Pixologic upgrades Zbrush 4.

Pixologic has the new Zbrush 4 R2 out. Although not a full new release yet, It introduces new features like DynaMesh, Mesh insert and Curve Mode and Clay Polish. The guys at Pixologic stated they will continue to develop the new features the next months until they're ready for version 5, which will be 64 bit for Windows and Mac.

Zbrush is a digital modeling tool that, unlike other 3D packages, uses brushes that allow you to 'paint' highly detailed 3D models. It is actually like sculpting digital clay. Instead of pixels it uses 'pixols', depth-enabled pixels, that have a Z-dimension added to create high resolution geometry.The software was released in 2000 and has since developed to define the industry standard for high resolution digital modeling today. For more info visit Ryan Kingslien's channel.

George Maestri is the man!

George Maestri was part of the original team that produced the first season of South Park. He was also one of the writers and creators of Nickelodeon's 'Rocko's modern life', which earned him a nomination for a CableACE award. He now has his own animation production house 'Rubberbug' and started sharing his experience in animation and cartooning through online video's at the Lynda.com website. In his latest course 'Creating Animated Characters' he shows how to build and set up a character for digital animation using Adobe's After Effects.

Maestri in one of the recording booths at Lynda's, teaching his skills on 3D animation using Autodesk Maya 2012.

Pixel vs. Vector.

While most cartoon animation today is created in vector based programs like Toonboom or Flash, it's After Effects that rocks the world of motion graphics and visual effects. In his latest course, out last September, George shows how to set up a character for animation in After Effects using pixel based characters in Photoshop. Yes, After Effects is pixel based and therefor able to render the stunning visual effects you've seen in all the computer enhanced action movies or even the most spectacular commercials. With the latest update since the CS5.5 suite released in April, After Effects is 64-bit exclusively and now has more features than ever to create the coolest FX.

In his latest course George shows some great tricks. Although you can import work from Illustrator that contains vector artwork (which can be enlarged indefinately because it hasn't got any pixels) you cannot adjust the shape layers as one would in Illustrator. Something that would come in pretty usefull when trying to animate curves and other shapes. In the course George shows how using a little workaround still enables you to do that.

Setting up hierarchies.

He also advices to create a reverse hierarchy when parenting all the different lower body parts of a character, which is actually a more efficient way to keep a characters feet on the ground. He shows how to use Nullobjects (empty layers) to remain in control of the whole rig. Alternatively, he gives advice on how to animate a flattened character using the puppet tool.

Tackling the problem of having a low quality mesh he has some great tips on how to handle unwanted deformation problems by upgrading the mesh density. He also explains where the secondary puppet tool options come in handy: the puppet overlap tool (to control overlapping parts) and the puppet starch tool (to create rigid body parts).

If you want to learn more about replacement animation, this is definately something you want to check out. In the course George shows you how to enable replacement animation using precomps (nested animation) by sequencing the layers and using time remap while changing the keyframe interpolation to set up a 2D rig. He also explains how to do headturns, which is pretty easy using some digital trickery and he explains how to use some basic javascript expressions to connect different parts of an animated character.

Check out more from Maestri on his site Rubberbug or read his book Digital Character Animation vol.3 which is absolutely billiant! FYI: the first season of 'Rocko's modern life' has just been released on DVD by Shout! Factory. Here's creator Joe Murray's blog update on the second volume, which is coming out soon!

Marit P: Jim Olson: Make your hobby your career

Marit Pinkoske's Interior Design Portfolio: Jim Olson: Make your hobby your career: The Jim Olson lecture at WSU was truly inspiring to me.  I am amazed by his work and how he integrates art and nature into his architecture....

Megan P.: Reveal Expo 2011

Megan Pharmer: Reveal Expo 2011: The Reveal Materials Expo was a real good experience for me. Learning about products is one thing, but being able to talk to representatives...

Aaron Sims new website up and running.

Hey guys, just spreading the word here! Aaron Sims, the guy you all love for his amazing work on recent hit movies like 'Transformers: Dark of the Moon', 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' and 'Clash of the Titans' (still one of my favorites) has his new 'Directors' site up, where he shows the projects he directed himself. You should definately check out the trailer of his upcoming short 'Archetype'. On the site you will also be able to watch his full short 'Paralyzed'.

Aaron is a character designer or conceptual artist and digital effects artist. He has worked on all the major Hollywood blockbusters of the last two decades. He worked with Rick Baker's Cinovation Studios and Stan Winston. Working with SoftImage and Photoshop, and combining his knowledge of computer technology with his experience as a sculptor made him the lead character designer on Spielberg's 'Artificial Intelligence', which changed the the industry's design process. He co-created Stan Winston Digital and led the studio, working on films as 'Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow' and 'Constantine'. He now runs the 'Aaron Sims Company', which worked on films such as 'The Incredible Hulk' and '30 Days of Night'. Among his team are Jerad S. Maranz (lead artist), Alex Mandrajiev (concepts/storyboards), Tsvetomir Georgiev (main modeler) and Joel Chang (head environment designer).

If you like to learn more about Aaron Sims or his approach to creature design, you should definately check out the training dvd's he did for Alex Alvarez' Gnomon Workshop. They include demonstrations with Photoshop, XSI (SoftImage), Deep paint and Z-brush. Excellent stuff!

The Simpsons return with season 23!

D'Oh! Waiting some time for this, but 'The Simpsons' returned with the first episode of their 23rd season this sunday, Woohoo! The last episode, 'The Ned-liest Catch' aired May 22 on Fox.

