IDEAS FOR A GOOD PORTFOLIO.......

Basic Portfolio Contents

* Several pages of current life drawing from live subjects.
* Copies of pages from sketchbooks with gesture-style drawings of people and   
   animals in motion.
* Head drawings-both quick sketch and long poses.
* Some samples reflecting color and design sense.
* Some figurative drawings reflecting knowledge of lighting.
* Some work based on imagination.
* A few samples that display cartooning skills. Do not include copies or   
   interpretations of Disney or other classic cartoon characters.
* No more than two or three samples of comic-strip, comic-book or fantasy 
  illustration.
* Do not include graphic, advertising, industrial, textile or 3-D design,  
   photography or jewelry.

Instructions for Specific Positions

In addition to the Basic Portfolio Contents, the following materials should also be included for specific positions.

* Visual Development artists should provide artwork that displays a sense of caricature imagination, color and design; a selection of color sketches (any media) that dramatizes a story; and extensive samples of character concepts drawn from your design and imagination. Include various types: humans and animals, personalities, anthropomorphic objects, model sheets, characters in environments, etc.

* Story Sketch artists should supply one or two sets of storyboards (animation or live action); character designs and/or model sheets; and quick sketches showing lighting, dramatic setting and staging sense.

* Layout artists should provide a selection of layout drawings demonstrating a strong sense of staging, design, lighting and perspective. Include character drawings for the layouts, if possible; a selection of comic strip and/or comic book samples, if possible; and indicate if this work is from your own roughs or clean-ups from another artist's work.

* Character Animation artists should include a video reel of scenes you've animated and two or three animation "flips", if available.

* Clean-up artists should supply at least two sets of rough keys, along with clean-up drawings of same and other clean-up samples (please note if drawings are assistant, breakdown, or in-between work).

* Effects artists should provide drawings showing a variety of work and approaches to design; a resume noting any optical or digital training you might have. A video reel is suggested but not required.

* Background artists should supply painting examples emphasizing attention to detail, lighting, atmosphere and painterly technique, along with a selection of color prints or transparencies of animation backgrounds.

Tangled : Behind the Scenes at Disney...

Disney’s 50th film sees “damsel in distress” Rapunzel break free from her tower and let down her hair.

While we’re all familiar with the classic fairytale, the Disney take gives it a modern twist, with fast-paced action and a heroine who can handle herself.

On set - splitting those hairs

A few months back we were flown over to Disney HQ in Los Angeles for an exclusive set visit, complete with a preview of the unfinished film, a studio tour and a sit down with the Tangled team. Delving into Disney’s 50th animation proved to be an eventful day, which gave us an insight into the studio and how Tangled’s free-flowing story came about.

After watching a 60 percent complete print of the film, comprised of storyboards, rough animation and post-production, we were shown around the animation studios to get a detailed understanding of the new technologies that Disney have employed. This may be their 50th film, but the team are determined to mix traditional Disney visuals, with cutting edge animation.

Directors Nathan Greno (Bolt) and Byron Howard(Bolt, Mulan), told us about how they wanted to shoot for the stars with Tangled, and revealed how new “hair technology” shaped Rapunzel’s locks.

“We wanted the scale of the movie to be huge. Especially with the hair technology, which has been in development for six or seven years, it’s brand new, very cutting edge, nobody else has it.

“The hair is such a real part of the story, so we said instead of just drawing all of it, let’s do 100,000 hairs that you can actually see flowing and moving.”

The directors continued to explain how the hair was also a big driving force behind the 3D. Trending alongside some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, visual experience is an absolute must for Disney:

“CG was definitely the way to go, it was the best way to tell the story. We wanted to use moving cameras, depth of field and lighting to make the world real.”

DISNEY ANIMATION STUDIO, LOS ANGELES

Another equally important aspect of the film is the fairytale. Written by the Brothers Grimm, the original story is a dark gothic fairytale, which meant getting the film off the ground wasn’t an easy sell for the producers.

The result is something very different to the Brothers Grimm version with an upbeat, family story alongside modern visuals and characters. With a feisty leading lady (Mandy Moore) and less-than heroic lead (Zach Levi), Disney has proved it can move with the times while still retaining its customary charm.

Producer Roy Conli was more than happy to answer additional questions about the film, including how they incorporated a more modern feel into the traditional tale:

“We wanted to tell a story for the 21st Century, we didn’t want someone sitting up in a tower waiting to be rescued, we wanted someone who is vulnerable but strong and naive but intelligent.”

HANGING OUT WITH RAPUNZEL & FLYNN RIDER 

Last but not least we ended the day by speaking to actors Mandy Moore and Zach Levi, who both revealed how awestruck they were at the chance of being immortalised as a Disney character.

Since starting her career as an all-American popstar, Moore has starred in several television shows such as Scrubs and Grey’s Anatomy, while also sharing the big-screen with icons such asDiane Keaton.  Being a Disney fan, Moore was thrilled to breathe life into the character:

“I grew up watching The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast so the idea of playing a Disney princess was this lofty dream.”

