Author: Olivier Ladeuix

Animation Podcast unofficial Tangled animator’s commentary 3

Animation Podcast unofficial Tangled animator’s commentary

The Animation Podcast show 32

I was so upset when I realized there were no commentaries on the Tangled Bluray you wouldn’t believe. I understand Disney is trying to save money but how do you want people to truely appreciate your movies if you don’t give them an in-depth behind the scenes or at least some commentaries! I won’t be buying Blurays blindly anymore, that’s for sure.

On Pixar’s Incredible’s DVD there were 3 commentary tracks!

Anyway Clay Kaytis and a bunch of Disney animators came back with a bang. They gathered to record an unofficial Tangled Animator’s commentary to listen while watching the movie!

Excellent!

The Animation Podcast show 32 – The “Unofficial” Tangled Animators’ Audio Commentary

Related posts:
Tangled crew (Raiponce)
Joe Bowers Thought process
Jamaal Bradley shot progress

What is good acting? 0

What is good acting?

I wouldn’t be able to give you a clear answer to that but I think we can all agree that the following example is a really fine piece of acting starring child prodigee Henry Thomas during an audition for 1982 Spielberg’s E.T.

The video just surfaced on the internet at the same time as an interview for Esquire magazine where he explains how he approached the audition.

“I read a scene from some early version of the script, and then I was asked to do an improvisation. I think the gist of the improv was, “You found someone, and they’re going to take them away from you, and it’s your friend, and you really don’t want your friend to go away.” So I started crying, and really going for it I guess.”

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/henry-thomas-et-interview-13541489

According to the Huffington Post, legend has it that Thomas drew his inspiration for the scene from a deceased family dog.

Okay kid, you got the job!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV0vYQcmWK0[/youtube]

“The Quest of Digduguesclin” in Pixel glory 1

“The Quest of Digduguesclin” in Pixel glory

My friend Sebastien Lasserre just released his 34 minutes shortfilm to the public and an official website showcasing some of the artwork that went into the making of the “short”. (few more minutes and it was a feature 😉 )

Sebastien took a year off from work to dedicate to this project, a shorfilm mixing medieval storyline and 8 bits video game references all animated in Pixels.

My only contribution was moral support as I only discovered the finished shortfilm when it premiered last year in Bayonne.

I should also note that the music and sound design was handled by my good buddy Vincil from Ummo whom I mentionned a while back on this blog.

http://sebastienlasserre.net/films/

Grab some drinks and popcorn, sit back and enjoy.

In the year of grace 1351, the entire kingdom is devastated.
Begged for by the king in order to reverse the cursed Malsanto,
Bertrand sets off on a long journey…
Scénario, director : Sébastien Lasserre
Dialogues : Michel Pasut et Sébastien Lasserre
Music : Sylvain Aubert,

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/50612323[/vimeo]

Character design research

After viewing the short don’t forget to check his other stop motion short films, and especially “Christmas time” which was selected at Annecy few years ago.

Related posts:
Christmas time is here
Saint Louis video clip

Facebook birthdays comics part 01 2

Facebook birthdays comics part 01

In order to broaden my range of skills and improve my employability I have started making comics. I think this could be a great training for storyboarding. My storyboarding teacher Steven MacLeod told us how much it helped him to clean up his boards so that should work for me too.

Here is the first story, well the first part. The first panels were drawn in Photoshop and the last one in PaintToolSAI. If you are a Twitter subscriber you have already seen some pictures I posted few weeks ago, that software is great.

Forgive the rudimentary colors and inking, I am really new to all of that and few month ago I couldn’t even draw with a wacom tablet. Things will get better with practice.

The second page will be uploaded tomorrow (I’d better finish it! ;-)). Enjoy

Related posts:
Pressing matters 01 rough first pass
Pressing matters 02 rough first pass
Pressing matters 03 rough first pass

“Tangled” Joe Bowers thought process 2

“Tangled” Joe Bowers thought process

Joe Bowers gave a great walkthrough of some of his shots from Disney’s “Tangled” and “Bolt”.

I love when an artist explains what his thought process was when creating a piece of work. The thought process is as much important as the finished piece itself I feel and Tangled is a perfect example for that as Glen Keane really helped the animators to push their work to a new level in CG animation. Those days people are so focused on performance that they forget about stylisation. If performance is all that counts you might as well using motion capture.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/48497275[/vimeo]

On a side note, the more I look at Bolt and Tangled, the more I am amazed at the look Disney created for those movies with the use of their revolutionary Painterly rendering

if you missed them I am also posting two older but still great walkthroughs by David Anthony Gibson for his work on Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs and some, related to my work at EA.

