A while ago I saw this sand animation by Kseniya Simonova. It’s a very moving animation about Germany conquering Ukraine in WWII. The way she erases and redraws the sand is impressive. It makes the animation seem more alive since its happening in real time and you’re seeing it change right before your eyes.

It reminded me of William Kentridge because he erases and redraws his animation though he uses charcoal instead of sand. I recently found out that there was a showing for him at the Fort Worth Modern. Unfortunately, it ended on September 27.

They both have serious stories to tell with their animation and they’re not simply something to enjoy but to think about.

Our Song of the Week comes from UK band Everything Everything, MY KZ, UR BF. I’d only heard this song a few times on the radio but it immediately stuck to me. I love the complex harmonies and the little guitar strumming give a great electro-pop feel. The vocals remind me a little of Passion Pit, not a great singer and weird falsettos but very interesting nonetheless. I hope they release soon in the US. What do you think of the song and the video? Do dancing policewomen appeal to you? Does it compare at all to Passion Pit? Am I the only one who finds it more difficult to type “UR” than “Your”?

This is an amazing video of a mural being animated. This was a group project done by blu and David Ellis. I’ve seen some of blu’s other works and they’re all very well thought out, creative masterpieces. The work looks like stream-of-consciousness, but I think there must have been some planning involved. If only to figure out if there’s enough space to carry out the idea. I love the scope and scale that these guys have worked in. They must not be scared of heights! The most striking thing about this video, something that would make a great difference if absent, are the sound effects. The soundtrack bring the images to life and allow a better understanding of the artist’s intention.

It must be nice to have a whole courtyard to paint anything one likes. I love that the shots are taken from birds’ eye-view. The video looks like a bunch of stills that have been compiled together, which in essence is what animation is all about, piecing together still frames. The artist enjoys a cyclical aspect of animation, hence the looping of this video but also the way the feet become legs which in turn become larger legs towards the end of the sequence.

What do you think? Do you think the artist has a plan or is it all “off-the-cuff”? What do you think of the open brain motifs? Gross or gorgeous?

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

I was just going to email Darmini and Lisa this, but remembered we had a blog to share this on. Duh!

If you’ve ever put your email address on your website, then you’ve had the experience of your inbox being flooded with unwanted spam. One way around this without having to put your email address in an image or list it in a funky way such as 123[at]emai[dot]com is to encrypt it in ASCII.

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The Song of the Week this week is my Scottish DJ/Producer, Calvin Harris, “I’m Not Alone.” It’s his first single from his album Ready for the Weekend, which has already hit the #1 spot in England, and #2 on the Dance chart, here in the US according to iTunes. The album was released in the US last week, and this video features Harris as a mad scientist making girls dance funny. It ends on a macabre note that should not be advocated*. What do you think of the single and the video? Do you think it’s better or worse than “Acceptable in the 80s” and “The Girls“?

*Killing Teddies is never funny.

Scottish DJ/Producer, Calvin Harris has come up with a great way to market his new album, Ready for the Weekend, released in the U.S. yesterday. He’s created a human synthesizer, and if anyone knows about synthesizers it would be Calvin Harris. The main reason I love this whole concept is the interaction part. One of the exhibits we saw at Siggraph was a Student Show at the SpaceTime Gallery. I love art that begs audience participation. In this day and age, interactivity is everything; I’m no longer satisfied to just look at a great piece of art, it has to do something. I have to make it do something.

One of the types of art, we saw at the Evening Theater at Siggraph were demonstrations of real-time graphics, including one by Tatsuo Unemi & Daniel Bisig. DT4 Identity-SA is an “artware” of Project 7², a type of screen-based installation with visual feedback and sound synthesis. It displays a new type of animation of aesthetic graphics and deformed reflection of user’s image. You can download it for yourself, another reason I like interactive art – sometimes its free! You can see an example of this below, but trust me it was much better on a huge, crisp HD screen.

Here’s the Calvin Harris Humanthesizer and the making-of videos.

This is the first of a series I hope I’ll be able to continue every week and let you in on my favorite song of the week. This song will be completely subjective and the only criteria is that it keeps going round and round in my head.

This week’s song is by Deadmau5, world-famous Canadian DJ, featuring the lead singer, Rob Swire,  from drum ‘n bass group Pendulum, Ghosts ‘N Stuff. Match made in Heaven if you ask me. Enjoy below.

After an eight hour drive with the sun in our eyes, we’ve made it back home! We learned a lot at Siggraph, met several people, and were inspired by all that we saw but its so nice to be back home in our own beds. I want to just soak up being home this weekend before I need to go back to work on Monday.

Our final day at Siggraph, I can’t believe it’s already come. This week has gone by so fast. We had a very full day today. We were at the Exhibition at 9am like the Pixar Recruiter suggested and wow, a big crowd built up before 9:30am when the Exhibition opens. We went through a separate less crowded entrance and still ended up at the end of a long line. But we did each get a poster, yay! The line went quickly since they were just handing them out one after the other. We didn’t get to open it until lunch and found out that it was a big poster for the movie “Up” which is what we could have guessed because the Pixar exhibition was the “Up” house. It was so neat, I’d show it to you but forgot to take a picture.

