Mickey Mousing If you look at early animation from the 1920’s and 1930’s, you’ll see a lot of what came to be known as Mickey Mousing. Characters were mostly animated […]
Jon
Rhythm for Everyone
Rhythm Rhythm is everywhere. There’s rhythm in the music you listen to. There’s a rhythm to the way you talk, and the way you move. The motor in your car […]
Violent Consequences
There’s a recurring conversation in this country about the relationship between violent imagery in our entertainment and violent behavior in our society. This conversation is mostly a lot of closed-minded, […]
Concepts in Fight Choreography
I’ve been writing a lot about Striking from the point of view of application as an animator. But I want to back up in the process a little and examine […]
Mocap is not the Devil
Every time a new technology comes along, people get scared. If that technology promises any sort of “labor savings” the fright takes a slightly different course: people fear losing their […]
Let the Technique be your Teacher
In the United States, it seems we’ve developed a lazy, backwards way of thinking about education. We go to a teacher and expect them to bestow knowledge upon us. We […]
Striking Fundamentals part 3
In Part 2, I showed the little diagrams I’ve been using to clarify in my own mind the components of striking, and I wrote a bit about relationship between the […]
Mixing Paint in After Effects
The Martin Scorsese movie The Aviator follows the life of aviation mogul Howard Hughes through different periods of his life. The director wanted the color look of the movie to […]
Striking Fundamentals part 2
In part 1, I talked about the difference between training martial arts yourself and depicting martial arts in animation. I want to get into breaking down striking techniques into their […]
Striking Fundamentals part 1
Animators and martial artists both must study movement. However, the difference between the two is when an animator expresses that movement they do it externally, and when a martial artist […]