Denis Dutton loved Ren and Stimpy

You gotta hear this, Denis Dutton, one of the world's finest theorists of aesthetics reveals that his favorite cartoon was 'Ren and Stimpy'. Fills my heart with Joy.



Denis Dutton was at the forefront of the emerging 'Evolutionary Aesthetics' / 'Literary Darwinism' research field. His book 'The Art Instinct' is one of my favorite books of all time, an immense inspiration.
Dutton's thesis is that art has universal characteristics (which he lists and explains in detail) and can be understood through the lens of Darwinian thinking: we are biologically predisposed to make and appreciate art which crosses cultures, gender, races, and the test of time. This flies in the face of the Marxist Postmodernism which has taken over the art world. Denis has been taken from us at the age of 66, it shocked me to lose such a gentle and brilliant man, I hope you got the patch of heaven you so much deserved, rest in peace.

All ink and paint: done.

The longest, most careful, painstaking and physically straining process of "The Barley Way", digital ink and paint, is now done. It was done entirely in Flash with an intous 3 Wacom Tablet.

This is the final scene, completed today, the player 'hiccups' a bit at first:

Seq1-s8-color from Amir Avni on Vimeo.

Another scene I like, Harmke contributed by inking Beanton's sniff, a great job of it! Pete Emslie's voice added a lot of depth to the dad character.

Seq3 s2 color from Amir Avni on Vimeo.

Here's an insight to the process:

Now it's time for Background painting, sound effects and final editing.

Spaghetting there

Aside from studying for the Master's degree, I've been finishing my film when I have some free time. Animation is complete, Like sequence 2, Sequence 3 is now completely inked and painted, There's four scenes to ink and paint in Sequence 1, three of them short. then it's BG paint , composting and editing.

I'll share some more in later posts.

Cheers.

Season's Greetings!

What is Art?

What's the difference between Marcel Duchamp's 'Fountain' 

and Michelangelo's 'David'?

It would be wrong to pee on 'David'.

 -AA.

Progress on "The Barley Way"

Although I'm working to get my MA, I'm also working to finish my film. All animation on sequence 3 has been finished, and it is now being inked (long, laborious process). There's several sequence 1 animation scenes in need of completion, those are the next priority. Afterward it's composing and finishing the thing.

Here are a few scenes for the flavor (they take a while to load):

Seq3 s7 from Amir Avni on Vimeo.


Seq3 s9 from Amir Avni on Vimeo.


seq3-s10 from Amir Avni on Vimeo.

Here's the work-reel I submitted before graduating from Sheridan, I got an A+


"The Barley Way" work reel from Amir Avni on Vimeo.

An artist thinks like an artist

Listening to Steven Moffat is inspiring. It's very clear that how he constructs his stories is very different than how the fans and the media deconstruct them (in effort to understand or categorize them).

A few favorite bits:

Q: Did you anticipate writing for an American audience as you went into the new series?

A: I don't even anticipate writing for a British audience, I just think "what would be really really cool to happen in 'Doctor who'? How else do you write stories? I entertain myself and hope it entertains other people"

Q: I've heard that you were aiming for 'A dark fairy tale' with the series, can you explain how is that coming across?

A: To, be honest, the whole 'dark fairy tale' thing is because people jammed my arm behind my back and demanded that I label it somehow, and I suppose that is a reasonable label for it... as I'm sure we all know putting "dark" in front of "fairy tale" is entirely redundant, that is until Disney re-made the fairy tales, and de-fanged it.

Steven Moffat
Uploaded by abecruikshank. - Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Now Open for Business!

http://www.etsy.com/shop/toonamir


http://www.etsy.com/shop/toonamir

Benedict Cumberbatch for 12th Doctor

http://12th-doctor.blogspot.com/

Posters coming soon

Here is a Low-Res sample of my first design for a forthcoming Etsy Store.
Posters, prints and postcards will be on offer in approximately 3 weeks.

Check out a cropped sample of the Hi Res file:

3D Practice

This is a scene I made, to practice some 3D/Maya Animation.
It was mostly done by using key frames and not much tweaking of splines in the Graph Editor. Maybe I can find a good tutorial somewhere about giving more punch to the animation by tweaking the splines. I signed up for lynda.com for their Maya Essential Training tutorial, Highly recommended! Thanks for letting me know about this, Mitch!
The character rig is from 11secondclub.com

comments and critiques are welcome



The voice is Julian Barrat's, and the clip is taken from "The Mighty Boosh" 2x05 "The Legend of Old Gregg"

Sophistication in pop culture references?

Usually I'm not a fan of pop-culture references. my main objection to them is that the humor isn't original, or related to the show, it is usually not relevant, and unfunny without prior knowledge of the culture item that is being quoted or referred. If the reference is non relevant to the show, there is usually no sophistication in bringing it up.

I think this bit from "The IT Crowd" is an exception. Even though it requires prior knowledge to be understood, It's sophisticated and relevant because it reflects on the characters, and therefore specific to the show



Moss is a super-nerd, therefore it would make sense that he would confuse "Fredo" from "The Godfather" with "Frodo" from "Lord of the Rings". Moreover, he doesn't SAY "Frodo", we do the math in our own heads, based on the character's reply which engages the viewers.

What do you think?

The Doctor and Amy

According to Stephen Hawking, Time travel to the past is impossible due to paradoxes, effects can never happen before causes. However, Steven Moffat wasn't frightened to make this paradox his bread and butter for writing Series 5.

I'm excited for the next series, this one was good, and definitely got better as it went along!

This post is dedicated to Whovians world wide... especially Nicole!

Sherriff Dulcie of Doll City

I usually don't just post single sketches, but what the haystack.

First commission: Nicolas Martinez

Here are my versions of Nico's characters Sammy and Maggie, they're fun to draw!

Commissions galore

Fancy a commission? I'll draw it for ya.

Black & White Caricatures

Color Caricatures
Computer, Marker, Watercolor

Black and White Characters:

Original characters
or
my version of your favorites

Color Characters

Computer, Marker, and Watercolor.

Ink wash paintings

toonamir@gmail.com