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Upgraded to WordPress 2.6

Posted on July 22, 2008 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment

After few days of struggle with Media Temple, I finally managed to update my blog to WordPress 2.6.

For the past few month my blog suffered from invisible HTML injections advertising Viagra and other stuff and I couldn't upload any pictures anymore.

The update went fairly smoothly. My category names were gone but luckily they were still existent with an invisible name in the database. I had an old page still open and I could give update the names.

I am not too excited about the way the pictures are handled and I haven't been able to upload any so far.

Anyway everything seems to be find and I should be able to embed videos now. 

 

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going offline

Posted on May 6, 2008 
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Sorry for the lack of posts those days. I am still alive but I have decided to dedicate all my free time to my short film for the next 7 weeks. Kevin is a great mentor and it would be a shame to screw up this term again and not make the most of his dedication to help us make great short films.
You can still catch me in London this Week End or Annecy next month.

Olive

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Leaving home

Posted on March 21, 2008 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

Here is a funny clip a friend found on Youtube. I remember an AM student using it for his class 4 assignment and I am a bit disapointed as the acting was very similar. This is why I would recommend people to get audio clips where the acting can be interpreted in different ways
lvhm.jpg

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my toys

Posted on March 8, 2008 
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a lot of people at work have toys on their desks here is a pictures of mine! Carla has probably the best ones but I don’t have a picture yet. Mine are all sorts of toys collected over the years. They all keep me inspired for different reasons.

The Pixar pot is a freebie from the Annecy festival last year, there is an african sculpture at the back which comes …. from Africa ;-) The muppet show and Aardman characters are coming from Forbidden Planet in London, Shadow is a designer toy from Nathan Jurevinius’s “Scary girl”, it comes from Playground in Soho, the Zombie robot is from a comics shop in Annecy, the Smurfs are a new addition I just bought in a comic shop in Bayonne. I just got Wario from a collegue at work who has an online shop (I can’t remember the url…) and there are few more toys which I bought from Forbidden Planet just for the proportions, or because the anatomy is well defined or the way they have sculputed the hair or the creases on the clothing.

toiz.jpg

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College isn’t worth a dime

Posted on March 4, 2008 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 1 Comment

Not related to animation today.

After my experience with Animation Mentor this is something I have been thinking about for a while and is being relayed here by financial reporter James Altucher on an interesting interview with Farnoosh Torabi for TheStreet.com
alt.jpg

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Awesome!

Posted on February 26, 2008 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 3 Comments

I love this new Verizon advert featuring Transformers Director Michael Bay.
It’s like a cartoon, incredible timing, pacing, staging, composition, acting. I could loop it for hours !!!

Awesome ;-)

awsm.jpg

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Movie of the week

Posted on December 3, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 1 Comment

Lately the topic came back few time. Which movie should we see this week. Well if you are interested in acting, go and watch “American gangster”. I don’t think there is anything else worth mentioning at the moment ;-)

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The end of Feature Animation

Posted on October 23, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 11 Comments

I might come back to this post and elaborate a bit in the next few days but I was reading some stats on Boxofficemojo.com the other day and started to think that we might be on our way to a down market in the Feature Animation industry.

Let me give you some figures:
Sony “Surf’s Up” – Domestic total $59million, Foreign $59m
Disney “Ratatouille” – Domestic total $205m, Foreign $272m
Dreamworks “Shrek” – Domestic total $321m, Foreign $793m
Clear winner Dreamworks!

Everytime I hear Brad Bird screaming “Story, story, story!” I believe he knows what he is talking about but without the heavy Disney marketing and the all time low dollar I am sure the movie would have tanked! Despite the critics unanimously calling Ratatouille, the best Pixar, I must admit that I got bored watching it and that s probably what the word of mouth was, boring. Just like me I think that people care more about entertainment than Story or how else do you explain Shrek3 results?

Surf’s UP… Has anyone seen the movie? okay the story was a bit predictable but I still found it very entertaining. Animation was great, rendering was great, character design was great so how do you explain the $120m? The penguins? People didn’t want to see an other penguin story? I don’t think so. “Surf’s UP”, according to Rotten Tomatoes is this week’s number one rental at $8 million.

If it wasn’t for Shrek endless success could we call this the end of Feature animation and the rise of the DVD market?

