The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
I was lucky to have Albert Lozano as character design teacher while attending Animation Collaborative in 2011 but my drawing abilities didn’t allow me to make the most of that great opportunity.
Albert rarely appears on social medias so it was great to find this little video insight into Albert’s thought process when designing characters, starting from simple shapes based on the personality of the characters.
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Few month ago I was joining Dwarf animation in sunny Montpellier to work on the Monsters Inc TV series and today, Disney finally announced “Monsters at work, the TV series based on the Monsters inc universe.
The project is looking stunning and obviously I can’t say more than what was made public so if you are eager to know more about it, head off to the Pixar Pod where T.J. and Julie did a brilliant detective work! 😉
https://www.pixarpost.com/2019/06/monsters-at-work-logo.html
If you have liked my old Toy Story lip sync article, you will love this little video where I am studying the lip sync of a shot from Pixar’s forthcoming movie “Onward”.
Ideally, you want to download the video and play it frame by frame with a media player like KMPlayer, Keyframe MP or RV for the lucky ones.
It is also possible to play the videos frame by frame in Youtube and Vimeo after pausing the video. Use Shift + Left or Right arrow in Vimeo, coma (,) or dot (.) in Youtube.
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It looks like I never posted this.
Pretty short but interesting behind the scene video. I am mostly posting it as it features Maui’s facial rig and GUI picker.
On a side note, I have the feeling the animator is navigating through the brow picker using the left right keys of his keyboard.
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This article is the third of a three part series
Pixar animation software part 1
Pixar animation software part 2
I have just found a very old Pixar presentation where Pete Docter demonstrates an antique version of Pixar’s animation software Menv (Presto) running on Silicon Graphics.
The concept hasn’t changed much but the software allows much more finessing nowadays.
Have a look and compare to the latest iteration of the software featured in Part I and Part II below.
Related posts:
Pixar animation software Part I
Pixar animation software Part II
I just found one of those rare Joe Moshier interviews. It is in French but Google Translate should do the job.
Joe Moshier is one of the greatest character designer but similarly to Paul Felix, his life is pretty secretive. If it wasn’t for his credits on some of the most visually interesting Disney movies like “Emperor’s new groove” or “Home on the range”, you wouldn’t know about him.
Joe joined Dreamworks few years ago to work on several projects. Here is the French article followed by a quick video interview. Sorry the new version of WordPress breaks the layout of my blog 🙁
http://www.effets-speciaux.info/article?id=175
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The Sweat box
Many red moons ago, Disney partnered with Double Negative to bring to the screen Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novel “John Carter of Mars” and more specifically the character animation of the Tharks under the helm of Pixar brain trustee/ “Finding Nemo’s” director Andrew Stanton.
Here are few behind the scenes videos and a great animation process walkthrough by Patrick Giusiano followed by a series of related articles.
https://www.fxguide.com/featured/a-world-away-john-carter/
https://digitalmediaworld.tv/in-depth/467-john-carter-and-the-creatures-of-mars
I just came across that video which was a teaser for a Siggraph talk last year .
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The Pixar animation software part I
Behind the scenes are very rare those days compared to 10 years ago where you could get 10 hours of extra features on the additional DVDs so let’s celebrate the ones available.
As an animator and hopeful storyboard artist, I am mostly interested in the nitty gritty of animation related stuff and storyboarding and this video happens to have a bit of both.
I find it interesting to see storyboard artist (mostly female yay) working together in a room, with Sharpies on paper, but this makes sense as it probably is a brainstorming session to work on a specific scene. I wonder if they will scan the drawings next or just redraw them on the computer, probably the latter.
Animation wise, except few seconds with fellow Animation Mentor graduate Kira Lehtomaki, there isn’t much to see however, I am still finding some material worth a look. In feature animation it is not rare for animators to use footage from actors reading their dialogue for their acting so I can’t wait to see how much the animators derived from it as the hand gestures here in the video are mostly contrived, symmetrical and unappealing due to the fact the actor are just focusing on their lines.
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Rich Moore “Wreck it Ralph” talk a Google
L.A. Times Roundtable Discussion: Animation
Annecy 2012
Have you ever been tempted to use…
I don’t understand how people can animate heads in local (parent) space. Here is a great example on why you want to animate the head in world space rather than local space.
Our vestibular system acts as a gyroscope allowing us to keep our head’s direction independent from the rest of the body.
Using local space for the head also requires so much counter animation work, hindering granular refinement of the motion.
The motion of the body is so complex and requires a lot of finessing when the head seems so still. In production you want to have the freedom to add more layers of complexity in the body without having to counter animate the head.
https://www.facebook.com/WWFFrance/videos/329660194537260/
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World orient head and shoulders
So you want to be a rigger huhh? version 02
