Thursday, December 30, 2010

"New York Times" article on animation

Published: December 29, 2010
ABSTRACT: At a Columbia University lab, Eitan Grinspun and his students work on helping movie studios to get hair to blow in the wind and clothes to hang properly.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Oliver Mark

One of the most impressive new photography books is Oliver Mark's portraits. His personal site showcases some of the photography in the book. Take a look at this fantastic photographer next time you are in the library.

Mark, Oliver. Oliver Mark: portraits. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2009.
TR 681 .F3 M37 2009

Monday, December 6, 2010

Jason's Super Reviews-Maya Dynamics


Alright you bloggees, here's where the fun stuff starts...yup you guess it, BOOK REVIEWS!! Anyways I'm going to start this series reviews off with a book that will get all you animators and game designers bouncing off the walls.

"Jason's Super Reviews" presents a Maya studio projects instructional / tutorial book on Dynamics.
what is Maya Dynamics you say? Well, that can be answered in one simple word, "Awesome!" Dynamics in Maya is where all the cool special effects stuff like meteors, volcanoes and EXPLOSIONS are created.

This book starts you off with a simple and small explosion using particles and editing them to do simple stuff like orbit around a larger object, just like an asteroid belt orbits a planet. Later on in the book, you get to more complicated stuff, such as tornadoes, mushroom cloud explosions, flood,s and even a gas station blowing up! How cool is that?! The book also comes with a CD with all the project files, so you can follow along.

I have been super excited to get to read this book and I'm glad it was everything I hoped for. I highly recommend this book to anyone learnin' Maya and wants to get into doing cool effects in movies, animated films and game cinematic.

Palamar, Todd. Maya Studio Projects: Dynamics. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010.
Q 183.9 .P355 2010
~Jason Kunz