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“Walt Stanchfield”, Don Hahn Webinar

Posted on July 22, 2009 
Filed Under Animation, Animation Mentor, Character design | 3 Comments

Animation Mentor just posted a great conversation between Disney producer Don Hahn and Bobby Beck about the life of Disney’s life drawing teacher Walt Stanchfield. Walt Stanchfield was a keen tennis player but more than anything an immense inspiration for everyone at Disney. His family also released his famous notes if you didn’t get the previous pdfs

http://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961

Check it out

Drawn to life

Drawn to life

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Animation Mentor not yet world domination

Posted on July 17, 2009 
Filed Under Animation, Animation Mentor | Leave a Comment

Animation Mentor

Animation Mentor

Few weeks ago I spoke with a friend of mine who happened to be a production manager in Paris, working on some really big features, and he didn’t know about Animation Mentor! He did recognise the AM rigs when I showed him the Animation Mentor showreel but didn’t know about the school!

Few animation students I work with in Angouleme were amazed when I told them I had been taught animation through an online school for 2 years. They had never heard about AM! Crazy isn’t it? Well it is even more crazy when you take in consideration that there was already an Italian AM alumni in the company.

Here is a good read for people who never heard about AM: Bobby Beck’s latest post on his blog!

“Animation Mentor had 51 mentors, students and alumni who worked on Ice Age 3!”

I think I will have to post the link to the AM student showcase again actually. No no that’s not because my friend Hichem’s short is on the cover ;-)

http://www.animationmentor.com/students/student-work.html

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New project “The Contender!

Posted on June 4, 2009 
Filed Under Animation, Animation Mentor, Portfolio | 7 Comments

contender

Here are some renders of my new Bishop mod. This is a new project I am gonna work on when coming back from Annecy. Yes I am a Dreamworks fan boy but there is an other reason I chose Shrek for inspiration.

Wireframes after the break
[...] Read more

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Welcome to my new blog

Posted on May 24, 2009 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Drawings, Graphic design | 5 Comments

Old and new design

Old and new design

I have finally been able to work on the design of my website.

People will probably scream when looking at the code but why would I spend 10 hours pulling my hair troubleshooting some nasty CSS when I can just do the same job in an hour using HTML?! [...] Read more

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“He has a gift” BrussHell blocking

Posted on February 26, 2009 
Filed Under Animation, Animation Mentor, Portfolio | 2 Comments

hellbish1
Here is the blocking for a shot I am working on. I didn’t get much response on the AM forum, let’s see if I can get more comments here. There will be a BrussHell kid on the right.

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Hichem Arfaoui short film

Posted on December 7, 2008 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Friends | 1 Comment

My friend Hichem just posted his short film on internet. If you haven’t seen it yet on the Animation Mentor showreel, have a look!

It’s funny and managed to get few laughs from top Pixar animators during Annecy this year.

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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

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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.
title-02.jpg

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11 seconds club

Posted on April 4, 2008 
Filed Under 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”.

11s.jpg

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601 bis, some of my classmates

Posted on April 2, 2008 
Filed Under Animation Mentor | Leave a Comment

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!
601bis.jpg

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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!

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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!!!

class-6-mug-shots.jpg

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Short film class 6, 3 weeks left

Posted on March 6, 2008 
Filed Under Animation Mentor | 1 Comment

After few weeks working like a mad man. Class6 is finally coming to an end. Unfortunately I won’t be able to finish my short on time and will have to redo class 6 but it was a blast again and for this class I was privileged to have animator extraordinaire Jason Schleifer as a mentor..

For those who don’t know, Jason is an animation superstar who started his animation career at Weta and after few years at Dreamworks working on everything that was thrown at him ;-) he is currently a supervising animator on the sequel of my favourite Dreamworks show: “Madagascar 2″ (Prince of Egypt and Eldorado are my second favourite).

