PIXELS is Patrick Jean’ latest short film, shot on location in New York.

Written, directed by : Patrick Jean
Director of Photograhy : Matias Boucard
SFX by Patrick Jean and guests
Produced by One More Production

Always a fan of Simon Tofield’s animation. Be sure to dig for more.

I’m learning more about DoInk – a web-based animation studio. I took their popup ‘Create Now’ app for a spin and was suitably impressed: vector drawing, some primitives, paint bucket, erase, text tool, onion skinning and more. What was quite unique was a community library of props that you can use in your own animations.

The look and feel of the drawings is very Flash-like, which I’m not a fan of, but I can look the other way for now. Alright I lied:

Dear DoInk, in a future version may we have more painterly effects as well as the ability to import PNG alpha-channel bitmap drawings for cut out animation? Love, Carl.

But let me tell you, cadets — what got my wheels spinning in the driveway was this announcement: it’s available for the iPad. A mobile animation studio you can carry in one hand. For $5. (On sale for $4.99, reg. $8.99)

*clutches chest*

I can’t even imagine taking animation projects with you let alone working on one at the doctor’s office, the kitchen table or the front porch. Geez, I’m still getting used to pixel drawing on my iPod whenever I get the urge. To draw.

Where will the iPad and apps like DoInk take artists? I don’t know, but am eager to find out.

A new project I’m on involves using Inkscape to prepare images for print, cut-out and hand-animating. Inkscape, as you may already know, is an open source vector creation application for Windows, Linux and Mac. I’ve been using this particular program for some time now and recently discovered an interesting feature: I can texturize my drawings.

Here’s a composition test for an animation I’m busy putting together. Note how graphical the image is:

By ‘graphical’ I do mean ‘flat’ – the image is cartoon-y in nature, with solid colour fields and crisp edges (the blurred foreground hills are an effect available in Inkscape – I was trying to preview a shallow depth of field.)

Now this is all fine and good, but I’ve always admired graphics with more illustration flavours – textures and imperfections – signals that a human hand was directly involved in the manufacturing process. Something with character.

Using a combination of photographic elements and textures, I was able to create masks in Inkscape and overlay those over the graphical vector drawing. For instance, a photo of tree bark would be superimposed over the area of the tree trunk. Grass over the hills. Barn-board over the fence posts, etc. And over everything, a scan of old, yellowed paper. Here is a test result:

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the results. I am now able to draft objects in Inkscape and, in short order, add significant character to everything – something I haven’t been able to do yet.

Ah, sticky notes. I both love and hate the things. I love them for being external reminders and for freeing up precious brain cycles. But it didn’t take long before I developed a particular blindness to bright yellow squares. They became like negative space; I simply no longer saw them.

Then I watched the following animated shorts and learned to see sticky notes anew.

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Quirky with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheekiness and numerous animation jokes and puns. Great stuff, directed by Alan and Frank Shannon, produced by Dublin’s Jam Media for RTE, Ireland’s public broadcasting channel.

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The National Film Board of Canada now features streaming film and animation selections at its new Screening Room at www.nfb.ca

Boys and girls: the National Film Board of Canada has opened the doors to its online Screening Room — and is making available to everyone film and animation selections (currently 489) from its collection of over 13,000 entries! Visit www.nfb.ca

Let’s hope they digitize and post the entire archive! (Now you can pay our taxes with a hint of a smile!) If you experience any streaming issues, be patient — a note posted at nfb.ca reads “Due to the unprecedented increase in traffic, we’ve been experiencing some growing pains. We knew our numbers would increase and of course we were prepared, but the volume of traffic was higher than we could have possibly anticipated.”

BTW – 2009 also marks the NFB’s 70th anniversary! SEVENTY!