Apologies for my near absence from Motionographer over the past week. I’ve been working like mad on a couple projects for school, and I haven’t had much time to look at stuff, much less write about it. (I’ll post the projects on It’s Not About the Grades when they’re done.)
Daniel and I did manage to carve out a little time today to chat with the good people at Freestyle Collective, though. We’ll be posting that interview soon. In the meantime, chew on this…
Adapt 2006 Conference
If you missed SIGGRAPHâ€â€?or if you’re just jonezin’ for another high-end 3D production fixâ€â€?you should seriously consider the Adapt 2006 Conference in Montreal from September 23-24. It’s a much shorter but much more focused look at the techniques behind movies like Spider Man 2, The Matrix and The Incredibles, just to name a few. The roll call of presenters is incredibly impressive.
Special scooby snacks for anyone who goes and does a little write-up about it for Motionographer.
(Thanks to Sean for the tip.)
Mikros Image
Babe Baker tipped me off to a site that will likely consume many hours of my life. Mikros Image is a post-production house in France that has put a staggering array of their top-notch work online.
The site’s a little trickyâ€â€?okay, it sucks, but here’s a little help. The reels are obviously under the Showreels category, but if you want to see individual works, go to Gallery and then choose a subsection. Click on a project to launch a pop-up window. From there, click “Showreel” to see the actual spot. (I think something got lost in translation there.)
France has quickly become my favorite nation for animation. Yes, that’s a retarded thing to say, but I’m just brimming with love for Mikros and Gobelins and people like David and Nicolas Laurent. I’d be marching around in my beret right now if it wasn’t at the cleaners. (Wine stain, of course.)
Inching Towards Minority Report
I’ve seen prototypes of Jeff Han’s touchscreen interfaces before, but his presentation at TED shows a real breakthrough in both the hardware and software developments of his research. Think about how this could affect media authoring. 3D modeling would be a blast. Maybe in the fututure organic modeling will actually be easier than non-organic modeling.
(Thanks again to Babe for sharing his radar with us.)
PES: Game Over
PES has long been a source of inspiration for looking at the world in a different way. Through the lens of PES, every object is potentially something else entirely. His newest movie, Game Over , is a fun little romp through the video games that shaped my childhood.
One of the things I really dig about PES’ work is its subtle virtuosity. It all looks so simple, but the Asteroids sequence, for example, took an incredible understanding of animation in order to mimic the physics of the game. Truly amazing stuff.
(Thanks to Seth for the tip.)