I'm not convinced facial expressions have an "origin". More likely, they're simply a by-product of our reactions to various sensory input. What probably does have an "origin" is the connotations we associate with them. Most of the simple ones are probably primitive comparisons to...

Interesting... considering how much of a valuable asset the book itself has been, I'd be very tempted to buy the DVD set. The thing that does concern me a bit is that the info page regarding the DVDs says each lesson is roughly 40 minutes, yet it doesn't say how many of these "lessons" are...

You need a utility like the freeware app Capture Me . Because Apple has their OS configured to comply with the MPAA's DVD standards, Mac OS X's built in screen capture tools don't allow for screen grabs containing video from Apple's DVD player software. It's annoying, but at least it's trivial to ge...

Well, it seems I'm a bit behind on this one this time around, but it may interest you to know that the Nicktoons Network is currently accepting entries for their upcoming Nicktoons Network Animation Festival . This is now the 5th year of the festival's running and there are some great prizes to be h...

As some of you may recall from my previous posts, I've been a long-time fan and observer of Larry Schwartz's Animation Collective and their progress, going all the way back to some of their earliest projects such as Leader Dog and Tortellini Western . More recently, however, I've been starting to no...

It gets better... there are consumer level 3D printers due out later this year for just under $5,000 that'll output objects up to 5 cubic inches. Of course, if you have $50,000 on hand right now, you could pull off full-color, 1:1 scale 3D object duplication using one of these . In the meanwhile, th...

A few days ago, I came across a new device called the NextEngine 3D Scanner that I'm now actually considering buying for use in my own work. The device is a desktop-based unit capable of scanning both the geometry and texture of any 3D object up to 13" tall by 11" in diameter and works by ...

Depending on your level of experience and what you want to create will ultimately be the determining factors in deciding which app to get. Personally, I've found Carrara Studio to have the best balance of flexibility, ease of use and price for most purposes. (However, I cannot speak for versions bey...

You're still confusing the difference between upsampling and tweening. There's really no reason to animate at framerates greater than you really need. When you upsample the framerate of your animation, the playback remains visually indistinguishable from the framerate you started with. This remains ...

Hm, but wouldn't you agree that everyone exploring this field of animation seriously should at least learn some of the basic concepts and common terms? I say he should. But I've experienced a lack of knowledge and disagreement about terms even in animation industry, which is a shame. You're overloo...

a lot of the older cartoons were animated at 12 - 15fps Sorry, this is a common misconception, or wrong use ot the term "fps". fps meaning "frames per second" always means the projection speed of film (or video). Because of that origin, this speed is a) fixed for a given technic...

To start, a lot of the older cartoons were animated at 12 - 15fps due to limitations imposed on staff and resources of the time period. (Many studios back then were even limited to painting cels and keeping them around just long enough to shoot the frame before washing the cel sheets and reusing the...

Oddly enough, I taught a brief 3D animation course for a class I was in back in my high school days. Even though the tools at the time were nowhere near as easy to use as they are nowadays, the students did manage to pick up on it within a few days and were creating basic animations of their own aft...

On the sidenote of games, there's actually another title that might fit into the same vein as Magic Pengel that was just released a few days ago for the Nintendo DS, Drawn to Life . While the game does initially seem like a Mario Paint clone in platform game format, it appears you do not actually dr...

Here's a bit of an unusual app I stumbled across... Plopp . While the application is seemingly designed for young children to play around in, Plopp could easily be redesigned into a serious pseudo-3D modeling tool intended for artists who might not want to spend months or even years learning how to ...