"The Sting" - New Character Animation

Well, it's been ages since I did any character animation, as I've been animating planets for nearly 5 months now at Prime Focus World so I thought I'd revisit an exercise from my post grad.

The dialogue is from the film classic "the Sting", which any fans of Hustle on the Beeb will know half-inched it's first series plot from! It's two of my favourite actors talking, in Robert Redford as the younger, brasher and in this clip angrier Johnny Hooker, and Paul Newman as the wiser Henry Gondorff.



I tried to give Redford (blonde squirrel) a more animated set of poses due to his frustration at this stage. Newman (grey squirrel) was more laid back, hence his languid animation style, i also wanted to throw in a bit of background animation for him with the coin toss. The lighting is a bit overcooked at the moment, but I should get a new version out on Monday. Hopefully that includes the whole film, Youtube and Adobe Premier don't seem big fans of the Sorensen compression I used on the Quicktime so the anim cuts slightly short at the end.

Check out the trailer to the film (the original dialogue is used at 35 - 40 secs):-



I love these guys as actors, there's something about them on screen and the aura they had. Paul Newman was more than just an actor, but raced cars at a championship level including le mans, and was a man of principle to the point he was put on Richard Nixon's dangerous enemies list during the McCarthy investigations. He made a mean salad dressing too. Rob Redford again is a great actor, but also a director (A River Runs Throught It is worth 2 hours of anyone's time) and also politically engaged.

As a double act, for me, they are THE greatest all time on-screen partnership, as they'd also prove in Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid.