Becky - The cover girl of ImagineFX, issue 49 November 2009. Warren Louw (2D)

It's all in the pose!

Pencil Test Depot

For anyone interested in 2d pencil tests, this is a great blog. It has archived material from animation legends as well as links to new productions and individual artists. Well worth subscribing to.

http://www.penciltestdepot.com/

An example below:

CGS Production Focus: Batman Arkham Asylum

Interesting feature on a very well received game, some good conceptual insights.

Jesus 2000 (Gobelins)

Squashy, stretchy, pose-to-pose loveliness from Gobelins. Animated in Flash.

Mini Davey Jones (Pirates of the Carribean) by Tiago Hoisel

CGS Production Focus: Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs

Production focus with shader writer Danny Dimian who also worked on Dreamworks' Surf's Up.

Line Art animation to Gigi D'Agostino's Bla Bla Bla

Cheers for this link Ricky! 2d Line art animation - to a beat. Haven't seen anything quite like it in a long while!

The Beatles: Rock Band, Opening Cinematic (Passion Pictures & director Pete Candeland)

Lavish mix of 2d, 3d, transitions, effects, huge cast of characters and great background art... this is the kind of work a studio can pull off with a huge budget and great direction! Director Pete Candeland recently collaborated on another spot with Passion Pictures for Coke Zero where you can see many of the same visual approaches.

Saloon - a VFS student film...

Listed purely because a cowboy on a rodeo bull machine animated to duelling banjoes just deserves a mention!

Nice little VFS student piece - perhaps not as refined as some of recent months but there was something about it that makes you smile a little...

http://www.thiagolm.com/Saloon/film.html

The Cat Piano, by People's Republic of Animation (PRA)

Great film-noir style in this 2d short by Australian studio People's Republic of Animation, blue and red hues on black backrounds with a use of transitions that harks back to the more trippy mgm Pink Panther segments of the 70's (this could be just me?) :) A very graphic style of animation; I'd never have placed the studio as Australian!

Animator spotlight: Peter Negy

I've always admired designers and artists who have a good grasp on different media, approaches and styles. This guy has some good character animation on his Vimeo page and an interesting back-catalogue of work in 2d animation.

Here's an example of his work from August's 11 Second Club competition.

Banish Headlice, 23 Lunes style!

Cracking lighting, shading, critter design and frantic animation in this headlice shampoo commercial from Spanish all-rounders 23 Lunes (www.23lunes.com - Translated link)