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3d Modeling portfolio

Posted on January 14, 2012 
Filed Under Education, Modeling, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Since animation work is pretty scarce at the moment I have decided to put all my modeling work together just so I can apply to 3d modeling positions.

Those are props for a long overdue short film, personal work, professional work and character design studies. The work was done in Maya 2009 for the most recent pieces, 3ds Max 5 for the rest.

The Pixar related models are obviously fan art as I have never worked on Ratatouille or Brave. I only did those to get a better understanding of Pixar’s character designs and rigging (articulations).

During a recent visit to French sculptor Bourdelle’s museum in Paris, I was reminded it is how the best artists learnt their art, by copying the masters. Michaelangelo was a great source of inspiration for Bourdelle, Daniel Lopez Munoz is mine.

Download the PDF version if you prefer Olivier_Ladeuix_modeling_2011.pdf or click the pictures below to zoom in.

You will probably find a timelapse video for most pieces in the “Related Posts” section at the end of the post and I would suggest their viewing to anyone wanting to learn about CG modeling.

Related posts:
Low polygon modeling
Fredericksen house part 02
Long chair modeling timelapse

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Showreel february 2011

Posted on May 22, 2011 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio | 5 Comments

I am currently working on a new showreel with two new acting shots but in the meantime, here is a showreel with my latest work.

The first shots are from Chico Chica Boumba, a TV series I worked on at 2minutes (Angouleme).
The second shot is a self directed acting shot in french as I am currently looking for work in France.
The third shot is a short extract from my short film “Summer time”.
The Robots shots are from the EA game “Spare Parts”.

And if you are interested, here are my Work in Progress

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Spare Parts Cutscene 02b progress reel

Posted on February 22, 2011 
Filed Under Animation, EA, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

And an other progress reel for Spare Parts Cutscene 02b. That sequence followed 02a during the game. The lighting is “In Game” and the shadows are baked or faked.

For that sequence I used the famous shot from Tim Burton’s “Mars Attack” and an other one from Dreamworks “Monsters vs Aliens”. (click on the thumbnail for an edited animation)

For the layout, I reused a run cycle I had done for in-game animation and quickly tweaked it so the character could come to a stop and restart. As you can see there is no offset in the cycle yet.

The idea at that stage was to convey that an entire army was getting ready for the fight and a long queue of enemy would go throught the suit-up machine. This eventually got ditched as I didn’t have time to animate all those guys reacting to what was happening in front of them. The rigs were also really really slow and I couldn’t get more than 2 of those guys in Maya at the same time.

After pitching the idea to the executive producer, he suggested that one of the characters would get his helmet the other way round to give a more comical effect. I was delighted as it meant I could have a bit more time and went a bit further by having the guy getting stuck to the machine.

The chair is missing here as Ross our concept artist was working on the final environment and I changed the colour of the tube to match the colour of the LCD screen in the previous shot. At that stage I had establish that the good guy would use a variation of blue colours and the bad guys a variation of greens, ultimately we went for purples in final.

If you pay close attention to the end of the shot, you will notice that the arms on the poor fellow have been inverted when he has his helmet the other way round. As the helmet and the arms were constrained to the same control, this was the only way I could achieve that effect. Talking about constraints, while in the air, I parented the upper body of the character to the transparent box you can see at the top to allow for the flailling legs and rotation of the main control without affecting the upper body. Originally the tube was supposed to be transparent and show that but when in game, we ran out of time to make it work.

I hope you found this interesting!

Related posts:
Spare parts

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Spare Parts Cutscene 02a progress reel

Posted on February 21, 2011 
Filed Under Animation, EA, Portfolio | 3 Comments

Some of the work I did at EA last year

Related posts:
Spare Parts Cutscene 02b progress reel
Spare parts

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“Spare parts” daily demo

Posted on January 31, 2011 
Filed Under EA, Portfolio | 2 Comments

“Spare Parts” came out last week and despite a lot of praise for the fancy graphics and ANIMATION the game didn’t get very good reviews among the hardcore game critics who weren’t too pleased to see a game renewing with the tradition with simple and fun action adventure games.

If you haven’t got an internet enabled Xbox360 or PS3 and didn’t get a chance to check out Spare Parts démo on PSN or XBLA, here is a “Gamespot Daily demo” where you will be able to get a glimpse of the actual game play, in-game music AND, for once, what EA normally hides for screenshot purposes, the fancy frontend graphics Kim created for the game.

