Pick my brain…with a Moustache
Posted on January 27, 2012 |
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Pick my brain with a Moustache
Ever wanted to participate to a one hour one-to-one Q&A with an expert in a field related to animation?
There will be a free beta test for the first 5 people who sign up next week after the official announcement.
And if You are an expert in Character design, Modeling, Rigging, Animation… make yourself known! olivier.ladeuix@gmail.com. Use “I am an expert” in the subject line.
“Yummy” – short film
Posted on January 18, 2012 |
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After many years, my friend Maciek finally finished his short film “Yummy”.
Maciek and I started Animation Mentor together in Cassidy Curtis’ first class and after some struggles and set back, he eventually fulfilled his dream to became an animator in Feature Animation. I just hope he gets interviewed one day so he can explain how tenacious one needs to be to succeed. Ah and he could probably talk about his current workflow compared to when he started ;-)
He recently revamped his blog, check it out http://www.maciekgliwa.com/
Related posts:
Daphne’s new broom
102 Q&A
A day in the production of La Luna
Posted on January 17, 2012 |
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Pixar’s story artist Enrico Cassarosa wrote a nice series of article where we follow him for a day, during the production of his short film “La Luna”.
One thing that surprised me was to see Mudbox being used at Pixar. I thought they were still using that stylus and digital arm we have seen in the past but it looks like they have now fully embraced digital modeling and chosen a tool that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. No Zbrush nonsense here. I wonder if they also use 3d coat or Topogun.
The series of articles starts from the following post and you can access the next ones by clicking on the link above the posts to the right, “9am off to work” being next.
A day in the production of La Luna
While we are at it, you can also have a look at that nice 30 minutes interview with Enrico
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Enrico Cassarosa
Food for thoughts
Posted on January 16, 2012 |
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Doing some research for my shortfilm, I went through the first twenty of the 49 Wile E Coyote and Road Runner short films and it saddens me to say….. I didn’t break one laugh.
The worst is that those were all directed by animation legend Chuck Jones, a man that is wildly accepted as one of the funniest men in the animation industry.
Despite the great Carl Stalling soundtrack, gorgeous stylized Maurice Noble backgrounds, the crazy animation, brush work and comedic timing, nothing helped. I might have smiled few times to how Chuck Jones played with our expectation on the final gag but I didn’t find anything worthy of a laugh.
The Wile E. Coyote series came out at the end of the 1950s and was probably really funny at that time but I feel that the humor didn’t age well.
Would this be due to the fact that, he … invented it all? So many variations have been seen for the past 50 years that maybe we have now become desensitized to the original material?
If you want to do the same test you are in luck, Youtube user CoyoteAndRoadRunner uploaded pretty much all the shortfilms, by chronological order, to his channel .
While watching the shorts, one thing struck me…. For some reasons, Youtube kept suggesting the viewing of a series of candid/hidden camera gags and I eventually did.
Man, I didn’t expect what would follow.
After only watching one video, I was in stitches.
“Just for Laughs Gags” is an hilarious Canadian secret camera show using all the comedic elements of cartoony pantomime. The gags are beautifully set up, staged and acted by a cast of very likable characters. Even with the inevitable “background laughs” muted, it is impossible to resist laughing hysterically.
For comparison, here is a selection of Chuck Jones directed “Wile E. Coyote” short films followed by “Just for laughs gags”. See what you respond the most to. Maybe you will differ from me but if not, we need to rethink what constitutes comedy in animation.
Coyote and RoadRunner – Gee Whiz-z-z-z (05.05.1956)
Coyote and RoadRunner – Chariots of Fur (21.12.1994)
Infinite Ice Cream
Honking At Hookers
Worker Stuck In Ceiling
Mall metal detector
Stretcher In Water Prank
Related posts:
Reel FX Looney Tunes shorts online
Josh Carey VFS rigging submission
3d Modeling portfolio
Posted on January 14, 2012 |
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Since animation work is pretty scarce at the moment I have decided to put all my modeling work together just so I can apply to 3d modeling positions.
Those are props for a long overdue short film, personal work, professional work and character design studies. The work was done in Maya 2009 for the most recent pieces, 3ds Max 5 for the rest.
The Pixar related models are obviously fan art as I have never worked on Ratatouille or Brave. I only did those to get a better understanding of Pixar’s character designs and rigging (articulations).
During a recent visit to French sculptor Bourdelle’s museum in Paris, I was reminded it is how the best artists learnt their art, by copying the masters. Michaelangelo was a great source of inspiration for Bourdelle, Daniel Lopez Munoz is mine.
Download the PDF version if you prefer Olivier_Ladeuix_modeling_2011.pdf or click the pictures below to zoom in.
You will probably find a timelapse video for most pieces in the “Related Posts” section at the end of the post and I would suggest their viewing to anyone wanting to learn about CG modeling.
Related posts:
Low polygon modeling
Fredericksen house part 02
Long chair modeling timelapse
Ken Fountain “Attitudes and Acting Beats”
Posted on January 13, 2012 |
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Ken Fountain just released “Attitudes and Acting Beats”, a new video tutorial at the incredible price of $10.99.
