Animation with a moustache

The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!

Monthly Archive: August 2007

1 character acting shot 1

Animation Mentor / Portfolio

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1 character acting shot

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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.

Un Monstre a Paris 5

Animation

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Un Monstre a Paris

monstrelogmon10.jpgSince I first saw some animation test and renderings of this feature, I fell in love with it. The story takes place at the begining of the 20th century in Paris, at the time of the Moulin Rouge and the universal exhibition.

The movie is directed by Eric Bergeron “Bibo”, ex Dreamworks director on “The Road to Eldorado” and “Shark Tales”. I wasn’t moved much by the story on Shark Tales but I really liked the work done by the concept artists and the designs. “Eldorado” is also one of my favourite 2d cartoons.

The production is said to be starting in Septembre in Nice (France).

Here are some pics found on internet. Unfortunately that s all you can see. The trailer shown at Annecy will not be shown to the public unfortunately.
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The website for the movie seems to be down at the moment but you can always have a look at Bibo films website

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here is a list of blogs from people involved in its production, gorgeous work:

Matt Jones

Antoine Antin

ex Gobelin Aurelien Predal

Neil Campbell Ross

Related post:
Monstre a Paris short clip

TVPaint FX 0

Drawings / Tablet PC

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TVPaint FX

olive_car_panto_planning06.jpg

Because TVPaint allows to do that kind of stuff fairly easily, why not use it? I just rerendered my previous planning, adding a white contour and a drop shadow to some of the elements of the scene and I really like it. What do you think?

Who is Jason Ryan? 3

Animation Mentor

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Who is Jason Ryan?

[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]

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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.

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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!

Car pantomime shot (planning first part) 3

Drawings / Tablet PC

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Car pantomime shot (planning first part)

I don’t know how this happened but I lost the post I published few minutes ago…. anyway let’s type it again…

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I am currently using TVpaint to plan my CG shots on a Tablet PC. It is just like working in 2d without the burden of storing, scanning, shooting paper and you can work anywhere.

Here is the first part of my planning for my new Pantomime shot.

Car pantomime shot (planning first part) 1

Drawings / Tablet PC

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Car pantomime shot (planning first part)

car_plan01.jpg

I just wanted to share with you my new planning method for CG animation… 2d animation! 😉 I am currently using the demo version of TVpaint 8.5 on my HP Tablet PC and that is just awesome.

Just like Zbrush, TV paint takes a bit of time to get used to but once you know your way around, it is very easy to start animating in 2d.

TVpaint doesn’t offer the bells and whistles of a good CG Fcurve editor but you can do some really decent flash like animation with a traditional feel to it, and that s all I need.

New pantomime shot (blocking first part) 4

Animation

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New pantomime shot (blocking first part)

car_block01.jpg

I have decided to start a new pantomime shot in order to replace the class 2 and 3 assignments that were on my showreel. KISS being far from my school of thought, the idea is to combine a heavy push exercise with a little story.

Here is the synopsis. Stewie decides to force his way in a parking space until he realises that it was the worse idea he has ever had 😉

This is a spliney kind of blocking for the first part. There should be plenty more little details in the next pass. 5:40am time to sleep.

Animatic for my short 5

Animation Mentor / Drawings / Short film / Tablet PC

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Animatic for my short

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.

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