Animation with a moustache

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

Monthly Archive: March 2009

AE Button plus 1

Life hack / Windows Mobile

 by 

AE Button plus

I just found that great Windows Mobile application. AE Button plus:
http://ae.inc.ru/aebplus.php

This application allows you to map any function to the different hardware buttons. Instead of only controlling the Volume, I have set the VolumeUp button to open the Task manager and the VolumeDown button to do ALT+Tab, both on double click.

The amount of possible combinations is amazing. AEB plus also recognizes triple press and long press. This application is definitely a must have. You could for example allocate the camera function to the hang up button which is great if like me you are using the default Windows Mobile UI.

Last day at Rare, starting some new adventures! 2

Rare

 by 

Last day at Rare, starting some new adventures!

last chat with Conker

As a recent article in Edge indicated, Rare will be laying off some of their staff. I was unfortunate to be part of those and my last day at Rare will be this Friday 27th.

Things are not too bad though, I already have few things lined up and even got some really interesting offers in feature, TV and games. I was really tempted to take some long holidays in South America but since in this business it is all about timing, I will instead focus on choosing the best offer for my career.

I have had a great time at Rare and enjoyed every minute of it. From the first day everybody was really friendly and welcoming and it didn’t take me too long to become part of the Rare family. After 18 month, it is sad to be leaving all the talented people I met there but I am sure I will meet them again in the future!

The Story of the “Ribbon” 1

GTD

 by 

The Story of the “Ribbon”

If you have 1 hour to kill and interested in User interface design, watch “The story of the Ribbon”, a presentation by Microsoft Office User Experience Manager, Jensen Harris. Jensen is such a good speaker/story teller that after 30minutes I was convinced that the new Microsoft Office interface was just the best thing on earth…… where is the Print button again? 😉

ribbon1

System recovery strategy 0

IT / Life hack

 by 

System recovery strategy

What would you do if your computer decided not to restart? Few days ago my main HD decided not to restart, just when I was working on my new showreel. I normally have a pretty good System recovery strategy but since last time I reinstalled my system was 2 or 3 years ago, I wasn’t too sure if I had a backup. Luckily I had, so it was really easy to get back to a working desktop.

In the light of that, I have decided to share with you what is my “System recovery strategy”, maybe you will find something useful here.

Right now I don’t have time to go into too much detail so I am posting a version v1.0 which I will update if anyone is interested.

As usual I am using OneNote so here is the PDF:

System recovery strategy v1.0

Avatar walk cycle 0

Portfolio / Rare

 by 

Avatar walk cycle

Time to put some stuff together and test what the market is like! 😉

Here is a walkcycle I did for the Xbox 360 Dashboard Avatars. It is a nice rig but the legs are not stretchy so it was a bit of a pain to troubleshoot the knee pops. I could spend a bit more time on the fingers and the path of the arms but I have some other shots to polish.

avatar_walk_cycle

SBP Diary / Calendar+ 0

GTD / Life hack / Windows Mobile

 by 

SBP Diary / Calendar+

sbpThanks to my coworker Matt, I discovered the free application Calendar+ for my Windows Mobile phone. It is free and it is really good when used with SBP Diary. The way I set up my Home/Today screen is to have Calendar + to display my calendar at the top of the screen and SBP Diary right underneath to display my Tasks.

I really like having my next “physical actions” in my calendar as I can easily track how long or when I accomplished a task but when I need to shift a series of “all day events”, then things become a bit more complicated. Anyway this new setup should be a bit more GTD so let see how it goes in the next few weeks.

Ah I am now displaying the SBP Diary tabs horizontally. It is good to have big buttons but they do take a lot of space….

Here are some screenshots I took with Ilium “Screen capture” freeware

“Photograph of Jesus” 0

Graphic design

 by 

“Photograph of Jesus”

I just found this funny and inventive animated documentary relating the strange requests Getty images receives on a daily basis, from photographs of the Yeti to Jack the ripper’s picture 😉

The short film directed by Laurie Hill won the 2008 Getty Images Short and Sweet Film Challenge

Annecy preparation 1

Animation

 by 

Annecy preparation

I have some good and bad news.

Bad news is that a lot of accommodations are already booked out so instead of our luxurious flat in the old town we had to take a much smaller one next to the Imperial hotel… which is not too bad in the end as there is a great cheese shop and bakery right behind the building 😉

Good news is that my friends Seb and Babasse got their short film selected at Annecy. Unfortunately they didn’t make it to the main competition but will still be featured at the “Out of competition” showcase.

Sebastien’s short is a very cool stop motion video clip using clay and Babass short film is a 3d animated watercolour work relating his trip to Madagascar (the real one, not the one from Dreamworks).

See you there!

[edit] You can see some clips from Madagascar on Babass’s latest showreel (you might want to turn down the volume 😉 )


show reel 2009 from bastien dubois on Vimeo.