Reallusion, Inc., an award-winning developer of video creation software for real-time 3D animation, introduces a powerful animation pipeline for CrazyTalk Animator, the revolutionary 2D Animation desktop studio designed for professional storytellers, aspiring animators and now; digital artists.
CrazyTalk Animator is an innovative animation engine that has been built from the ground up and designed specifically to avoid neck-breaking frame-by-frame editing. With its universal face and body templates and its real-time puppeteering capabilities, CrazyTalk Animator delivers unprecedented ease and speed in animation.
Now digital artists everywhere can exploit the powers of drag & drop content creation with real-time puppeteering, to animate any kind of image or artwork in a matter of minutes. Artists no longer need to worry about complicated pipelines and time-consuming tasks as CrazyTalk Animator’s highly automated design allows for quick and easy character creation, face and body fitting with customizable motion controls.
Artists can import their vector, draw, paint or photographic artwork by simply dropping their content directly into the main CrazyTalk window for further fitting. Props and characters can then be easily created and saved inside the content library for future projects. Additionally, users can use realistic facial morphs with body sprite segments to generate animations with preset mouth, eyes, and hand libraries. Another great feature allows the audio data to be turned into phonemes that trigger instant facial animations. This audio lip-sync allows for a streamlined animation process that can be further enhanced with preset emotions and detailed expression commands at any time.

Visit the website here.

Back in March I told you about the Remastered exhibition, which looked at digital reinterpretations of classic masterpieces. You’ll find coverage of the show in issue 19 of Digital Artist, on sale now.

Here we meet artist Rafael Pavon, who created the animation Mind the Fog, based on Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog.

Digital Artist: How did you get involved with Remastered?

Rafael Pavon: Before the Intel Remastered project, I collaborated with Jotta on a 
project creating live visuals for Latitude Festival. They usually work
 with a lot of collaborators from the University of the Arts where I 
studied so after that project, they got in touch with me again about
 this project that involved remixing classic masterpieces using new 
technologies, which sounded really cool, so I started working on my 
proposal for it.

Digital Artist: What did you want to address in your ‘remaster’ of Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog?

Rafael Pavon: The piece ‘Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog’ deals with a feeling that I
 wanted to explore since I first saw the painting: the ability to enjoy 
uncertainty. I was fascinated by the way the Wanderer seems to feel 
comfortable in such a threatening and confusing landscape and I
 wanted to recreate that feeling from the perspective of the audience.

Digital Artist: What can you tell us about creating the artwork?

Rafael Pavon: After understanding what I wanted to say about it, I decided that
 using an anaglyph 3D video was the best way to immerse the audience in
 the fog and emphasise the depth, a very important variable of the 
piece. Then the process started to be very wild, mixing video,
 photographs, illustrations and sound to create that confusion while 
keeping a narrative at the same time. It was all about walking around 
London looking for details, capturing things and then putting
 everything together in the space.

Image above, still from Mind the Fog, © Rafael Pavon and courtesy of Remastered/ Margaret PR

Back in March I told you about the Remastered exhibition, which looked at digital reinterpretations of classic masterpieces. You’ll find coverage of the show in issue 19 of Digital Artist, on sale now.

Here we meet artist Eric Schockmel who created the animation The Great Western Singularity, based on JMW Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway.

Digital Artist: How did you get involved with Remastered?

Eric Schockmel: Jotta had commissioned me last summer to be part of the “Music Without Sound” project, which was an animation screening programme held at Latitude festival. The participants each prepared a one-minute animation that was projected onto a wall of water in the middle of a lake. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see it as I couldn’t attend the festival, but it seemed to get a really positive response from the audience, so they got back to me about the Intel Remastered project with a list of artworks. I immediately picked Turner’s “Rain, Steam and Speed” and wrote a short treatment that got accepted.

Digital Artist: What did you want to address in your ‘remaster’ of Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway?

