Hasta La Motion!

Disney and Pixar revealed the official release date for Toy Story 4 on social media in a Facebook post.

The Toy Story franchise has a strong fan base who loves Woody and his gang. The upcoming feature is going to be about Woody and Bow-Peep’s relationship.

The voice cast includes Tom Hanks, Laurie Metcalf, Annie Potts, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Kristen Schaal, Bonnie Hunt and others. Toy Story 4 is directed by Josh Cooley and is his first feature film.

The storyline has not been revealed so the fans have to wait in anticipation for the release. Woody is yet again set to come to the big screen with his gang on 21 June 2019.

The post ‘Toy Story 4’ to hit the screen in June 2019 appeared first on AnimationXpress.

The most awaited Studio Gibhli Fest, a nine film monthly series of anime classics comes with a magical adventure, The Cat Returns. Created by Studio Gibhli’s talent-house who also produced My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, it is a treat for the fans of the 2002 anime feature directed by Hiroyuki Morita. The event will play in movie theatres all over United States for three days, 22, 23 and 25 April.

The screenings on 23 April will be subtitled in English while the others will be dubbed in English.

The synopsis of the anime classic, The Cat Returns goes like this:

Haru is walking home after a dreary day of school when she spies a cat with a small gift box in its mouth crossing a busy street and she jumps in front of traffic to save the cat from an oncoming truck. To her amazement, the cat gets up on its hind legs, brushes itself off, and thanks her very politely. But things take an even stranger turn when later that night, the king of cats shows up at her doorstep in a feline motorcade. He showers Haru with gifts, and commands that she shall marry the prince and come live in the kingdom of cats!

Moviegoers nationwide can enjoy these events in more than 700 select movie theatres.

The post Studio Gibhli Fest brings back ‘The Cat Returns’ this April appeared first on AnimationXpress.

From left to right : Alien Bengali-babu, Alien Frieda Kahlo, Alien Rabindra Jayanti.

Ever wondered about how would an alien selfie look like? Or an Adam teaser?  Or an Alien Bengali-babu?  If not, then the official website or the Facebook page of illustrator Charbak Dipta is THE place to visit. After one has gone through them, one will find that his works are as unusual as his name and dressing sense.

Born to a Bengali family in Bongaon, a small town in West Bengal, Charbak Dipta has already become a name in the field of graphic story-telling and cartooning. He is well known for his independent illustrations, political satires and the much appreciated alien series, Indian Aliens and its sequel, International Aliens.

Besides being a fantastic graphic and comic artist, Dipta is also a trained Hindustani classical singer, guitarist and classical pianist. He took formal music training from ITC Sangeet Research Academy and Calcutta School of Music for over a decade. Started off with casual drawing just like kids in usual, he never thought of taking it as a profession because he wanted to pursue a career in music.

On being asked to elaborate about his journey as a self taught artist, he said, “I have been drawing right since my childhood. I don’t think art can be taught but comes from within. So I started from scratch, picked up inspiration from my surroundings. In school I used to doodle and scribble during recess but never thought of taking it seriously as a profession, because music was my forte then and art was just a mean of unwinding pleasure.”

In fact, he stopped drawing entirely for eight long years during his high school to university days and it was only after completing Masters in Philosophy from Jadavpur University and his internship with The Times of India (TOI), India’s largest selling newspaper that he thought to take up art as a profession.

“I got an opportunity to do an internship as a cartoonist with TOI and since then I never looked back. I went there as a novice and returned as an expert in print media, software, and learnt to manage deadlines. Later I moved to Delhi to become a full time artist. I think my style of artwork was hidden somewhere in my earlier works which I reinvented. I have been practicing it seriously since last five-six years,” he recalls.

Post the TOI period, a keen believer in anti-establishment, he decided to freelance, for he considers art, music, poetry as full time job that requires 24 hours dedication and diligence, and one has to be completely into it.

As an individual,Dipta likes to define himself as a combination of many persons into one. He tries to record his thoughts and perceptions of art, in the form of illustration expanding every illustration into a full length story and thus the title of a ‘graphic story teller’ fits him aptly. Once expanded one has turned out to be ZERO: Indian Aliens’ Adventure, his debut graphic novel.

