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Animation Mentor 2010 showcase

Posted on September 1, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Animation Mentor, Friends

Well it’s out! Some really really nice work from my fellow graduates and ex coworkers.

http://www.animationmentor.com/showcase2010/

Some of them have already landed top animation jobs and others will very soon.

And while we are at it, let me introduce you Bishop 2.0, the latest version of my favourite Animation Mentor rig. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet but this looks very promising and I have to mention that my friend the awesome Keith Ribbons helped out with the facial rigging.

YouTube Preview Image

Related post:
Dan Carey “Shower Power” short film

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Kaeloo

Posted on August 30, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

Few years ago, french director and Supinfocom alumni, Rémy Chapotot, released the trailer for a crazy cartoony TV series produced by Cube Creative, Kaelou.

http://www.vimeo.com/12422185

It took a bit of time but the 52×7 TV series finally got produced between french Blue Spirit and Belgium Sinematik and the series finally aired on french cable TV this summer. I tried to get on board last year but they were already fully staffed and my experience with Character Studio was way too limited.  (it is rendered in Vray by the way)

Here are few short videos that are getting me really excited and upset I didn’t work on it ;-)

http://www.vimeo.com/11648356 http://www.vimeo.com/14002633

a bit more reading and behind the scenes here:

http://www.qualia-international.com/works/animation/kaelou/index.html

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abAutorig Part II Pyro tutorial

Posted on August 29, 2010  | 3 Comments
Filed under Animation, Portfolio, Tutorial

[update] I thought I would be able to post the first video to Youtube but unfortunately they have a 10 minutes video limit.  Part I will therefore have to wait till sunday, once Vimeo resets my weekly limit.

If some of you are still struggling to use Supercrumbly’s awesome abAutorig auto-rigging script, or have no clue on how to rig, here is something for you!

Due to technical problems, I won’t be able to post them in order but this will make a lot of sense once they are all uploaded.

The video is real time and has now, me, commenting on the different steps involved. If you double click on the video this will sent you to Vimeo where you can save the Quicktime file in HD!

Let me know what you think!

Tutorial Part II
http://www.vimeo.com/14514357
Part IIIa
http://www.vimeo.com/14524954

Part IIIb
YouTube Preview Image

Related posts:
abAutorig overview, how to create a rig in 5 minutes
Autorig tutorial preparation work III

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Composition 101

Posted on August 26, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Tutorial

In the next few days I will be adding some content to that post but in the meantime, check out those two great illustrations on how to direct your audience and compose your “pictures” for a better readability.

Disney/Pixar - Cars

Disney/Pixar - Cars

Disney/Pixar - Incredibles

Disney/Pixar - Incredibles

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iAnimate, Jason Ryan interview

Posted on August 24, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation

A school were all the teachers are full time animators working at Dreamworks. Live instructor critique. Sounds pretty exciting doesn’t it?

Speaking of Animation just posted an interview with iAnimate creator Jason Ryan.

http://www.speakingofanimation.com/2010/08/podcast-jason-ryan/

If I were to study animation nowadays, I wouldn’t know where to go! It will take a long time before iAnimate’s community reaches Animation Mentor’s size but the facts that all the mentors come from one of the top feature animation studio and are all still employed is definitely a big plus. Also, people with experience can already start in the advance classes without having to start from the very basics.

Rig wise, I am not keen on the Boris rig at all but I have heard that a top rigger would provide iAnimate with a much more interesting one and it is also possible to use a rig like Norman.

Related posts:
Stretchy rig or broken bishop
The downfall of traditional animation
Who is Jason Ryan?

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great Disney links

Posted on August 22, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Character design

I was busy collecting some references for my shortfilm today and found some really good Disney links.

Animation Background. As the name implies, you will find a large collection of old classic Disney shorts/features and also more recent backgrounds. It is so cool to finally be able to take a close look at those beautiful watercolours.
http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com

The Art of Disney Animation
http://artofdisney.canalblog.com
That one is mainly in french but you will find a lot of artwork from the house of the mouse, among them a larger collection of colour scripts from Toy Story 3 than was had been available in the past.

and 2 more links that have been around for a while but a lot of people don’t know about.