Judging by the official blurb and teaser, that one is probably more about acting and motion analysis so it should appeal to everyone from beginners to professionals.
If you want to become a good animator, do no hesitate to buy that tutorial. At $10.99, don’t come up with silly ideas and tell me you can’t afford it! Ken Fountain worked on many movies at Dreamworks, graduated from Animation Mentor and is a current teacher at Ianimate so you are getting way more than a 90 minutes video.
I haven’t seen the tutorial yet but seeing all the effort he put into the last one, that one is a must buy.
Here are the official blurb and teaser:
The new video is officially released! Whew. My intent was to be able to focus on some of the specific areas of my process that people had asked me to elaborate on, and hopefully introduce some new ideas as well. So, in that light, this 90-minutes of lecture/demo is devoted entirely to the planning, video analysis and blocking processes, and the tools and concepts I use to execute these phases with consistency, clarity, and hopefully emotional appeal.
This video is heavy on analysis. I get very specific regarding the structures I use to breakdown a performance and turn it in to pose-able emotional moments; like text, context and subtext, a structure I use to really understand my character and their circumstance; and the pillars of my workflow – attitudes, beats and textures – to create the right body language and interesting rhythms I need to engage my audience. I also take the opportunity to go deeper in to the concept of character centers and how that can greatly effect you character’s movement as well as the graphic quality of your shot’s staging. And, as usual, you can watch my approach to staging and posing for a specific shot; one that I will carry through to the next two videos.
Thanks again for all of your input. I hope to be able to address it all over this 3-part series. And keep them relatively affordable (only $10.99!).
Buy it on the JRAwebinar website http://jrawebinar.com/index.php/store.html
and follow Ken Fountain Splatfrog studio on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/splatfrog
Vickey Blue Eyes
Posted on January 6, 2012 |
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My buddy Oasim just posted a turn around of a really nice car he modeled a while back. It is a very nice tribute to Cars2 and I think it should be included in any Cars sequel!
If you are interested, he also posted a behind the scene and full tutorial for Maya and Vray.
Electroshock – ESMA 2011
Posted on January 5, 2012 |
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Look at what we got today! Elliot Maren just sent me a link to that great short film he made with four others ESMA students. Electroshock is a very good looking 8 minutes shortfilm done at French animation school ESMA and YES! it is not a FREAKING CHASE!!!! It is good to see that students still care about storytelling and acting.
The shortfilm is probably inspired by “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs” and it really matches the visual quality of Sony’s movie. I especially love the colours they put in the shadows and how they handled the SSS.
I have featured several short films from that school already and it is good to see that Gobelins and Supinfocom have a really strong competition.
The pool of talents in France is increasing dramatically, I just hope that one day the demand could match the offer. Investors, are you hearing me??? ;-)
Great job guys!
There is no making of or blog but hopefully they will put more infos on the Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/Electroshockmovie
[update] We don’t have a website/blog or Making of but see what I just found!
Related posts:
ESMA
ESMA Mythologique shortfilm is out
Premiere CS 5.5 uncompressed output … not
Posted on January 3, 2012 |
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I have been using Adobe Premiere since version 4.2 and as I bought a new fancy 64 bits laptop, I decided to upgrade from Premiere CS2 to CS 5.5 but it is driving me crazy.
As you can see above (click on the picture to see it full screen), Premiere 5.5 doesn’t seem to be willing to export a video to an .avi file with no compression to it. I have tried every possible option, did a fair amount of research on Google and Youtube but I can’t find any help on why Premiere is making my footage blurry when I am asking for a straight uncompressed video file as seen on the timeline.
Has anyone gone through the same thing? If I have to spend one more day on this I will have to revert to Premiere Pro CS2. Ah and the Uncompressed AVI option they have now is just a disaster waiting to happen, what were they thinking? How many people got fooled into thinking it was actually an …. uncompressed AVI option! ;-) I wonder if software makers ever have users test their softwares nowadays or is it the result of the current recession?
“Spare parts” 8bit credits
Posted on December 28, 2011 |
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For “Spare Parts” credits, our concept artist Ross Burt offered to make some retro 8bit rolling credits and he created an 8 bit avatar for the core team.
It was really fun to see his 8 bit caricature of all of us ;-)
Here are some screenshots followed by the entire credits.
Watch them with the music on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86SQ9QdqwVM&t=2m2s
Related posts:
Last day at EA Brightlight
“Spare Parts” cutscene 2a Progress reel
“Spare Parts” is out
Ianimate 2011 showreel
Posted on December 24, 2011 |
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I know I am very late with this but hey, I was really busy for the past few month you know and I still haven’t posted any pictures from CTN 2011! ;-)
Ianimate just released their first showreel. Some really nice work is being done there but what else would you expect from a school taught exclusively by Dreamworks animators! If I had to restart my animation schooling I wouldn’t know where to go between all the great schools available those days!
Big up to my AM fellow graduates Joost, Dave and Roberto for making it into the showreel. I recognized a lot of other familiar names!
