"A Conversation with Eric Goldberg"

seen on animated news

MADAGASCAR DVD releases in india.

Is being relesed with much fan fare in India. I wont say i am bog fan of the ad's. They are done very badly. There is no sense of unity with them. You are bombarded with random clips from the movie and its seems like the editors is hoping they will add up to something. All it does add up to nonsense.

Honestly very disspointing TV spots being played here. Reflects the Big studios lack of understanding of the indian audience.

I love blogging

When you decide to create a blog its like you create a concience. Its is always there, sitting in the corner of your mind reminding you to reflect and observe. Not matter how long you stay away, the fact that you have one reminds you to come back to it.

Its been such a long time since i last updated this but having a blog is a constant reminder that i have to come back to it. It doesnt matter if i write something productive or not. But just the act of having a place where I can sit down and think and write a few lines is surprisingly relaxing. And I know exactly what the frame of my mind was when i was writing even after many many months.

This is a most useless entry but i still love it. Who do i thank for blogging?

first four minutes of chicken little

on the threedy forums download here ---> chicken little

Death Fall | Open Season

Death Fall | Open Season: "BULLY "

got this from ethans blog. Looking like a lot of fun :) I like the story line. Its what animation should be about - whimsy.

ummm.. yeah the whole autodesk maya thing

I dont think anyone was expecting this especially after seeing how MAX and MAYA salesmen bitch .. i mean pitch. It took me a little while to get access to this news. At first I was like hmm.. took me a sec to realise that MAX was Autodesk. THen I was like WHAT! Then Bill, Raj and I went WHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT! Then we were like ok.. this could be good.

I dont really think they gonna stop making maya or anything drastic like that. Nothing for end users to worry about. I think the lack of competition could become a problem. But these things have a way of correcting themselevs with new competition. I need to start looking at softimage and other animation packages. Jason says in his blog that its all about workflow. I cannot agree more. Working on a whole project and not just a little piece as I was used to doing in PDI I can see that a BIGGGG part of executing a project is having a good pipeline and a software or a team of engineers that can help you design your pipe line. So i really hope MAYA MAX version 1 will address that :)

While I am looking into my crystal orb let me make another prediction. PRICE! DOLLARS! DINARO AND RUPEES! Maya and max will become more expensive over time ( if there is no effort by the current competion to use this op to start cracking on things)

Thats it - the bottom line is the money.

It would not be a bad idea for a bunch of good programmers to start a site and begin to create a open source 3d program. It might take a while but if its anything as sucessful as linux then....

:)

setting up anything

is so hard. Raj and I are in bangalore setting up our next venture. There is so many variables in the equation. A teacher once gave me a good metaphor for animation. Imagine a stick on which a plate is very delicatly balanced. Now imagine wine glasses on each end of the plate. It is the animators job to fill up all the glasses to the brim without the whole arrangement crashing down.

Now imagine doing this with a hundred different setups like this. Then you understand what i am going through now. running around, selecting, ignoring, remembering to remember. Making a million choices all day. This is why a directors job is so hard.

You try to have good taste. So you choose the right things and it all falls magically into place :)

I am a bad blogger

Not really been updating this site. Been very busy. Holy crap I have a 4 inch stack of visiting cards from all the people i met in the last 2 weeks. I was in bombay then I went to delhi then back to bangalore and then back to bombay and then chennai and then back to bangalore. Phew.. I feel like air port is my home now. But that is over for now. So i am back to base. The film is progressing well ( touch wood) but i am still getting nervous. But exicted. Also nervous.

Hmm sounds like direction from a bad director.. make him exicted and nervous. and keep him sad with a some joy too..

But thats how i feel exicted, nervous happy ..sad..

Zoo gets world's first elephant treadmill -

Somebody must have been seeing madagascar

LINK

seeing Madagascar

Finally I got to see Madagascar. It was an early show but with lots and lots of kids. I dont know why but kids LOOOOOOOVE animation. I have never ever seen a audience laugh and cheer so much even at jokes which I am sure they did not understand. After a long time I got to see an animated movie without the critic in my mind going blah blah. And I loved it. The kids seem to walk out of the theater a few inches above ground after the show. Reminded of why i joined this industry in the first place.

While I admit Mad is not a perfect animated film or a perfect film. I think its sucess with the audience is a testament to the fact that animated storytelling has an uncanny way to get connected to the audience. Nothing else explains the sucess of so many below average TV shows or Disneys Direct to videos.

Yay Animation!

scale of the lord of the rings

..boggles the mind.