The Pixar blog
http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/

Upcoming Pixar
http://pixarplanet.com/blog/

oops I was about to forget a great resources if you intend to do some research on old Disney short films
The encyclopedia of Disney Animation shorts. A great website if you want to track a Disney director or artist.
http://www.disneyshorts.org/sitemap.html

By the way, does anyone know who was the main character designer on Jungle Book, Sword in the stone, 101 dalmatians, Robin Hood and other features sharing the same angular look? With my colleague Karim we are not able to agree on this. I am aware Milt Kahl reluctantly became character designer but I am pretty sure he was only drawing in that very characteristicstyle. For some reason Ken Anderson keeps coming back to me but I can’t find any information about it. Any idea?

Related post:
Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream

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How much do they earn?

Posted on August 21, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Business of animation

Ever wondered how much other people in the industry earn?

VFX Soldier collected wage information at various VFX, animation and games companies in the USA and organised the data in a very informative spreadsheet.

VFX soldier wages spreadsheet

Bobby Beck posted an interesting article on his blog regarding a new trend in the industry, despite the growing success of animated features.

http://bobbyboom.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

Related post:
TAG wage survey

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Edinburgh Fringe festival

Posted on August 19, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio

For my coworker and environment artist extraordinaire John’s birthday, we went to the Edinburgh Fringe festival this week end. The town is soo pretty that I will have to come back and do more architectural drawing.

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MunQi

Posted on August 18, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

My friend and now Pixar animator Jude Brownbill was one of the two animators who animated that really wacky and fun pilot for London based animation studio BlueZoo.

Looking at the recent success of “Despicable Me”, investors should get really excited by that trailer!

Check it out!
http://www.vimeo.com/14088312

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Animator Roundtable part II

Posted on August 18, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation


It is now out! …. I just have to warn you that it is a bit shorter than the previous one :-(

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Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream

Posted on August 16, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Painting

If you lost track of what is happening on the Chiustream, here is something you shouldn’t miss!

“Sketchtravel” co-creator, Totoro forest project co-initiator, Toy Story visual development artist Daisuke Tsutsumi (Dice) was very recently interviewed by Bobby Chiu on the Chiustream.

Dice is an incredible artist and I was amazed to hear that he also spend a lot of his free time painting and drawing from life.

With Sharon Calahan, Bill Cone and the other “Early bird painters” they usually wake up around 5am to meet around 7 and go painting in the country side for a couple of hours before going to work.

Just as a reminder, Bobby Chiu also spend 2 to 4 hours every morning on very specific exercises in order to develop his skills.

As a bit of trivia, we learn that Dice is married to Ohayo miyazaki’s niece which he met when they were 6 years old.

You might need to register to watch the video but you will also have access to Peter deSeve, Aaron Hartline and other top artist’s interviews.

By the way, I just came back from the Edinburgh Fringe festival in Scotland and did a bunch of sketches which I will post very soon. I still haven’t had time to learn watercolour so don’t expect anything too fancy yet.

Related post:
Light and colours

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BAFTA Young game designers

Posted on August 11, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Video Games

My buddies game designer Gary Napper and concept artist Burt Ross got recently interviewed about the game industry and their role in the game development process. Check that out, you will see some of the earlier concept from “Spare parts” and Ross  look really sexy in that familiar Tshirt ;-)

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Back from California

Posted on August 9, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio

With my hero Mike

I just came back from California and I am completely jet-lagged ;-)

This is the second time I visit San Francisco and Los Angeles but having been invited to visit some of my favourite animation studios made the trip much more special.

I had decided to focus mainly on my sketching skills this time and try to apply what I learnt during the past seven month. My knowledge in anatomy and proportion combined to 7  month of intense life drawing practice helped me to make the most of those very long journey on bus and subway. The Santa Monica/Downtown LA journey was probably the most fruitful since people tend to quickly fall asleep and not pay attention to that one guy with dark glasses and hat screwed on his head, frenetically moving a pen on a tiny notepad, in a corner, at the back of the bus ;-)

If I lived in LA, I think I would take the bus everyday, the passenger always presented amazing features to capture and every ethnicity and age range was on display.