Likewise Levi – who plays the lead in television series Chuck - proclaimed his excitement at being involved in the project:  “As a huge Disney nut I’ve dreamt of doing this ever since I was a little kid. I’ve watched all the Disney movies, all the musicals, all the songs, all the shorts that used to be on the Disney Channel.”

The hair is such a real part of the story, so we said instead of just drawing all of it, let’s do 100,000 hairs that you can actually see flowing and moving.

The duo were both given room to adlib scenes, and while Moore opted to stay with the script, Levichose to incorporate his own slant on the character of Flynn Rider. He also revealed how Flynn was almost a Brit:

“I think maybe I assumed that he was British because when you go to fantasy worlds, with castles and all of that stuff, everyone turns British don’t they?”

While, unfortunately for us, the British version of Flynn never made the cut, Levi brings comedy and conviction to the character – which is equally matched by Moore. With impressive visuals, entertaining characters and Disney magic, Tangled has something for everyone.

Celebrate Your Mistakes...........

Pamela Kleibrink Thompson talks about the fear of failure and overcoming it.

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep.”— Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle

Every October we celebrate a huge failure in America on Columbus Day.  The Spanish crown funded Columbus’s voyage hoping to gain advantage over others in the lucrative spice trade by finding an alternative route to the East Indies. Columbus was unsuccessful in his quest.  Instead, on October 12, he landed in the Bahamas archipelago and discovered a land that was rich in resources and already inhabited by people. After failing in his original mission, Columbus discovered America by accident.

Don’t be afraid to fail.  Failure can be eye-opening and life changing.

Here are two more mistakes that give us reason to celebrate.

In 1930, Ruth Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, was mixing a batch of chocolate cookies and found out she was out of baker’s chocolate.  She substituted sweetened chocolate, expecting the small pieces would melt and the dough would absorb them, making chocolate cookies.  But when she took the pan from the oven, Wakefield was surprised that the chocolate had not melted into the dough and she had not baked chocolate cookies.   Instead, her mistake, not having baker’s chocolate on hand, led to the invention of Toll House Cookies, also known as chocolate chip cookies.

In 1970, Spencer Silver was working for 3M Company trying to find a strong adhesive.  Instead he failed–the new adhesive he invented was weaker than anything they already made.  It would stick but could be easily lifted off.  It wasn’t thrown out, but no one knew what to do with it.  Four years later Arthur Fry, another 3M scientist, used Silver’s weak glue on the markers in his hymnal to keep them in place.  The weak glue kept the markers in place and they could be lifted off and reused without ripping the hymnal pages.  Fry sang the praises to God in his church choir and lauded the weak glue to 3M.  Post-It Notes started selling nationwide in 1980, ten years after Silver invented the super weak adhesive–one super mistake.

Embrace your mistakes and forgive yourself if you are not successful in achieving the goal you had in mind.  The results from your mistakes could lead you into new directions, or, as in Columbus’ case, a whole new world.  Celebrate your mistakes this October and all year.  “There is glory in a great mistake,” wrote Nathalia Crane.  There may be glory in small ones too.

Pamela Kleibrink Thompson is a recruiter, career coach, speaker and writer.  She is learning not to dwell on her mistakes.  She contributed to the books Eclectic Collage 1 and Eclectic Collage 2: The Relationships of Life  which you can find on Freundshippress.com and Amazon.com.  You can reach Pamela at PamRecruit@q.com.

IK Solvers in Maya..........

In terms of solvers it numbered into three,

* Single Chain (SC)
* Rotate Plane (RP)
* IK SPLINE


The Single Chain is for connecting joints of 2 bones usually and it’s your basic IK Handle.

The Rotate Plane is fun, it’s the same as the SC but gives you a pole vector control. So for example you have a bent elbow, the pole vector would allow you to control the direction of the elbow points.

The IK Spline is for spine of characters (there are some rules you have to follow when creating IK Spine). This solver use the CV’s of a EP Curve to move bones in the backbone.

Last Minute Tips For Interview.....

• Arrive 5 to 10 minutes early.
•  Express a positive and enthusiastic attitude.
•  Pay attention to your body language.
• Show confidence without being arrogant.
• Speak positively about past and current employment experience.
• End the interview with a closing statement.
• Open up to the interviewer So that he or she gets a glimpse of who you are.
•  Be yourself.

MODEL SHEET IN ANIMATION...????

If you’re going to create a character to animate, it usually helps to have a model sheet, which is a series of poses of the character to refer to when you’re animating. The sheet could include poses of the character standing still, bouncing a ball, smiling, jumping, and running, for example.

The idea is to draw the emotions and actions that would be expected from the character. If

your animations are going to be much simpler than an animated person or animal, however, a

model sheet might not be necessary.

Some Examples for Model Sheets:

SOME ANIMATION EXCERSICES....