Eric Schockmel: My reinterpretation of Turner’s painting works on several levels. There’s the light and colour palette that I liked a lot, quite uniform but with subtle nuances, so I adopted that and worked on lighting and shadows. Turner also had the recurring theme of the Industrial Revolution, which made a great conceptual point to rework it digitally, in a time of Information Revolution that we are in today. I took the train of the original painting and turned it into a metaphor for technological progress itself. Instead of just rolling along on laid-out tracks however, I chose to turn it into a machine which evolves progressively, one step at a time, and building itself out of its previous state. Technology basically creates the groundwork for the next generation of progress upon which it bases itself. That’s what the train is doing, moving through the landscape, leaving traces and breaking up the ground. Our current progress might not be entirely sustainable, consuming more resources and energy than can be replaced. So the train is approaching a cliff. What happens over the abyss stays quite ambiguous though, so it’s up to the viewer to interpret the consequences of that progression.

Digital Artist: What can you tell us about creating the artwork?

Eric Schockmel: As soon as I had figured out the concept and narrative of the piece, I started storyboarding the shots and camera moves. Then I modelled the elements I would need, some of which are based on freely available 3D resources on the web. Same with the sounds, which I used under a Creative Commons license via Freesound.org. I then animated everything, set up the cameras and lighting and rendered all the footage out through the CPU that Intel had provided me for this piece. It was a 2nd Generation i5 Sandy Bridge chipset that gave me quite a bit of processing power. Then on to editing, syncing the sound effects and exporting.

Image above, still from The Great Western Singularity, © Eric Schockmel, courtesy of Remastered/ Margaret PR

Check out Part 2 of our Remastered coverage by clicking here.

Last year I was in London department store Liberty when I came across the most beautiful book, The Boy in the Oak, written and illustrated by Jessica Albarn. It was on a very limited release then – first Liberty, then the Design Museum Shop – but now you can pick up a copy from Amazon. A modern fairy tale with stunning pencil illustrations and quirky acetate overlays, after a very quick flick through it, I knew I had to put it in our Zeitgeist pages.

Fast forward to issue 17 of Digital Artist, and I’ve popped it in again. Why? Because now it’s a film combining live action, animation and illustration directed by Luke Losey, with a musical score by the author/illustrator’s brother, rock star and composer Damon Albarn, and narration by A-list actor Jude Law. The movie will premier later in the Spring at selected cinemas and art festivals – more news on that as soon as we get it. It’s going to be a real treat to see Jessica’s delicate, precise illustrations come to life on the screen, and it certainly promises to be a magical experience for kids and adults alike.

This year’s Animated Exeter Festival runs from 14th February to 26th February 2011 in the UK. Founded in 1999, the festival aims to promote animation and encourage young people to explore the creative industries, with a particular focus on animation. Pulling in  an average of 15000 viewers last year, it’s certainly popular! Set in the beautiful Devon town of Exeter, events, exhibitions and films can be seen scattered around the town’s venues. This year they’ll include a free exhibition exploring the role of craft in animation and a show entitled Art You Grew Up With featuring backdrops and scenes from some classic British children’s cartoons (The Mr Benn pieces from this are seriously calling to me!), the Exeter International Comic Expo, feature film screenings including The Book of Kells, The Illusionist and A Town Called Panic, plus much more! Added to that there are a wealth of competitions, talks and demonstrations for kids, young people and adults alike. If you’re in or near the south west of the UK then Animated Exeter is well worth a visit. Find out more about what’s on by visiting the official website here.

If you’ve noticed quite how often the UK city of Bristol pops up in Digital Artist then you’ll have realised that the South West of England is a remarkably creative region, especially when it comes to illustration and digital art. The Somerset town of Shepton Mallet will be celebrating that this week with the second annual Shepton Mallet Digital Arts Festival. It’s a celebration of the inspiring and creative digital art coming out of Somerset, Bristol, Bath and the wider South West.

On Friday 26th November, there will be workshops and masterclasses in photography, digital imaging, animation, film-making and creative writing.

On Saturday 27th November, there will be a showcase of films and animation, and the winners of the Festivals Digital Arts Awards will be announced.

On Sunday 28th November, there will be presentations, talks and debates on the subject of digital futures.

For a full schedule of events, visit the Shepton Mallet Digital Arts Festival website by clicking here. And check out some of the entries for the Digital Arts Awards below!