Being told to elucidate on this adventure he said:

“I record the thoughts in concentrated form. The ones that are large and cannot be concentrated into a single work, I expand it. That’s why I write graphic poems. It is the marriage of poetry and comics- a new genre I started. Ideas which are large enough to express in a single illustration, yet not as large to be a graphic novel, so I place them in this graphic poem category that fits in two to four pages length.”

Dipta has a plethora of artistic works. Each one of them has its separate world and separate ideas, influenced by his studies of philosophy, world cinema, film theory and music. The latter, especially plays a big influence on him in generating ideas. Lately, his art exhibitions has taken him to a lot of places which also has enriched his thinking process helping him to imbibe the sights, sounds and cultures of different countries into his creations.

Another source of inspiration for him is his hometown Bongaon, a sleepy small town 80 km north of Kolkata near the Indo-Bangladesh border. Hailing from a Bengali family that has a rich cultural environment and has kept traditions alive, he seems to have creativity running in his veins. Even the house where he has grown up has impacted his drawing style hugely.

Apart from Philosophy, he has studied metaphysics, epistemology, logic, buddhism, Indian logic system, Greek philosophy, mind cognitive science and psychology that has helped him think rationally, break horizons and broaden imagination. A former professor, he then chose to defy norms and quit a stable job to pursue his passion in cartooning and illustrating.

But it’s always easier said (read chosen) than done. The path he was traversing was not a cakewalk as it had its own challenges. The first one was, convincing his parents from conventional background that he would like to make a living out of his illustrations and comics. Life is an adventure and at times it’s okay to break rules and chase your dream. And when one’s goals are clear, can success be far behind?

Every work of his derives from the frustration of what he couldn’t achieve in the previous one. He adopts new ideas and themes which remained unexplored till date and these have garnered him with mixed reviews and responses for his works from different parts of the world.

“Every society comes with its own packages. In India, people still cannot accept nudity in art and the regression is increasing day by day. Thus one of my artworks, The Third World in which a bald brown boy, who embodies the third world countries, embraces a pillow, smiles, dreams wild erotic things and masturbates in joy. When posted online some people asked me to remove it because they only found nudity and nothing else in it,” he exclaimed unpleasantly.

It was the same fate for Kaali, another piece of work where he experimented with Kaali, the Hindu Goddess, shown to land in Delhi as a representative of womanhood and drinking the blood of the rapists. Many people asked him to remove it since it demeaned Hinduism (just like Hussain did in his Saraswati) and might put him into trouble.

“Whenever I make a political cartoon, I have to mellow the sharpness of the pun or satire to be safe in this biggest democratic country of the world. Every other political and social cartoonist is alarmed these days or another Charlie Hebdo will take place.”

From left to right: Alien Lalon, Kaali, The Third World.

Besides that, another challenge he faces while making art, is the lack of time and choice of the perfect medium as there are innumerable ideas. He wants to explore water colour, but finds it hard and time taking. Recently he has discovered his flair in pastel and acrylic colours which he enjoys exploring.

Dipta’s works are mainly culture- specific. Though that showcases the authentic Bengali culture to the world, chances are high that it might act as a barrier to reach out to a larger audience. But he thinks that more it comes from one’s root, the more it will become universal. Thus as an artist he celebrates unique ‘Bengaliness’ and showcases it on a greater platform.

“Satyajit Ray, the man I look up to, did not follow western ideas as that path is much traveled .Whereas the world of Bengali culture, literature and music, remains untouched. In our country children are not being taught their vernacular language these days for which they are forgetting their roots If we, the youth don’t take it to the world, who will? It is OUR duty to reach the ideas of Lalon the philosopher, to the world, just like westerners reached the ideas of Dylan to us,” he asserts.

