Snowman walk
Posted on December 17, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Drawings | 9 Comments
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
Filed Under Animation | Leave a Comment
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
Dr. Seuss’ Lorax trailer 2
Posted on December 7, 2011
Filed Under Animation | 1 Comment
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
Filed Under Animation | 2 Comments
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
Filed Under Animation, Character design | Leave a Comment
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
“This is what you need” v541
Posted on November 28, 2011
Filed Under Animation | Leave a Comment
This is where I am as of tonight, I refined some areas, constraints and other fun business are still untouched for now. Four days left before the next crit. I just added a background for some people so they can understand the story a bit better, hopefully ;-)
Eye darts – video reference
Posted on November 27, 2011
Filed Under Acting, Animation, Education | Leave a Comment
I was watching a documentary on the Sherman brothers and found that really good eye dart video reference with two actors only few inches away from each others. It is striking how much the actress’s eyes move around when she is looking successively at the left and right eyes then at the mouth. Also pay attention to the timing of the darts, it is between one and two frames and the eye lid seems to be delayed by one frame at time.
Related posts:
Kids take – video reference
Take – video reference
“This is what you need” v.460
Posted on November 25, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Education | Leave a Comment
After Aaron Hartline ripped my shot last week I wasn’t too sure what to think anymore. It is very refreshing to hear someone showing you a very different perspective on your shot but it can also be a traumatizing experience if it is summed up by “you have some nice motion here but the story makes no sense“. Aaron suggested that I would change the story entirely as Palapatine “doesn’t have that voice” and Anakin “is blond and not a delivery boy“.
I guess it is like contemporary art, some people are more receptive than others. Some people prefer Picasso’s more figurative paintings when others prefer his cubist period. Some people prefer Jim Carrey’s humour to Larry David’s, I guess it is a question of taste.
Victor Navone didn’t have a problem with it so I will keep pushing and finish the shot with the original idea. Once I have the cloth simulation and the rest of the environment, it should make more sense for the wider audience.
So, here is where I am. A mess! ;-) The rig I am using (very old but really fast Bishop rig) doesn’t have FK/IK Snap or any fancy IK hands space switching so I am supposed to set up a lot of constraints and I am not to willing to go into that Victor is completely happy with the body animation. I was hoping to finish that shot WAY earlier than that but with only one review per week, changes can impact the completion of the shots in a dramatic manner and this is without counting the changes that were finally reverted to the original blocking and video reference and I have had several like this. Lesson learnt, show your video reference at every review! I am actually thinking of putting my video ref on a Nurbs plane actually. This way we can compare immediately the two instead of having to switch all the time which is not very easy with the shot review software we are using at AnimC.
Here is what I have today, it is not really at a presentable state but since I haven’t posted anything for the past 4 or 5 weeks, I felt it was necessary to finally post something. I am not going to pretend I have a feature animation workflow completely nailed, especially with that kind of rig. Also, let’s remember that this is a 17 seconds sequence with one long full body shot, two characters interacting and plenty of constraints. A lot of fun ;-)
As you will notice, I have also done a lip sync pass as it is pretty unlikely Victor will ask for dramatic changes and it makes the shot a bit more presentable. Also… I love lip sync and close ups.
I am posting a Youtube version as it was quicker than Vimeo Vimeo version posted but the sound seems to be slightly offset despite uploading a huge uncompressed version.
Related posts:
This is what you need video ref 02 and blocking
“This is what you need”, planning
“This is what you need’, gathering references
Lip sync observations
Kaeloo. Let’s play Scaredy Cat
Posted on November 21, 2011
Filed Under Animation | 2 Comments
I am currently in L.A. attending the incredible CTN Convention and it is a blast! I would recommend everyone to attend next year as it is a crazy event for people interested in Animated Features.
I got to meet and talk to so many exceptional people for the past two days. Among them was a great workshop with Corpse Bride character designer Carlos Grangel and tomorrow an other workshop with Sergio Pablos. I will probably write a full report in the next few weeks with pictures.
In the meantime, nothing to do with CTN but it is always a good time to post some French wacky animation. Check out that crazy episode from Cube creative/Blue spirit’s Kaeloo.
Related posts:
Kaeloo
Pixar “Brave” November trailer
Posted on November 16, 2011
Filed Under Animation | Leave a Comment
As announced few days ago, a new trailer just came out. That one is not a teaser but a proper trailer for Pixar forthcoming feature “Brave”. The movie, directed by “The Incredibles” Story supervisor and “One Man’s band” director, Mark Andrews, is set to be released June 22th 2012 in the US and around August in the UK.
It is good to finally see those character designs in motion. The three Lords have so much character, it is great! We still haven’t seen the Wise woman though, I can’t wait!
The accent is a bit strange I am finding, some of the characters seem more Irish I feel. Oh well.
If you want to see some high resolution pictures, check out my latest “Brave” post below.
