One of the things that have keeping me away from blogging is rigth below: the new opening for the Brazilian MTV News.

Notícias MTV / MTV News from Virgilio Vasconcelos on Vimeo.

I still don't have the final audio track, but I liked the result. The direction and final composition was made by Marck Al, from NitrocorpZ studio. I made the models and animation in Blender, based by some boards sent by Marck.

A feature promised for Blender 2.5 that I really missed when making this video was the ability to edit multiple objects at the same time. Adjust the animation of multiple objects will be very pleasing when the new version arrives. :)

Last Friday (Feb, 13th) Coraline had opened in Brazilian theaters. I must say I couldn't wait any longer. :)

I had some great expectations on this movie, and they were more than satisfied! This movie is awesome: flawless animation, beautiful models and an intriguing and captivating story. If you haven't seen it yet (and if the movie is already on a theater near you) do yourself a favor and go watch it.

It was the first time I went to a 3D theater. I tried to watch Bolt when the technology arrived to my town, but for some reason the projector was broken and I had to watch the "normal" version. The effect is really cool, and I think that Coraline producers had used it very well, because it wasn't painful on the eyes as the trailers that preceded the movie: Monsters Vs Aliens and Up. These made me ponder if I could stand two hours of that gimmick.

And I must say I'm really happy to see such film as Coraline to be released. In times when we notice more and more safe stories and "family-friendly" movies, it's really comforting to know that there is a studio which is brave enough to put money, freedom and trust in the hands of a director, as Laika did with Henry Sellick.

In a recent post on Cartoon Brew made when the movie opened in US theaters, there are some excerpts of interviews with both Henry Sellick and the author Neil Gaiman. The text makes it very clear about this Laika's position of looking for a new market instead of trying to jump into that over saturated Pixar/DreamWorks "style". I'm cheering for Laika, and I hope to see much more from them. :)

To get an idea of how bold they were, without worrying about pleasing each one of the viewers: there was a little boy on the line behind us who cried for the entire second half of the movie, scarred by the villain and the problems faced by Coraline. Honestly I found it great (not that I'm into making little kids cry) because it shows how the producers and the director were competent enough to make a honest and convincing movie.

Congratulations to everyone who worked on this movie: you've created something really remarkable. :)

When you have a great and entertaining idea, you can free yourself from making an extremely fluid and technically perfect animation:

Thanks, Suryara, for the link. :D

The January edition of Computer Arts Brasil brings a humble Blender tutorial by yours truly. :)

Yeah... I found it very cool to get invited, and now I hope to publish some tutorials often. In this edition I talked about using Blender in a pipeline where the final composition is made with another app, like Adobe After Effects. Making the render in passes and using the node "File Output" is a very cool feature in Blender to make things easier.