The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
The increasing role of character animation in games
Several month ago, with few other Animation Mentor graduates, I was asked to write some clever thoughts about the increasing role of character animation in games. My name got misspelt few times but the article is still a very good read.
You can find the article here on Animation Arena.
http://www.animationarena.com/character-animation.html
As a confirmation of what has been said by one of Pixar senior HR staff in Annecy, here is what Pixar artists have to say about demo reels.
http://splinedoctors.com/2009/08/more-on-demo-reels/
I must admit that I still don’t know what to think about the 4th bullet point:
“4) Don’t use those free Internet models. I cant tell you how many times we see the same 4 or five models. Yes, we know its hard to rig and find a good model to animate, but seeing the same rig for all these years is getting old. If you are gonna use a free rig, alter it so much so that you cant tell that its the norman rig or the animation mentor rig.Using the stock rig is just boring.”
Do they expect people to learn how to rig? I don’t have any problem with technical stuff like rigging or modeling but I am not sure everyone is really inclined towards that stuff so how much customization do they think is necessary when using “stock rigs”? Do they have any successful example?
AM summer 2009 showreel
AM just posted the new Animation Mentor showreel. Few of my friends were featured which is really cool and funny enough 3 of them are ex Blue Zoo staff from London.
Animation Mentor just posted a great conversation between Disney producer Don Hahn and Bobby Beck about the life of Disney’s life drawing teacher Walt Stanchfield. Walt Stanchfield was a keen tennis player but more than anything an immense inspiration for everyone at Disney. His family also released his famous notes if you didn’t get the previous pdfs
http://www.amazon.com/Drawn-Life-Classes-Stanchfield-Lectures/dp/0240810961
Check it out
Drawn to life
Animation Mentor
Few weeks ago I spoke with a friend of mine who happened to be a production manager in Paris, working on some really big features, and he didn’t know about Animation Mentor! He did recognise the AM rigs when I showed him the Animation Mentor showreel but didn’t know about the school!
Few animation students I work with in Angouleme were amazed when I told them I had been taught animation through an online school for 2 years. They had never heard about AM! Crazy isn’t it? Well it is even more crazy when you take in consideration that there was already an Italian AM alumni in the company.
Here is a good read for people who never heard about AM: Bobby Beck’s latest post on his blog!
“Animation Mentor had 51 mentors, students and alumni who worked on Ice Age 3!”
I think I will have to post the link to the AM student showcase again actually. No no that’s not because my friend Hichem’s short is on the cover 😉
Here are some renders of my new Bishop mod. This is a new project I am gonna work on when coming back from Annecy. Yes I am a Dreamworks fan boy but there is an other reason I chose Shrek for inspiration.
Wireframes after the break
[…] (more…)
Old and new design
I have finally been able to work on the design of my website.
People will probably scream when looking at the code but why would I spend 10 hours pulling my hair troubleshooting some nasty CSS when I can just do the same job in an hour using HTML?! […] (more…)
Here is the blocking for a shot I am working on. I didn’t get much response on the AM forum, let’s see if I can get more comments here. There will be a BrussHell kid on the right.
My friend Hichem just posted his short film on internet. If you haven’t seen it yet on the Animation Mentor showreel, have a look!
It’s funny and managed to get few laughs from top Pixar animators during Annecy this year.
after 2 years and a half I finally graduted from the online Animation Mentor training. AM wasn't an easy experience but it was really worth it. I met a bunch of incredible people and a lot of talented animators. I also got a job out of it, in one of the best video game companies.
I thought redoing class6 would be easy since a lot of shots had been approved by my previous mentor Jason but Kevin pushed me in a different direction and I had to reblock a huge section of it. My short is still not finished but I still like my short very much and will keep working on it until I am pleased with the result.
I think I should be able to post a bit more often on my blog in the futur but there is already a new deadline with Siggraph so let's see what happen. Keep an eye on that space, I have a lot of things to say about the Annecy animation festival. I got to meet Bolhem Bouchiba, a very very nice animator from Pixar. I got to test TV Paint 9 and talk to the developers this year again. I saw Doug Sweetland "Presto", I participated to a presentation of "Monstre a Paris" (A Monster in Paris)… I got to do some pedalo on the Annecy Lac 😉 a lot of great things!
In the meantime, here is a pic of most of my classmates for this term under the mentoring of Kevin Koch
