What is your name and your current occupation?
My name is Stanley Somers, and I teach at Hawthorne Academy High School as their Art Teacher. What are some of your favorite projects you’re proud to have been a part of? In Animation, I worked for twenty two years at; Disney, Warners, Hyperion, FilmFair and many others. My favorite projects were Rover Dangerfeild, The Little Mermaid, and BeBe’s Kids.   In art I with my ex wife Marsea open New Image Art gallery in 1994 in west Hollywood. The Gallery Initially juxtaposed Minimalist artist with performance art to create a new dialogue in LA. How did you become interested in animation? In the 70’s through to the beginning of the 2000’s it was the best way to draw and earn a living, the studios sought out artist that were schooled and loved drawing. Where are you from and how did you get into the animation business? I’m from LA and in 1978 went to Disney after graduating college. There they put me under Eric Larsen to be Continue reading
Today Toon Boom announced our new release, Storyboard Pro 5! Storyboard Pro is recognized as an industry standard in storyboarding, and the studios and artists who use it to create stories are passionate about what they can do with its toolset.
Storyboard Pro 5 is available for free as a benefit for customers who own a Desktop Subscription or Perpetual license with Support. Simply go to the Toon Boom site and download your new software today.
You can buy Storyboard Pro 5 for as low as $38 per month on a yearly subscription or $999 for a perpetual licence. A full breakdown of pricing can be found here.
If you haven’t tried Storyboard Pro yet, download our free trial of Storyboard Pro 5 here. There are loads of free learning materials available to help get you started.
What’s New
The new release of Storyboard Pro streamlines the workflow with new creative tools for artists, adds improvements to the 3D workflow, and provides better integration with editorial.
With a new more neutral UI colour scheme that reduces eye strain, Storyboard Pro 5 makes it easier for artists to accurately see the colours they are working with. Of course, for artists who prefer the original look, the traditional colour scheme is still available.
A better 3D Workflow
The 3D toolset in Storyboard Pro lets you integrate 3D models, block out camera shots and create scenes with depth. Storyboard Pro 5 includes several new features that provide better integration between 2D and 3D.
There’s the new Snap to Surface that makes it easier to position and animate 3D models on a 2D plane like a floor or wall (this feature works with 2D artwork as well). You can create layers on surfaces when you want to draw on 3D models, which is a powerful way to add 2D artwork to your 3D scenes. The 3D camera is much more responsive making it easier to position, do tilts, pans, rotations and camera rolls. And Alembic and Collada can now be imported (added to existing support for FBX and 3DS), making it easier to bring in CG content.
Here you see a 2D prop being positioned inside a 3D spaceship. Positioning and animation controls let you easily place your artwork, which will maintain contact with the surface no matter what changes you make.
Enhanced Bitmap Drawing Tools
Storyboard Pro has both vector and bitmap drawing tools that interact seamlessly. This provides the flexibility that artists are looking for when developing artwork from sketch to cleanup. New in Storyboard Pro 5 are customizable tips for bitmap brushes. These enable more artistic freedom and control over the look and feel.
Change the roundness, hardness, and angle of tips as well as add randomness to affect the resulting lines. Brush tips can be customized, and you can create your own in Photoshop, Harmony or Storyboard Pro.
Better Organization with Layer Groups
In Storyboard Pro, artists can break out their artwork into an unlimited number of layers in a single storyboard panel – for example, character line work and shading can be drawn on separate layers. This enables artistic freedom and makes it easier to edit drawings. For an even more fluid creative development process and exchange between artists, Storyboard Pro 5 features the ability group layers of drawings – making it easier to organize and share content.
When you select a group of layers, all the layers move together. With Layer groups, artists spend more time being creative and less time searching for artwork, which is especially important when projects need to be turned around quickly.
Faster Revisions with Shared Drawings
Some drawings, like a background, are regularly reused in a storyboard. To make it easier to update this kind of artwork, you can now share drawings – use a single drawing across multiple panels. When you make a change, the artwork updates everywhere so you can move on more quickly to the next creative process.
Qt Application Scripting
New Qt Application scripting support can help you save time by creating scripts that automate manual tasks, or you can create new tools that can be accessed at the click of a button.
To get you started, a number of example scripts are available in this release – delete hidden layers, export the camera path, change the timing of multiple panels simultaneously, and others.
Better Integration between Storyboard Pro and Editing
Added support for 23.976 NDF timecode enables the seamless transfer of animatics from Storyboard Pro to the editing suite making it even easier to collaborate with editors. Storyboard artists can now work with this frame rate, directly exporting animatics and timelines with panels, sound, transitions, and timing to editing suites via EDL, AAF, and XML.
For those who haven’t tried Storyboard Pro yet, now is a great time. The new features in Storyboard Pro 5 add to an already great blend of creative tools and technical capabilities that help customers increase pipeline efficiency and creative output. Try it out!
You can see the whole post here of a ton of background art from the critically acclaimed show “Batman the Animated Series”
I was fortunate to work at WB during this time on Animaniacs and had many friends working on BTAS. It was truly a huge amount of incredible talent collected together. One of the coolest concepts they used to give the art that brooding night time feel, was to paint on black poster board instead of white poster board so that everything had this dark feel right from the get go. Truly amazing artwork in this show… hurry and check it out now before someone makes them take it down.
Movie Pilot.com is reporting that Nickelodeon is rumored to be reviving one of its most beloved shows: As Told By Ginger. They’ve even got some development art up.
Russell Hicks and Chris Viscardi exclusively told MoviePilot that Nickelodeon in working on an As Told By Ginger revival with the original creator Emily Kapnek on board, the show will focus be a continuation after the events of The Wedding Frame, when the gang is in high school and will focus on the ups and down on the life of Ginger Foutley.
