Animation and Video Life

Do you get the feeling Red knows he's on the naughty list? T he last minute Christmas rush is pretty much upon us but it's not too late to create completely custom Christmas Cards to send to family and friends. Send them by email or take them to your local department store print on demand service if actual, physical Christmas cards is more your style. Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 5 is perfect for creating fun, Christmas themed cartoons, like my running joke above, with the cast of Resident Dragon , confronting Santa each year with TET's Christmas gift 'guide'. The Annual Last Minute Christmas Resource List This list is something of an annual event too, where I run through various Christmas themed products that caught my eye in Reallusion's, Cartoon Animator Marketplace this year. If creating unique holiday images (and animations of course) with Cartoon Animator is something you want to do, then save yourself a bunch of time with pre-made content you can pur...

The Resident Dragon Team visit Santa to discuss their Christmas Lists. O ne of the great strengths of Reallusion's Cartoon Animator is you can create short, message based, animations within hours. Especially if you save yourself time by not creating all the artwork yourself and simply purchase ready made characters, props, and scenes from the Reallusion Content Store or Marketplace . With Christmas fast approaching I thought I'd highlight some of the best 2D holiday assets available, from Reallusion Marketplace Developers, that you may like to use in your own seasonal animated messages.  Note that I'm not affiliated with any of the developers listed and I did not approach any for permission to include them here. These packs are just what caught my eye and offer just that little bit extra. Be sure to check each highlighted developer's store as many have a whole range of Christmas themed content and would love your patronage. Santa & Prancer by Clay Triche Santa ...

Merry Christmas from Animation and Video Life.  It's the most wonderful time of the year... well not yet. The Nightmare Before Christmas is not just the animated Tim Burton movie, it's also the nightmare of trying to make your own animated holiday messages in the week before Christmas. Animation takes time. Why didn't you start those in November?! If this sounds like your nightmare, here are five free or low(ish) cost apps to help you back to sharing the joy of the season with animation, so it truly will be the most wonderful time of the year. Cartoon Animator 4 (or iClone7 ) Reallusion Marketplace search 'Christmas'. If you're already a power user (or even know your way around it a little bit) you'll know CA4 is one of the fastest ways to make completely custom animations. The Reallusion Marketplace has a bunch of Christmas content you can utilize, just don't be too ambitious. Drop in a background, throw in a Santa character, record a short message f...

Club Med and BAFTA nominee and Art Director/Creative Lead at animation studio 3.81, Matt Oxborrow, have teamed up to answer the question "Is your luggage having more fun than you when you go on a holiday?" Find out in the delightfully unique animation, Sun, Sea and Scanned: A Flip-Flop Family Holiday (below) created using a full-sized airport luggage scanner.

People seem to like Happy Bunny so much as GoAnimate's Complaints Desk Operator that he was the obvious choice for this years Christmas animation from yours truly. This outing I wanted to get back to a more universal humor and move away from some of the GoAnimate member centric humor of the previous episode, hence no members were parodied, sent up or poked fun of in the making of this animation. Except perhaps for myself. My goal was to try and use as much of GoAnimate's Christmas theme as possible whilst still trying to maintain the idea that this is a Complaints Desk and therefore people should be complaining. It was obvious to me that Happy Bunny would naturally be cynical about the whole Christmas Holiday season and not really appreciate any attempt to decorate his space with 'holiday cheer'. However he would also get a certain satisfaction out of undermining the Christmas spirit by spreading the cheer with 'False Hope'. This time around Street Fig...

GoAnimate launched its Spooktacular Halloween Contest this week and although I missed the first deadline I've just managed to get this in before the October 25th (2009) deadline for tallying up total views during the contest period. So, if you happen to be reading this and it's October 25 or before please watch the animation below ASAP so I can get the view recorded in my tally. Deer Hunter's Creek by etourist Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com . It's free and fun! The ten animations with the most views will go on to be judged for the major prizes (which are only exciting to GoAnimate members - so don't think I'll be inviting you as a guest on my prize of an ocean cruise or anything). Anyhow all the animations are themed around Halloween and in particular Ghost stories. If you've already watched my animation you'll know it features GoAnimate's Full Energy Cast of characters as well as a couple of cameo appearances from characters in their Cl...

It was that time of the year... well Christmas 2008 was fast approaching anyway. I hadn't tried GoAnimate's Christmas themed characters so I thought now was probably a good time. At the same time I discovered classic GoAnimate character, Joyce, looked really cool with a humongous axe from the new Monsters theme. She clearly has a dark side with her green styled fashion sense. Rather than create a typical Christmas animation with everyone all happy and smiling I liked the idea of an 'anti-Christmas' theme where Joyce plays the part of an unhappy customer... with a literal axe to grind! This is one of my favorites so far because it's funny and a little off balance. You're never quite sure how it's going to end. Santa's already smashed the door in so he could be quite dangerous, yet Joyce is deadly serious brandishing that axe. In one early version I toyed with the idea of actually turning it into a bit of a blood bath but decided, not only would it be too ...

Batman is a guilty pleasure for me. He's a character I love (but not in an icky kind of way). Which is why Batman is a recurring theme in many of my animations. A Batty Halloween Accident is a good example. The scene is set with Frankie and his bride going out to celebrate Halloween with a night on the town. Unfortunately their driver is distracted by Frankie's beautiful bride and before you know it they've accidentally run over Batman... A Batty Halloween Accident Like it? It's free and fun! Create your own at GoAnimate.com Obviously this animation was created during the 2008, USA Presidential elections. The idea of John McCain as Batman just seemed funny to me since on some of his platforms they were trying to bill him as a hero. At the same time anyone who wasn't a Republican supporter was concerned about the idea of Sarah Palin being one step removed from running the USA. Most didn't think she had the brains or the credibility to even stand in for John in ...