Showing posts with label Archive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Archive. Show all posts

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Preston Blair, John Kricfalusi and the $100,000 animation course

I'd like to share with you some links/definitions.

Association Internationale du Film D'Animation

ASIFA-Hollywood is the Los Angeles chapter of The International Animated Film Society

The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive

Animation Archive

The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course

I came across these links in a round about way. I'd been told about John Kricfalusi's blog and although I've been reading it since before Christmas, he's be churning out a lot more than I can read. So much so that I've even been printing blog pages out to read on the bus on the way too and from work. I was a bit puzzled as to why these articles were so long and why the comments were even longer but I was happy to read them in ignorance of this fact. I've been particularly interested in his comments on clear staging and hope to write a short article on how it applies to CGI and model animation in the next few days. John had mentioned Preston Blair's book "Cartoon Animation" a few times so I though I'd get myself a copy.

After wandering around the books shops and failing to find a copy like an animated J.R.Hartley I decided to look on the web. After a few searches I realised a few things. The first is that Cartoon Animation is actually a compilation of Preston's earlier works, a series of booked entitled "Animation". The next was that the Animation Archive have posted the first of these online.

Preston Blair Animation Part 1
Preston Blair Animation Part 2

John Kricfalusi, revolutionary television animatior

The final piece of the jigsaw that made sense of everything was that John was actually running an animation course based on Preston Blair's material hence why the detail in the blog articles and the inquisitive responses in the blog comments.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Mediatheque


In the latest edition of Storage Magazine (something I get for work), there is an article on how the British Film Institute is working with HP converting their highly flamable film stocks to digital versions.

For the Mediatheque project they will be providing access to their archives of films and television footage in a new "BFI Southbank" building just along the Thames from the London Eye. Initial this will be a few hundred essentially "British" clips but this will be expanded as the footage is converted. The important films will be hand restored but HP Labs have been working with Warner Brothers on techniques to remove dirt, scratches and other imperfections from the digital copies.

One film that I would like to see available in the Mediatheque is The Strength and Agility of Insects (1911) which is already digitised but only available to registered access points in libraries and colleges.

For more details see the BFI Website.