Monday, February 25, 2013

Introduction to Stop Motion

Here is the latest assignment in my physics of animation class.  We are introducing stop motion.  I have never done stop motion before and I have to say that it was a real fun experience.  I loved working with the cutouts and just creating the whole thing was very crafty and super fun to animate.  Im thinking that I might keep something like this in the back of my head, maybe it could be something I could get into.

Sunday, February 3, 2013

The Newest Thing

So I just spent the last two hours studying scenes from Disney/Pixar's Brave.  It's such a beautiful movie and I thought it would be the perfect film to study composition and lighting from.  I noticed a couple of things while doing this, about the movie.  Merida, the main character, has these amazing flowing red locks of hair as you might remember.  Something that I didn't notice before was that throughout the entire movie, there is a constant contrast between the red of her hair and its complimentary color, Green.  Now it wasn't green as in christmas colors red and green, but subtle like in the blues, greys and in what we think is the blacks.  Cool colors were mostly used as a contrast to Merida's hair when there were key points in the film.  
In this composition the artists used the green in the grey wall, her dress, and greenish yellows that were the background for Merida so that she stood out more.  While the foreground has a bit more red in it, like in the browns.  All this helps to guide the eye of the viewer.
Again in this scene, merida is Red and her mom, who she has problems with wears a green dress and green emerald on her tiara.  

This scene was compositionally beautiful.  It used directional light, contrast of colors, and arrows to guide the eye where to look.  They want you to focus on these two characters on a very important part of the film.
All in all, this film is visually stunning and just like other Disney Pixar films, so much attention is put to the details which makes them such a superpower studio. I can only image creating a film this great.