When studying animation, one of our first projects was to do a few walk cycles. We were given a 3d model (in Maya, a 3d animation program) that looked like an artist dummy and told to create three personalities with just their walks. It it pretty amazing how much you can communicate with just a walk—age, self-confidence, sex, mood, purpose, etc.
Edit: The YouTube video was pulled down, but there is a high quality version on the film’s site, here.
This animated short is so brilliant. The animation and lighting is beautiful.
Steel, Mermaid
Fantastic cg work from Pascal Blanché in Montreal. It is gritty and stylized and I wish there was an entire movie made with his stuff. He worked on Myst IV, which I love and can never get enough of.
sky, just fly
I went to college with him and studied digital animation, Lev Kolobov. He is super talented, and here is his photo blog.
The subway we rode used to go over a small valley, I remember him talking about wanting to do some time lapse photography of that valley, but it wasn’t permitted to take pictures on from the train. Make sure you hover over his last name in the bottom right hand corner to see what each photo looked like before he edited it.