ANIMATION EXCERSICES

 Try to Display the Emotions of a Character Might Go through While Waiting for a Bus that’s Late. Pay Close Attention to Facial Expressions, Body Language and Detail.

 Have A Character Try To Open Something (Ie, A Present) That Refuses To Open. The Character Can Only Use Body Parts For The First Minute, But May Resort To Other Measures (I.e., Tools And Explosives) Thereafter. Note, The Character Will Be Affected by the Tools Used (Ie, Blast of an Explosion).After You Have Masters This Try to Do the Same Thing with a Normally Inanimate Object (I.e., Lamp) As Your Lead Character.

 Animate Someone Riding A Pogo Stick Or Some Other ‘Fun’ Object(I.e. Using A Hoola Hoop)

 Have Your Character Use A Weighted Objecct, Such As A Hammer Or A Shovel. Demonstrate How The Weight Of The Object Affects The Stance And Demeanor Of The Character Using It.

 Create A Walk Cycle Then Vary It To Accommodate Different Attitudes And Character. For Example: Angry, Happy, Sneaky, Drinked, Carrying A Heavy Object, Sleep Walking Etc.

 Animate Two Characters Swaing A Log.The First Character Is A Big Muscular Brute. Animate Him Pose-To-Pose First And Cycle His Animation. The Second Character Is A Scrawny Little Guy Who Gets Yanked Around Grabbing Onto The Saw For Dear Life.

 Have A Character Bend Down Pick Up Something Heavy And Trow It. This Excersise Can Help You With Timing Emphasizing Weight And Anticipation.

 Put A Short Character In A Tall Room With One Window One Door One Light And Switch And A Hanging Ceiling Fan With Hanged Switch. The Room Contains 3 Boxes A Ball And A Board. Imagine The Different Ways Your Character Could Figure Out How To Reach The Hanging Switch And Then Animate The Most Outrangeous. Next Subtract Two Boxes And Add A Skateboard And Try Again.

 Two Character Dialogue – Introduce More Staging And Interaction Standing Or Sitting Character Doing Nothing, Body Language Should Suggest Thought Process Without Any Interaction With An Object.

 A Bunch Of People Waiting For A Bus, All With Different Ages And Or Professions.

 A Character Walks To A Mailbox,Deposits An Envelope And Walks Away. Now How Is That Action Different If The Envelope Contains (1) A Heartleft Love Letter,Sent Without Knowing Whether The Recipient Feels The Same Way About The Sender. (2) This Year’s Tax Return, Which Includes A Big Fat Check Made Payable To Uncle Sam. (3) The Last Mortgage Payment On A House, Or The Last Alimony Check To An Ex? The Basic Goals Are The Same (Approach Mailbox, Etc), But The Motivation Behind Them And The Mood Expressed Will Be Dramatically Different For Each One.

 Character Goes To Pick Up An Object They Think Is Light But Its Heavy And Vice Versa.

 Character on the phone but not talking listening to a person on the other end talk about something : important,sad happy and or “fill in the blank” . Choose the subject matter to really express how the receiver of that information reacts. The exercise is designed to help people develop a character’s thinking through eye movement,subtle facial expression and pantomime with body language.

 Display the feelings a character would experience while waiting for something or someone.Gender specific reactions can be really revealing here.How a man would react vs a women? This is a good exercise because it demands pure acting outside of dialogue.

 Thinking Time : A Character ALWAYS thinks before it does anything.

 Primary & Secondary Actions : Easy examples in a walk – the legs are the primary action – then arms are the secondary action.

 Anticipation or Antic : In a grab, the hand comes up and backward before it goes forward.

 Compensation – If a character is running and stops – you have to compensate for the forward momentum (usually by driving the forces up or down and then up).

 Reversals : Try to work as many reversals into the spine as possible ( as long as it make sense to the action). The spine is curved forward – then curves back during an antic and then curves forward when the character picks up a stone.

 Cushion or Settle : Is where you move passes a key frame into an extreme/extreme and the cushion back into the original key frame.

 Moving Hold : Is a very very slow out of an action – to where the movement is coming to a creeping halt.

 Staging : How the action is composed within the frame.

 Character Design : The ability to caricature a person utilizing good design skills and have appeal

 Dialogue would be a plus.

Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs

Its an American animated film by Disney in 1937.
This is considered as the first 2d animation movie &
the first full length film in America &
the first film from Disney productions &
the first movie in the Disney Classical series &
the first movie released in full color &
the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history..

Story of Snow white : 

Once upon a time, long, long ago a king and queen ruled over a distant land.  The queen was kind and lovely and all the people of the realm adored her.  The only sadness in the queen's life was that she wished for a child but did not have one. 

One winter day, the queen was doing needle work while gazing out her ebony window at the new fallen snow.  A bird flew by the window startling the queen and she pricked her finger.  A single drop of blood fell on the snow outside her window.  As she looked at the blood on the snow she said to herself, "Oh, how I wish that I had a daughter that had skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony."  

