Vancouver Animated News

Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics.

Pencil is free and open source.


This software pushes Classical Animation as an art form, letting the animator draw frame by frame.

Its interface is clean, simple and easy to navigate, you'll be animating in a matter of minutes. It supports onion skin, variable FPS and audio. Among other features you'll find background images for rotoscoping purposes, colors, layers and alpha channels.



Pascal Naidon brings Pencil as a result of his love for animation, he based it on "Pencil Planner", a pencil test software by Patrick Corrieri.

For more information please visit: Pencil

Posted by Pochat at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

YouTube launches The YouTube Screening Room.

Every other Friday YouTube will be showcasing 4 films from around the globe, whether they have been premiered in international film festivals or not. The selected films will be playing with a high quality player giving the audience, filmmakers and the film themselves the best compliments.

There are 2 Animated Films already!!

-The Danish Poet
-Love and War

YouTube is Connecting films and audiences in the world's largest theater.

For more information please visit The YouTube Screening Room

Posted by Pochat at 8:09 PM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Richard Williams Animation Masterclass presents a 16-DVD box set - The Animator's Survival Kit - Animated.



Disk Content
16-DVD BOX SET INCLUDES:

Starting Right
Timing and Spacing
Working Methods
More Timing More Spacing
Building Walks
Flexibility in a Walk
Sneaks, Runs, and Animal Action
Flexibility
Overlapping Action and Weight
Takes
Vibrates
Accents
Dialogue 1
Dialogue 2
Giving the Performance
Putting it all Together

Lesson lengths are an average of 40 minutes, plus specially animated examples for each lesson and the animated logo

During his more than 50 years in the business Williams has been one of the true innovators and serves as the link between the Golden Age of animation by hand and the new computer animation successes. Perhaps even more important has been his dedication to passing along his knowledge to a new generation of animators so that they in turn can push the medium in new directions.



For more information please visit: www.theanimatorssurvivalkit.com

Posted by Pochat at 7:37 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

Animation Rigs.com is devoted to create powerful and robust character animation rigs through a series of video tutorials meticulously explaining the art of rigging.

Their services are based on affordable monthly and yearly payments addressing individuals and companies, in other words personal use and commercial use.

Once you register you'll get to see what's in the other side of the fence, there are a lot of video tutorials ranging from beginner to advance. You'll have full access to online tools that are connected straight to Maya's interface via html, when you click any of the hyperlinks on a specific tutorial Maya will react to it and will bring models, scenes, samples, etc.


A lot of their tools are made for animators, meaning that a basic technical level is enough to comprehend the current tutorial. On this same note, their animation tools are made to accelerate the rigging process without compromising its quality. The animator will jump quicker to the animation stage, in particular if they use Rapid Rigger. Rapid Rigger is an impressive tool designed to rig a character in about 30 minutes or less.

AnimationRigs.com is also developing Studio Sim, where artists participate in each production stage, from Character Design to Modeling to Rigging and finally Animating.

AnimationRigs.com is already changing the way of what animation productions used to be. They are bringing innovating animation tools and concepts, making them an important player in the animation industry.

For more information please visit: www.animationRigs.com

Posted by Pochat at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post

'skine.art. is a sketchbook artist community, its all about art done on sketchbooks, meaning artists drawing on the go!

'skine.art.'s website looks very well maintained and has a clean cut, its easy to navigate and most importantly the art has high priority.

Any artist can contribute, they just need to register to submit their artwork.

Once the art has been submitted it shows on thetop of the page, which has a blog-roll type layout. Newer posts go on the top, other artists can comment on the sketches and favorite them praising the artist.


'skine.art keeps their top contributors visible on the "Top Contributors" section including a thumbnail image of their art. Also there is favorite column listing the artists links.

There is a forum that allows artist to introduce themselves, chit-chat, participate in sketch contests, etc. And last but not least 'skine.art holds artists interviews where you can get to know them even better through interview questions.

'skine.art is definitely a solid and attractive online community making your stay very pleasant and giving you intense feelings to jump back to your sketchbook.

Moleskine is the legendary notebook used for the past two centuries by great artists and thinkers, including Van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway and Chatwin.

For more information please visit: 'skine.art.com

Posted by Pochat at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments | links to this post