Craft Mastery Unit

How to Paint Like Miyazaki

From the Craft Mastery Special Unit

I found this nice write up about a recently translated pamphlet that show's Miyazaki's painting technique and tools.

I'd seen the pamphlet before in Japanese, which I don't read, and though it looked nice, but I missed all the charming self-deprecation Miyazaki is known for.

What's great about this is Miyazaki's tools and techniques are about eliminating friction and getting work done. Tools aren't the focus in his work, he just found something that gets the job done, and his technique never gets in the way of telling a story, or exhibiting a character's personality.

Read the full write up here: LINK

The second page there is concept art for a commercial Studio Ghibli did back in 2004 to pay the bills:

Watch the video here: LINK

-Jake

The Art of the Smear

From the Art Department's Craft Mastery Special Unit

Smear frames in animation is a creative solution to making animated characters move with more fluidity in a short amount of frames. This webpage does an EXCELLENT job at explaining it with interactive examples.

THE ART OF THE SMEAR: BREAKING DOWN A SECRET ANIMATION TRICK LINK

I share this because someone recently posted screen grabs of all the smears from the recent 3D animated Spongebob film. Each of these frames is like a Dali painting. Brilliant work by the artists at Mikros, who animated the film.

Tons more here: LINK

(via @PunzieSfw)

-Jake