Soon after that, the kind queen got her wish when she gave birth to a baby girl who had skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony.  They named the baby princess Snow White, but sadly, the queen died after giving birth to Snow White.

Soon after, the king married a new woman who was beautiful, but as well proud and cruel.  She had studied dark magic and owned a magic mirror, of which she would daily ask, 

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?. 

Each time this question was asked, the mirror would give the same answer, "Thou, O Queen, art the fairest of all."  This pleased the queen greatly as she knew that her magical mirror could speak nothing but the truth.

One morning when the queen asked, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?" she was shocked when it answered:

You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow White is even fairer than you.

The Queen flew into a jealous rage and ordered her huntsman to take Snow White into the woods to be killed.  She demanded that the huntsman return with Snow White's heart as proof. 

The poor huntsman took Snow White into the forest, but found himself unable to kill the girl.  Instead, he let her go, and brought the queen the heart of a wild boar.

Snow White was now all alone in the great forest, and she did not know what to do.  The trees seemed to whisper to each other, scaring Snow White who began to run.  She ran over sharp stones and through thorns.  She ran as far as her feet could carry her, and just as evening was about to fall she saw a little house and went inside in order to rest.

Inside the house everything was small but tidy.  There was a little table with a tidy, white tablecloth and seven little plates.  Against the wall there were seven little beds, all in a row and covered with quilts.

Because she was so hungry Snow White ate a few vegetables and a little bread from each little plate and from each cup she drank a bit of milk. Afterward, because she was so tired, she lay down on one of the little beds and fell fast asleep.

After dark, the owners of the house returned home.  They were the seven dwarves who mined for gold in the mountains.  As soon as they arrived home, they saw that someone had been there -- for not everything was in the same order as they had left it.

The first one said, "Who has been sitting in my chair?"
The second one, "Who has been eating from my plate?"
The third one, "Who has been eating my bread?"
The fourth one, "Who has been eating my vegetables?"
The fifth one, "Who has been eating with my fork?"
The sixth one, "Who has been drinking from my cup?"

But the seventh one, looking at his bed, found Snow White lying there asleep.  The seven dwarves all came running up, and they cried out with amazement.  They fetched their seven candles and shone the light on Snow White. 

"Oh good heaven! " they cried. "This child is beautiful!"

They were so happy that they did not wake her up, but let her continue to sleep in the bed.  The next morning Snow White woke up, and when she saw the seven dwarves she was frightened.  But they were friendly and asked, "What is your name?"

"My name is Snow White," she answered.

"How did you find your way to our house?" the dwarves asked further.

Then she told them that her stepmother had tried to kill her, that the huntsman had spared her life, and that she had run the entire day through the forest, finally stumbling upon their house.

The dwarves spoke with each other for awhile and then said, "If you will keep house for us, and cook, make beds, wash, sew, and knit, and keep everything clean and orderly, then you can stay with us, and you shall have everything that you want."

"Yes," said Snow White, "with all my heart."  For Snow White greatly enjoyed keeping a tidy home.

So Snow White lived happily with the dwarves.  Every morning they went into the mountains looking for gold, and in the evening when they came back home Snow White had their meal ready and their house tidy.  During the day the girl was alone, except for the small animals of the forest that she often played with.

Now the queen, believing that she had eaten Snow White's heart, could only think that she was again the first and the most beautiful woman of all.  She stepped before her mirror and said:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?

It answered:

You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But Snow White, beyond the mountains
With the seven dwarves,
Is still a thousand times fairer than you.

This startled the queen, for she knew that the mirror did not lie, and she realized that the huntsman had deceived her and that Snow White was still alive.  Then she thought, and thought again, how she could rid herself of Snow White -- for as long as long as she was not the most beautiful woman in the entire land her jealousy would give her no rest.

At last she thought of something.  She went into her most secret room -- no one else was allowed inside -- and she made a poisoned apple.  From the outside it was beautiful, and anyone who saw it would want it. But anyone who might eat a little piece of it would died.  Coloring her face, she disguised herself as an old peddler woman, so that no one would recognize her, traveled to the dwarves house and knocked on the door.

Snow White put her head out of the window, and said, "I must not let anyone in; the seven dwarves have forbidden me to do so."

"That is all right with me," answered the peddler woman. "I'll easily get rid of my apples.  Here, I'll give you one of them."

"No," said Snow White, "I cannot accept anything from strangers."

"Are you afraid of poison?" asked the old woman. "Look, I'll cut the apple in two.  You eat half and I shall eat half."

Now the apple had been so artfully made that only the one half was poisoned.  Snow White longed for the beautiful apple, and when she saw that the peddler woman was eating part of it she could no longer resist, and she stuck her hand out and took the poisoned half.  She barely had a bite in her mouth when she fell to the ground dead.

The queen looked at her with an evil stare, laughed loudly, and said, "White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony wood!  The dwarves shall never awaken you."