After we got our posters, we wondered over to the SpaceTime Gallery. Lots of interactive and amazing artwork there. Another exhibit worth looking at if you haven’t gotten the chance, but since tomorrow is the last day you may miss it. There was this one installation, Aurelia, where we got to meet the artist too, Jean Ho Chu. She was volunteering in the gallery and had actually requested to stay there and not be reassigned to another exhibit. Which I can totally understand, because I’d be curious about how others react and interact with my installation too. The installation was fun and it was interesting to see the different things that would happen as we moved the cotton balls around or even removed some. She had obviously put a lot of thought into it and its no wonder it ended up in the Siggraph gallery.

Now about the infamous Pixar teapot. We headed over to the Pixar exhibit after lunch, a little before 1pm and the line was INCREDIBLE. We thought the poster line was long, nope, we were wrong. We walked along it to find the end, but it kept going and going and going. We finally found the end of the line and was practically on the other end of the exhibition hall. We were worried we wouldn’t get one and tried to console each other that at least we got the poster, but in fact we actually really wanted it. Luckily, we made it all the way to the Pixar house and each got a teapot!! We were so close to the end though! They were telling us that they only had a little left.

We spent the next four hours in Room 260 with 3D glasses. We got to see “G-Force 3D: Guinea Pigs, Gadgets, and Post-Production in Stereoscopic Filmaking” presentation and learned a whole lot more about how Real 3D is made. The end results are amazing though. We got to see a little clip from the movie and I kept watching for the moments it would pop out of the frame(which is effective and not too noticeable). However, my favorite sequence is when the fireworks are shooting all around them, I could really see things coming towards me then. Right after “G-Force 3D” was “Coraline: The Changing Face of Animation.” Once again, we thought “G-Force 3D” was packed and proven how wrong we were compared to how packed “Coraline” was. Luckily we were already in there otherwise who knows what kind of seats we would have ended up with, if any. Before the Production Session even started, people were crowding around the presenters taking their pictures. And as soon as the session was over, people were crowding around them again taking their pictures. We figured they’d see spots all night because of all the flashes. The “Coraline” session was really interesting too. We got to learn how 3D printing fit into the workflow and all the work and dedication that went into making the movie. Its quite inspiring. I’ve heard about 3D printing before but didn’t know it could become such an integral part of a movie. They used it to print out replaceable face pieces. Its really innovative which is why the title of the session, “The Changing Face of Animation,” fits it perfectly.

We got to end our final night at Siggraph with the Evening Theater. All the clips and shorts were amazing! It was a great way to end our time at Siggraph. There was one interactive artwork presented called “DT4 Identity”. It asks like an abstract mirror that changes and reforms, while making sounds. Once we found out that it was downloadable, Darmini and I wanted to try it right away. There are several other shorts worth mentioning, but this post is already long enough so I’ll cut to the end. The last short shown was the “Unbelievable Four,” which is a short I’ve seen ads for but never got to watch before and always been curious about. I finally got to see it tonight and it did not disappoint, in fact it was a shock seeing Bush, Cheney, Rummy, and Condi singing “The Final Countdown” with nice comedic twists.

Our third day at Siggraph was slightly different. We spent the morning at the Exhibition looking at more displays and presentations. We even got the courage to talk to the Pixar recruiters and found out that they offer residencies for people who have recently graduated, but of course the competition is tough. However, its something and its worth hoping for. One bonus is that we finally found out where all the posters in long brown tubes were coming from, the Pixar booth! Lisa and I were going crazy wondering where they came from. We even found out that they also give away teapots four hours later at 1pm. We agreed to be there the next day. I’m sure plenty of you already knew about these, but at least we eventually figured it out.

The difference today was that we spent the rest of the day exploring New Orleans. We didn’t have the Computer Animation Festival Pass and had already looked at most of the things we could yesterday. Plus, its nice to be able to spend some time to look around the locale. We walked along the Riverwalk and found the food court where everyone from Siggraph was eating. We had ate at the smaller food court on the other end and at a Subways nearby so didn’t know about the Food Court in the Riverwalk. Whoops! Lisa’s one requirement was to see the Mississippi River, so we got a nice view of it and plenty of pictures, better than the ones we tried to take on the bridge when we were on I-10.

Afterwards, we walked around a bit looking at the buildings and scenery as we headed to the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. This was Darmini’s first time in an aquarium which made it extra exciting. We went to see an albino alligator, penguins (some of them was so funny because they stuck close to us, but the King Penguin was the most silly), and adorable sea otters who were doing lots of tricks. Lisa and I got to pet stingrays too. It took a long time though because we had to wait for them to come up to us, our arms were in the water pass our elbow before they finally came up to us. They were actually more soft than what I expected.

Tonight is the one night we decided to go to an authentic New Orleans restaurant, Chartres House Cafe. It was nice, the people were friendly, and they had a pretty fountain in their courtyard. Lisa and I shared a Taste of New Orleans, which included Red Beans and Rice, Jambalaya and Chicken and Andouille Gumbo.

We ended the day with souvenir shopping. I think I got more than the others, big family I guess. I’ve still got some more left too and tomorrow’s the last full day!