Animating the Calarts 2008 Open Show intro in Blender

We finally started animation but we're learning how to use Blender, not how to animate. It's a funny thing because when you think CG and CG animation, you think of Pixar. But those guys literally have 100s people working on one shot and several thousand controls on each character to make it look as believable as it does.

I've been re-watching all the Pixar films in chronological order as soon as I started this class. As we learned more about the CG world more and more of Toy Story 1 and 2 made sense. I started understanding how they did it. But that's where it stops.

I have no clue how they make Mr Incredible's eyebrows look so good, or how they simulated water in that shot where Reme tumbles down the sewers in Ratatouille. It appears there is tremendous amounts of technological rah rah in CG. It is not a child's play thing.

As far as my learning animation goes, I need to keep it simple just to get my hands dirty. The other day, I found this video for the 2008 Calarts Open Show. I thought stealing his idea would be the perfect assignment to get into animation in Blender without doing real character animation.

Here's my first shot (more like 5th.. let's just say it took me all day to get this far):

.