The community-based event was set up by a group of creatives who recognised that the South West of England was a creative hub of digital art and wanted to celebrate this. Claire Sully, Peter Wild and Dominic Weston explain on the festival’s website that “We wanted to create an event that not only would shout about the south-west’s success – in digital film-making, animation, photography, digital art and so on – but would also bring together artists to learn from each other and share experiences and expertise via talks and hands-on workshops.  This would then inspire the next generation of artists. We also wanted to interest the general public in digital arts – and see our region as innovative, creative and cutting-edge.”

Each year the Festival runs a competition to give the South West’s designers, artists, illustrators and animators something to get their teeth into – you can see the stunning calibre of work submitted from these entries.

You need to be an established professional, working in the industry or as a full-time freelancer. You don’t need to be famous, but you do need to have worked on at least one commercially published book or comic (or editorial illustrations) or on a short film or cartoon that has been broadcast. This can have been with smaller indie publishing houses or distributors, or with larger ones. The key thing we’re looking for here is industry experience, so please don’t respond to this call if you don’t have it (sorry) as you will be expected to be able to prove your credentials before you’re invited to participate in the feature.

If you fit the bill then drop us a line to digitalartist@imagine-publishing.co.uk (NOT direct to my email address) with the subject line ‘Illustration feature’ and please include:

Your name

A link to your portfolio website

A brief overview of your project credentials

A link to where you’re named as a contributor to these projects (If this info isn’t already on your website)

This call will close on Friday 30th July 2010 at 23:59 BST. After that time and date we will not be checking any further submissions.

US internet service provider XMission has launched a competition for digital artists worldwide. Having created a new LED display in its Salt Lake City, Utah HQ, the company is now in search of digital art to decorate it with – and the winning artist will receive an Apple iPad!

Artists should email their submissions to marketing(at)xmission(dot)com by July 16, 2010. XMission will rotate the submitted files on its display during July. Anyone may view entries and cast a vote for a favorite artist on xmission.com starting on July 17.

Along with digital entries, artists should also submit the following: full name, email address, home address, phone number, artwork title.

XMission will accept almost any style of video or Flash content, but it must maintain the proper dimensions (171 pixels x 32 pixels). Artists may submit videos or animations of any length. Each artist may submit up to five entries.

For additional rules and submission guidelines, please visit XMission’s blog: http://transmission.xmission.com

If you fancy learning the basics of animation but just cannot be doing with the tedious task of hand-drawing every frame or spending weeks rendering your work, have a play with the free and fun Muvizu (Pronounced “Movie Zoo”, I’m reliably informed.) Over to the Muvizu team to tell you more:

“Muvizu lets users direct pre-rendered characters – who lip-sync to any imported dialogue – then run, jump and even fight their way around pre-built sets, on command.

Characters are animated with a simplified set of commands allowing users to generate comedy sketches, corporate product demonstrations or mini-movies in resolutions up to HD quality.

All that’s needed is a PC (or Mac) running Windows XP, Vista or Win 7, a broadband connection for registration and uploading, and a modern 3D graphics card.

A direct upload button allows users to broadcast their efforts straight on to their YouTube accounts, and some are even showcased on Muvizu’s own YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/MuvizuYT

The revolutionary program was the brainchild of the animation and software teams at Digimania Ltd, and its founder Matthew Karas, who was the architect of the BBC News website.

Vince Ryan, Managing Director of Digimania, who also had a hand in online history as an architect of The Daily Telegraph website, one of the world’s first major news sites, says Muvizu’s beauty is in its simplicity….

Vince says: “Anyone can download and use Muvizu 3D. You no longer need to spend three years learning how to build an animation and another three months rendering it. You can learn how to use this software in a matter of minutes and have a professional-looking clip finished the same afternoon. It’s instant gratification for the internet age”.

Muvizu’s website at www.muvizu.com offers basic tutorial videos to get users up and running, as well as advanced guides for creatives to push the software’s boundaries and build their own Toy Story or Shrek.”

Check it out at www.muvizu.com!