He was really inspiring and having him for mentor for my short was a god send. He really helped me out in defining my character’s personality and without him I am not sure if my short would have been as strong. Obviously I am paying the consequences as well and some of the shots that were meant to last 4 seconds ended up well over 20 seconds ;-) anyway this will make my short even better and I don’t regret it at all! Instead of a 30seconds short I will end up around 2 minutes which is … perfect for festivals ;-)

caricature by the great Mark Behm

schel.jpg

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Blocking from 2d to 3d

Posted on February 18, 2008 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Tablet PC | 2 Comments

Nothing really new here. You are all subscribers to Jason Ryan’s newsletter and know his workflow very well. Personally I love it especially for broad animations or physical shots.

Here is one shot I planned using this technique with my favourite 2d digital software: TV Paint
sht14_2d.jpg

sht14_3d.jpg

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Create a slide based presentation in Quicktime pro

Posted on January 18, 2008 
Filed Under Animation Mentor | Leave a Comment

Animation Mentor just started and many class 1 students are asking how they can produce a quicktime presentation.

Here are the settings you should pay attention to

make_quicktime_01.jpg

make_quicktime_02.jpg

This is the important bit. If you want your slides to last few seconds, you should select “4 seconds per frame” or upwards. No need to copy the frames 24times to get 4 seconds like I heard some people are doing.

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Is Animation mentor expensive?

Posted on November 11, 2007 
Filed Under Animation Mentor | 5 Comments

People around me know that AM has been for me a love and hate relationship all along and unlike some other students I didn’t get caught in the “everything is awesome” bubble that wraps most people as soon as they join AM.

I did my fair bit of bashing in the past but like fine wine, the school is gradually getting better and better and that’s amazing for a school who has been in business for only few years but today I wanted to share a comment I posted on the Splinedoctors blog since I have more audience here than they will ever have ;-)
is Animation Mentor expensive?.

Well that s an interesting question that deserves to be answered.

I would be tempted to say yes but looking around, how many cheaper options do you get if you are not french, already ultra talented and selected by Les Gobelins animation school?

What else do you get for those $15,000 and ultimately, how long would it take you to pay back that money if you got this animation dream job?

Personally that money was my savings to pay the deposit for a mortgage but since I was working while doing AM I could have quickly recovered the cost of AM with my new animation job. Now I live in UK, I have no clue if this applies to other countries, the dollar is at it lowest level since 1982 I am told.

After 18 month at AM and without any animation experience previously, me and the classmates who reached the upper classes, applied for jobs where we were in competition with people who had been through 4 to 5 years of university!

Foundation course: 1 year
BA: 3 years

Some guys who applied for the same job I was applying for even had Masters or Post graduate diplomas!

Does one realise how much it cost to spend 4 years at university? Let alone the fact that people like me couldn’t move city and had to do AM on top of our full time job.

Now don’t get over excited ;-) This doesn’t mean that you just need to pay your $15000 for AM to get a job. Your mentors won’t animate your shots for you and you will still have to work realllllly hard to polish this Showreel that will get you where you always wanted to be!

Animation is hard, no matter how much you paid or what school you went to but AM gives you access to a crazy community of people who love and live for animation and if you make the most of it, you will definitely reap the rewards of it.

Animation Mentor might seem expensive at first glance, but it is very much worth it.

[update] at the moment, the Short film has been removed from the program. I am completely against the idea and I just hope they bring it back very quickly.

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1 character acting shot

Posted on August 29, 2007 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Portfolio | 1 Comment

philmon11.jpg

Do no worry, I haven’t given up on my pantomime shot yet but I still have to polish my old shots so here is one of the oldies.

That one was on the back burner for a long time since I didn’t have a clue how to tackle the animation for the towel. Maya 8.5 and Ncloth have certainly gone a long way since the first years of cloth simulation but I finally had to resort to something else after few hours of research and failure.

Wrap deformers… that s all was needed!!! no need of fancy dynamics! Thanks to Ninja Philip To for the tip.

How do you like his hat? this was a quick test in Zbrush, I really liked the idea but I am not sure it will work with Bishop very odd shaped cranium.

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Who is Jason Ryan?