As Told By Ginger, if you remember, follows the all-too-relatable trials and tribulations of Ginger Foutley, a grade schooler just trying to find her place in this great, confusing world. There were episodes on breakups, death, depression, and other real-life things that made it a must-watch.
This montage, created by animator Steve Cutts, shows what The Simpsons would love have looked like on the set of Miami Vice. A particularly tickling touch is the “thou must kill forgive Simpson” on the wall of the heavily tattooed Flanders’ prison cell.
A short film made by Academy Award-winning studio, Aardman Animations (creators of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep). The interesting thing about this film for me is that it’s interactive. Use your mouse to rotate the view to follow Santa and the guard around the courtyard. Pretty cool little device to tell a story!
Find yourself following the adventures of a humble caretaker, who is disturbed by a mysterious stranger on the roof. Who’s there? And the chase begins… room to room… up and down… somehow, mysteriously, just out of sight. But the elusive stranger is always one step ahead, leaving behind only a trail of gifts…
These interactive stories are optimized for a fast connection (WiFi or LTE) and a supported Android device. Also, please update your YouTube app for the best experience.
Full Interactive experience currently optimized for following devices: Nexus 5, 6; Moto X Gen 1st, 2nd; Moto G Gen 1st, 2nd; Droid Ultra, Turbo, Maxx; Samsung Galaxy S5; Samsung Galaxy Note 3, 4, Edge; LG G2, G3; Sony Xperia, Z2, Z3, Z3 Compact; HTC One M7, M8; Nexus 7 (2013); Nexus 10; Samsung Galaxy Tab S2
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About Spotlight Stories:
Google Spotlight Stories is a new form of storytelling made specifically for mobile and VR. In these 360-degree, interactive stories, your phone becomes a window to a world all around you. The sensors on your phone allow the story to be interactive; when you move your phone to various scenes, you are able to unlock mini-stories within the story. Look anywhere, follow individual characters, watch it over again and again on your phone or in Cardboard. If it makes you smile, share it with a friend.
Executive Producers
Heather Wright
Karen Dufilho
Regina Dugan
Technical Project Lead
Rachid El Guerrab
Creative Director, Music & Sound
Scot Stafford
Lead Technical Art Director
Brian Collins
Technical Art Lead
Luca Prasso
Aardman Animations
Story by
Peter Lord
Tim Ruffle
Andy Janes
Sam Morrison
Aardman Animations:
Head of CGI Production: Jess McKillop; Production Manager: Danny Gallagher; Production Co-Ordinator: Hannah Campbell; Technical Supervisors: Philip Child, Ben Toogood; Technical Story Director: Lee Brown; Technical Co-Ordinator: Shane Simms; Camera Programmer: Marco Weber; Storyboard Artist: Andy Janes; Character Design: Nigel Davies; Set Design & Colour Keys: Aurelian Predal; CGI Environment Build: Andy Lavery, Christopher Livesey; Additional Environment Build: Clare Price; CGI Modellers: Christopher Livesey, Tom Lord, Jonathan MacDonald, Antonio Mendoza Salado; CGI Riggers: Christelle Girard, Nathan Guttridge, Chris Kilshaw, Martin Parsons, Clare Price, Vincent Touache; CGI Animation and Supervision: Mathew Rees; CGI Animators: Eva Bennett, Olly Davis, Andy Fossey, John Ogden, Terry Reilly, Inez Woldman; CGI Junior Animators: Morten Andersen, Lasse Rützou Bruntse, Sara Jespersen Holm; 2D Animator: Philip Parker; Voice Talent: Janitor: Rich Webber; Santa: Peter Lord; Pigeon Lady: Jason Fletcher-Bartholomew; Angry Neighbor: Doug Sweetland; Editor: Dan Hembery; Sound Editor: Laura Izzard; Studio Publicity: Anna Lewis
Google Spotlight Stories:
Software Lead: James Ritts; Engine Lead: James Beattie; Tools Lead: Brendan Duncan; Support Engineer: Josiah Larson; Engineering Manager: Brian Clark; Program Manager: Ellen Yang; Technical Artists: Ryan Enslow, Matthew Oursbourn, Kye Wan Sung; Software Engineers: Darren Austin, Andrea Hemphill, Tim Leahy, Guruji Panda, Jamieson Pryor; Support Engineers, Digital Fish: Ken Brain, Mark Decker, Adam Wagner; Graphics Engineers: Jeremy Chernobieff, Daniel Jeppsson, Shaveen Kumar, Houman Meshkin, Timothy Richards, Owens Rodriguez; Tools Engineers: Morgwn McCarty, Eric Mueller, Ciaran Wills; Designer & Compositor: Bryan Woods; QA Lead Test Engineers: Ravi Aluru, Charles Darakdjian; QA Engineers: Jose Camba, Zhichao Ren; Production Assistant: Sara Diamond; Music: Scot Stafford & Dave Lebolt; Music Production: Pollen Music Group; Sound Supervision: Scot Stafford; Sound Design: Jamey Scott; Audio Software Engineer: Wayne Jackson; Google ATAP – Deputy Director: Dan Kaufman; Director of Operations: Holly Lim; Director, Strategy and Partnerships: Cameron Walker; Financial Analyst: Jonathan Bradley; Chief of Staff: Rachel Lillestolen; Program Administration: Matthew Yonaki; Corporate Council: Tom Lue, Zachary Patton; Marketing: Jessica Beavers; Communications Managers: Victoria Cassady, Iska Saric; Social Media Manager: Jaime Schember; Public Relations, the pr kitchen: Fumi Kitahara Otto
Production Babies: Brendan, Caleb, Philip, and Grayson