Pixar “Brave” new pictures before trailer release
Related posts:
Low polygon modeling
Pixar “Brave” D23 concept art part 2
Pixar “Brave” D23 concept art part 1
“Brave” Concept art and teaser
Pixar “Brave” new pictures before trailer release
Posted on November 14, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Character design | 1 Comment
A new “Brave” trailer should be hitting the theatres and our computer screens tomorrow. In the meantime, here is a series of shots from the movie.
Hit the following links for higher resolution pictures:
via Empire online
Via Bleeding cool
On a side note, I wasn’t too far off with my modeling and the hair on Lord Macintosh is looking really fun.
Related posts:
Low polygon modeling
Pixar “Brave” D23 concept art part 2
Pixar “Brave” D23 concept art part 1
“Brave” Concept art and teaser
Aaron Hartline Chiustream
Posted on November 4, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Education | 2 Comments
I mentioned that great interview with Pixar animator Aaron Hartline a while back but loads of people seem to have missed it.
Make sure you watch it this time as it is really good.
Aaron was a Blue Sky senior animator until he finally made his dream true after years of effort and attempts despite many hurdles. A great lesson on persistence.
You might as well be interested in watching the following interview I just found:
Pencil Kings recently spoke with Art Directors, Animation Supervisors, Layout Designers, etc. from the most notable studios in the world. Pixar, Walt Disney, Sony Imageworks and Blue Sky Studios were all represented and some of their top artists provide insight and share their story on what it took to reach the top of their profession.
http://www.pencilkings.com/2011/07/17/how-to-become-a-professional-artist/
Aaron is currently a tutor at Animation Collaborative.
Related post:
CTN Animators tool of the trade
Aaron Hartline “Vlad”
Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream
Sketchtravel shortfilm
Posted on October 29, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Painting | 1 Comment
Dice Tsutsumi is a machine!!!! Look at the pretty cool Sketchtravel short film he created while working full time and preparing for the Sketchtravel auction event.
I was able to see some real size reproductions of the pages at Pixar few days ago and it looks great. That Miyazaki’s double spread is pretty sweet I must say…
I have been told the book is sold out in France and I am not sure when it will arrive in the US and other countries. Who was lucky and already bought one?
Here is some further discussion and infos on the Cartoon Brew blog.
Cartoon Brew Sketchtravel film
Related posts:
Sketchtravel – Frederic Back
Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiu-stream
Lights and colours
Dr Seuss’ “Lorax” first trailer is out
Posted on October 27, 2011
Filed Under Animation | 1 Comment
Interesting, the first Illumination’s “Lorax” trailer finally came out. You will probably find some visual similarities with “Horton hears a Who” as “Lorax” is also based on Dr Seuss’ illustrated books and Maurice Nobel’s interpretation in that 1972 short film.
Now “Lorax” seems to have a more lighted tone that the book and short film but it definitely looks much more serious than also Mac Guff produced “Despicable Me”. I hope it gets a good reception by the public. As noted by Sergio Pablos in that recent “Frame by Frame” interview, comedies are much safer to market and sell to investors and the wider audience.
Illumination is taking a gamble by adapting the long time seen controversial Lorax book to the screen, let’s see if the aura created by Despicable Me and soon coming Despicable Me 2 will help to propel “Lorax” and Mac Guff to the level of an other studio known to regularly take similar gambles, namely Pixar, and establishes Mac Guff as a new solid player in that feature animation top 5.
And here is the Maurice Noble’s art directed short film if you haven’t seen it yet.
Related posts:
Sergio Pablos – Frame by Frame interview
Despicable Me triumph
Mac Guff tour
Aardman “Pythagasaurus”
Posted on October 26, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Character design | Leave a Comment
Check out that great and probably new Aardman CG shortfilm, it is so funny! Great visuals, funny quirky dialogues and sounds (cavemen with zippers, who would have thought!). I hope they do more like that one.
“Outside a volcano has happened!”
This reminds me a bit of an old but great shorfilm by an other British studio “Studio AKA”, for the Natwest campaign.
I can’t stand Flash websites…. how am I supposed to embed anything?
Here is a link then… very sexy…:
Related posts:
Studio AKA keyword search
My Maya settings and preferences
Posted on October 24, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Education | 2 Comments
Out of the box, Maya is probably the most animation unfriendly software ever so every animators have their own set of scripts and hotkeys to palliate for Maya shortcomings and speed up their workflow.
To be fair, I don’t use many but the following ones are true “life saviours”. Some of them are shelf script, others are triggered by Hotkeys.
my Animation Shelf
I haven’t cleaned up my Maya animation shelf for a while, the two first buttons were customized windows layout but I don’t use them anymore. LLuis Lobera’s make button, Justin Barrett’s Tween Machine, Zoomerate and Xsheet are the ones I mostly use. Michael Comet’s Auto-tangent is now a Hotkey as follow (bare in mind this is with my french keyboard, I use A on english keyboards).
Auto tangents and other scripts triggered by Hotkeys
As I have been travelling a lot lately, I can only carry a 17 inch equipped laptop with me so full screen viewport and Hotkeys are a must.
