where I was a part of the team that put on this show. It was great fun! Enjoy!

Who Had The Most Tedious Job?

An impressive animated video for Fujiya Miyagi, by Wade Shotter. More of his work can be seen here, at Factory Films.

Was this done by hand or generated by computer? If I had directed this, and the animator had complained at the tedious nature of manipulating each dice by hand, I would have told them to check out Google's latest addition to Google maps, and told them to think themselves lucky that they are not the individual that has to photograph every street in the world.



Check out the new amazing functionality here, and go to San Francisco to see it in action. How cool to see a real image of the exact place you are going to have to find - like this you will know that you have arrived exactly where you meant to go. Super useful!! And try clicking and dragging the image - you can pan around the image like a QTVR, and zoom in also.

Audi TT Viral Video by Universal Everything

This is a really beautiful animation created by Univeral Everything for Audi Australia to announce the launch of the new Audi TT. It is wonderful in the fact that it does not actually show the car itself, but through the abstract and fresh modern elements the video really conveys the sleek and aerodynamic car design and leaves people wanting to actually see the car. The particles were actually generated by a specially created softwear to dynamically recreate a simulation of a wind tunnel. I am not sure that it lives upto its viral name, but it is certainly a stunning piece. The animation is too long in my opinion with the final part dragging on. The particles may have been better off forming the famous rings that make up the Audi logo. Check out more work by Univeral Everything here.

Teaching The Machine - Cool Video About Web 2.0

A very cool video that uses typed text written on screen in various scenarios to explain some of the simple principles of Web 2.0. One of the things that interest me most about the end message is that not only is it each of us as individuals that will contribute to the way information is arranged and ordered, but also that each action we make, be it clicking on a link, tagging and article, copying and pasting etc, each of these actions will be fed into a computerised system that will learn based on our actions. The relationship between human action and computerised automated actions is a facinating area of developement. As computers get more and more powerful, their levels of intelligence will superceed our own. Thanks to Gaz for the link.

Pervasive Animation - Conference

Pervasive Animation - Location: Tate Modern
Friday 2 to Sunday 4 March 2007

Animation has an unlimited potential to visually represent events, scenarios and forms that have little or no relation to our experience of the 'real' world. Implemented in many ways, in many disciplines, it is increasingly influencing our perception and experience of the world we live in.

Especially since the digital shift, the uses of animation are no longer exclusive to cinema, and animation's origins in pre-cinematic optical experiments through avant-garde experimental film continue to evolve in fascinating ways. Artists increasingly incorporate animation in installations and exhibitions, architects use computer animation software to create narratives of space in time, and scientists use it to interpret abstract concepts for a breadth of industries ranging from biomedicine to nanoworlds. Pervasive Animation provides a dynamic international forum to explore animation's myriad forms and applications across a wide band of creative and professional practice.

The conference's contributors include Norman Klein, Michael Snow, Vivian Sobchack, Tom Gunning, Anthony McCall, George Griffin, Suzanne Buchan, Beatriz Colomina, Edwin Carels, Siegfried Zielinski, Lisa Cartwright, Johnny Hardstaff and Esther Leslie.

More info

Hudson-Powell Animation

A very fresh looking abstract video made by Hudson-Powell for Carat media planning agency.
See some stills here, but see the video on their site.

Cover Pop Music Visualiser

A beautiful flash animation that generates music and visuals based on variants of simple mathematical algorithms.

View here.

Interesting Animator/Illustrator

Tomás Peñ - has worked with WYSIWIG

Andy Ward - Illustrator

English illustrator based in Venice.

Nanika

Interactive art and installations company.