The human animal
Posted on July 22, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 1 Comment
Great video posted on Google video.
Upgraded to Wordpress 2.6
Posted on July 22, 2008
Filed Under Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment
After few days of struggle with Media Temple, I finally managed to update my blog to Wordpress 2.6.
For the past few month my blog suffered from invisible HTML injections advertising Viagra and other stuff and I couldn't upload any pictures anymore.
The update went fairly smoothly. My category names were gone but luckily they were still existent with an invisible name in the database. I had an old page still open and I could give update the names.
I am not too excited about the way the pictures are handled and I haven't been able to upload any so far.
Anyway everything seems to be find and I should be able to embed videos now.
something I am working on
Posted on July 3, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 2 Comments
here is something I am working on. A secret project due in 30 days ;-)
I graduated!
Posted on June 18, 2008
Filed Under Animation Mentor | 1 Comment
after 2 years and a half I finally graduted from the online Animation Mentor training. AM wasn't an easy experience but it was really worth it. I met a bunch of incredible people and a lot of talented animators. I also got a job out of it, in one of the best video game companies.
I thought redoing class6 would be easy since a lot of shots had been approved by my previous mentor Jason but Kevin pushed me in a different direction and I had to reblock a huge section of it. My short is still not finished but I still like my short very much and will keep working on it until I am pleased with the result.
I think I should be able to post a bit more often on my blog in the futur but there is already a new deadline with Siggraph so let's see what happen. Keep an eye on that space, I have a lot of things to say about the Annecy animation festival. I got to meet Bolhem Bouchiba, a very very nice animator from Pixar. I got to test TV Paint 9 and talk to the developers this year again. I saw Doug Sweetland "Presto", I participated to a presentation of "Monstre a Paris" (A Monster in Paris)… I got to do some pedalo on the Annecy Lac ;-) a lot of great things!
In the meantime, here is a pic of most of my classmates for this term under the mentoring of Kevin Koch
Explorer.exe crashing browsing video files
Posted on May 17, 2008
Filed Under IT, Life hack | Comments Off
Quick post.
If like me your Explorer crashes when opening a folder with video files, it s probably because you installed some dodgey software which is taking over the default explorer thumbnail generator.
To restore it, open the registry editor (type regedit in the command line)
find the following key
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\SystemFileAssociations\.avi\shellex\PropertyHandler
and delete whatever value you have for the “Default” key. Press Ok restart and off you go!
Thanks google and Annoyances.org website.
Today is a Rare day!
Posted on May 13, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 4 Comments
Ok the first articles, videos and interviews have emerged on the internet. Today is the annoucement day for “Viva Pinata2 - Trouble in Paradise” and “Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts”.
Wordpress doesn’t allow me to embed videos so jump on the following links for a tour of our studios and a video trailer of one of the games I have been working on since Septembre 2007
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/18831
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/18830
going offline
Posted on May 6, 2008
Filed Under Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment
Sorry for the lack of posts those days. I am still alive but I have decided to dedicate all my free time to my short film for the next 7 weeks. Kevin is a great mentor and it would be a shame to screw up this term again and not make the most of his dedication to help us make great short films.
You can still catch me in London this Week End or Annecy next month.
Olive
Short background first digital test
Posted on April 15, 2008
Filed Under Animation Mentor | 2 Comments
I finally realised that I wouldn’t need to buy hundreds of pound worth of paint, sponge,rollers to do the backgrounds for my short but use the regular Photoshop instead. Here is a quick test in the spirit of the 1950s cartoons.
Annecy Animation festival
Posted on April 6, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 4 Comments
The Annecy festival is taking place in June from the 9th to 14th . In case you haven’t booked your flat or hotel room yet, here is a map from Google maps. I drew 2 circles around the Main Bonlieu festival center and the Mifa. The distance between Mifa and Bonlieu is around 10 minutes walk. You can also rent bicycles for free to travel between the two locations.
Tear off Maya Channel box
Posted on April 5, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 4 Comments
Hey guys I found a really nice little script that allows you to hide the standard Channel box and use a flying one instead. You can download the script from here: Highend 3d and here is a little demo to show you how I use it I guess the next step would be to make the Layer box fly as well. Let me know if you have any idea how to do that too.
[edit] David Bernal pointed me to a Layer Manager that can replace the Maya one and also brings the Photoshop layer folders to Maya. Here it is Hierarchic Display Manager
11 seconds club
Posted on April 4, 2008
Filed Under Animation, Animation Mentor | 1 Comment
The former 10 seconds club died few years back but the “11 seconds club” has been alive for the past few month and the level is now really steep. Animation Mentor is also sponsoring the monthly character animation competition and the winner gets his shot “eCritiqued” by one of the fantastic Animation Mentor mentors.
Like I said the level is really high. I know some of the top contestants through the school and they have sinced been snapped up by top feature studios like my friend Philip To or are about to rock the animation industry like brazilian AM student, Bruno Monteiro. Bruno won the “11 seconds club” competion twice if I remember correctly and at school he constantly mixes 2d and 3d. It’s a pure joy to see his assignments every weeks.
Anyway February’s competition was won by Phillip Hall for his really entertaining piece so go and watch it , then have a look at what Dreamworks Dave Burgess had to say about it. Arcs, staging, twinning, opposite actions, a 15 minutes animation lectures for free thanks to Animation Mentor and “11 seconds club”.
