SynchroLux

I saw both Tangled and The Illusionist within a couple of days of each other through the CTN Expo, and came away impressed by both, but for very different reasons.  In a way, these two films represent the Yin and the Yang of feature animation.   The difference in animation technique is the least of the [...]

I should have posted this earlier, but each Tuesday this month Turner Classic Movies is showing a huge selection of Akira Kurosawa’s films, all uncut and commercial free.  I’m a huge fan of TCM and Kurosawa (and the great Toshiro Mifune) so this is pure gold.  I pretty much filled up my DVR last Tuesday, [...]

I have to admit I went a little crazy with this, but it was like a science experiment. I wanted to see if this apparent rule (that moving or facing right always means good, and moving/facing left indicates evil) really held up. I’ve taken a screen shot of almost every scene in the film and [...]

Back when I was writing up the posts on Shot Flow (here and here) in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, I watched Bad Day at Black Rock on Turner Classic Movies. I was in the mode of analyzing how shots hooked up, and I noticed something kind of amazing. Director John Sturges and cinematographer William Mellor [...]

My posts on shot flow in the piano duel from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? were cross posted on the TAG blog and the comments there give key background on how this sequence originated. First, cartoonist Larry Levine wrote: Chuck Jones originally layed out this scene during the film’s early pre-production & one can only dream [...]

In the last post, I broke down the primarily live-action shots in Who Framed Roger Rabbit that lead into the the piano duel between Daffy and Donald. Those shots demonstrated straight-forward film-making and clear shot flow, at least among the shots where human actors were the focus. Here I’ll break down the subsequent animated portion [...]

I remember seeing Who Framed Roger Rabbit and being excited by the Daffy/Donald piano duel. It was just about my favorite part of the movie. I was also as frustrated by the sequence as I was excited. Here it is: [ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page [...]

I’ll be getting a new batch of Animation Mentor victims students in class 6 in a few days. They’ll have spent the last 12 weeks in class 5, fleshing out a short film idea and blocking it out in animatic form. In my class, their final AM class, they’re supposed to animate the whole thing. [...]