The films were seven years in the making – two years
of pre-production, two of main production and three of
post-production. The scale of the project is shown in
New Line Production’s number list:

100,000,000 - estimated number of people worldwide who
have read the trilogy.

40 - languages (at least) into which the books have
been translated.

12,500,000 --hand-linked rings used to create chain
mail by Weta workshop for the films.

3,000,000 - feet of film (at least) used to film the
trilogy.

250,000 - silk leaves applied by hand to a tree in
Hobbiton.

90,000 - still photographs shot on set.

48,000 - swords, scabbards, axes, shields made by Weta
workshop for the films.

20,602 - extras cast for the films.

15,000 - costumes made by costume department for the
films.

10,000 - members of crowd at New Zealand cricket game
recorded making Orc sounds.

5,000 - cubic meters of vegetables and flowers planted
in Hobbiton a year before filming started.

2,400 - crew members at height of production.

2,000 - illustrations drawn for production by
conceptual designer Alan Lee.

1,600 - pairs of prosthetic Hobbit feet used by
principal Hobbit cast.

1,460 - largest number of eggs served at breakfast for
crew.

800 - largest number of lunches served on set at once.

900 - suits of armor made by Weta workshop.

550 - hours of film (at least) shot on set for
behind-the-scenes footage.

350 - sets constructed for films.

300 - handmade, knotted wigs made for films.

274 - shooting days for trilogy.

250 - horses used in one scene.

200 - individually crafted Orc masks created by Weta
workshop.

180 - artists created computerized effects at Weta
digital.

114 - speaking roles.

100 - locations, at least.

100 - hand-forged, inlaid weapons crafted by Weta
workshop.

68 - miniature sets.

30 - actors trained by two dialect and creative
languages coaches.

13 - months the Fellowship travels on its journey in
the trilogy.

9 - the numeral, in Elvish script, tattooed on nine
members of the cast following the shoot.

8 - acres of farm land in Matamata, New Zealand, used
for set of Hobbiton.

7 - years of development of the film trilogy by
writer/producer/director Peter Jackson.

5 - shooting units : Unit 1, two second units,
blue-screen unit and miniature unit.


(source: www.lordoftherings.net)

LOTR won seventeen Oscars in total, including eleven
for The Return of the King

Intelligent Falling

THe onion.. these guys do it every time.. this time its Intelligent Falling

Shane Acker on "9"

Got this link from Jasons blog. Very nice article.
AnimationTrip.com News: "started going to school there in ’99 a"

Joe Ranft

Joe Ranft of Pixar has died in a car accident. He was a brilliant and extremly funny individual. I had the honour to meet him once. He was giving a guest lecture at one of the story boarding classes i was taking. Even though he came after a very long day at work he gave us a very inspiring lecture on story. The awesome thing was he seemed to get energized the more he talked. He was filled with passion and believed so much in what he had to say that. After class he spent time with us and looked over our work and gave us comments on it. It is a very sad time for pixar and the animation community in general.

Joe Ranft -- Pixar animation artist, voice of characters

Interview

cgTantra interviews moi..

Interview

On the web at cgTantra

work culture at pixar through the eys of Brad Bird

I have posted this before but still an interesting read.

Wired article

fresh off the farm

Just rendered some old work. Done before 2002.

Marlon Brando Dialogue

Waiting

Box lift

lamp interacting with a ball

Wow a blog on just rigging

Check it out.

Creature Rigging

MADAGASCAR releases in india.

It never is a good feeling when I can't get tickets to a movie I want to see. I hate having to wait to watch a movie. Then it follows that I must be very disspointed to not get tickets in not one but two cities in india for a movie. But no! I am very happy cause that movie happens to be madagascar.

With very little fanfare Madagascar released all over india on friday. I happened to be in mumbai and oh joy! was unable to get tickets because theaters were sold out. Today, I am in delhi and WOW no tickets here either. So i guess I will have to see it when i get back to my home town Bangalore tomorrow.

Try to post some pictures on people watching the movie and maybe some reactions from the audience.

I am hoping I wont be able to get tickets. :D

for those of us who did not go to siggraph....