Back at home she asked her mirror:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?

It finally answered:

You, my queen, are fairest of all.

Then her cruel and jealous heart was at rest, as well as a cruel and jealous heart can be at rest.

When the dwarves came home that evening they found Snow White lying on the ground.  She was not breathing at all.  She was dead.  They lifted her up and looked at her longingly.  They talked to her, shook her and wept over her.  But nothing helped.  The dear child was dead, and she remained dead.  They laid her on a bed of straw, and all seven sat next to her and mourned for her and cried for three days.  They were going to bury her, but she still looked as fresh as a living person, and still had her beautiful red cheeks.

They said, "We cannot bury her in the black earth," and they had a transparent glass coffin made, so she could be seen from all sides.  They laid her inside, and with golden letters wrote on it her name, and that she was a princess.  Then they put the coffin outside on a mountain, and one of them always stayed with it and watched over her.  The animals too came and mourned for Snow White, first an owl, then a raven, and finally a dove.

Now it came to pass that a prince entered these woods and happened onto the dwarves' house, where he sought shelter for the night . He saw the coffin on the mountain with beautiful Snow White in it, and he read what was written on it with golden letters.

Then he said to the dwarves, "Let me have the coffin. I will give you anything you want for it."

But the dwarves answered, "We will not sell it for all the gold in the world."

Then he said, "Then give it to me, for I cannot live without being able to see Snow White. I will honor her and respect her as my most cherished one."

As he thus spoke, the good dwarves felt pity for him and gave him the coffin.  The prince had his servants carry it away on their shoulders.  But then it happened that one of them stumbled on some brush, and this dislodged from Snow White's throat the piece of poisoned apple that she had bitten off.  Not long afterward she opened her eyes, lifted the lid from her coffin, sat up, and was alive again.

"Good heavens, where am I?" she cried out.

The prince said joyfully, "You are with me."  He told her what had happened, and then said, "I love you more than anything else in the world.  Come with me to my father's castle.  You shall become my wife."  Snow White loved him, and she went with him.  Their wedding was planned with great splendor and majesty.

Snow White's wicked step-mother was invited to the feast, and when she had arrayed herself in her most beautiful garments, she stood before her mirror, and said:

Mirror, mirror, on the wall,
Who in this land is fairest of all?

The mirror answered:

You, my queen, are fair; it is true.
But the young queen is a thousand times fairer than you.

Not knowing that this new queen was indeed her stepdaughter, she arrived at the wedding, and her heart filled with the deepest of dread when she realized the truth - the evil queen was banished from the land forever and the prince and Snow White lived happily ever after.

*****************************************************************

THIS MOVIE IS PRODUCED BY WALT DISNEY BASED ON SNOW WHITE BY THE BROTHERS GRIMM.

FIRST RELEASE IN DEC 21,1937 & WORLD WIDE RELEASE IN FEB 4,1938

Difference Between Ik & FK ...

Say you have a joint chain, we'll say shoulder - elbow - wrist. The difference between IK and FK is where on the chain you start when you want to move joints. With FK, you start at the top of the chain and step down it, ie rotate the shoulder, then the elbow, then the wrist. Since that's the natural order of the joints, no special tools are needed for FK. IK is the opposite. You move the bottom of the chain and it influences every joint above it, ie drag the wrist around and the elbow and the shoulder rotate accordingly. . .

Brave Behind the Scenes

Finding Nemo 3D

Finding Nemo will return to theaters in 3D September 14th and will be released on Blu-ray for the first time December 4th!

The Dark Knight Rises

The third installment of the movie of finally arrived. It is always said that the third outing is always tricky, but Nolan has undoubtedly, outdone himself with his latest film which also happens to be the last in the Batman franchise.

It is tough to imagine that a comic strip could have such a poignant and an incredibly spell binding movie transformation. You remain fixed to your seats through the entire run of this 2 hours 45 minutes dark action thriller. 


Right from the first installment of the franchise- ‘Batman Begins’ to ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, the director has maintained the same tone and feel of the film, with the antagonist having an overwhelmingly terrifying influence on viewers with their mean and unfathomable manipulative schemes. While Joker of ‘The Dark Knight’, played impeccably by late Heath Ledger, won more accolades from viewers for his eccentric devilish act than Batman played by Christian Bale, this time round we have even more dangerous and evil adversary of the caped crusader in the form of Bane (Tom Hardy) who is not only intelligent but far more strong and agile than our hero. 

The story unfolds eight years after the death of district attorney Harvey Dent who in pursuit to completely eradicate organized crime from the Gotham city loses his life under double dealing circumstances at the hands of Batman. Police Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) is convinced that crime has severely been curbed following Dent’s death. But at some other place there has risen Bane who is hell bent on bringing Gotham city down by presenting the most daunting picture of organized crime by degrading contemporary societal trends. Exploiting on the crumpled economic situation of Gotham and the rich-poor divide, Bane, the ‘terrorist’ plans a very conniving plot to take Gotham city under siege challenging Batman to come out of his shell.