As always, this season will see it's share of voice actors doing guest appearances. Among them Joan Rivers, Andy Garcia, Jeremy Irons, Michael Cera, Jane Lynch, and Bryan Craston of 'Breaking Bad'. Kiefer Sutherland appeared in the first episode this week, called 'The Falcon and the D'Ohman' (episode #NABF16). He did the voice of Wayne, the new security guard at the Nuclear power plant where Homer ehm...'works'. Unlike Larry (the previous guard who now resides at the 'crazy house') Wayne doesn't want to fist-bump, which makes Homer go out of his way to befriend him (as you can see from the scene above, Homer had his way in the end!). Wayne appears to have been a secret goverment agent who learned to many secrets, while doing dirty jobs for the powers that be. Something like that will kill your social life, of course. The climax had a nice reference to Robert de Niro's action hit film 'Ronin', in which Wayne and Homer rumble with some figure-skating Russian moguls on the nearby ice-skating rink. (well, it's in 'Little Ukraine'!)

'The Simpsons' is now the longest-running American animated program and since 2009, the longest-running American primetime scripted television series, winning 27 Emmy Awards. Time magazine even called it 'the best television series of the 20th century'!

This season we will also wittness the historic 500th episode, which will air on February 19, 2012! The first full episode aired on December 17, 1989, after creator Matt Groening had previously created a series of shorts, which became part of 'The Tracy Ullman show' for three seasons.

Matt Groening lives in Hell.

Before Matt went into cartoons, he had his own underground comic strip titled 'Life in Hell' in the alternative newspaper 'The L.A. Reader' in 1978. It was based on his day to day experiences in Los Angeles, after Groening had moved their from Portland the year before. Matt also had a music column in the paper, but his reviews were completely made up and included bands that didn't exist or records that were never released! Hilarious!!

Matt´s comic caught the attention of producer James L Brooks who wanted him to do some animation based on the strip for 'The Tracy Ullman show'. Groening decided to create some new characters instead, which became 'The Simpsons family'. Matt's father (called Homer, like the Bart's father on the show) was also a writer and cartoonist. Fifteen volumes have been published so far of his comic, the last one in 2007.

Futurama

Matt Groening also created and developed the animated sci-fi comedy series ´Futurama´ with David X. Cohen, which is set in the 31st century. The first four seasons aired from 1999 to 2003 on Fox after which the show was sadly cancelled.

However, between 2007 and 2009 four straight-to-dvd movies were released: 'Benders Big Score', 'The Beast with a Billion Backs', 'Benders Game' and 'Into the Wild Green Yonder', which were picked up by Comedy Central and chopped up into 16 episodes as 'season 5'. Fox decided to create 26 completely new episodes for a sixth season, which were broadcast in 2010/2011. The season recently ended with 'Reincarnation', the 26th episode that aired on September 8.

In March it was announced that a 7th season with 26 more episodes will be produced, thirteen of which will be broadcast in 2012, the second half will be broadcast in 2013. Fox will release the sixth season on Blu-ray and DVD just in time for Christmas, on December 20th. Check Matt Groening 'My wasted life' for a nice chat with Matt on watching TV all day (which he called 'doing research'!)

Digital animation

Since season 14 of 'The Simpsons', traditional cel animation was replaced with digital inks and paint, while season 20 in 2009 was the first in HD format. As of 2010 the series is produced by Film Roman with overseas production handled by Nelson Shin's AKOM productions in South Korea. The animation of the series is done using Toon Boom software. Click the images below to check out some of 'The Simpsons' model sheets!

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Want more? Check 'The Simpsons return for 24th season'.

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Uncanny X-Men...final issue?

In June, Marvel announced that issue #544 of their long running comic 'Uncanny X-Men' (out October 19th) would conclude the series after Adam Kubert's five part 'X-men: Schism' would tear the X-Men apart. But now it appears that Marvel will be 'regenerating' the title and introduces two new series: 'Wolverine and the X-Men' and an alternative version of 'Uncanny X-Men' (lead by Emma Frost), splitting the original series in two.

Above: cover for the last issue of the original run. Artwork by Greg Land and script by Kieron Gillen. While the current artists of the original series will continue working on the new 'Uncanny X-men #1' (out in November), writer of 'X-Men Schism' Jason Aaron will team up for the 'Wolverine and the X-men' series with artist Chris Bachalo. The first issue will be out October 26th. As you can see from the artwork for both covers beneath, the members of both teams are still cloaked. Marvel will also publish a 'X-Men: Regenesis' one-shot, penned by Gillen with artwork by Billy Tan.

While the original 'X-Men' comic book series was created by the legendary Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, the series changed into the 'Uncanny X-Men' in November 1980 with issue #139 with the numbering continued. Although hugely popular now, the series initially failed to succeed and was even cancelled between 1970 and 1975.

Below left: Cover for Stan Lee's first issue from September 1963 with artwork by Jack Kirby with inks by Paul Reinman. Right: The Uncanny X-Men #139 from November 1980 carried the story 'Something wicked this way comes' by Chris Claremont and John Byrnes.

The real succes for the X-Men came when Chris Claremont took on the job of writer and introduced all kinds of new characters and stories, which he continued to do for 17 years, from 1975 until 1991! A spin-off series was introduced in 1991, which was just titled 'X-Men' again. Claremont also scripted it's first issue (with artwork by Jim Lee), which is still the best-selling comic book of all time! Below: Artwork by Jim Lee (pencils) and Scott Williams (inks) for the four variant covers of 'X-Men' #1 from 1991.