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still alive

Posted on October 3, 2007 
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just a quick post to say that I am still alive. I am getting used to my new life in the country side. I still haven’t found a proper gym and started to put on weight….. nooooo gooooodddd ;-) Working at Rare is awesome and everyone is fantastic. I haven’t done any personal work for the past few weeks but once my computer is setup I hope to be polishing my showreel and do some new animation.

By the way I applied to the new training setup by Stephen Gregory from the Splinedoctors but didn’t make this term. http://splinedoctors.com/drstepheng/Tutor/home.html he also posted his Pixar showreel here http://drstepheng.splinedoctors.com/animation.html

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Moving house

Posted on September 10, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 1 Comment

timelapsesept07.jpgToday was my last day at my current job which meant moving house too.

It would have been much better if I started recording it from the begining but I only thought about doing this at 5am. Too bad you would have been able to see the bed and furnitures flying around and alos notice a terrible slow down around 10 am ;-)

Memorable moments are when my girlfriend took pity and decided to get some breakfast from Mac Donald but a manager interrupted me in the middle asking why half of the Internet Café was closed? I started laughing since I wasn’t in duty anymore for the past 9 hours. She wasn’t very happy ;-) An other one is when I decided to get changed but the best is probably when I found a fully equipped mother board, a computer case and decided to build a PC ;-) what was I thinking!!!!

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Phone number back

Posted on September 6, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 3 Comments

[edit] I am finally back on my old number: 0788 6383 170

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Annecy 2007

Posted on June 17, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 5 Comments

Few pics from Annecy. More coming soon.

screen.jpg

Main theatre but not the most comfortable. The festival reminded me why I prefer to watch DVDs from the comfort of my home, luckily some of the screenings took place at the multiplex cinema which is equipped with Sofa sized seats.

docg.JPG
Two AM students, two AM graduates and Doctor G. Julio Lorenzo, Gustavo Calle, Olivier Ladeuix and Richie Prado.
canal.jpg

The canal that leads to the Annecy Lac

screen02.jpg

Main screen, behind us.

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Hold you breath!

Posted on April 28, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment

sorry for the lack of post but don’t worry, everything is fine. I am still in the writing process of my script and I have decided not to leak anything before I am happy about the story, and the animatic is well underway.

Maybe I am being paranoid but I wouldn’t want to see a similar short coming out few month before my graduation. I have huge plans for it so the only thing I am gonna say is that it is gonna be really cartoony and tell the misfortune of a funny looking vampire.

I might upload some concept art next week. Yes I am gonna model and rig my own character with the help of Alfonso.

In the meantime here are some great shorts whose directors I was lucky enough to meet at the Auch festival or in London/

chahut.jpg

Chahut by  Gilles Cuvelier click on “Voir le Film” then “Haut debit” to get the better quality stream.

out.jpg

Out from Supinfocom

I have few more things in my sleeve but I have to do some clay modelling tonight

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I am still alive!

Posted on April 15, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 3 Comments

sorry for the lack of posts lately but I had to come up with 5 stories for my short film and preparing my trip to the Auch Animation festival so was pretty busy. Don’t worry I will post some stuff very soon

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This is where I reside!

Posted on April 4, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment

I did travel a fair bit in the past and thought that it would be a cool idea to map all those places. The furthest I went was probably North America on holidays and the South West of Africa where I lived for 2 years.

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How about a pickle?

Posted on March 15, 2007 
Filed Under Animation Mentor, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment

am_winter.jpg
Animation mentor winter 2007 showreel is finally out! Congratulation to all my fellow students who made it. some truely inspiring work here.

The highlights would be in no particular order Jure Prek, Brandon Beckstead, Dan “the Dan” Barker, Mike Stern, Eric Lutha, Deter Brown, Peter Devlin and my ex classmates Ales Mav, Maciek Gliwa, Kickboxer Larisa Kotnik ;-)

Some of them have already found employment in big studios and that’s well deserved!

amshot.jpg

AM Rachel Ito did an amazing work on lighting some of the best shots.

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Compositing and render passes

Posted on March 4, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | 2 Comments

I was talking to my friend Mental Ray beta tester Jamie Cardoso lately, and realised that he was rendering his visualisations in single passes.

People who are not involved in rendering might not see the point but you need to think that if it takes you 5 hours to do a render and you realise that the Global illumination is too strong or the colours are too bright then you will have to do few more 5 hours renders until you get it right.

Ok you can always render a small area of your visualisation but if it is not you but the client who is not happy about the render and he needs to see the 8 pictures you have been asked to do every time you submit stuff for approval, then you are in real trouble.

