Birds Eye View Events

There's some good events this weekend for animators as part of the Birds Eye View festival that started yesterday.

On Sunday there's a programme of short films and animation, with the UK Premieres of Sally Arthur's A-Z and Lucy Izzard's One of the Family.

A-Z is a blend of Ink on paper and 3D and 2D CGI and Flash, it tells the story of Phyllis Pearsall tackling the monumental task of writing the A-Z. Sally Arthur studied at the RCA and now works for ArthurCox in Bristol.

After winning the New Animator award in 2005 with her film Tea Total, Lucy Izzard was commissioned by BBC Three to make a series of short animations. One of the Family is one of these films and is a humourous look at how pets are treated. This film was also also show as part of the British Animation Awards this year.

Also to be shown is the DepicT! award winning Flighty by Leigh Hodgkinson is a collage style animation previously seen at the Encounters Short Film Festival Bristol.

Also on Sunday is a seminar on Writing for computer games and tomorrow is a seminar on multiplatform films.

Carrara 6.1

It kind of snuck up on me but Daz have brought out a upgrade to Carrara. The main enhancements are for hair, reduced memory requirements for vertex models, some enhancements to displacement mapping and a there's a long list of bug fixes too.

The hair enhancements have new tools for straightening, curling and clumping the hair, there is more control over overlaps and collision detection, symmetry and grouping

The 6.1 version is available to those people who already have 6.0. It's currently a full uninstall / reinstall but there are rumours of a patch version with a smaller download size. You can access it by resetting your download counters in your account.

In related news, Digital Carvers Guild has an enhancement to Anything Goos that allow you to smooth between shading domains.

The Movieum

Opening in County Hall, London on Feb 22nd is the Movieum. A potential replacement for the sadly demised Momi. This new Film Museum takes many of the ideas from Momi and other Movie Museums and brings them bang upto date with Animatronics, Sets, Models and a unique look at the British Film industry.



For the animator there should be plenty to see, there promises to be a section of British Animation including origional artwork, limited editions, Beatrix Potter, Dangermouse, Bagpuss, Mr Benn and Peppa Pig. Chapman Entertainment provide details of how they use Stop Motion Animation to produce Fifi and the Flowertots.



The museum has been produced by the same people who put together the Starwars Exhibition last year in Country Hall, Wierd and Wonderful

Animation Bafta Winners 2008

The Bafta winner of the Best Animated Film was as predicted, Ratatouille. I'm glad but not surprised that this film was recognised for it's brilliance. The Golden Compass beat it to the post for Visual Effects.

Aardman's "The Pearce Sisters" recieved Best Short Animation award, I'm not sure that I could have predicted that one as Crumble Giant was also excellent. I thought Osbert Parker's Head over Heels was disapointing but I suspected he had some good contacts in the industry to lobby for him. So overall I would not have been able to choose between the three but again I'm glad Aardman was recognised for its new animation techniques used in this film.

The Making of Nightmare before Christmas

Although Tim Burton has been on the TV a lot for his Sweeny Todd claiming that it's his first musical, I'll always think of his classic stop motion animation Nightmare before Christmas as being his first.

I've recently discovered that there is a 3 part series of the making of available on Anima8.com



Part 1 Introduction by Tim Burton, Script, Music, Characters, Storyboards, Design
Part 2 Set Making, Lighting, Motion Control, Model Making, Acting / Animating
Part 3 Facial animation by head replacement, Lipsync, Special Effects, Compositing