Here are some drawings and pictures from my trip. I had brought some watercolours but eventually decided against using them. I didn’t want to ruin the sketches with poorly chosen colours. I need more experience with those however….. the reason why some of the sketches don’t have any shading,  is because  I still intend to colour them at some stage :-) I just found a great video tutorial with Jason Seiler that could prove useful. Jason Seiler/Schoolism

Forgive the poor line work, I was using a cheap Bic cristal and those don’t allow much thick and thinness. I had in mind to buy Glen Villpu’s favourite Namiki Falcon fountain pen but at $180 a pop at Flax, I eventually decided against it. It is only $120 online. Still very expensive for a fountain pen but the nib is really really flexible.

Here we go, that’s it. Enjoy

[ps] if you don’t know Matt Jones, check out his work, he has some really nice sketches on his blog
http://mattjonezanimation.blogspot.com/

Related post:
Sketchcrawl material

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Pixar motion blur

Posted on August 3, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Animation

Historically there are only two types of motion blur, 2d and 3d. The 2d one is post processed and the  3d one is done at rendertime. 3d motion blur is much more accurate but takes a lot of time to render.

Two years ago, Doug Sweetland gave a talk at Annecy where he explained how much effort it took to achieve a good looking motion blur and I would like to share with you some screenshots I took a while ago.


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Nicolas Marlet workshop!!!

Posted on August 3, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Character design

Character Design blogpost just announced a new training and workshop with Dreamworks Character Designer Nicolas Marlet, check this out

http://characterdesign.blogspot.com/2010/08/who-wants-to-watch-nicolas-marlet.html

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Megamind Comic-Con trailer

Posted on August 3, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

After visiting the San Francisco branch of Dreamworks yesterday and getting to see a bit more of the story, I am getting very excited about Dreamworks next feature “Megamind”.

The movie is only coming out in November but they just released some new footage for the San Diego Comic-Convention.

Watching that trailer still won’t reveal the entire plot but at least you will get introduced to a new character that will take a very important part in the movie. Check this out

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Available for work

Posted on July 22, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation, Portfolio

I am reaching the end of my contract at EA Brightlight and “Spare parts” is looking great, getting an amazing response from the press. I have been putting a lot of hours into the cutscenes this week and with the sound, compositing and full environment they will look amazing. At 800 MS points or $10 on PSN, I think you should buy the game for the cutscenes alone!! ;-)

My current contract is finishing mid Septembre and I have a one month notice so if you know a company doing cartoony games, TV series or even animated feature and looking for an animator with generalist skills in Maya, direct them to my showreels and portfolio section!

I am flying to LA and San Francisco on saturday but will be back the second week of August.

Thank you!

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Christopher Meledandri interview

Posted on July 22, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Business of animation

I just found that very interesting interview of “Despicable Me” (DM)’s producer Christopher Meledandri. Some very familiar names popped up! Alright we knew that co-director Pierre Coffin was “Pat and Stan” creator but did you know that the original idea was from Sergio Pablos? Did you know that the character design had been handled by no less than Ratatouille character designer Carter Goodrich??? and yes “Lorax”, an other Dr Seuss book adapted for cinema release has finally been announced.

Check this out

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=67456

The movie has finally reached $145M after only 2 weeks by the way. No bad when you take in consideration that it is fighting for screens with Shrek 4 and Toy Story 3.

Related posts:
“Despicable me” triumph

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“Spare parts” interview

Posted on July 22, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Video Games

Our game designer Gary Napper just came back from San Francisco where he presented our game “Spare parts” to reporters. Want to find out what “Spare Parts” is about?

The robots at the bottom in the background are performing some of my “idle animations” by the way.

Oh there is also an other video with more gameplay on Gaming Truth
YouTube Preview Image

Related posts:
“Spare parts” WIP showreel
EA “Spare parts” E3 teaser

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“Monstre à Paris” short video clip

Posted on July 16, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation

Ah ah! I just found a very short clip from “Monstre à Paris” on Zalex’s lighting showreel! ;-)

This is Vanessa Paradis’ character singing.

Related posts:
Monstre again

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