Nothing to see here folks…

Another jaw-droppingly good bit of animation from the amazing team at Meindbender.

For a look at their process, take a look at this CGSociety article posted up awhile back discussing their early Cartoon Network bumpers. They are using the physically accurate Maxwell Render to do things that would be incredibly difficult to do with traditional stop motion but able to achieve using 3D packages and impeccable traditional animation skills. The only thing the computer is really letting them do here is have a more controlled workflow. I would love to see some storyboards, I am sure they have carefully keyframed these beautiful little shorts well before they even start thinking about rendering.

[Meindbender]

Beautiful bit of animation created for CinemaKC show open by the good people at T2.

[ T2 | claudia.chagüi | chris waner ]

What started as a few window whiteboard scribbles. . .

. . . and has started to become more and more an identity for this site. I present to you cubeBot, and glimpse at where this little guy is headed.

cubeBot character sheet

cubeBot render tests.

And a simple look at his natural habitat:

cubeBot environment test (13MB .mov)

A big collection of cubes driven by some simple MEL expressions.

A lot more coming up in regards to this project. (Including but not limited to) Original score by Ekahwerdna, crowd and character animation, and some sexy sexy UI work.

[andoru.projects]

Not only does this MacBook look happy to be rendering frames, it is happy to be alive at all. Having a steady not-for-profit job is just icing on the cake. Although battered and bruised, this little guy is perfectly functional and can help get the job done.

Just using OS X’s built-in Screen Sharing functionality, some AppleScript tools, and some clever render setup it is easy to get renders offloaded from the main workstation.

Look how happy these frames are!

So, not really a “farm”, but I can guarantee this MacBook puts forward more effort per frame than other nameless render farm nodes. . .

(Peter Moxom wisely points out its closer resemblance to a garden rather than a farm)

[andoru.labs]

Full steam ahead. Dried Up (a film some good friends of mine made) received the Silver Medal in Animation at the Student Academy awards on June 12th in Beverly Hills. Even better the award was presented by Henry Selick.

From Right. Henry Selick, Isaiah Powers, Jeremy Casper.

If you haven’t already make sure to check out the film:

Congratulations to all those involved. Very well deserved!

[dried up] | [isaiah.powers] | [jeremy.casper] | [stuart.bury]