Doesn’t that game look stunning?

Related posts:
EA category

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EA “Spare parts” is out!

Posted on January 20, 2011 
Filed Under Animation, EA, Portfolio | 3 Comments

Spare parts, the game I worked on last year at EA Brightlight is finally out on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Spare Parts is a game that renews with the tradition of fun action adventure games for all we all love.

At less than $10, downloadable on XBLA and PSN, you can’t go wrong!

Related posts:
EA category

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La fete. Done

Posted on December 29, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Animation Mentor, Portfolio | 2 Comments

Here we go, I am pretty much done with that shot. It is still in French but I added some subtitles for those who want to understand what this is about.

The audio clip came from a funny french candid camera show my friend animator extraordinaire and BYOA organiser Samy shared on Facebook.

In that clip the host was pretending to be a tattoo artist until, looking at the work he had started on their body, people realised with horror he didn’t know how to draw. Fortunately the needle was in fact a felt pen.

I really liked the audio as it couldn’t get more genuine, presented with an opportunity for a “take/gear change” and allowed for something broad without looking overanimated.

The original character was standing fairly still but I believe entertainment doesn’t come from under-animation or over-animation but instead in stylised choices situated at the edge of both. A good showreel should demonstrate understanding in broad and subtle acting. This will be my broad piece.

Link to the original video

I will leave it in playblast for now and do a full render if I do an other pass. My goal wasn’t to have the best shot ever but just to get more experience with some of the concepts I rediscovered studying “the work of the masters” few weeks ago and hopefully get a junior or even a regular animation job in a french feature animation studio.

For the technical nitty gritty, I used my world orient FK spine again, world orient head and arms. I really like that workflow as it allows me to work in a layered method and keep adding levels of detail even when in polish. For my next close up shots I will be using an IK spine instead but I am still unsure how Bishop handles that.

For the nose I did something a bit fancy that I think is participating to make the face look more organic. In real life, if you observe people talking you will notice that the tip of their nose, nostrils and cheeks keep moving up and down following the opening and closing of the mouth.

Bishop has cheeks controls but with my custom nose, moving the nose control up and down wouldn’t have looked realistic. The skin of the face doesn’t just move up and down shifting the nose, it actually slides over its cartilage and the skull, causing a stretch of the soft parts of the head. (the ears also move actually)

Instead, I created a custom blend shape where the side and lower part of the nose came down simulating the pull of the skin according to the opening of the mouth. The effect is very subtle right now and I would have liked to push it further but after breaking the rig several time and using up few evenings with technical things I think this will do for that shot, time to move on, I think it is a nice close up shot with very stylised facial animation.

Related posts:
Lip sync observations
La fête – polish pass
Norman FK world aligned spine
World orient head and shoulders

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“Can you sing” first shot polished

Posted on December 4, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio | 4 Comments


There is probably one frame of overshoot missing for the tip of the index and possibly a need of overlap for the other fingers but the next shots will be much harder to polish so let’s call that one DONE!

The lighting is temporary, I am now using Mental ray and this is foreign territory for me. A lot of testing and research will be necessary.

The Area light simulating the sky has been switched to a direct light to get a more realistic look but causing the loss of the soft shadows. I don’t know how to use depth map shadows in Mental ray yet. I will also try to frame the skeleton’s shadow a bit better and brighten it in the next pass. It would also be nice to get the guy’s hand shadow come into screen before the actual hand to prepare the audience for what is coming next.

Ah, I havent used any global illumination or occlusion yet, this requires much more testing than I have time for at the moment, my priority is to finish the animation before Xmas and have an amazing showreel for january 1st.

Regarding the materials. I am using a quickly customised misss_fast_sskin for the guy’s hand. It works fine for that shot but not for the next ones. I have in mind something similar to what they did on “Tangled” (gorgeous movie) or what Malcon Pierce used on his AM short film.

A tweaked leather procedural material has been applied as a bump map to the skeleton to give the feeling of a weathered material, this only shows in Full HD. I will probably need to add some 2d textures to create more dirt on the lower part of the skeleton unless I could use a procedural gradient, is that possible?

For the cinematography, I am wondering if I will use a cross fade at the begining then use a slowly focusing camera or maybe a slight pan, truck in…. we will see.

