My Favorite Animation EVER!

Alright, now technically this is supposed to be a Youtube embed, but Jennifer Hager is SO awesome that this animation was just too cool to be put there. (And SCAD apparently can't get Quicktime Pro so I can't save it off the website and upload it myself, le sigh)

Regardless, here's the global link to the Calarts page. If you scroll down to the film "Sky Bound" by Jennifer Hager and click on the picture it'll bring up the streaming quicktime window. Let it load for a bit and enjoy!

http://film.calarts.edu/main/streaming/2005/charanim.html

BUT SERIOUSLY. I can't say enough about how awesome this student film is! My goodness! It may not be technically complete but c'mon, for a student film this is freakin' amazing. Her softness and sense of pleasing line and shape is unrivaled by any modern animator that I know of. She uses convincing weight and timing in her subtle animation and her story is simple but extremely potent and long-lived.
But I'll be honest here, apart from the animation my very favorite part of all of Jennifer Hager's work is her SOUNDTRACK! My lord, I don't know how she produces or procures her audio but it just smacks me in all the right places.

Enough drooling. Here's the only thing on Youtube that I've ever been able to find on Hager. Its her demo reel, but even that is astounding and I totally dig it.



Also, because I'm a nerd/nut and just REALLY love the character animation in this demo reel by Jordan Krahn:



So there you have it. You can see that I am indeed a bona fide nutter for good pencil animation. As for 3D animation, you'd better bet your britches that I am 110% enamoured with basically all of Kung Fu Panda. The '2D' sequences especially.



the asthetics, smoothness, secondary action... *shudder*
its just all breathtaking and insanely inspiring. I strive every time I sit down to animate to get that same fluidity and believable weight that the whole Dreamworks team achieved with every character.

Really for me it comes down to the subtleties that most folks wouldn't catch. ear drag, jaw drag, even toe drag... after doing it myself I know how insane it is to keep up with every single secondary, tertiary, and quadary (yes, I made up a word JUST for this occasion) movement and resepct it all the more.

So kudos, all you artists out there who feed my rabid animation dreams... you are fully awesome.*

*quote provided by Rhino