Related posts:
Animation design
Cloudy with a chance of eyeballs
Spare parts cutscene 2b
Disney related articles

Lord Macintosh (update) 4

Lord Macintosh (update)

I had already modeled Brave’s Lord Macintosh last year but working from a single concept art proved to be really tricky and I completely missed his nose and chin. Now that the movie is out and many trailers are available, I felt it was time to correct few things.

As you can see, I still wasn’t able to tackle the hair and didn’t want to use the old school textured cards. Most Maya based Animated Feature studios probably use Joe Alter’s Shave and Haircut plugin nowadays and I ordered a trial license to give it a go but I still haven’t received it so … proxy hair will do for now.

Here are some screenshots and wireframes for you.

If you know a ‘Shave and haircut’ expert willing to help me learn the software, please let me know. Cheers!


Related posts:

Brave concept art and teaser
Pixar Brave wireframe
3d modeling portfolio
Low polygon modeling

Septembre 2012 Box office grosses 0

Septembre 2012 Box office grosses

Summer is gone, time for a Box office grosses update with a lot of surprises. I decided to add the domestic grosses as those numbers could be particularly useful to understand the trend.

at M $337, one of the surprises was the really low score made by Lorax despite a record opening week-end in the US that pretty much covered their budget. With a 3+ month gap between the US release and the rest of the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if piracy has had a significant impact but we should also remember that Dr Seuss’s books are completely unknown outside the USA. Some people also got put off by the fact the movie was peppered with several musical sequences.

I think Madagascar 2 is superior than Madagascar 3 but the sequel was extremely well received by the public this summer. Proof that animators are not the best judges to what will sell?

I was also surprised to see that Ice Age 4 still does very well with the public, especially on the foreign market. As a matter of fact, Ice Age 4 made more money than what Lorax and ….. Brave together.

Pixar’s Brave is still showing across the world (I saw it this afternoon one more time) but the movie is really far from the score achieved by Toy Story 3. At M $500, Brave has made slightly more than Toy Story 2 and a little bit less than Wall-E. Who would have thought?

Here is the latest chart and I am attaching a pdf file with the complete chart starting in 2008 with hyperlinks to the related Boxofficemojo pages.

Box office grosses Sept 2012

Dreamworks’ 12 pictures announcement 0

Dreamworks’ 12 pictures announcement

I just saw an article on Animation Magazine announcing Dreamworks’ 12 next pictures.

Here is the important part:

The movies and their release dates are:

The Croods (March 22, 2013)
Turbo (July 19, 2013)
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (Nov. 1, 2013)
Me and My Shadow (March 14, 2014)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (June 20, 2014)
Happy Smekday! (Nov. 26, 2014)
The Penguins of Madagascar (March 27, 2015)
Trolls (working title, June 5, 2015)
B.O.O: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations (Nov. 6, 2015)
Mumbai Musical (working title, Dec. 19, 2015)
Kung Fu Panda 3 (March 18, 2016)
How to Train Your Dragon 3 (June 18, 2016)

With 3 to 4 movies released per year, Dreamworks will certainly become the busiest studio in the next few years offering a hell of opportunity for animators and artists.

Animation Magazine article

MAndrews and the Google Doodle team 1

MAndrews and the Google Doodle team

Great 58 mins interview with Brave’s Director Mark Andrews at the Google campus. Not your average, “how difficult was it to make Merida’s hair?” kind of questions fortunately.

There was also a tricky question at the very end regarding the Japanese trailer and I let you find out how he got out of it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOwq4zLcH8Q[/youtube]

Related posts:
Mark Andrews CalArts lecture
The 180 degrees rule

The 180 degree rule 5

The 180 degree rule

Few weeks ago, Karim my younger brother from an other mum and dad, reminded me that Mark Andrews (aka Mandrews) and Ted Mathot had been interviewed by Andrew Gordon for a great Story Splinecast back in 2007.

I had completely forgotten about that one and was surprised to see that I even left a blurb in the comment section 😉

With the release of Brave which Mandrews directed, I HAD to listen to that interview again and I certainly had forgotten all the great gems it contained and how different Mandrews profile is compared to other Pixar directors. Well we didn’t know he would go on directing a Pixar movie in 2007 and I expected him to go on directing live action instead.

The little gem I wanted to shed light on today is the one where he talks about the “180 degree rule”. Some directors Mandrews worked with would never break it but others seem to be a bit more partial. Check it out

“Mark Andrews 180 degree rule”

I would recommend you to listen to the entire Spline cast.

Story Spline Cast with Mark Andrews and Ted Mathot