Ah ah!!! I was about to forget! I have in mind to have a shredded piece of cloth around the shoulder of the skeleton, some sort of bright blue hawaian shirt but I am not too sure how to go about it yet. A cloth simulation and a shredded looking opacity map could do the trick but I don’t know how Mental Ray handles opacity map with Depth map shadows.

[update]I am back to raytraced shadows and the cloth simulation was much easier than I thought :-)

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Lost in translation (layout refined)

Posted on October 26, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio | 2 Comments

Here is a new layout pass with few camera changes and animation tweaks so the story is a bit clearer

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Chico Chica Boumba

Posted on October 12, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio | 4 Comments

It is really annoying when for NDA reason your only showreel is a very old one that doesn’t reflect your current skills but it is even more annoying when you realise that you kept sending your old showreel despite the NDA being lifted month ago!

A year ago, I got to work on a really exciting pilot for a french TV series with a bunch of seriously talented artists. Chico Chica Boumba is a 52×3’30mins produced by Angouleme based studio “2minutes” and directed by “Intervalists” Cédric Babouche.

Working on that pilot was a bit of a shock at first, with all those squash and stretch, smeared frames, the style of animation was radically different from anything I had done before and the pace was so much faster but having some very experienced french TV animators working with me made the experience a lot easier. The show is very funny, the songs and voice over very catchy but more than anything it has that french visual flair I was hoping to be part of one day.

Without further due here is the pilot for Chico Chica Boumba, sorry I only have the french version. There has been a bit of editing on my shots and I will post the original ones later on.

Ah by the way, the first season is in full production and I am back in Angouleme to finish it.

Related post:
Back from Angouleme
Chico Chica Boumba teaser

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“Listen Philbin”

Posted on September 18, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Animation Mentor, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

While polishing the spine of Bishop in that shot I realised that I had completely lost the original acting idea and I would probably be better off restarting from scratch but I still think it is still worth posting it.

Yes the right forearm intersects with the body and the left hand is still really rough, I have never said it was finished! ;-)

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Spare Parts Gameplay

Posted on September 16, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, EA, Portfolio, Video Games | Leave a Comment

so we have a new gameplay trailer, a poster and a Facebook page!

ah I wish you could see the cutscenes…..

Related posts:
Spare parts” interview
Spare Parts E3 2010 teaser
WIP showreel

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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.

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Back from California

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

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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Light and colours

Posted on July 13, 2010 
Filed Under Portfolio | 5 Comments



I came across some Dice Tsutsumi‘s Toy Story3 color script thumbnail this week end and was blown away by his understanding of colours and lighting!!!! As rought as they are, all the information is there for the lighters to start their work. Amazing stuff. This guy is a rendering engine equipped with all the radiosity features you can dream of!

Check out the subtle nuances in the shadows, the reflected light under the chin of Buzz and Woody, the contrast between cold and warm hues.

This made me want to go back to oil painting and experiment with those things on monday. This is only my third painting so please forgive the basic technique. I am pretty much self taught. I spent most of the time on the right shoulder, trying to get the highlight and reflected light. The model kept moving so I wasn’t able to do much work on the legs. Really enjoyable!

Related post:
Lines and colors

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Game showreel 2010 wip

Posted on June 27, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, EA, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Game showreel 2010 / Quicktime H264, NTSC, 11Mo

Well since some of my work has gone public with the release of the Spare Parts trailer, why not create a new temporary game showreel!? ;-)

You will find it in the Showreel section of my blog
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/portfolio/

Disclaimer:
No motion capture data was harmed in the making of that video.

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EA “Spare Parts” teaser

Posted on June 24, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, EA, Portfolio, Video Games | 2 Comments

Spare parts

Spare parts EA

The teaser for the game I am currently working on at EA Brightlight is finally online. You can even find a HD version on Gametrailers!

This game and the team I am working with are awesome. I have only been in the game industry for few years but making a downloadable XBLA/PSN game is probably the closest thing to what it was back in the mid 80s/90s. Unlike the 70 and upward teams most games require nowadays, in a project of that size, every team member can truly participate to the direction of the game.

All the character animation has been done by Neil, my lead animator, and myself.

Related posts:
Lee Sullivan
“Shower Power” shortfilm
Working at EA Brightlight

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Life drawing obscurantism

Posted on June 12, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | 2 Comments

Some time ago, my friend Annes sent me a link to a different Life Drawing class that I would possibly enjoy more than the one I am currently attending and everything finally made sense.