Max and Combustion offer a great way to work in passes but you need to learn combustion and that can be really daunting task. Combustion to me is a bit like the Zbrush of compositing. Great when you know it, horrible when you open it for the first time. Well that’s when you compare it to After Effect, Shake is just as confusing.

combustion.jpg

So what does this leaves you with? Cebas PSD Manager is only $172 and allows you to export your passes straight into Photoshop. Each pass goes into the correct transfer mode.

Unlike Combustion, working on videos would be a real pain. Now there is an other way and that one doesn’t requires any plugins. Mental Ray!

By default mental ray allows you to render passes but the problem is, how do you transfer them into photoshop? I didn’t actually read the mental ray manual since I am not too keen on that rendering engine so I looked for answers elsewhere and found them in the Max to Combustion workflow. Here is how you do it:

“The Background layer uses the Normal transfer mode

The Diffuse layer is directly above the Background layer, it is composited using the Normal transfer mode.

The Specular layer is composited using the Add transfer mode. The Self-Illumination, Refraction, and Reflection render element layers are also composited using the Add transfer mode.

The Shadow layer is composited above the Specular layer to dim color in the shadowed areas. By default, the Shadow layer uses Normal transfer mode because its alpha channel controls how much the black and white shadows dim the Specular and Diffuse layers beneath it in the stacking order.

For the composite to match the 3ds Max scene, the Shadow layer must be below the Reflection, Refraction, and Self-Illumination layers. Otherwise, these three layers would also be dimmed.

If the composite has an Atmosphere layer, the layer appears above the Self-Illumination layer. The Atmosphere layer must be composited over all the other layers that are turned on. The Atmosphere layer uses the Normal transfer mode.

By default, the Alpha layer is turned off because it is not required, but it is very useful for compositing additional layers. The Z Depth and Blend render elements are also not required for a composite, so the layers are turned off in the composite when these elements are rendered in 3ds Max.”

Autodesk owns the copyrights of the extract above, I hope they won’t give me any problem. Come on guys I am making your softwares more popular!

The entire content is in the Combustion manual, in the last chapter called:

Combustion and 3dsmax>using render elements>Transfer modes and stacking order.

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Do you see my title here?

Posted on January 11, 2007 
Filed Under Miscellaneous | Leave a Comment

I need to blog about this. I went to get a credit card at the Natwest Earl’s court branch for a friend of mine who lives abroad and was told to ask for a specific member of staff.

When I enquired about it at the Information Desk I got told that I would need a letter to pick up a credit card.

I explained the situation very carefully and clearly and the fact that I was told to speak with a very specific member of the staff but she said the same thing: “no letter, no card”.

I don’t really have time to hang around in Banks and before heading home asked her if she was sure about it to which she replied.

“Do you see my title here?” pointing at her name tag…. It reads V. F. Customer Service Officer.

I am not too sure what kind of customer service we are talking about here but certainly not the kind of customer service I will ever want to be treated with. A person with a condescending attitude to me has got nothing to do with customer service.

Natwest Earl’s court don’t expect me to recommend you to anyone.

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Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather on TV

Posted on December 7, 2006 
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Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather will be broadcasted the 17th and 18th of December on Skyone. You can read more on skyone’s website . Don’t forget to check the very cool videos and there ‘s even a “making of” video by the MPC people. Thanks Rich for the tip

hogfather.jpg

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Seat D4

Posted on September 22, 2006 
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Autodesk was holding the Max 9 and Maya 8 roadshow yesterday at Odeon Kensington. This brought back some fun memories.

After a quick lunch with my fellow AM students, I rushed to the event. The room was already full and since I couldn’t see my friend Jamie Cardoso, I decided to take seat D4 at the front of the room.

This was the best decision I made for quite a while. Few minutes later, the ATI guy who was making a presentation of the new ATI FireGL cards started the draw for a prize.

For whatever reason, my seat D4 got choosen and I won the ATI FireGLV7200. I didn’t fully understand what it meant until I checked the documentation and realised that this card is one of the ATI top of the range graphic card.

For the kind of stuff I do in 3d, I was never really bothered with graphic cards in the past but that one will fit perfectly in my new Core 2 Duo system and it has already replaced my crappy Radeon X600.

I had decided to do a bit more anatomical modeling this term and this is just the perfect timing. 41.6GB memory bandwidth per second for Zbrush can’t hurt, can it?

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