Pictured Above: Nintendo'd Flipnote Studios, available sometime in summer 2009
Pictured Above: Inchworm Drawing, an Animation Program for the Nintendo DSi
The Nintendo DS, first released in 2004, has become one of the bestselling game systems of all time. With the release of the third version of the system, the Nintendo DSi, it might also become the animator-in-training’s best friend.
The DSi features the ability to download games and applications over a wireless network through an “app store” interface. This means that smaller developers can offer the type of software that would not usually make it to store shelves: simple micro-games, unusual game experiences, and applications.
Two applications coming to the DSi offer great potential to transform the little system into a portable animation studio. Moving Notepad and Inchworm are the first of what, hopefully, will become a staple of the DSi store: drawing and animation programs.
Moving Notepad (Flipnote Studios)
From wikipedia: Moving Notepad allows the user to create both word and picture-based notes with the stylus and animate them into a frame-by-frame flipbook-style animation. The user may also add sound to their creations using the DSi's built-in microphone, and either of the DSi's built-in cameras may be used to take pictures for use as frames of animation; such images will be rendered by Moving Notepad into a hand-drawn style.
Moving Notepad has already been released in Japan and is expected to find it’s way to the North American DSi store sometime this year. See my previous post on Moving Memo PAd here.
UPDATE: The North American version of Moving Notepad will be called Flipnote Studios. Nintendo announced at E3 that it will be coming to the DSiware store "this summer".
Inchworm is a drawing and animation application created by an independent developer that just recently announced it will be bringing the software to the DSi in September of this year. This program shows much promise, as it is surprisingly full featured. Inchworm includes the ability to onion skin, add layers, adjust opacity, and adjust animation speed (or timing) for individual frames.
At the inchworm tutorial page, make sure to click on the animation tab to check out the application in action.
Henry Selick's film adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline is on it's way to theaters February of next year but while you're waiting, check out some cool behind-the-scenes videos at the website for the movie. You have to enter a password to make each video play:
Check out pixel and 3d artist Kenneth Fejer's work at his website: www.kennethfejer.com
The conceit is that these comics are from around 1912-1913, drawn by Mr. apelad's great grand pappy, one Mr. Aloysius "Gorilla" Koford.
Mr. apelad writes, on his flickr page:
The strip was entitled "the Laugh-Out-Loud Cats" and featured the exploits of one Meowlin Q. Kitteh (a sort of cat hobo-raconteur) and his young hapless kitten friend, Pip.
Check them out here.
Bob Truby likes pencils. He likes them so much he collects the little lead/graphite sticks, photographs them, and puts them on display at his site: brandnamepencils.com. Check it out.
Check out this post on yesterland.com to see the differences between the Hollywood buildings at Disney-MGM Studios and the real life buildings in Hollywood, California that inspired them. Werner Weiss, the 'curator of Yesterland', started the site as a place to document Disneyland rides that no longer exist (Check out his posts on the Monsanto House of the Future and Skull Rock) but it has evolved to cover other interesting aspects of the art of imagineering.
Want to read a seventy-three year old article about the process of making animated cartoons at Disney Studios? Well, click here to check it out.
via Cartoon Brew
Remember how I tried to explain coloring artwork using Photoshop? Remember how I didn't really explain it that great? Well, thank goodness for artist Steve Haymaker. He's posted a series of informative video tutorials on Youtube... check them out here.
But don't just take my word for it... read the review at ars technica. Not only is it fun to play, but the art direction is amazing.
