Blue Sky just released the first trailer for “Rio”. Wow, does it look amazing. Can’t say much about the story, but aesthetically, it looks incredible.

The animation is really, really, I mean really nice. Great job. These guys have always impressed me. But, their animation has just been getting so much better with each film. This new one is another huge step forward. And look wise. Wow. Incredible. Lighting, textures, well, just everything looks great.

Technically, I was blown away by the feathers. Especially on the main Macaw character. I’m sure anyone reading this blog knows, but just in case you aren’t in the industry. Creating nice looking feathers is not easy. It is probably one of the tougher things to do. Not only do they move realistically, but the way they are used to convey the characters emotion… Wow!

Lastly, animating with these rigs must be amazing. These look to be very well thought out. The performance they are able to squeeze out of them is inspiring. Working mostly in commercials, we don’t often have the luxury of fine tuning rigs to this level. It must be a joy to work with.

I must add. Anyone that knows me, knows I’m not a fan boy. So, it is a little unusual for me to give this much praise to anything out there. I almost feel dirty. But, I really like it that much.

I stumbled across this nice animated short film. Why can’t I come up with an idea like this? :)

I did another animation test in my spare time. Since I’d do an hour here and there, I have no idea how long it took to complete. If I were to guess, it was probably 30 something hours.

This is, I believe, is from Anchorman. Since I find Will Ferrell funny, I just had to do something with the audio clip.

Once again, after uploading an animation to Vimeo, I notice the audio is a frame or two out of sync. I’m not sure what is going on, but it sure it annoying. Besides the sync problem, it could use some additional work, but sometimes you just have to call it quits and move on.

Only a few posts back (but thanks to my slow blogging, more than eight months ago), I posted an image of an animation done for Pepper Films. I’ve decided to share the actual animation. You can see it below or follow the link to Vimeo to see it in higher resolution.

Again, the point was to make it look more stop motion than CG. Considering how quickly it was done, I think it turned out pretty well. Originally it was textured and lit by someone else, but I decided to redo it to my own liking. Besides lighting, I was also responsible for layout, animation, rigging, and supervising the modeling.

From the previous post: “I’ll try to come up with something worthwhile to say soon. Promise!” Well, that worked out pretty nicely, didn’t it?

To try and make up for my laziness, I’m about to post another two after this one. They may be low on wordiness, but there will be animation attached. At least it will be something to look at.