Character Design - Master & Student

Just for kicks, I've participated in a character design for AnimationRigs.com.
The theme was "Master & Student" and it was pretty open regarding the way we'll choose and show our characters.

I've decided to go on the cute/funny genre.

Hope you like it :)

My New Website

I'm back working at a steady job at the Weizmann Institute of Science, as a graphic designer, but still keep on the doing some freelance work.
Now that I finally have the time, I built myself a website which will show some of my recent work, as an illustrator, graphic designer and soon, also my new animation showreel.
You are welcome to check the site on this link here, and I promise I will keep updating and improve it (right now it's only in Hebrew but soon I hope I'll be able to add an English version as well).

SupEr hAndZ

I'm not a big fan of stop motion, but I did like this one.

SupEr hAndZ from [[- charetteprod -]] on Vimeo.

My Daughter's First Steps

My little daughter has just taken her first steps (I'm afraid this post is a few weeks late, but I had no time to post anything before) and It's amazing how funny it looks when they just start walking (actually, it looks like a bad animation).
This is a video I've taken after she only had a few days of practice!
Also, finally I managed to finish an old debt to myself and finish her door sign for her room (she likes lambs :).

Video reference mix

Hey guys!
Here is a really nice mix of edited video reference from several movies I'm sure you won't have any problem to recognize ;)

Enjoy!

Ratatouille Progression Reel

OK, I admit, everyone knows this one, and I've seen this progression reel many times my self, but since I accidentally encountered this clip, it was too good to pass and so inspiring to watch (I miss animating as a full time job).

Here is a clip showing the different stages in the production, from start to the final shot - enjoy!

Guide Your Audience Eyes

At animation, you should consider many things, and while keeping in mind the basic principles is great, sometimes it just wouldn't always suffice.
It is a well known fact that an animator is really an actor (I would like to consider my self as a shy one).
An actor, just like a magician who needs to perform in front of an audience, should maintain the illusion he wishes to portray, and for doing that, sometimes includes to control the audience point of view and visual focus.
He needs to manipulate the audience eyes to look to one place while he's making an "magic trick" he doesn't wish the audience would see in a different place (sometimes it even could be used to conceal a bad animation).
There are many ways to do so, and I'm not going to get much deeper into it, but an animator could use his animation of course to guide the audience eyes by using his animation (such as body language), by a correct staging and composition, by using his props and surroundings in the scene, etc.

I would like to thank Shuki Gamliel which is a great animator and a good friend, who gave us a short lecture about this subject (it was mainly on using a technique called NLP but I felt it also fit well in animation and I've waited too long to write this post).

Here you could find two examples of how easily you can manipulate the human eye.