Some really cool looking disney stuff. Thanks to Dan for the link

Disney stuff on aintitcool

Bunny suicides

interesting and very very wierd


Bunny suicides

some old work

As some may know, due to some freak accident I lost all my old renders. Which explains why I have never updated my portfolio page. The task of redoing it was just too daunting, so i just shut my eyes and pretend to be somewhere else. Well I just found this file, it was done abt ..oh.. 2001 ish. I was studying under Scott Clark and Pete Nash, both from Pixar. They gave us this luxo model and told us to animate it interacting with a ball. It was a lot of fun and provided me with my first insight of how pixar animators thought. I think animation is all about how you think. There is skill involved in transfering that thought into your medium of choice. But the real entertainment comes from the thought and not the skill. This is the advantage animators have over actors. An animator gets to try and see a couple of dozen times if his thought is working out on screen the way he wants it to work out. He can tweek it frame by frame. Actors dont have that luxury.

I hope I am not violating any copyright by putting up a luxo model on my site.

Lamp interacting with a ball

Finding this has inspired to me re-render atleast some of the shots that I did. Hope you like it.

Blogs galore

You go away for a few months and you come back and everybody you know and their mom has a blog! So just decided to put a links section for people to take a stroll on. More to come soon.

I am gonna need a good software to read up on all these.

rex looking like this!!!

He used to look like alex the lion!!

Shh-Life-Er! � Blog Archive � Rex gets trimmed to help Madagascar..

BTW Jason's blog -> http://jonhandhisdog.com/shh-life-er/

How does he do it?

Jason Schleifer- master of many trades and a mind boggler

CGTalk - Meet the Artist: Jason Schleifer

OH MY GAWWWWWD!

this is what is called too cool -

The Animation Podcast

adding events

I read somewhere that music is not actually about the the sound. But is about the silence between the sounds and how everything adds up. I was thinking about this in terms of story today. It doesn't really matter what the incidents in a characters life are what is important is what happens between the incidents and how the incidents add up to form the final picture. Just as how the sounds add up to make music. And in the space between the sounds emotion is generated. I think one of the main reasons why artists create art is to evoke emotion.

Reading what i have written, it seems i am saying that the whole is more important than the parts. I think what i really mean is that the main function of the parts is to add up! Their sum must be more than parts. 1+1 must equal 3!

eChalk colour perception: This is the most amazing optical effect in the world

Interesting link to a site that demonstrates some illusions created due to our color perception


eChalk colour perception: This is the most amazing optical effect in the world

story

Story is a very elusive thing. It is like a wet fish that slips out your fist everytime you think you've caught it . Thats my simile of the day. :)

I have been reading a lot of books on Dramatic technique and story telling. WHile reading them i had a lot of euphoric realisations about the nature of story. But once you lay the books down ,you realise that those books are just praises of story. Commentaries of symphonies cant teach you how to write one. It can only help you to understand some of the ideas behind its creation.

So imagination is the only way to create art or story for that matter . Nothing can be a shortcut to creation. Not even theory and technique. Perhaps inspiration could be. But who can count on that.

end of abstract thinking for the day.

update

I am in india right now and am working on a film. Still haven't got a chance to see the Madagascar with a regualar ticket buying audience. Glad to see that it has done well.

While here I am immersing myself with hong kong cinema particularly Wong Kar Wai. Really good stuff. Check it out.

just a quick note for when you are feeling too tired to work on your shot

frank and ollie say - "Remember your shots are there forever.."

no time..

We are in a "this is it" stage of production on Madagascar. I am learning heaps but unfortunalty i have no time to share it with you. Apologies to those to check everyday.

IFILM - Movies: A Scanner Darkly

very interesting.. check it out


IFILM - Movies: A Scanner Darkly

Robots Trailers & Clips - Yahoo! Movies

Robots Trailers & Clips - Yahoo! Movies

another review of madagascar

hard not to jump into this one. But still no comments from me..


Ain't It Cool News - View Article

New Madagascar trailer

Click here. Enjoy

Ain't It Cool News - madagascar review

No comments from me.

Ain't It Cool News - View Article

nice interview

i love video games and i think these guys are smart.

The Onion A.V. Club | Feature

wired article on pixar

interesting.

Wired 12.06: Welcome to Planet Pixar

"Surprise" Incredibles wins big at annie awards

NOT. :) As expected. Incredibles mopped up any and all awards that existed at the annies.


32nd Annual Annie Award Nominess and Winners

Coming Soon! - Latest News

Coming Soon! - Latest News click that link for cool madagascar posters. Hope you like em.

Will Eisner passes away

http://www.willeisner.com/ Most awesome genius comic book artist Will Eisner has passed away. He leaves behind a treasure trove of graphic novels and learning materials for the world to enjoy. I found his book "Comics and Sequential Art" when I was a student and it influenced me strongly. I admire his approach and dedication to his art and credit him with creating the graphic novel as we know it today. Thank you Will Eisner.