Dipta’s artwork is very unique to comics. He creates stunning illustrations taking various situations in consideration. Of all artworks, his best-applauded is The Alien series which is a juxtaposition of Indian culture, (especially Bengali culture) and the concept of Aliens, the thing he is curious about. Some of these pieces depict alien versions of famous people, others put aliens in place of humans in everyday situations, and some are inspired by pop culture.

On being asked to throw some light about the actual idea behind this ‘out-of-the-world’ concept, he said:

“In the University, I studied Plato whose theory of ideas attracted me. It says there are ideas of each thing that are real. The things we see, including ourselves are just the copies of these ideas. This theory influenced creating the alien series. I stay at Chittaranjan Park, the Bengali colony of Delhi and each year there are huge Durga Pujas in the locality. Once I imagined those non-resident Bengalis as aliens and thought what if they do the pujas.”

And thus was made The Alien Durga Puja- the first one of the Alien series. Posted online, it became an instant hit. Hence he thought of making it into a series and the rest is history.

During his adolescence, he read the literature that have shaped up his artistic acumen. From sci-fi of Arthur C Clerk, H G Wells, Isaac Asimov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Satyajit Ray (Professor Shonku), Premendra Mitra, Anish Deb and the absurdity of nonsense literature of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and Sukumar Ray, are major inspirations to him.

Graphic poems, his new found love has kept him hooked. It is like a montage where images overlap and things crisscross each other. It is a dream of bizarre worlds with bent space and time and cannot be tied by some particular symbols or metaphors.He watches the world around him and cooks images inside his head where they get merged with his subconscious. These images when become ripe and struggles to come out, he brings them down onto the papers.

Dipta’s amazing style is also reminiscent of traditional wood-block prints with his own unique twists. When asked about his technicalities that go behind creating those amazing works he explained:

“My style of line drawing is an amalgam of Ligne Claire, Marcinelle, far eastern wood cut, Bengal school and my own innovation. There aren’t any unusual tools. If there is anything unusual in it at all, it is because of the way I use them, which I developed through practice. I work in mixed ways and most of the time it ends up with the best result. I use Pigma pen brush, or sometimes Black gel pens to do the drawing on A3 size papers and colour it on Photoshop. I also work on Wacom Bamboo pen tablet and wish to buy a Cintiq in future.”

These days, social media has enabled people to see more works which were otherwise locked inside the art galleries.

“The outlook has grown and that is very encouraging for artists. But in commercial art world, people don’t want path breaking concepts from the artist. They are keen in buying art that suits their furniture at home, which is pathetic. In India, we don’t have the art infrastructure like other countries. Here, the number of art galleries are too low and our graphic narrative publications cannot compete with that of Manga,” he concluded.

Apart from several other honorary medals in different parts in Bengal and Delhi, Charbak Dipta had been the mentor in the first Kolkata Comic Con arranged by the French and The German Embassy of Kolkata. He has also received an honorary residency by Kala Kriti Art Foundation in Hyderabad and did art-mentorship in BITS Pilani. But what makes him stand out in the crowd, is the domain he’s working on and taking the baton forward for future generations.

The post From ‘Alien Rabindra Jayanti’ to ‘Alien Frieda Kahlo’: meet graphic poet and story-teller, Charbak Dipta appeared first on AnimationXpress.

Designer and Art Director Ash Thorp creates a sci-fi spaghetti western in this Nike VaporMax spot. See how he used GorillaCam to bring the project to life.

Nike’s fourth collaboration with ACRONYM® sees the release of the Nike Air VaporMax Moc 2. To announce the new sneakers, Nike released the following trailer featuring ACRONYM® founder Errolson Hugh and musician John Mayer.

Blink and you might miss the stellar work of designer and all-around creative mind, Ash Thorp. If you aren’t familiar with Thorp’s work, he created many of the stunning posters, concept art, VFX, and titles used in films like Blade Runner 2049, Ghost in the Shell, and several Marvel blockbusters.

You can take a closer look at his Nike work in this video Thorp shared on Twitter.

