A blog I have scoured through and read fairly frequently is updated by John Kricfalusi, who is known most for Ren and Stimpy. His blog is very informative, and he gives very good opinion on a lot of different things involving animation. What’s really great is he’ll throw up clips from different segments of cartoons, breaking down all the key poses and analyzing different aspects of the actions. He’ll talk about things like anticipation, follow-through, secondary motion, etc. what are some good things to keep in mind and what are some not so good things. Certain pitfalls animators can easily fall into, not excluding other sides of the dice like character design, background layouts, color use, and much more.

Even though he mostly focuses on 2d flat-screen animation, a lot of concepts can and should be applied to 3d, and by extension of that also applied to the dome setting. Things can be a lot tougher for animating characters in domes, such as having strong silhouettes, staging, and subtleties and perception of close ups.  Enough of my rambling though, here’s the link:

John K. Stuff

I should also probably note that even though we share the same first and last initials, and both have tough last names to pronounce (his probably more than mine I think); its not the only reason I read and enjoy his blog!

We recently had a discussion on what lends itself to a dome. Seeing as Star projectors are no longer the center piece of the technology,we have an entire surface to expose and fill with content.
Space science has typically been the focus of Planetariums and is a primary focus even today. A dome offers itself to be a simulation of the sky above. Though as the technology gets more sophisticated it has become a way to illustrate space with a little “s”. We can deal with space inside a cell, or explore the volume of a dense molecule.

Some Visual devices we know work on a dome are as follows:
Moving to a large open area from a some what cramped one.
Moving through tunnels.
Flying along the surface of any object. (Moon, Mars, a really long line of text)
Flipping the horizon
Moving through objects
Shifting Perspective

Though a characteristic that seems to be prevalent in our continued exploration of the medium is motion. Still sequences seem to be a thing of the past. Even a slight rotation or scale is better than a static shots. I’m sure this list will continue to grow as we develop new ways to exploit the unique environment of the dome, and we define a visual language for how a dome is used.