Today's news and stuff.

Spline Doctors posts a pretty nifty interview with former animator Mark Oftedal (warning, PDF link).

One part of the interview in particular struck home with me:

I don’t want to be misleading, particularly to students that might be reading this. Your question asks what type of animation I enjoy more. The real answer is “neither”. For most of the process, I don’t like to do animation, because it’s hard. But I love to see it when it’s done.

This reminded me too of the animation program Reflex - I've only heard about it and heard nothing but good things. Than again, the same can be said about Marionette, the package Pixar uses to animation.

Stay tuned to Spline Doctors as some new podcasts are coming up too. I'm psyched because they're probably going to talk to (a yet un-named) story artist next!

Also in terms of software, I've heard some rumbling about a 2d animation software package called Mirage. Check out D.T. Nethery's post about Mirage and see it for yourself! Sadly I don't think it runs on a mac. [Small update] I guess I should have looked before I leaped! The screenshots that D.T. posted up are clearly the Mac version. I'm definetly going to give it a whirl now!

Someone recommended this software to me at TSA the other day (the guy that Phil refers to as the 'vampire guy.' Still, it looks pretty good at mimicking real pencil lines! Make sure to check out some of D.T's drawings at the bottom of that post - They really look like graphite and col-erase that has been drawn on paper!

Lastly, but not... leastly, Ninth Wave Designs posts about 'beauty queen' style competition in hopes of finding a suitable successor to the Blackwing Pencil, the famed animation pencil used in the days of old and now discontinued. Guess I might have to search out this so-called California republic pencil... Or just get better at drawing!

Over and out!