In life drawing, there seem to be a predominant “school of thought” that believes in learning by pure academic observation. That “London Atelier of Representational Art” (LARA) in Clapham Junction, even goes to the extreme of forcing you to draw using a “Sight-size method”. As they describe it, here is how it works:

“the artist first sets a vantage point where the subject and the drawing surface appear to be the same size. Then, using a variety of measuring tools – which can include strings, sticks, mirrors, levels, and plumb-bobs – the artist draws the subject so that, when viewed from the set vantage point, the drawing and the subject have exactly the same dimensions.”

I think “academic observation” is very valuable when drawing from the model but as Glenn Villpu implies it in his theory and instructional material. This is just, one tool!

How long is it going to take you to finally be able to work as an animator, illustrator, storyboard artist and draw from imagination then? Years and years and years and years!

Why not instead, add more tools to your toolset. Why no try to understand the underlying structure of the figure? What about learning proportions and the different parts of the skeleton but also the few muscles that shape the surface of the skin? How to represent the figure in simple geometric shapes?

What about learning … the Structure!

The big problem with the “Academic observation” approach is that you only discover the elements of the structure through experiencing them, this can take a very long time. It is what I would call “brute force life drawing” teaching. But there is a smarter way!

K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer published a great paper a while ago, about “the Role of deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”. The paper is a bit dry so you would be forgiven to skip to something a bit more approachable and that great article from CNN called “The secret of greatness”.

What those articles try to demonstrate is the importance of having a plan when learning and focus your practice on specific areas. This is what they call “Deliberate practice“. “Brute force” learning is great but it is definitely not the deliberate practice sort of approach.

Where can we learn about structure? well Glenn Villpu is the obvious start, then all the AWESOME blogs, Dreamworks storyboard artist and life drawing teacher, Rad Sechrist, is part of!

Rad How To
Analytical figure drawing
Advance figure drawing
The Art Center

Reading those blogs and learning what is on display should help you improve tenfolds!

I would also recommend Andrew Loomis pdfs as a start actually and this great 1890 book by french Dr Paul Richer
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205846w.planchecontact.r=richer.f145.langEN where he shows the relationship of the head height to the rest of the body.

To finish this post, here are my two last drawings from my thursday class:
Contains nudity
[...] Read more

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Walk challenge – refine

Posted on June 1, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio | 2 Comments

Sorry for the lack of update but I just came back from a great trip in beautiful Slovakia. I love Europe.

So, the results are in :

Walk challenge Winners

Well with the amount of work I set myself to, I didn’t expect to win but man…. to not even be featured!!! That really sucks! (Syndrome’s voice). I know my entry is not finished but still….. was it about the branding or the fact that it doesn’t …. well… that it doesn’t cycle :-) ? ahah yes that could be the reason.

Tyler Kakac’s disco walk was really funny and highly polished despite being a bit off topic. Disco in the early 70s? It is more like late 70s to me. Anyway he is my winner amongst all the other entries, lot of character in that cycle. Check out his showreel (not Apple handset friendly at all, remember, Flash blows up your batteries so you are not allowed to use it on your expensive device) http://tylerkakac.com/

It is nice to see Eleonor, a friend AMer, win third place with a not so customized Bishop rig. Congrat girl!

The winner is a really cool cycle too. I would have voted that one second though. He also has a nice reel! http://www.drewwiney.com/

Ah and here is the entry I sent by the way. It would have benefited from 2 more days of work but it was really difficult to find more time for it and I was really looking forward to my first holidays in 6 month.

I hope you like it and have a look at the related posts if you are interested in watching thought process, layout, blocking and changes. I won’t spend more time on it though, I have more important shots to finish. Time to get back to my short film!!!

Related posts:
Pervers Pepere – Spline 01
The walk challenge – a contest – Blocking
The walk challenge – a contest – Thought process

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Fredricksen house part 02

Posted on May 23, 2010 
Filed Under Education, Modeling, Portfolio | 4 Comments

Here is where I am today. Only spent one hour on this. The weather was way too nice to stay home today.

I mainly worked on the windows and some detailing work. I added some basic colours and did a quick mental ray rendering just for giggles, nothing too elaborate.

The shingles will be modelled at the latest stage, I still have a major issue with the roof proportions to solve. Don Shank blueprints are very useful but the final model seems a bit different.

Click on the pic for bigger version

and here is the timelapse, 6 hours of work in 12 minutes.

Related post:
Fredricksen house part 01

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