601 bis, some of my classmates
Posted on April 2, 2008
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we didn’t have time to speak with everyone this week so here is a mugshot of the people we met today. Shad is currently in games working for Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment and previously worked on “Curious George”. Ron used to work at Secret Level game studio until Dreamworks snapped him up. The last game he worked on is Iron Man! How cool is that! My favourite superhero!
Class 6 redux
Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under Animation Mentor | 1 Comment
Here we are. Back to AM for a new Class 6. It’s pretty cool, I am back to AM with some of my first classmates, superstar animator Salem Arfaoui, Michael Herold but the coolest thing ever is that I am gonna be mentored by Kevin Koch! I was stalking his blog for a while http://www.synchrolux.com/ and now he is gonna deliver his knowledge every week through webcam! How cool is that? Kevin has worked at Dreamworks for few years from back in the 2d days till 2006.
I am gonna learn a lot this term again!
Class 6 “It’s a wrap!”
Posted on March 26, 2008
Filed Under Animation Mentor | 1 Comment
For our last Q&A, Jason was in a hotel room where he would spend few nights while attending a workshop at Dreamworks Glendale, hosted by James Baxter! Nice. Unfortunately it was our last Q*A so we will never know what James Baxter spoke about :-(
Here is a mugshot of Jason, surrounded by my fellow classmates. Hopefully we will all meet again at the Graduation Ceremony in San Francisco this summer and you will probably see the names of at least 2 of them in the credits of forecoming features!!!
Leaving home
Posted on March 21, 2008
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 2 Comments
Here is a funny clip a friend found on Youtube. I remember an AM student using it for his class 4 assignment and I am a bit disapointed as the acting was very similar. This is why I would recommend people to get audio clips where the acting can be interpreted in different ways
Train Train
Posted on March 19, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 9 Comments
some of the regulars on the french animation forum I regularly visit, have release a short extract from their new short “Train, Train”. I really like it! All the shots with the car have been animated in After Effect… Insane ;-)
Train train, un short by Gilles Cuvelier, Samuel Guénolé, Gabriel Jacquel and Claire Trollé.
I am also posting a link to Mister Coq, which wasn’t selected for Annecy this year :-(
“Daphne’s new broom”
Posted on March 18, 2008
Filed Under Animation, Friends | 2 Comments
At Animation Mentor I was lucky to have some great mentors but also to to be in the same class as few animators extraordinaire. Here are two I would like to mention today, Ales Mav and Maciek Gliwa
Ales Mav was featured few times I think on the Animation Mentor showreel and he is also the director of CG Talk front page short “Daphne’s new broom”
He obviously animated the entire short but also took care of the rigging, modeling, lighting and rendering. The facial could have benefited of a little bit more work but for a 2 minutes 30 short done by one guy in half a year, I think this is just amazing.
Now Maciek Gliwa was equally featured on the animation mentor showreel at least once or twice for his famous baseball pitch but I wanted to feature him because he is a very nice guy despite being very tall ;-) and because he should be joining a prestigious feature animation studio in California sometime this year. Don’t forget to check this animatic he did a while ago for a football kick.
Horton behind the scenes
Posted on March 17, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 10 Comments
I previously posted few links to differents showreels of animators who worked on it but Blue Sky wasn’t too happy about them I guess as they have all been brought down.
I saw the movie yesterday. It is really fun and the animation is really much to my liking. Really really entertaining.
The only problem I have is that I saw too many behind the scenes and trailers than I had seen pretty much all the funny animation beforehand.
Here are few links for you:
Kenny’s pictures [working link]
Nick Bruno’s Horton showreel [reel taken off]
Jeff Gabor animation stages from video ref to final animation [reel taken off]
Learning composition with Hortons Hears a Who
Posted on March 9, 2008
Filed Under Animation | Leave a Comment
A colleague from work (animator extraordinaire Jon ;-) ) showed me this webiste a while ago but I had lost the url until today. Brazilian animator Virgilio Vasconcelos has a great blog and one of the posts he wrote was an image composition walkthrough using the Hortons Hears a Who trailer.
There is nothing really new here but it is always good to see how much work goes into crafting those movies. Which reminds me that I wanted to do the same with a scene from Elia Kazan (1951) “A streetcar named Desire”.
Ed Hook did an acting walkthrough of the Steeeeeelllaaaaa scene during his workshop last month showing the change of status, psychological gesture, imaginary centers using Marlon Brando and Kim Hunger but I also noticed how beautifully Elia Kazan played with the shadows. Without the sound or even the acting, just by paying attention to the shadows or the graphic pattern, you would quickly understand the story.
Horton Hears a Who. behind the scenes
Posted on March 8, 2008
Filed Under Animation | 1 Comment
I didn’t know the work of Dr Seuss before the movie but I am starting to like it very much. Some of the shots are really really funny! If the videos weren’t streamed I would watch some of the shots or sequences in loop. The one with Horton and the feather has a great cartoon timing. The one with the mayor at the dentist with his flappy arm…… there are soooo many great shots that I wonder how they managed to cram so much fun in same movie.
Here is a selection of Blue Sky new feature’s behind the scenes.
Horton comes to life:
the tech talk is very interesting too.
http://www6.comcast.net/entertainment/horton/wacAEW2WR4U
TkCAccO__r5uq0aKVqk4I/