Meanwhile, the Dark Knight of the city aka Batman has become a recluse taking the blame of Harvy Dent’s death upon him. The film also has the ‘Catwoman’(superbly played by Anne Hathway) who very tactfully manages to lure Batman to his most powerful opponent till date who in a fight overpowers Batman- even breaking his back and dumping him to rot.

Batman has to save his city and its people and he has to rise to the occasion. And in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’, Batman has to fight not only Bane but also his own self. He has to get rid of the guilt of killing Dent and his once fiancée Rachel and come to terms with the fact even if his ways of dealing with the warlords are in transgression with the city’s administration; he is the ultimate savior of Gotham.

Animation & gaming park to be establish in Hyderabad

The Andhra Pradesh Government is preparing a plan to establish an animation and gaming park in Hyderabad. The 25-acre facility will have plug-and-play office space for animation and gaming companies.

“We have asked four consultants to come out with design and financial outlay for the project,” Mr Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Minister for Information Technology, said.The consultants are expected to submit their proposals this week.


The Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) will build the facility at Rayadurgam near here. The State Government is planning to pitch for at least six IT hardware parks for the State. In order to get funds from the Union Government under the national scheme to promote industrial clusters, the State will propose five clusters at Maheshwaram near Hyderabad and one at Visakhapatnam.
To be developed in 100 acres each, these clusters will be developed with an outlay of Rs 300 crore. The State would give Rs 50 lakh for companies that set up incubation centres for start-ups, he said. The Mee Seva (the Government-to-citizen service) programme would be expanded to all the 23 districts by the end of the month. Currently, it is being implemented in 17 districts, registering 55,000 transactions a day.

The crucial meeting on ITIR (Information Technology Investment Regions) will be held in New Delhi on July 23 and 24. The meeting of Secretaries will discuss the ITIR proposals from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The recommendations will be submitted to the Union Cabinet.

The Centre will provide funds to develop commercial and residential infrastructure in the proposed regions.

Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are the first two states to come up with proposals to claim the funds. Andhra Pradesh is planning to develop the region encompassing Uppal and other IT hubs in the State capital.

Another Reference

Seriously..........!!!! Everything is in this....!! Whatever essence u need to make an awesome fabulous animation u can see all that essence here.. Acting,Timing,Balancing,Anticipation.... Etc Etc.. Its simply an Awesome Inspiration to all who wants to become an ANIMATOR........!!!!

Awesome Example

This is Pure,Awesome,Great....!! Everything is in this.. Acting,Timing,Animation.Style, it feels feels Fantastic....!!!! It has a Feel of Old Disney Classical Movies......!!

Autodesk Maya Basics.

Understanding Menus within Maya

Menus in Maya are actually the sub-menus of Menu Sets. Maya’s User Interface (UI) is quite difference than the UIs of other software applications. Maya’s Menu Sets are like diverse and special applications. In contrast of 3D Studio Max Maya has introduced a quite new style to approach appropriate Menus by selecting a particular Menu Set, for instance for the menus of Animation we can select the Animation Menu Set. Under the Animation Menu Set we’ll find all menus containing several commands and tools for animation purpose. Maya 2009 has Popular Menu Sets of Animation, Polygons, Surfaces, Dynamics, nDynamics, Rendering, Fur, Hair, Cloth Menu Set. Therefore before Maya 2009 there were Animation, Modeling, Rendering, Dynamics and Fur Menu Sets in Maya.

General Introduction to Maya UI

UI stands for User Interface. Usually it is called GUI means Graphical User Interface. A GUI is the dashboard of any software contains almost all commands and tools in it. We operate software by using GUI or UI. Almost all software try to build user friendly UIs that’s why we find almost all software same in some menus such as file menu, edit menu, tools menu, view menu etc, but while working within Maya we see something different but not difficult. Maya is amazing in this aspect because it provides a realm of commands, tools, script editing and customizing software in one place at a time. We don’t change its user interface again and again or we don’t restart Maya again and again for changing the applications as we do in many of the software.

Understanding Hot Box

Hotbox is an amazing feature of Maya. You will have never seen such a quick command system in any software. Although the use of hotbox is for experts and it is not recommended for beginners, but it has been experimented that if you try to be familiar with hotbox in beginnings you will get a natural flow to access all of the Maya while working within it. Hotbox gives you the ability to work in a big room. Many people like to work in a big room. It has been observed that most of the users close the shelf menu or status line or time and framing preferences and sliders while modeling within some 3d software. You may see the expert mode in 3D Studio Max as well, but Maya’s Hotbox is gives astonishing results. Hotbox is the game of right and left clicks when you have pressed and hold the space bar with your one hand, you will have to click and hold right or left mouse button with the other hand . With Hotbox you can hide all of the UI elements of your software application. Only and only one Hotbox gives you the direct access to each and every menu, command, tool, feature, menu set, scripting and any of the Maya’s features.

