Beton, by Ariel Belinco, Michael Faust (Preview) from Acme Filmworks, Inc. on Vimeo.
Directing, Script and Animation: Ariel Belinco & Michael Faust Original Music: Mikael Berkowitsch Sound Design: Michael Goorevich Project Supervisors: Van den bergh Roelof, Kaminski Hanan America Israel Cultural Foundation / Bezlalel Academy of Art & Design, Israel / Utrecht School of Arts, Holland"This is my first post and I wanted to share with you an animatic I made with the old Mirage program. I used the demo to create this and finished it in three weeks. It features a battle between a griffon rider and an undead dragon rider.
When I discovered that Mirage had been discontinued I was saddened because I had hoped to purchase it to create more animated works. Recently, I learned that the developers of Mirage had created TVPaint ! It looks fantastic and there seems to be many improvements since the old Mirage. I'm looking forward to testing out the demo soon and I'm sure I will be purchasing the software as well."
"Drew Carey's Green Screen Show" featured Drew Carey as the host , and an ensemble cast of improv actors doing skits in front of a "green screen" . After the live actors had done their stuff , the footage was handed over to various animators (coordinated by Acme Film Works) to embellish the skit with animation. The show never really took off , and like all improv sketches there were hits and misses . One of the hits, in fact probably the strongest piece that came out of this show, was a sequence called "Racetrack" animated by master animator Eric Goldberg.
In an article on Animation World Network there is a bit about the production process they used on the piece . I was interested to note that they used Mirage for the ink & paint. Notice how the drawings have a beautiful, organic hand-colored look , like watercolor washes or markers.
According to the article :
Without pre-sketching or testing, Goldberg animated with ink directly on paper, working in a style he was comfortable with, allowing for a certain amount of boil and spontaneity. He wanted the game's horse character to have the same scratchy, rubber-hose freedom of the Fleischer and Krazy Kat cartoons.
As I've mentioned before, the application called "Mirage" is no longer available as such . The company that used to sell Mirage , Bauhaus Software, no longer sells it . However the software development company (TVPaint Development Co.) that originally developed Mirage has taken over and is now marketing a much improved version of Mirage as TVPaint Animation.His wife, Susan Goldberg , assisted as art director, and his two daughters helped with mattes. Using Shake for compositing and Mirage for ink-and-paint, Scott Johnston helped achieve the animation's watercolor look.
Goldberg was committed to putting in as much technical detail as possible, such as the secondary action of the horse's reigns (animated by Todd Jacobson), because it makes the piece more convincing and compelling to watch. Goldberg feels this added effort adds a quality and touch that really sells the whole illusion.
