A fellow classmate from a while back, Jeff Gabor, has been putting up these really interesting reels that exhibit the capturing of a performance of an animator and translating that to a character.  We in the animation biz like to call that animation.  Tried and true, it’s the best solution there is to getting characters full of life!

use password: “education”

On a serious note, take a look at this post (link below)  challenging Andy Serkis’ statements that actors deserve Academy recognition at the same time completely disregarding the role of the animation team it takes to make a character lifelike and engaging.  While I think this shouldn’t be put squarely on Andy’s shoulders, He being the mocap spokesperson and Weta both definitely should have something to say about their actions most recently displayed in a making of video that completely neglects to have any footage about animators working hard to translate and polish the performance onto the digital character.

They must have some highly pissed animators working for them. It’s also stirring up emotions of other animators who are or who have been in the same position.   I know how it feels as an animator being left out of credits and getting no recognition working at Image Metrics, again a production run completely as if the software was doing all the work.

Be sure to take a look at the video half-way through Tim’s post.