Animation with a moustache

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

Author: Olivier Ladeuix

Premiere CS 5.5 uncompressed output … not … [fixed] 8

Animation

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Premiere CS 5.5 uncompressed output … not … [fixed]

[update] the problem is fixed! It is due to the misleading Adobe’s Microsoft AVI format which overrides anything you do and makes your video blurry.

When creating your project, use “I-frame only MPEG” for example, instead of that weired Adobe Microsoft AVI format.

[Original post]

I have been using Adobe Premiere since version 4.2 and as I bought a new fancy 64 bits laptop, I decided to upgrade from Premiere CS2 to CS 5.5 but it is driving me crazy.

As you can see above (click on the picture to see it full screen), Premiere 5.5 doesn’t seem to be willing to export a video to an .avi file with no compression to it. I have tried every possible option, did a fair amount of research on Google and Youtube but I can’t find any help on why Premiere is making my footage blurry when I am asking for a straight uncompressed video file as seen on the timeline.

Has anyone gone through the same thing? If I have to spend one more day on this I will have to revert to Premiere Pro CS2. Ah and the Uncompressed AVI option they have now is just a disaster waiting to happen, what were they thinking? How many people got fooled into thinking it was actually an …. uncompressed AVI option! đŸ˜‰ I wonder if software makers ever have users test their softwares nowadays or is it the result of the current recession?

“Spare parts” 8bit credits 0

EA

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“Spare parts” 8bit credits

For “Spare Parts” credits, our concept artist Ross Burt offered to make some retro 8bit rolling credits and he created an 8 bit avatar for the core team.

It was really fun to see his 8 bit caricature of all of us đŸ˜‰

Here are some screenshots followed by the entire credits.

Watch them with the music on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86SQ9QdqwVM&t=2m2s

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“Spare Parts” cutscene 2a Progress reel
“Spare Parts” is out

Ianimate 2011 showreel 1

Animation / Education

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Ianimate 2011 showreel

I know I am very late with this but hey, I was really busy for the past few month you know and I still haven’t posted any pictures from CTN 2011! đŸ˜‰

Ianimate just released their first showreel. Some really nice work is being done there but what else would you expect from a school taught exclusively by Dreamworks animators! If I had to restart my animation schooling I wouldn’t know where to go between all the great schools available those days!

Big up to my AM fellow graduates Joost, Dave and Roberto for making it into the showreel. I recognized a lot of other familiar names!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32697046[/vimeo]

Kyle Balda, walk cycle in10 minutes 0

Education

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Kyle Balda, walk cycle in10 minutes

I am not a fan of walks “on the spot” and in games I never had to make one but Kyle Balda’s workflow seems really effective. No step blocking here, he starts immediately in spline, which technique I am finding, a lot of very fast feature animator tend to favor. Rob Thompson gave us a similar demo at the Animation Collaborative and Rob was originally a 2d animator.

In the following video, Kyle Balda creates a basic walk cycle in 30 minutes! It is good to see how he handles the peel of the heel and the math expressions he uses in the graph editor. I didn’t know the ones he applies in the video but one I use extensively to troubleshoot gimbal locks is the +=360 or -=360

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9N_sIBRWvY[/youtube]

Related post:
Weight shift

Italian in 10 minutes, the power of gestures 2

Acting

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Italian in 10 minutes, the power of gestures

According to NLP, 55% of communication is made by gesture and body language. Watch this video and you will be amazed by how easily you understand Italian without any previous knowledge đŸ˜‰

Great reference for gestures or give personality to your characters.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHZwYObN264[/youtube]

Alfredo Cassano posted a nice series of illustrations on his blog. Make sure you see the three of them and maybe buy his book!

Related post:
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AurĂ©lien PrĂ©dal “Monstre Ă  Paris” 1

Painting

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AurĂ©lien PrĂ©dal “Monstre Ă  Paris”

AurĂ©lien PrĂ©dal is a Gobelins graduate whose work you might have come across in 2006 as he took part in one of my all time Gobelins favorite shortfilms : “Burning Safari”. (“Le building”) is also a top favorite Gobelins short)

AurĂ©lien was involved in the never ending production of french animated feature “A monster in Paris” and he just posted some unbelievable colour keys he made for the movie.

If you are interested in painting or lighting you should definitely have a look at his blog, his work is exceptional. To me he is just as good as people with 5+ years of experience and he probably made those colour keys, two to three years after graduating.

If you didn’t know, AurĂ©lien was also a contributor to the Sketchtravel project.

AurĂ©lien PrĂ©dal “Monstre Ă  Paris” colour keys

As a side note, with 1.7 millions tickets sold, the movie did very well in France but so far it hasn’t covered the 27 millions euros the movie cost, making it a loss for the production company, Europa Corp.

A US release would be really expensive for Luc Besson’s company but they could probably do a UK release first. The British market is usually the second biggest territory in term of sales, ahead of Japan.

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Dice Tsutsumi Light and colours
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Snowman walk 11

Animation / Drawings / Painting / Portfolio

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Snowman walk

Few people wanted to see this guy animated so here it is. Believe it or not this was animated in Maya. I placed the walk cycle on a nurbs plane and animated the UV đŸ™‚ I have been told I could have just used Photoshop. I will give it a try next time or maybe use Plastic Animation Paper since it is free.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/33138769[/vimeo]

and while I am at it, here is a little teaser I made with my new camera using some footage I shot during my last Animation Collaborative character design class with Albert Lozano and Chris Sasaki.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/33213216[/vimeo]

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Animschool Tom Bancroft interview 0

Animation

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Animschool Tom Bancroft interview

Hurry up, Animschool just posted an special interview with Disney veteran Tom Bancroft. The interview will only be available to the public for few more days so make sure you don’t miss that exceptional interview.

I have only seen the beginning so far but Tom animated one of my favourite characters on Mulan, the crazy talking dragon Mushu. People too often forget that there is no one Disney animation style, it all depends on the story and the character of the character. Mushu is a great example of the exaggerated Disney animation style.

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Feature animation Box office grosses 1

Business of animation

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Feature animation Box office grosses

As I very often check the box offices grosses of my favorite animated features, I decided to finally organize those information in a centralized/easy to read table and share it with you. I will post the updated table on my blog every few month and maybe add older features.

As of December 15th 2011 and by release date.(source: BoxofficeMojo.com)

You will find a ranking of the different movies by lifetime grosses at the following address, unfortunately it only for domestic revenues :
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/genres/chart/?id=computeranimation.htm

Dr. Seuss’ Lorax trailer 2 1

Animation

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Dr. Seuss’ Lorax trailer 2

Ahah! Just when you thought you had seen enough trailers for Lorax, a new one pops out! Trailer 2, technically speaking is actually the third one but I am guessing they finally considered the first one a screw up since it was a bit confusing regarding who those male characters were.

Trailer 2 is not giving away a lot more and making things a lot clearer. The trees we thought were populating the streets of Thneedville are actually made of plastic!! Makes sense!

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

Related post:
Dr Seuss “Lorax” trailer 1 is out