So the animation project I was working on for four months is animated. It's an episode of the No Budget Show. I said I'd post something about what I learned once it was done.

First, some links that you might find nice:
This explanation of the bouncing ball is pretty great. It gets into variations on the bounce, and use of the bounce in a walking animation. I only found this once this project was pretty much done, so it had no real influence.

In a post on JohnK's blog where he was explaining the problems in "Canadian-style" animation, he said:

TOO MANY ANTICIPATIONS Every pose is connected with the next by an anticipation and overshoot. Every single one! No one ever just moves from one pose to the next easily. There is no variance in timing or posing.

Further to an earlier post where I criticized the visuals of an online chess game, I figured I'd post a couple games that do the visuals right.

I didn't see the Olympic rip-off of Ferry Halim's Winterbells but I did get to see this:
http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2008/04/offset_the_evil_panda.php

This also looks like a Winterbells clone. But some of the ways in which it differs serves to underline what was so good about Winterbells.

It has the same basic idea. In Winterbells, you control a rabbit that hops on bells, which disappear when you jump on them. In this banner ad, you control a panda that hops on rainbows.

Rat photos:

Dear sirs. I would like to complain about the comic you ran in the paper today. I am afraid I must take offense at what it depicts.

Ziggy is wearing pants. This is atrocious, as it renders all the preceding Ziggy comics as lascivious in retrospect. I demand you issue an immediate recall on all papers featuring this comic, and refrain from ever drawing attention to Ziggy's pantslessness again.

If you do not do this, I will cancel my subscription.

Good day.

This chess game is hard on the eyes. I think the transparency wasn't really necessary. And the dominant visual element on the screen? This thing:

I came across this lately, through BoingBoing:
http://excesscopyright.blogspot.com/2007/11/canadas-copyright-law-is-str...

Howard Knopf wrote a list of ways in which Canadian copyright law is more restrictive than the American, in response to recent rumblings that the U.S. is trying to press Canada into adopting American-style laws similar to the DMCA.

I'm helping with an animated project. One thing that's come up a few times when I mention this to people is they'll mention drawing the 8 mouth positions needed for lip sync.