AM>

Drat that Shawn Kelly and his clever animation ways. I was in the process of mentally preparing a blog entry based on how Walter Murch's ideas put forward in "In The Blink Of An Eye" could work really great when applied to animation, but the villain has beaten me to it in the AM newsletter. Furthermore, he explains everything way better than I ever could, dammit.

Go and have a read of his essay, concerning blinks.

At least it saves me the typing, I suppose. Here are a few paragraphs of his that I think are most insightful:

"The most important use of a blink is to show thought process. We do blink sometimes just to wet our eyes, and we blink on a rapid head turn, we blink on a major change in eye direction, and all those other "blink rules," but in my opinion the most important time is when we have a change in our thought process. When we're having an idea, or when we're switching from one emotion to another, or when we're realizing something. Those are the gold-mines in terms of blinks - that's when a perfectly placed blink will take a scene from being merely "good" and make it "great."

There's a great book called "In the Blink of An Eye," by Walter Murch, who is an amazing film editor, and a part of that book is about his theory that we blink to edit the film of our lives. We blink throughout the day to cut from one scene to the next to the next to the next. And he uses that theory in his film editing. He looks for when the main character blinks, and often uses that as his cutting point, figuring that it's probably the most natural-feeling place to cut for the audience."

I'm sure Shawn won't mind me quoting him here, considering he STOLE MY IDEA and all.

Just kidding.

I'll have to up the ante and come up with something way better now, (possibly featuring goats and formal dancing).


-RedvanimationMentor