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abAutorig Part II Pyro tutorial

Posted on August 29, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio, Tutorial | 3 Comments

[update] I thought I would be able to post the first video to Youtube but unfortunately they have a 10 minutes video limit.  Part I will therefore have to wait till sunday, once Vimeo resets my weekly limit.

If some of you are still struggling to use Supercrumbly’s awesome abAutorig auto-rigging script, or have no clue on how to rig, here is something for you!

Due to technical problems, I won’t be able to post them in order but this will make a lot of sense once they are all uploaded.

The video is real time and has now, me, commenting on the different steps involved. If you double click on the video this will sent you to Vimeo where you can save the Quicktime file in HD!

Let me know what you think!

Tutorial Part II
http://www.vimeo.com/14514357
Part IIIa
http://www.vimeo.com/14524954

Part IIIb
YouTube Preview Image

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

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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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Available for work

Posted on July 22, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio | 2 Comments

I am reaching the end of my contract at EA Brightlight and “Spare parts” is looking great, getting an amazing response from the press. I have been putting a lot of hours into the cutscenes this week and with the sound, compositing and full environment they will look amazing. At 800 MS points or $10 on PSN, I think you should buy the game for the cutscenes alone!! ;-)

My current contract is finishing mid Septembre and I have a one month notice so if you know a company doing cartoony games, TV series or even animated feature and looking for an animator with generalist skills in Maya, direct them to my showreels and portfolio section!

I am flying to LA and San Francisco on saturday but will be back the second week of August.

Thank you!

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Light and colours

Posted on July 13, 2010 
Filed Under Portfolio | 1 Comment



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, 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, 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 Modeling, Portfolio | 3 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.

http://www.vimeo.com/11983854

Related post:
Fredricksen house part 01

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Fredricksen house

Posted on May 22, 2010 
Filed Under Modeling, Portfolio | 1 Comment

I saw this yesterday and thought it would be fun to model it over the week end….

I didn’t think it would take so long but this is where I am 5 hours later. Click on the picture for a bigger version.

If you are interested, I have also recorded a timelapse video as usual and will post it when done with the modeling tomorrow.

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The Walk Challenge – A contest

Posted on May 3, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Portfolio | 10 Comments

[this article will be revisited everytime I have some updates as well as my Public Review on the Animation Mentor workspace so keep an eye on the following post.]

Since I pretty much do Walk cycles for a living, I got really excited when the Spline Doctors started a contest few weeks ago.

“The walk challenge – a contest”

This should allow me to demonstrate my understanding on walks but also to add a bit of acting. Isn’t it what this challenge is about rather than just a 24 frames cycle?

Because I intend to have some facial animation and since the walk might be used for an article, I thought I would be better off using the Norman rig rather than Bishop or a self made one using abAutorig. Norman is also pretty generic and adapts very well to modifications so it is easy to make it look less…. “stock” ;-)

Out of the 4 choices, I chose the Period character from the Victorian era for the following reasons:

[...] Read more

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Life drawing, second term just started

Posted on April 24, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | 1 Comment

This term I have gone a bit mad and enrolled for 3 classes a week for a total of 7h. I can already see a lot of progress compared to last term. Better composition, better line work, better shading, better proportions, speed. Good thing I didn’t walk out or gave up like other students.

Here is a 2 hours pose. My Thursday tutor keeps telling me that I would be a great forger. That’s not a good thing for him. As artists, we shouldn’t try to copy the model like a camera would.

I don’t care much for the moment, being a camera is still a good thing for me until I have mastered anatomy and proportions.

This term is very exciting, I am sharing two classes with a lot of very talented concept artists and artists from the Video game industry. That is a lot of competition but at least that pushes us to get better.

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Long chair modeling timelapse

Posted on April 3, 2010 
Filed Under Modeling, Portfolio, Short film | Leave a Comment

What are you supposed to do on Easter bank holiday, work on your short film right?

