PPD: Maxim Zhestkov

i recently got shown the work of Maxim Zhestkov, who is a digital motion artist who predominatly uses Adobe after effects as his "weapon of choice". he has previously been selected to feature in the "onedotzero"(2008) books and i find his work to be simply phenominal.

http://www.zhestkov.com/watch.html?mov=mov/m_005.mov&width=560&height=330

this video was selected for the 2008 "onedotzero"

he is a huge influence now and i want to experiment with this media further.

Nick Park

how could i have forgot to mention Nick park and the guys at Aardman Animation. the prolific creators behind the legendary Wallace and Gromit animations.Nick Park was born in Preston in Lancashire, England, and attended Cuthbert Mayne High School (now Our Lady's Catholic High School) then the national film and television school up in london. He grew up with a keen interest in drawing cartoons, and as a 13-year old made films with the help of his mother – who was a dressmaker – and her home movie camera and cotton bobbins. He also took after his father, an amateur inventor, and would send items – such as a bottle that squeezed out different coloured wools – to Blue Peter. He studied Communication Arts at Sheffield Polytechnic (now Sheffield Hallam University) and then went to the National Film and Television School, where he started making the first Wallace and Gromit film, A Grand Day Out.

Seth McFarlane And Family Guy

Family guy is now one of the biggest animated shows in history. the show has currently had 7 seasons so far after being cancelled previously TWICE! he is the creator and the producer of the show and voices a host of quality characters, including, Stewie, Peter, Quagmire, Brian and Tom and Jake Tucker



MacFarlane was born on October 26, 1973 in Kent, Connecticut. His mother, Ann Perry (née Sager), and father, Ronald Milfton MacFarlane, reside in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and are of English, Scottish and Welsh descent, partly by way of Canada.[5] During his childhood, MacFarlane developed an interest in illustration and began drawing cartoon characters Fred Flintstone and Woody Woodpecker.When he was eight years old, he drew "Walter Crouton", a comic strip for the The Kent Good Times Dispatch.
MacFarlane received his high school diploma in 1991 from the Kent School in Connecticut. His headmaster, the Rev. Richardson W. Schell, publicly rebuked MacFarlane for his "low" style of humor and later asked Fox not to air Family Guy MacFarlane's parents, who both taught at the school, resigned in protest.
MacFarlane went on to study animation at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. As a student, he wanted to work for The Walt Disney Company, but changed his mind upon graduating from RISD. As he recalled: "Like a lot of animators, I felt Disney is God. Now, it's become Disney is Satan." During college, he created his thesis film entitled The Life of Larry. His professor at RISD submitted MacFarlane's cartoon to Hanna-Barbera, where he was later hired.

Note: Family guy is awesome :D

David Silverman (The Simpsons)

Silverman is largely credited with creating most of the "rules" for drawing The Simpsons. He appeared during the end credits of the Simpsons episode "Goo Goo Gai Pan" giving a quick method of drawing Bart, and is a frequent participant on the Simpsons DVD audio commentaries. A cartoon rendering of him can be seen in "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show", where he is the animator who draws Poochie (along with renderings of other Simpsons staffers). He was once credited as Pound Foolish as the director of the episode "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular".[3]
Silverman is also the director of the The Simpsons Movie, which was released July 27, 2007. He originally left The Simpsons to direct The Road to El Dorado. Some of his other film work includes Monsters, Inc.. He is currently a consulting producer and occasional director.

David Silverman (born on 15 March 1957 in New York City, New York) is an animator best known for directing numerous episodes of the animated TV series The Simpsons, as well as The Simpsons Movie. Silverman was involved with the series from the very beginning, where he animated all of the original Simpsons Tracy Ullman shorts and went on to serve as director of animation for several years. He was also the co-director of Monsters, Inc. for Pixar Animation Studios.




probably the most famous new era animation of all time, hitting the classics along with popeye,mickey mouse and Luxo JR.

:D

Trey Parker And Matt Stone - South Park

In 1992 Parker and Stone created Jesus vs. Frosty.[2] It included four boys, two resembling Stan and Kyle, one called Kenny who looked like Cartman, and a fourth unnamed boy who looked like Kenny. After the duo released Cannibal! The Musical, they were asked to make another animated short. They came down to two ideas; one a sequel to Jesus vs. Frosty, and one about a character that would later be recurring in South Park, Mr. Hankey.[3] They chose to write about the four boys, and their decision ultimately opened the door for them to present a show, South Park, to Comedy Central.[4] Stone and Parker produced 13 episodes for season 1.

The narrative revolves around four children — Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick — and their bizarre experiences in the titular mountain town. The show has won acclaim and a plethora of awards, including three Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Animated Program.

my favourite clip ever from the south park saga is the Mongolians scene shown here



however my favourite episode by far is the world of warcraft episode :D




brilliant haha

Peter Chung

Peter Kunshik Chung is a Korean American animator. He is best known as the creator and director of Æon Flux one of the only anime show i will actually watch, which ran as shorts on MTV's Liquid Television before launching as its own half-hour television series. He studied animation at CalArts from 1979-81, one year at the Character Animation program, and another year in the program in Experimental Animation.
Chung's directing credits include the Matriculated segment from The Animatrix, and, most recently, The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury.

here as some clips of his work





he is by far one of my favourite animators due to his clever ideas behind his animation, not your run of the mill animations

Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl was one of the first pioneering animators. By 1907, the 50-year old Émile Cohl, like everyone else in Paris, had become aware of motion pictures.At Gaumont, Cohl collaborated with the other directors whenever possible, learning cinematography from Arnaud and directing chases, comedies, féeries ("fairy pieces"), and pageants. But his specialty was animation. He worked in a corner of the studio with a vertically-mounted Gaumont camera and a single assistant to operate it. He turned out four sequences a month for insertion in mostly-live action films. Studio director Léon Gaumont, in one of his visits, dubbed him "the Benedictine".
Cohl made "Fantasmagorie" from February to May or June 1908. This is considered the first fully animated film ever made. It was made up of 700 drawings, each of which was double-exposed, leading to a running time of almost two minutes. Despite the short running time, the piece was packed with material devised in a "stream of consciousness" style. It borrowed from Blackton in using a "chalk-line effect" (filming black lines on white paper, then reversing the negative to make it look like white chalk on a black chalkboard), having the main character drawn by the artist's hand on camera, and the main characters of a clown and a gentleman (this taken from Blackton's "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces"). The film, in all of its wild transformations, is a direct tribute to the by-then forgotten Incoherent movement. The title is a reference to the "fantasmograph", a mid-Nineteenth Century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.

this was released in August 1908, see it here