NIKE + ACRONYM – VAPORMAX@erlsn @Toronaydo @Nike @realpilotpriest pic.twitter.com/FttT5muLw2

— Ash Thorp (@Ashthorp) April 3, 2018

We wanted to learn more about how this collaboration came about, so we reached out to Ash Thorp. Here’s what we found out in our interview:

Chad Ashley: For those not familiar with your work, could you give us a brief history of who you are, and what you do?

Ash Thorp: My name is Ash Thorp, and I am a creative, I’m a director, artist, illustrator. I’ve been working in the feature film industry and AAA games industry for almost 8 years now.

I primarily work on feature films, that’s my client work. I’m slowly migrating all my efforts to direct my own feature film.

I’m basically a generalist. [laughs]

CA: How long have you been using Cinema 4D?

AT: I’ve been working in Cinema 4D maybe about 7 years now. It’s kinda crazy, seeing I still kinda suck at it. [laughs]

CA: I’m curious about that. You’re work is amazing, and you do a lot of original concept work. How much of that is done in 3D versus sketching.

AT: It all varies and depends. I will sketch my thoughts on paper. If it’s a motion piece, I’ll do a still, or series of stills to sell the idea. From there, it’s full on pipeline mode to do the animation and all that fun stuff.

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

CA: I just watched your new Nike piece, and it is just fantastic. Can you tell me how that started?

AT: Yeah, it was a quick job. Very quick. Just a couple of weeks. I knew Errolson, who is the founder of ACRONYM clothing. He’s just an awesome guy, and I’ve had him on my podcast.

So, he was pitching a concept and idea to the team at Nike for the release of his new shoe collaboration, the VaporMax. He was like, “You know who could do this? Ash Thorp.”

They needed to make a world very quickly. They pitched the idea to me, to merge a spaghetti western and a cyberpunk world. Instantly I was like, “Wow, that’s really weird. That sounds good. Let’s do it!”

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

I was thinking, well, we’re really in a place in the realm of CGI that you can do anything you want. That’s really powerful for someone like me, who just wants to get these ideas out of my head as fast as possible.

I saw the vision for what it was, so I grabbed a bunch of assets off of turbosquid, modeled a bunch of stuff, and did some style frames. The Nike guys loved it, Errolson loved it, and then I was like – Ok. To the races.

I was basically rendering for an entire week with all my cards on fire. I think it was a total of three weeks, from nothing to the final.

I wasn’t alone. I had my buddy Toros Kose, and he took care a lot of the heavy lifting in After Effects while I was rendering and building out the worlds. We had a lot of fun passing stuff back and forth.

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

CA: So it was just the two of you?

AT: Yeah baby!

CA: Dude, that’s great.

AT: I think it’s the future. The future is in smaller teams of smart people working together, complementing strengths and weaknesses and making good stuff. In my mind that’s really where things are going.

I’m seeing the death of the bigger studio. I could be completely wrong, I just feel like that’s the way I’m moving.

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

CA: I don’t think you’re far off at all. I remember a while back, that you were mentioning you were starting a potential job that would be good for GorillaCam, which we were we still pretty early on in developing. I got you an early version of the plugin to play with. I had no idea you were going to actually use it on a job!

AT: You literally gave me the plugin the day I started animating. That’s how good it is!

CA: Wow, my timing is just that good.  [laughs]

AT: I took it, and watched the tutorial. I think that’s one thing that I will say is so important for software creators and app developers. Please give us an understanding of how this thing works. For people that are crazy busy like myself, and with an attention span of a nit-wit.

I watched the tutorial, and I went right into it. I was like, “Oh, this is what I’ve been wanting for forever now.”

This is the way I did it, which is probably against the way you intended – but I don’t care. I just kept hitting “I’m feeling lucky.” I made two cameras and said I’m feeling lucky, and I was like, yeah, that’s good. Alright, cool. Then I rendered it out.

I wanted it to feel really weird and handheld. Kind of like a drone that was super spazzy. So, I created the cameras in a point A point B, then patched everything together using the GorrilaCam.

I would change the scale to World Scale proper, and then I’d just keep hitting I’m Feeling Lucky. I had no time to really finesse things.