Here is a series of timelapse video where you can follow me modeling one of the main props for my short film.
http://www.vimeo.com/10620178
http://www.vimeo.com/10629348
http://www.vimeo.com/10642272
http://www.vimeo.com/10649139

Today I am gonna tackle the cartoony rigging of this guy so it ties a bit better with shot 12. I am keeping in mind to make the props looks a bit more wonkey but the rig could help for that.

Related post:
Short film blog category

Shot 12 final
Props done

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Autorig tutorial prep work 04

Posted on March 4, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Modeling, Portfolio | 3 Comments

http://www.vimeo.com/9936173

This time I am modeling the hands. I am not looking at references yet, just blocking out the shapes.

You will see me starting from a cube, which I subdivide manually to extrude faces and create the fingers.

I push the details on one fingers then duplicate it to create the other ones. Very often you will see me going from low poly to high poly using the 1 and 3 keys in maya 2009.

and here is the second pass
http://www.vimeo.com/9924238

Third pass, refining the shape, cleaning up some edges, adding more detail
YouTube Preview Image

Related posts:
Autorig tutorial prep work 03
Autorig tutorial prep work 02
Autorig tutorial prep work 01
Low polygon modeling tools

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Autorig tutorial prep work 03

Posted on February 28, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Modeling, Portfolio | 3 Comments

CharlesF. Muntz

Here is the nearly final model. Click on the picture for full screen version.

I will work on the hands tomorrow.I am still not entirely happy about the junction between the chin and the cheek bone, the eye/nose area also need a bit more work but that should be enough for the Autorig tutorial.

Related posts:
Autorig tutorial prep work 02
Autorig tutorial prep work 01
Low polygon modeling tools

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Autorig tutorial prep work 02

Posted on February 27, 2010 
Filed Under Animation, Modeling, Portfolio | 4 Comments

http://www.vimeo.com/9780845

Here is a video showing the modeling process for my tribute to Pixar’s “Up”.

You can double click to see the video in Full screen but if you first click on the Vimeo logo you will be able to see it in full 1600×1200. You might also be able to download the video from Vimeo, it is in Xvid/Divx, sorry I don’t have Quicktime pro but Virtual Dub or KMplayer allow you to go frame by frame if needed.

[...] Read more

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Autorig tutorial prep work1

Posted on February 9, 2010 
Filed Under Modeling, Portfolio | 6 Comments

As some of you might know, I have decided to make a tutorial showing how to use the zooTools and SuperCrumbly’s abAutorig autorig scripts.

To demonstrate this I wanted to model a new character so here it is!

Charles Muntz is definitely my favourite character design from the movie UP.

I have mainly focused on the right hand side and will mirror it next time.

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Life drawing week 03

Posted on February 2, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Here are my latest drawings. Two long poses.

I tried to think about the composition a bit more this time. The thumbnails on the top left corner are the base for my composition.

I wasn’t too happy the way things were going for the first one and restarted from scratch, which didn’t leave me with enough time to finish the pose. I had in mind to incorporate the little platform the model was standing on originally but realised that it didn’t present much interest so I decided to go for something tighter, with the feet fading away.

The second one is pretty good, but the model is way to high on the page. The foot is better than my last attempt but the hands, especially the right one would have needed more work. The quality of the line is still very poor but I am working on that.

Things are getting better and better I feel and there is definitely some improvements compared my first drawings. My skills in drawing from imagination have also dramatically improved and I can now draw different body parts without reference.

Those two drawing will probably be my last pencil shaded piece as I feel it is now time to move to Oil painting. I have been told that moving to paint would help me to improve my drawing skills and Painting is also something I always wanted to try but never found a good teacher/course until now.

Marc

Robert

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Life drawing session 03

Posted on January 26, 2010 
Filed Under Drawings, Portfolio | Leave a Comment

Here is the pose we worked on yesterday with Marc again. 1h40 pose. Longer poses are great as they allow for corrections and trying different techniques. I got stuck with the feet so moved on to do some shading in order to define the belly a bit better and try to create some volume.

Contains nudity
[...] Read more

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