Kyle Balda, walk cycle in10 minutes
Posted on December 20, 2011 |
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I am not a fan of walks “on the spot” and in games I never had to make one but Kyle Balda’s workflow seems really effective. No step blocking here, he starts immediately in spline, which technique I am finding, a lot of very fast feature animator tend to favor. Rob Thompson gave us a similar demo at the Animation Collaborative and Rob was originally a 2d animator.
In the following video, Kyle Balda creates a basic walk cycle in 30 minutes! It is good to see how he handles the peel of the heel and the math expressions he uses in the graph editor. I didn’t know the ones he applies in the video but one I use extensively to troubleshoot gimbal locks is the +=360 or -=360
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Weight shift
Italian in 10 minutes, the power of gestures
Posted on December 19, 2011 |
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According to NLP, 55% of communication is made by gesture and body language. Watch this video and you will be amazed by how easily you understand Italian without any previous knowledge ;-)
Great reference for gestures or give personality to your characters.
Alfredo Cassano posted a nice series of illustrations on his blog. Make sure you see the three of them and maybe buy his book!
Related post:
Desmond Morris “The human animal”
Aurélien Prédal “Monstre à Paris”
Posted on December 18, 2011 |
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Aurélien Prédal is a Gobelins graduate whose work you might have come across in 2006 as took part in my all time Gobelins favorite shortfilm “Burning Safari”. (“Le building”) is also my top favorite Gobelins short)
Aurélien was involved in the never ending production of french animated feature “A monster in Paris” and he just posted some unbelievable colour keys he made for the movie.
If you are interested in painting or lighting you should definitely have a look at his blog, his work is exceptional. To me he is just as good as people with 5+ years of experience and he probably made those colour keys, two to three years after graduating.
If you didn’t know, Aurélien was also a contributor to the Sketchtravel project.
Aurélien Prédal “Monstre à Paris” colour keys
As a side note, with 1.7 millions tickets sold, the movie did very well in France but so far it hasn’t covered the 27 millions euros the movie cost, making it a loss for the production company, Europa Corp.
A US release would be really expensive for Luc Besson’s company but they could probably do a UK release first. The British market is usually the second biggest territory in term of sales, ahead of Japan.
Related posts:
“Monstre à Paris”
Dice Tsutsumi Light and colours
Sketchtravel project
Snowman walk
Posted on December 17, 2011 |
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Several persons wanted to see this guy animated so here it is. Believe it or not this was animated in Maya. I placed the walk cycle on a nurbs plane and animated the UV :-) I have been told I could have just used Photoshop. I will give it a try next time or maybe use Plastic Animation Paper since it is free.
and while I am at it, here is a little teaser I made with my new camera using some footage I shot during my last Animation Collaborative character design class with Albert Lozano and Chris Sasaki.
Animschool Tom Bancroft interview
Posted on December 16, 2011 |
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Hurry up, Animschool just posted an special interview with Disney veteran Tom Bancroft. The interview will only be available to the public for few more days so make sure you don’t miss that exceptional interview.
I have only seen the beginning so far but Tom animated one of my favourite characters on Mulan, the crazy talking dragon Mushu. People too often forget that there is no one Disney animation style, it all depends on the story and the character of the character. Mushu is a great example of the exaggerated Disney animation style.
Related posts:
Animschool Free Malcolm rig
Jeff Gabor webcast recording
Feature animation Box office grosses
Posted on December 15, 2011 |
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As I very often check the box offices grosses of my favorite animated features, I decided to finally organize those information in a centralized/easy to read table and share it with you. I will post the updated table on my blog every few month and maybe add older features.
As of December 15th 2011 and by release date.(source: BoxofficeMojo.com)
You will find a ranking of the different movies by lifetime grosses at the following address, unfortunately it only for domestic revenues :
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=computeranimation.htm
Dr. Seuss’ Lorax trailer 2
Posted on December 7, 2011 |
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Ahah! Just when you thought you had seen enough trailers for Lorax, a new one pops out! Trailer 2, technically speaking is actually the third one but I am guessing they finally considered the first one a screw up since it was a bit confusing regarding who those male characters were.
Trailer 2 is not giving away a lot more and making things a lot clearer. The trees we thought were populating the streets of Thneedville are actually made of plastic!! Makes sense!
Related post:
Dr Seuss “Lorax” trailer 1 is out
First Wacom Inkling review
Posted on December 6, 2011 |
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My buddy Ross Burt also wrote a review on his blog
http://rossburt.blogspot.com/2011/12/wacom-inkling-review.html
Aardman’s “Pirates” behind the scenes
Posted on December 5, 2011 |
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I think we need to thank Sony for backing up Aardman on their next stop motion feature and allowing them to come up with such a great looking movie! The environment, the props, the character design, THE BOAT!!! Man this must have cost a fortune!!! I hope the quirky British humour gets a good response from the broader audience and not only animation fans. “Napoleon Blownapart” ;-)
Pirates movies, who doesn’t like them anyway??
Related post:
Aardman “The Pirates” trailers
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