It's all in the hands...

While listening to Animation Mentor's podcast about "What Inspires Enrico Casavosa" (http://www.animationmentor.com/resources/podcasts/), they mentioned a fun fact about Italian gestures which they studied while making Pixar's new Oscar-nominated animated short La Luna.
Naples was conquered by so many different countries through the last 4 or so centuries that they could never really learned the language of whoever invaded them! This taught them to really communicate with gestures.

I found the video they mentioned on the podcast with the Italian gesture's here:
BEST COMPLETE GESTURE'S LESSON

As an animator I am always looking for new ways to use gestures in my own work. The hands are already so expressive, and when combined with pantomime acting, can become a seriously awesome combo!

Scared/Excited, Relaxed, and Anger               

Here's a few poses I whipped up to show a few different hand gestures with "feeling". They show a variety of feelings (from left to right) such as Scared/Excitement, Relaxed, and Anger.

My Animation Fascination Story

My first fondest memory of animation is Disney's Fantasia - Night on Bald Mountain animated by Vladimir "Bill" Tytla. He is considered by many to be one of the best animators working during Disney's Golden Age of Animation, you know, waaaay before all the not-so-good sequals to The Lion King film.

He was most well known for his delightlyfully creepy animation of the Chernabog, the giant horned monster with huge bat-like wings that summons ghouls and all other manner of dark denizens to terrorize a small medieval town. I was around 5 years old when I first saw this scene and where other kids my age were too terrified to watch this particular scene in the otherwise cheery film of Fantasia and would have fast-forward past this portion of the film on the 'ol VHS, I on the other hand couldn't take my eyes off of the screen! I remember rewinding it over and over until I wore out the tape! I was fascinated then and even more fascinated now.

Chernabog

Thank you Mr. Tytla for introducing me to animation.

To learn more about Mr. Tytla, CLICK HERE.

Voice Over Demo

Although this Blog will be focused on all things animation I will from time to time post up articles, ideas and work related to Voice Over.

This is my Voice Over Demo I created under the guidance of Chuck McKibben, who was employed by Hollywood's legendary "Man of 1,000 Voices," Mel Blanc, as his personal recording engineer and audio producer.

Lu Ramos Voice Over Demo

Feel free to check out the others genres I produced, recorded and mixed such as my Corporate - Informational, Telephony and Education demos.

Character Animation Resume

This is the link for my updated Character Animation Resume:
Lu Ramos Character Animation Resume

New Character Animation Demo!

Lots of blood, sweat and tears went into this one! I am really happy with the end result of this demo. Soon to come will be my Game Animation Demo currently in the works.

Lu Ramos Character Animation Link