Here is my current full screen viewport when in Blocking and first pass spline, I would normally create an other set of selection buttons for the eyes and facial controls when polishing. As you can see I don’t use any GUI but instead I toggle the Nurbs controls (avars/movers) with a hotkey (alt+c)
Full screen viewport
This is the script I use for Full screen switching by the way, the Maya built in hotkey (CTRL+spacebar) has been buggy on all the Maya versions I have used so far. The Hotkey is alt + z on french keyboard, alt + w on english keyboard.
Full screen script
This is my working window layout on a 17 inch screen in 1440×900 (yep it is a cheap laptop, no HD res here ;-)). Camera view on the top left, Graph editor top right and perspective view underneath. The TweenMachine window is taking a bit more space than required but hopefully Justin will soon post a leaner version or maybe Autodesk will pay Justin to integrate his script to the next version of Maya ;-) The graph editor channels column is also taking more space than necessary, Maya doesn’t allow dragging the divider further (antiquated Unix legacy….).
Right, that’s all I have time for today, I will add a Hotkey description in few days.
update with some of my hotkeys
Related posts:
Maya, Mel scripts for animation
Wacom settings
Animation hotkeys
Spare parts cute designs
Posted on October 15, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Character design, EA | Leave a Comment
My ex-coworker Ross Burt posted some of the character designs he created for Spare Parts.
The cute robots weren’t selected for the final game but I really loved them. We did model one of them and I got lucky to animate the green one with spray can nozzle head on the far right. Those who know me will rightaway understand why I fell in love with that little fellow ;-)
Spare Parts Heroes and Villains
Related posts:
BAFTA Young game designers
EA (category)
“Paper fox”
Posted on October 12, 2011
Filed Under Animation | Leave a Comment
Paper fox
Check out that cool project from one of my australian subscribers, Jeremy Kool. Jeremy is looking for funding for “Paper fox”, an interactive short film with a very non CG look.
You can also follow “Paper fox” on Jeremy’s blog
http://thepaperfox.blogspot.com/
This is looking really nice. There has been several project in that style lately but I can’t get enough of it.
Also check out that fun TV show teaser that emerged on the internet half a year ago. A really nice show in a similar origami/cut out style with a pop-out twist: “Quick Quack Duck”
“This is what you need”, blocking
Posted on October 10, 2011
Filed Under Animation, Education | 1 Comment
Here is the blocking for my “This is what you need” shot. I also shot some new video reference footage for Anakin as the previous video wasn’t very strong or interesting.
I am incorporating Blender more and more to my workflow as it has some amazing tools really suited to the Animation pipeline. Here I am able to write some notes on the video reference to single out some elements of interest. Other people like Jeff Gabor would edit their video reference in Premiere but I find it simpler and cheaper to use the Grease Pencil keys in Blender’s Dope Sheet editor.
New video reference, no sound (yep I am a cartoon but you knew that already):
Blocking:
The box at the beginning is a placeholder for the boxed Darth Vader outfit. I might add 12 frames at the very beginning it just so the first cut doesn’t come so early. I ran out of time and didn’t manage to fully flesh out Anakin or even the facial poses but with the help of the video reference, I think we know exactly what I am aiming for.
Related posts:
“This is what you need”, planning
“This is what you need’, gathering references
Blender
Jeff Gabor webcast recording online
Sergio Pablos – Frame by frame interview
Posted on October 6, 2011
Filed Under Animation | 1 Comment
Christian Dan Bejarano from the great “Arte y Animacion” blog just informed me about a recent 11 minutes interview they recorded with Sergio Pablos.
It is a very refreshing interview where Sergio explains what triggered his leaving from Disney. He talks about how animation is perceived in Spain vs the USA and how much of a challenge it can be to set up your own studio but as long as you take action, show persistence and learn from your mistakes, you should be able to reach your goals and Sergio Pablos with his involvement in Despicable Me, Titeuf, Rio and other secret projects is definitely proving this.
He also mentions the kind of movies he would really like to make, using the Iron Giant and Ratatouille as examples, but explains that comedies are probably the easiest stories to market and sell. The failure of the beautiful Framestore feature “The Tales of Despereaux” could prove him right actually.
Right, go on, why don’t you listen to the full interview now? It is only 11 minutes but it is packed with great insights by a guy who has been involved with many of the recent successes of the past several years from Tarzan, to Rio…
While we are at it, here is a link to a previous interview with Sergio Pablos on the Character Design Blogspot http://sergio-pablos-interview.blogspot.com/
Hables espanol? I do!
If some of you also speak spanish, you are in for a treat. Arte y animacion also recorded some podcasts with other talented spaniards currently officiating at Disney and Dreamworks, here are few links for you:
Abraham Meneu modelador en Dreamworks
Daniel Peixe Disney Animator. Daniel is also tutoring at AnimatedBuzz by the way. The website seems to be in shambles right now but here is the link anyway http://www.animatedbuzz.com/
via: Arte y animacion
Related post:
Pocoyo creator interview
Jeff Gabor webcast recording is online
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