Understanding Persp and Orthographic Views

Maya has four views for work. The main and most used view is perspective view of Maya, and shortly called persp. A view is actually a camera with which we see our objects and animations. The first and most used persp view gives you the workspace of perfect 3d environment. You may watch your elements and objects from south east, south west, north east and North West and you can also tumble, track and dolly your perspective camera within Maya. Other 3 views are used while checking the left, right, front, back, top and bottom of your objects or elements or animations. It’s important that you be familiar with these four views of Maya, because when you model an object within Maya in perspective view you often mistakenly think that you are modeling a very good item with specific values but when you observe it in some other view such as left view, right view, front view, back view, top view and bottom view you may find great errors in your model. So it’s strongly recommended that always use all of the views and switch always between all of the views again and again while working with Maya. In this way you can get the proper results of your efforts.

Using ChannelBox in Maya

Channel box is most used command panel of Maya. It controls all the attributes and channels of all types, such as of an object or its shapes or animation or dynamics etc. channelbox has easy access for user. It is recommended for new users of Maya that they should pay very proper attention to understand the channel box because without using channelbox they will never be able to model or animate something with accurate values. Suppose you start to model an object directly with your mouse pointer. It may be corrupted due to free style modeling because when we scale, rotate or translate our objects or their components within Maya with simple clicking and dragging we can never model or animate some object with its appropriate values or figures. And when we use the channel box especially for controlling the attributes of the objects or animations we get very accurate results and there is not a single corruption in our model or animation. We even can control the attributes of lights, cameras and much more things from channel box. The second portion of channel box is shape. This is the place from where we control the shapes and behavior of our channels, objects and their components. The third portion of channel box is called layer editor. It’s the best way to display or manage the items of your scene or workspace. Even you can control thousands of object with layer editor any time.

Understanding Status Line of Maya's UI

Status line of Maya’s User Interface is an element which gives you a very comprehensive approach to the most used tools and commands, especially to control the behavior of objects while working with them within Maya. But the most important characteristic of status line is giving the opportunity to control your software application any time as quickly as you can. In the start of status line you will find Menu Sets. You can choose the menu sets according to the requirement of you work. Let say you want to work within Dynamics, so for this purpose you will have to choose the dynamics menu from menu sets from status line. When you select a specific menu set the sub menus of that menu set appears in main menu bar. You also find the main famous menus such as file menu’s items i.e. save file or open a new file etc. A status line has arrow type pipe characters which can be closed and reopened with the passage of work’s needs. Status line provides you many of the same control commands which you can find from any other panel or toolbar also. Such as the render current scene is a command which you may find from main menu, from shelf menu, from hotbox menu and etc .

Understanding Main Toolbar

Main toolbar is located on left side of the workspace of Maya. It contains main tools that are most used during work. Move, rotate and scale tools are the most important and frequently used tools for everything in Maya, such as modeling, animation, working with graph editor, hypergraph, hypershade etc. other tools of toolbar are also repeatedly used during work. The top most tool of main toolbar is selection tools, but often benefits for de-selection of objects and other items. At the bottom of the toolbar we find the camera switching tools. Such as single perspective view or the four view and so on. A user of Maya must be habitual of using toolbar during work. In this movie you will learn, what the function of toolbar is? How do the tools of toolbar work, and for what. Although all of the tools of toolbar are available on some other panels or menus but the main toolbar has still significance. Most of the experts hide all of the toolbars and command panels but they never hide main toolbar because of its extreme need.

Understanding Animation Preference

Animation preference is the main setting area for controlling an animation. When Maya loads, we see the time slider and range slider for animation. At the end of the range slider you may find a button for animation preference. This can also be accessed from window menu and setting preferences. With animation preference you set the speed of frames per second, you can change the playback speed; you can change the numbers of frames. Actually whatsoever we see in an animation is a sequence of still images. We know that if we pass 16 images just in one second in front of our eyes, we feel the elements of images are moving. It’s an illusion in deed. The great philosopher Zeno of Great Greece claims that there is no movement in this world. Everything is still, we feel movement due to the sequence of images in front of us. He claims that an arrow in air is not moving. It is stopped at every point. Anyhow, with the beginning of cinema humans have come to know that if a sequence of still images passes swiftly in front of eyes it gives an illusion of motion. That is the basic principle of animation. We can change the ratio of frames from animation preference. Usually in film industry 24 frames per seconds are used but we can set our custom number of frames. With animation preference you may change the playback range, as well as you may change width of time slider for sound import purposes. Animation preference allows you to control you animation masterly within Maya. In this lesson you are going to introduce with animation preference.