CA: That is exactly how I use it, just so you know. When we were designing it, I said to Chris Schmidt, I want a button that says I’m feeling lucky. I got used to the Google Play Music “I’m Feeling Lucky” button that would build playlists for me. I wanted that functionality in GorillaCam. Sometimes you could surprise yourself, you’re not really sure what you want. So I usually hit that or Randomize Seeds.

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

AT: Beautiful. Thank you for that. That’s how I work. I’m a weird hyper-child who pixel-fucks everything to death, but I also like randomness. So I enjoy the ability of having flaws. I like to be surprised when I make things.

When you’re at a computer, it’s such a linear experience. It’s very controlled. Oftentimes, it’s about putting imperfections into your work to let it breathe.

I think it works mighty fine for me, and I’m gonna use it like that till the end of time. [laughs]

I’m starting to do pre-viz for my films, and I started slapping the GorillaCam on there, just so it doesn’t feel so rigid. It just helps me do my job faster.

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

CA: I’ve always wanted this tool in Cinema, and I feel very fortunate to work with developers who can make this a reality. The most satisfaction I get from my job, is hearing from artists like you and hearing that they’re getting something out of it.

AT: I couldn’t be more thankful, honestly. You guys have an interest, you build something, it’s awesome, it’s very useful. It helps me just be an artsy-fartsy guy.

When it comes to CGI work, the thing I love is that it’s the most powerful of the artforms, I think. The thing that I hate about it, it’s the most powerful. It’s so hard to get good at fast. You can’t just go, but you can make a multi-dimensional experience.

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

CA: What renderer did you guys use for this?

AT: I’m using Octane right now. Testing out Redshift still, but I’m worried about learning a whole new thing.

CA: That’s why I’m here, friend.

AT: [laughs] I know, I know! I’ve seen your new tutorials on Redshift, and it looks so promising and awesome. Especially to someone like me, who uses a lot of volumetric and lights and doesn’t like noise. But, I’ve been using Octane since I started doing GPU stuff.

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

CA: What about the comp pipeline, that was all After Effects?

AT: Yeah. I just like to render everything without any passes and send if off. I’m kindy risky like that. Then Toros and I will take all the renders, which I have 6 GPUS – 3 Nvidia Titan X‘s and 3 Nvidia GeForce 1080‘s. Some scenes are really heavy geo-wise, so it would be 8 or 9 GB of VRAM. So they’d take like 7-8 minutes a frame.

I think there were 20 shots, each with maybe 40-80 frames, so it was just a lot of rendering. I just didn’t want to do extra passes on top of that. I just didn’t want to deal with that, and I didn’t have the time.

We originally cut it to a Justice track, added glitch and removing things and going bonkers on it up until it shipped. We were working on it up until the last minute.

You know, you hate it when you do it, but the only way to get that stuff out is to put that pressure. It’s unfortunate, but that’s just how it goes.

The people at Nike are very talented, and have great taste. I’m just lucky that they picked me to go along the ride with them, and they realize that they best way to do this stuff is work with a creative and stay out of their way.

They just let me be a bozo and get crazy. Plus I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cyber-western.

CA: That’s great. Thanks for sharing and talking with me.

AT: Thank you for what you’re doing! And thank the entire team at GSG. You’re making it easier to do what I want to do, which I appreciate. Thanks!

Image via Nike / Acronym / Ash Thorp.

Project Credits:

Client – Nike
Creative Director – Danny Demers
Designer/Animator/Art Director – Ash Thorp
Designer/Animator – Toros Kose
Score – Pilotpriest
Producer – Monica Thorp
Producer – Collin Samples
Producer – Bria Hisey
Special Thanks – Zaoeyo, Greyscalegorilla

More about this project:

If you want to know more about the product, you can read more about the shoe collaboration on Nike’s website. For more of Ash Thorp’s work, check out his website. His site also includes many of his reels from the films and other projects he’s produced.

If you are curious about the GorillaCam plugin, you can check out the GorillaCam product page here.

The post Interview: Ash Thorp on Creating a Cyberpunk Western for Nike appeared first on Greyscalegorilla.