David Regal, TV Writer and more!

David Regal has always had a love for writing and magic. He began his career writing for several animated TV series including "Rugrats" and "The WildThornberrys". If you have ever wondered what it would be like to be a writer for your favorite TV show, take a listen to the video below.

Part 2 is more about his career in creating magic effects and producing a TV series about magic.Take a look below...

I think I must be doing something right, we are up to 206 subscriber to the Animateduated YouTube channel! And you can be number 210! 2020 is just around the corner with a new decade of really amazing new things to learn about. If you have any comments or suggestion, please email at heyjimr@gmail.com or leave a comment below.

Happy Holidays!
Jim

Spooky Animated Treats!

For Halloween, I thought I would post a few early works from my animation past which I have recently found on YouTube. Here are two episodes of an educational series I worked on for Disney Educational division early in my animation careen.

I have started the clips on the animation I worked on, you may stop it at any time after that. I still have the theme song stuck in my head which cannot be removed even with surgery.

From 1929, The Skeleton Dance, an early Disney classic animated by UB Iwerks!

 

Below is another short animated by Ub Iwerks which was animated after The Skeleton Dance. Can you see the same animation reused in this short?

Here's an early Betty Boop Halloween cartoon from 1933

Tim Burton worked on Black Cauldron and hated it so much that he created his first venture into stop motion back in 1982. The puppets and stop motion animation was done by the Chiodo Brothers based on Burton's designs and direction.

That same year, Kathy Zielinski won her Student Academy Award and Focus film award for her student film, "Guess Who's for Dinner." You can learn more about her work by watching this Animateducated  interview.

Guess Who's For Dinner from Kathy Zielinski on Vimeo.

Here are several eerie animated films not just for Halloween. 

Got a favorite spooky animated short film you like? Let's know in the comments below, Send the link and Subscribed to Animateducated on YouTube!

Happy Halloween!

Klaus, a return to 2D?

When you think of a 2D animated movie about the beginning of Santa Claus, you might think of this...

 

This weekend, I went to a "making of" event for Klaus, the first animated production from Netflix and SPA Studios. The first started back in 2014 or so, when animation director, Sergio Pablos started working out an origin story of Santa Claus. 

Pablos created a pitch presentation and animated a preview showcasing his 2d animation using a new look which gave more details to lighting and effects animation. This new look development allowed Pablos and his team to create an animated short which combined the best 2D animation with the 3D rendering look of CG animation. Here's an interesting article about that process.

All the research and work paid off and is now become a 2D feature hybrid of animation film called "Klaus".

The animation is superb in quality, the storytelling is fun, the character designs and acting is very appealing to watch. All of this film was well worth the wait and should be a nice Holiday movie to watch this November and every November after that.

Will this be a film that returns us to 2D animation production?

If you would like to know more about Sergio Pablos, check out this 2016 interview. 

Is this film on your holiday list? Let us know below or follow us if you like what you see.

24 Hours for 2019

That time of year again. 
Time for the 24 hours Animation Contest and challenge on Friday, Oct 4th to Saturday, Oct 5th!

In past years, I have posted all the 24 hours contests that Woodbury University has been involved with. Here are last year's teams and their films.

Enrollment has gone up with the increase of Animation students at Woodbury this year. Several classrooms have been updated, replacing Animation discs and desks with Work stations and Cintiqs. 

Here's a live stream from CSU Long Beach: https://www.facebook.com/aubry.mintz/videos/10162551963485551/?notif_id=1570226399742648&notif_t=live_video_explicit

This year's theme is: Family 

Family(noun) fam·i·ly |  \ ˈfam-lē    , ˈfa-mə-\ plural families

F amily  –  F amilia  -  家庭 –  F amiglia  –  ครอบคร ว –  Rodina  –  Ohana  –  החפש מ  –  परिवाि –  Keluarga  –

Pamilya  –  Famille  –  F amilie  –  Família  –  Οι κο γ έ νε ια  –  С емь я  –  Aiga  –  가족 –  ةل ئاع

“Holding  on  as  one

Roots  rich  with  stories  of  life

Ancestrally  linked”