Posted on August 26, 2007 
Filed Under Animation Mentor | 3 Comments

[update. Just so I don't mislead animation students, I don't use Jason Ryan's "2d to 3d workflow" anymore. Instead I do my posing straight into Maya, with preparatory sketches once in a while. The main reason being my inability to draw subtle acting shots]

jason_ryan1.jpg

Jason Ryan

Yesterday I was talking to an animator friend that had recently converted from 2d animation to 3d. For few minutes, I had been explaining to him why I was making a 2d animation of my pantomime shot before shooting it in 3d but he couldn’t understand why or where I got this idea from. “This workflow is inspired by Jason Ryan” I told him, to which he replied: “but who the * is Jason Ryan?”

Jason Ryan grew up in Ireland, worked for disney for the past 12 years, where he was supervising animator on Chicken Little (Eamonn Butler was the animation supervisor). His last film at Disney was Meet the Robinsons and probably “Enchanted” before accepting a position at Dreamworks.

Before AM I didn’t know who he was either but once in….. Jason Ryan became a regular topic amongst students, especially around class 2 and 3, when we were trying to figure out how to animate a shot. He was only a mentor for 3 classes I think but he was a great source of inspiration to his students and the followings.

There used to be a section on the Animation Mentor forum where students would discuss topics raised during the week lecture or assignment on the “My Mentor” section dedicated to their class.

This section has diseapeared now but at the time Jason Ryan was a mentor, his section grew up to 40 pages!!! 40 pages!! That should tell you how infectious his passion for animation is.

His workflow is strongly influenced by his traditional 2d animation background and I would highly suggest you to check a video he recorded for Digicel

http://www.flipbookpro.com/movies/mayabowlingdemoSTRMED.mov

basically what he does is to first rought out his animation on a Cintiq equipped computer or a Tablet PC, using a digital 2d software like PAP, Digicel or TV Paint (my favourite). The final animation is then exported as an image sequence in Maya and will be the base for the posing of the character.

jason_ryan_cintiq.jpg

This workflow is very good especially when working in production as it only takes few hours to communicate with your supervisor what you are going for. It would take much more time if you were to reach a similar level of definition in Maya.

Being quicker at this allows for more changes and experimentation.

I also like that very much to fine tune my timing. Playblasting takes few minutes, 2d animating takes much less.

Few more links:

The place for his future animation training and a quick trailer:


An interview on radiofree.com
http://movies.radiofree.com/interviews/chickenl_jason_ryan.shtml

Two videos of him at work on Chicken Little (check around 2:07):
http://movies.aol.com/movie/chicken-little/18895/video/inside-the-dvd-chicken-little/1479195

http://movies.aol.com/movie/chicken-little/18895/video/video-qanda/1423201

Ahhh this makes me want to watch Chicken Little again!

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Animatic for my short

Posted on August 12, 2007 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Drawings, Short film, Tablet PC | 5 Comments

Ok sorry about the delay but I was a bit paranoid that someone would steal my idea that I didn’t want to show it until now.

Anyway, here it is for the ones who haven’t seen it yet.

While working on the layout I realised that some areas still needed a bit more definition so back to the drawing boards.

animatic-blog-screenshot.jpg

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Summer time, character concept

Posted on April 29, 2007 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Drawings, Portfolio, Sculpture, Short film, Tablet PC | 3 Comments

As promised, here are some concept art for the design of my character Thirsty, a cartoony looking vampire. I have modeled and alpha version of him in wax already but I will probably change the proportions and use a different material. I started using a dark red wax but it is too dark and most of the detail won’t show up properly. I did try some Super Sculpey I had laying around but it was too dry and brittle. I also tried some Chavant clay but it was too sticky for my liking. I will go to Tiranti tomorrow and see what they have on offer….. not that I trust them much anymore but well let’s see.

Here are my concept art, 2 hours of brainstorming with my TabletPC and Sketchbook pro.

concept-art.jpg

And here is the unfinished alpha version of the sculpt.

sculpt.jpg

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