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Kaeloo

Posted on August 30, 2010 
Filed Under Animation | 2 Comments

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

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 ;-)

a bit more reading and behind the scenes here:

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

Looking at the links he is featuring on his blog I understand immediately why his work looks so appealing to me, I have the same influences!

http://remichapotot.blogspot.com/

And here the Vimeo version of his graduate shortfilm

abAutorig Part II and III, Pyro tutorial

Posted on August 29, 2010 
Filed Under Education | 5 Comments

[I am adding part 1 in here to centralize the 3 parts]

This is Part II, IIIa and IIIb.

Tutorial Part II

Part IIIa

Part IIIb

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

Composition 101

Posted on August 26, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Education | Leave a Comment

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

iAnimate, Jason Ryan interview

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

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?

great Disney links

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

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

How much do they earn?

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

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

Edinburgh Fringe festival

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

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.

MunQi

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

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!

Animator Roundtable part II

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


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

Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream

Posted on August 16, 2010 
Filed Under Painting | 1 Comment

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. This makes a lot of sense as there is no other way to keep improving.

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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