-  Denise  Boston,  Ph.D.,  Dean of Diversity &  Inclusion,  California

Institute  of Integral  Studies

It's a family affair, it's a family affair One child grows up to be Somebody that just loves to learn And another child grows up to be Somebody you'd just love to burn Mom loves the both of them

You see it's in the blood

- Lyrics from the song “Family Affair” by Sylvester Stewart AKA Sly Stone

from Sly and the Family Stone

https://www.urbandictionary.com/ offers the following definitions of the word family:

family sample definition 1:

A group of people, usually of the same blood (but do not have to be), who genuinely love, trust, care about, and look out for each other. REAL family is a bondage that cannot be broken by any means.

by Lola5544 April 29, 2011

family sample definition 2:

A bunch of people who hate each other and eat dinner together. by Guinness 1759 September 16, 2005

In some families parents enjoy spending time with their children but in other families the parents may have to work three jobs to pay the bills and don’t have the privilege.

In some families siblings look out for and love one another – even older siblings generally help take care of younger siblings. In other families siblings must learn to fend for themselves and the strongest rise to the surface.

In some familes the children respect their parents born out of love and nurturing.

In other families the children are forced to respect their parents one way or another.

Some parents are in love

Some parents make it work for the children Some parents make it work in separate homes Some parents don’t make it work at all

Some children don’t have any parents at all.

Families can be seen as a bond that holds centuries of lineage in an interweaved web creating generations rich with culture

drastically paired with

families that struggle to hold on for life while they are separated at border walls in certain political climates

As you can see from the samples above the definition of Family casts a wide net from a collection of very personal stories that range from extremely supportive experiences that fosters stimulation and encouragement towards intellectual and artistic growth to the sheer opposite that displays families that promote harmful abusive patterns for generations to come.

THE THEME FOR 24 HOURS 2019 is:

What does “family” mean to you?

Make a 30-second animated film based on your own

definition of “family” .

You have 24 HOURS Go!...

 

This year, Woodbury has 3 teams competing in the 24 hour animation contest.

The SnickerDoodles

Brieanna Bell, Colby Yabeny, Amanda Wiley, Brandon Chua and Janine Zarmarron

Finished film goes here.

HADLY

In the back row; Yifan Zhang, Lauren Gregorio,Heather Ramos, Aspen Leavitt and Daniel Cruz

and

The PaintBucketeers

Guenevere Smith, Mallory Collins, Taylor Pedersen, Nicole Petrovsky and Haley Lambert

Woodbury entered the first 24 hours contest back in 2014 with only 2 teams.

After the 24 Hours were over, 2 projects came out of Woodbury and one of them won first place. It was a real boost to the Seniors who had worked together and were able to make an animated short which tested all their learning over the past four years.

Last year's theme: What if you had 24 hours to live?  
Ryan Tengel and her Woodbury University animation team answered the question with this 1st place winning short.

The team members from this short film are now currently working in animation at Cartoon Network, DreamWorks and other animation studios.

At this time, we still have no idea if Team Snickerdoodles survived or not? We are waiting to hear back from them and post their film as well. If you have seen them wandering the halls or stairways, approach with caution; they have been up for 24 hours and need a hug.

A Snowden Fine Interview

2D animation is still alive and kicking and after 25 years, the animation duo of Allison Snowden and David Fine created a new animated film, "Animal Behavior", using today's animation technology.

You can see more of their earlier work by click on this link.

Onion Skin in Harmony 17

The latest Harmony 17 has improved their Onion Skin feature with added controls. Click on the Pages below to enlarge them.

Shift and Trace!

Shift and Trace was one of those very helpful technique which is hard to explain in words. A visual demo helps understand the process easier.

Basically you are trying to keep your artwork on model as you are inbetweening. In traditional 2D animation, this requires that you remove your key drawings from the pegs, shifting the position of your Keys to line up in the same area on the paper. Not only where you lining up your drawings, but you were also lining up the edges of the paper and the peg holes evenly.

Then you would TRACE off the inbetween in this position and when everything was re-pegged onto the peg bar, the Inbetween was in a better position and more On Model than before.

I told you its hard to understand, but recently, Harmony has a new Function called SHIFT and TRACE bringing this hard to understand technique into their 2D software. Below are some pages which will show you how to do it.

Click on the pages below to enlarge image.