Cartoon Network Rebrand by Capacity

I’m a cartoon-a-holic if I do say so myself, so despite being 26 years of age, my first favorite button on the remote is assigned to Cartoon Network. With that said I’ve been a big fan of their recent rebranding, focused around the recent popularity over the last few years for Graphic style Vinyl toys often painted but now also more and more becoming available in solid white that one can purchase and paint their own design on.

Now I’ve known that Turner themselves uses CINEMA 4D, so I’d had my suspicions that these spots had at least a little CINEMA 4D here and there particularly as there’s some notable MoGraph type effects in there, but as an animation fan, what I really wanted to know was whether the character and cool material effects stuff was done in CINEMA 4D. Recently at the AENY meeting and then later on a Creative Cow Podcast I discovered the it was actually Capacity, a really kick ass studio that also uses CINEMA 4D, that did the rebranding for them. Well sure enough, despite Capacity being in the middle of a website redesign, (the old one is still here) they’ve posted a new landing page with the Cartoon Network Rebranding reel, and sure enough the characters and everything else is done in CINEMA 4D. Check their site and the new rebranding out and lets hear what everyone thinks.

This post goes out specifically to my fellow AM students. The current system at Animation Mentor requires use to use an older release of Flash 9 R47. The problem with this is a lot of websites nowadays like Capacity.tv, a cool studio whose work I will make a separate blog post for, They use Flash 10 and require us to update, but then we have to downgrade again. Quite the hassle.

The solution came up in the Tech Q&A last night (more…)

Glen Keane is just one of those animators, as a Kid, one didn’t pay attention to who wrote or directed or animated movies, and yet names like his and Andreas Deja, that just kept showing up in the credits for my favorite characters growing up. He may not be one of the Nine old men, but he was very fortunate to come in and learn from them and take over as their reign ended and much like a lot of Richard Williams Stories from Milt Kahl and Ken Harris, is where you can really relate to them just as I look up them and my mentors both at VFS and now at Animation Mentor . Its what helps bring them a little off that pedestal and more down to reality. And hearing and seeing that passion in others just makes one want to animate even more.

There is a lot of great stuff on the web about Glen Keane, on the right I’ve a link to Raul Andres blog dedicated to the Art of Glen Keane, but Check out this 14 part lecture of Glen. It is pure gold.

My Mentor Paul Allen passed this onto us after our First Q&A, and I really appreciated it as I mentioned Roger Rabbit as being one of my main inspirations for wanting to get into animation. Its a featurette on Richard Williams and how they did the magic they did for Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Its Pretty Cool to see the extent Zemeckis went to to get the look he did, but a big part of the success goes to Richard Williams and his staff for the amazing aniamtion, and painting they did. the lighting in some shots is simply amazing.

Make sure to watch all three parts in the playlist.

I think what I loved most about Roger Rabbit was it was the one place where I got to see so many different characters together. to really sell the idea that this world really exists, I think seeing Disney, MGM, Warner Bros., Fleischer, Walter Lantz, and even Felix the cat (king features) just sold that this universe was some crazy place the toons all went to after their crazy cartoon antics.

So I’ve had access to the system since Monday watched all the cool videos and checked out the place, and on Tuesday did a lot of it over again as well as meeting a bunch of my classmates through the email system.

But today, today was the day we finally got to meet our mentor, Paul Allen. Paul’s a very friendly and approachable guy, and very identifiable, I think he did a great job of making all of us feel more at ease.

That class is great we’ve got people form all over, US, UK, Brazil, India, and even a fellow Canadian, all of various ages, backgrounds, and skill levels making for a very nice mix.

Anyways it was nice to meet everyone I can tell we’ll be a pretty tight group, so now its just waiting for the first assignment.