Time Slider and Range Slider

Timeand range sliders are twins. Both of them are used for animations in Maya. By default Maya opens time and range slider at the same time but user can hide one or both of them according the needs of job. Time slider is actually a time line, right beneath the workspace of Maya.However the workspace of Maya is actually persp view or erspective camera. Time slider can be scrubbed with left mouse button as well as it can be played with playback controls. Playback controls are on the right side of the time slider and are very simple like media player controls. Range slider specifies the range of the time slider or time line. The values of both of them can be set from animation preference window. Video tutorial on animation preference can be watched from the same page, from where you got this video tutorial. The value of time slider can be typed in small text boxes of range slider. Range slider has one bar and 4 small text boxes. On the left most corner of the range slider, you will find tow small text boxes for entering the start frames for time slider or range and on the right most side of the range slider bar you may find two text boxes for entering the end frame values of time slider and range. Time slider and range slider are easy to use and easy to understand; even a very new user can make an animation easily by using the time and range slider of Maya .

Understanding Shelf Menu in Maya

Shelf menu or shelf toolbar or shelf is rich and very comprehensive tool plate. Although experts avoid using shelf because of its size which reduces the workspace or work area of Maya, but there are times when experts prefer to use shelf menu than every other tool menu or command panel, especially when modelers work on specific task such as human body modeling or clothing or specifically dynamics, they avoid to open up the main menus again and again and they use shelf bar. Often experts use custom shelf menu and they collect the necessary items for their specific work. Some users prefer to create their own commands through scripting and they also put them into shelf menu bar. But for new users the shelf command panel or tools plate is strongly recommended for use, because it is difficult to keep in mind a lot of tools and commands at a time, so they can see the image icons of specific primitives and commands on toolbar and this way they can model or animate an object easily.

Familiarizing with Maya's Workspace

Workspace is a word which illustrates the space for work in Maya. Whenever we first time load Maya, the first thing which appears is the workspace in front of us. We see a grid, which is used as the graph paper for drawing different 2D and 3D objects. By default the perspective camera is set as workspace. Actually workspace is the main working area where a Maya user spent most of his/her time. The most important point while understanding workspace is to be familiar with it. There are majorly 3 actions to manipulate our workspace Tumble, track, and dolly. All these 3 actions are used similarly in offline film industry. Tracking a camera in Maya is same like panning a camera in 3D Studio Max. Dolly in Maya is used as zooming a camera in 3D Studio Max. Tumbling a camera in Maya is same like rotating a camera in 3D Studio Max. These 3 camera moves are basic skills. If you can’t fluently manipulate the camera speedily, you can’t do anything because during working within a 3D software you will have to manipulate working cameras, workspaces or viewports hundreds times for making a single object or a simple animation.

What is 3D?

Understanding XYZ Coordinates is the basic thing, when you are trying get in 3D world. Actually many people wish to be Master of 3D graphics and animation but they don’t even know what the place of point in a space is? With XYZ Coordinates we specify the place of a point in realistic 3D space. For example, if you are asked to draw a point in specific place of our own realistic 3D word, you will be told the location according to some origin. Such as right or left or top or bottom or front or back of something and then you will place the point there. XYZ Coordinates are the same thing. There is always an origin and you specify the distance from the origin on X or Y or Z axis and this way you draw accurate points and objects, that are actually the collection of points.

Understanding 3 Dimensions is one and only way to get in the world of 3D. Let’s try to understand what the dimensions are? When we draw something on paper like sheet or surface, we use 2 dimensions. A photograph is two dimensional thing, a shadow is a two dimensional entity as well. A 2 dimensional object is always drawn on 2 dimensional surfaces like paper, and has two axes for drawing, X, Y, one for length measurement and one for width measurement. But a 3 dimensional object has depth in addition, And cannot be drawn on 2 dimensional surfaces like paper, because a 3 dimensional object is a thing of realistic world like cup, glass, room, fan, computer, ball, book, human, pen, pillar etc. when we model a 3 dimensional object within Maya. We model it in an imaginary workspace, which gives us the illusion of realistic 3D world, and we have length, width, depth at a time. We model 3 dimensional objects on 3 axes X, Y and Z.


3D Software and Realistic World are same indeed, because according to Modern physics the realistic world is nothing more than an illusion. Most of the Western Philosophers and Scientists including Einstein the Great believe that our realistic world is nothing but just an illusion. We believe that we exist however it’s not totally true, because whatsoever we observe is just perception or conception of our five senses. Even the Father of Modern Western Descartes says, “I think so I am” otherwise nothing is to make my belief that I exist in this world. Anyhow we are not studying philosophy here, we are just trying to understand the difference between realistic world and any of 3D Software such as Maya, 3D Studio max, AutoCAD or somewhat else. When we work within Maya, actually we use a 2 Dimension Screen of our LCD or Monitor as drawing canvas. So the difference between realistic world and 3D software is clear that we just model or animate 2 dimensional entities on an imaginary 3 dimensional canvas. It’s just like drawing an apple on a paper with shades that make apple’s round rather we model things in our realistic world on a realistic canvas which is our space, our surroundings, our environment.