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

"The Barley Way" Work Reel

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

So here's the work reel for the film I've been hard at work on.
Production started in March 2009 when I recorded the voices of Pete Emslie and Brock Gallagher.
My goal was to make a cartoon with everything I like about the medium. I was interested in tackling musical timing (I used bar sheets) characters and relationships, a Tex Avery story structure (with a topper gag that reflects on the characters) clear & fun posing (for which my new hero is Floyd Gottfredson) wild animation (I studied Rod Scribner) and facial acting (for which I studied the mirror).
In short I was trying to make the kind of cartoon I'd want to see. Now that most of the hard work is done, to get it all colored, I'm gonna keep working on it like a monk in the back room. Enjoy!

I'd like to give a huge shout out to Ben for his amazing contribution to the color styling! You're pure talent, man.

New Portfolio and Demo Reel