Amazing Treasure Trove of Historical Illustration from the British Library

The British Library, one of the world's great archival organizations, has published a huge store of illustrations, paintings, maps, and other visual materials from its catalog of books from the 17th to 19th centuries. The materials number over one million items, and all are in the public domain. This is a  fantastic resource for research, inspiration, or just some fun browsing. I've pasted some examples below.

By the way, it has come to my attention that the emails which accompany my blog postings are missing the images, probably due to some mysterious security function within the Sheridan Server that sends them out. The blog itself is fine, though, so please take a look there if you want to see the images in the post.  ( http://sheridan4thyear.blogspot.ca )

The complete British Library archive is available from Flickr at:

one million public domain scans

Spectacular Rob Ford video from Cuppa Coffee

A little more fun at Rob Ford's expense, courtesy of Toronto's Cuppa Coffee.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC5vhfF7RQs

Adobe Content Download - Sound Effects and Music Loops

I'd like to say thanks to Colin Smith of Adobe for his demo yesterday of Adobe Audition.

There was one thing Colin pointed out which wasn't obvious from the software itself - included in the software is a free download of thousands of free sound effects and music clips which you can use in your own production work.

Since all of you are owners of CS6 you are all entitled to this content as well. Go to the following link and sign in using your Adobe ID. It's a big download (several GB), so be sure your  a high-speed connection is working well:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=auditionloopology

If you're interested in what's avaialble, here's the condensed listing. I can't vouch for all of these, but I heard a few of them in Colin's demo yesterday and they sounded pretty good.

======================================================
SOUND EFFECTS

Ambience 1 (ZIP, 1.3 GB)

Ambience 2 (ZIP, 1.16 GB)

Animals (ZIP, 95 MB)

Cartoon (ZIP, 83 MB)

Crashes (ZIP, 80 MB)

Drones (ZIP, 1.3 GB)

Emergency Effects (ZIP, 180 MB)

Fire and Explosions (ZIP, 490 MB)

Foley (ZIP, 121 MB)

Foley Footsteps (ZIP, 128 MB)

Horror (ZIP, 108 MB)

Household (ZIP, 311 MB)

Human Elements (ZIP, 203 MB)

Impacts (ZIP, 727 MB)

Industry (ZIP, 94 MB)

Liquid and Water (ZIP, 585 MB)

Imaging Elements (ZIP, 273 MB)

Impacts (ZIP, 727 MB)

Multimedia (ZIP, 180 MB)

Noise, Tones, DTMF and Tests (ZIP, 213 MB)

Production Elements (ZIP, 866 MB)

Science Fiction (ZIP, 73 MB)

Sports (ZIP, 81 MB)

Technology (ZIP, 166 MB)

Transportation (ZIP, 1.4 GB)

Underwater (ZIP, 974 MB)

Weapons (ZIP, 53 MB)

Weather (ZIP, 396 MB)

MUSIC LOOPS

Ambient (ZIP, 122 MB)

Blues (ZIP, 207 MB)

Classical Orchestral (ZIP, 179 MB)

Country (ZIP, 38 MB)

Disco (ZIP, 263 MB)

Drum One-Shots (ZIP, 83 MB)

Funk Rock 1 (ZIP, 606 MB)

Funk Rock 2 (ZIP, 434 MB)

Industrial (ZIP, 122 MB)

Latin Lounge 1 (ZIP, 372 MB)

Latin Lounge 2 (ZIP, 112 MB)

House and Noise (ZIP, 112 MB)

Reggae and Ska (ZIP, 374 MB)

Rhumba (ZIP, 104 MB)

Rockabilly (ZIP, 94 MB)

Techno and Dance 1 (ZIP, 349 MB)

Techno and Dance 2 (ZIP, 194 MB)

Urban (ZIP, 181 MB)

Wedding and Event (ZIP, 349 MB)

World Music (ZIP, 150 MB)

MUSIC BEDS

Bossa Nova (ZIP, 10 MB)

Corporate 15sec (ZIP, 14 MB)

Corporate 30sec (ZIP, 29 MB)

Funk Beds 110bpm (ZIP, 7 MB)

General 15sec (ZIP, 14 MB)

General 30sec (ZIP, 29 MB)

Rock Beds (ZIP, 9 MB)

Rockabilly and Country (ZIP, 5 MB)

Sports 15sec (ZIP, 14 MB)

Sports 30sec (ZIP, 29 MB)

Techno (ZIP, 7 MB)

Wedding and Event 15sec (ZIP, 14 MB)

Wedding and Event 30sec (ZIP, 29 MB)

Tim Horton's commercial animated with coffee grounds!

A bit of Christmas cheer - check out this ad from Toronto animation company Common Good:



Tim Horton's "Coffee Art" (dir. cut) from Alan Poon on Vimeo.



Here's behind-the-scenes look at the how and why of the ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu2OSVSV34A&feature=youtu.be

REMINDER: ANIMATIC SCREENING - 9:30 WEDNESDAY MORNING

As planned, our annual 4th Year Animatic Screening will take place in SCAET S235, starting at 9:30 tomorrow (Wednesday) morning. A great way to wrap up the semester and get ready for the holidays. See you there!

WORKSHOP: Screening and critical discussion of "The Snowman"

Kaj Pindal will lead us through a screening and critical discussion of the The Snowman, an  animated film by Dianne Jackson and Jimmy Murakami, nominated for the 1982 Academy Award for Animated Short Film. The film was adapted from Raymond Briggs' award-winning children's book.

Made for BBC Television, the film uses traditional animation techniques, including chalk and pastel drawings. Without dialogue, it tells its story entirely by means of the animation and the wonderful musical score by Howard Blake. The British Film Institute lists it as one of the 100 greatest British Television programmes.

Join Kaj and myself for a screening of the complete film (26 minutes) followed by a critical discussion of the animation and other production values. All taking place at the usual time and place, A150 at 3 pm Wednesday.

Animation Timing - Lecture by Greg Duffell of Lightbox

We have a very special guest for our Wednesday Lecture this week: Greg Duffell, president of Lightbox Animation and graduate of the Richard Williams school of animation. Greg will repeat his talk from this year's TAAFI Festival, about the essence of Animation Timing. This should be of great interest this week as you work on your action analysis Milestone. 

                                                

Greg's animation credits include Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler, and Inspector Gadget (the original), while he has also worked at Chuck Jones Film Productions, The National Film Board of Canada and Chuck Gammage Animation.  This is the first time that Greg has visited our 4th Year Lecture series, so be sure to come out for this special event. As usual the lecture begins at 11 am Wednesday in S235.