Animation

anɪˈmeɪʃ(ə)n/

noun

 1. the state of being full of life or vigour; liveliness.

2.  the technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets or models to create an illusion of movement when the film is shown as a sequence.”a combination of live action with 3-D animation”

10 Reasons Why Animators Should Make GIFs

| Paul Greer
1. They’re quick to do. 
Animation is traditionally a lifetime torturefest of pain, self-doubt and confusion. You can make a nice GIF from just a few frames and that’s the end of it.

2. They catch the eye.
There’s nothing like a moving image in a sea of search results to make people look twice. (We’re living in an attention economy, people).

3. You can provide a nice teaser to your Vimeo page.
Like worms for fish.

4. No-one will ask you to explain the sub-text.
Which is especially good if it is not in your best interest to tell people what exactly that is.

5. People rarely click and watch a video on Tumblr.
With a GIF, TOO LATE!! They already watched it.

6. It’s down with the kids.
Kids love GIFs, GIFs love kids.

7. You can do self portraits and no-one has to look at your ugly face.
I’ve been participating in the Guest Directed Self Portrait project initiated by Molly Peck. I think I am only recognisable in 1 of my 7 submissions so far made.

8. You can try stuff out and get quick feedback.
Nothing says something works by a tsunami of reblogs.

9. You learn the virtue of brevity.
There’s nothing worse than a time waster.

10. You can recycle old work.
Remember that crappy piece of work you did years ago that you’re too ashamed to show anyone? GIF the good bit, bin the rest.

Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi

Video | | Paul Greer

 Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side)

“Designer Olympia Le-Tan’s embroidered clutch-bags spring to life in director Spike Jonze’s tragicomic stop-motion animation Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side). On a shelf in famed Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, the star-crossed love story of a klutzy skeleton and his flame-haired amour plays out amidst Le-Tan’s illustrations of iconic first-edition book covers. “It’s such a beautiful and romantic place,” offers Le-Tan of the antiquarian bookstore. “The perfect setting for our story!” The project started after Jonze asked for a Catcher in the Ryeembroidery to put on his wall and the plucky Le-Tan asked for a film in return. Enlisting French filmmaker Simon Cahn to co-direct, the team wrote the script between Los Angeles and Paris over a six month period, before working night and day animating the 3,000 pieces of felt Le-Tan had cut by hand. “I love getting performances from, telling stories about and humanizing things that aren’t human,” said Jonze of working with Le-Tan’s characters. After spending five years adapting Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, Jonze’s recent shorts include robot love story I’m Here and an inspired G.I. Joe-starring video for The Beastie Boys. “A short is like a sketch,” he says. “You can have an idea or a feeling and just go and do it.” Here the iconic director reveals his creative process to writer Maryam L’Ange.”

Race Horse First Film Ever 1878 Eadweard Muybridge

| Paul Greer

“This Race Horse was the first Film ever, filmed in 1878 by Edward Muybridge.

Eadweard J. Muybridge (pronounced /ˌɛdwərd ˈmaɪbrɪdʒ/; 9 April 1830 — 8 May 1904) was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.

By 1878, Muybridge had successfully photographed a horse in fast motion. This series of photos taken in Palo Alto, California, is called Sallie Gardner at a Gallop or The Horse in Motion, and shows that the hooves do all leave the ground — although not with the legs fully extended forward and back, as contemporary illustrators tended to imagine, but rather at the moment when all the hooves are tucked under the horse as it switches from “pushing” with the back legs to “pulling” with the front legs. This series of photos stands as one of the earliest forms of videography.”

— silentfilmhouse