The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
I am guessing an English one will follow shortly, in the meantime, here is something for those who can’t wait. Too bad we lost a lot of the whimsical feel the Japanese trailer had. It still looks fun though.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbODIIPfFow[/youtube]
Related posts:
Pixar “Brave” Japanese trailer
Old Santa
I don’t think I ever mentionned the work of incredible French cartoonist/character designer/story artist Christophe Lourdelet alias Zébé on this blog. Actually I did but that was a reaaaally long time ago.
Zébé has done some great work for Aardman a while back and he is sharing some of his designs with us through a series of posts related to the production of Sony/Aardman’s “Pirates, Band of Misfits” and “Arthur Christmas”.
Albino Pirate
I would also recommend a comic strips he posted right after his first trip to Aardman in Bristol. Sorry it is only in French but you might be able to understand the story through the clear facial expressions and poses.
Zébé is probably a very modest, down to earth guy but in that strip he depicts himself as a pompous and haughty French man, completely unfazed by a gig at Wallace and Gromit’s creators studio, Aardman.
The poses, gags and facial expressions always crack me up. Mistaking a Guiness for a Cappucino …. genius!
Zébé’s blog and his strips actually inspired me to start my own comics and I have been fleshing out some stories for the past few years. I will share some of them with you very soon.
As a teaser, here is a quick digital clean up (still learning) of the main character. The posing is a bit wonkey but that’s the overall design, unless I decide to draw myself a bit taller.
If you are a true Disney fan, you know what this is about.
Watch it before it disappears again. It is a very insightful and dramatic documentary on how much of a roller coaster commercial film making can be. I loved “Emperor’s new groove” a lot and never imagined it could have started so wrong to the point that it nearly got canned.
As a bit of trivia, this is the first time we get to hear/see Disney’s young and very promising character designer Joe Moshier. Joe did some great character design work on that movie, and on the following not so great “Home on the Range”, I love his very angular/stylized designs in the tradition of the old Disney movies.
Joe Moshier is also the guy Ricky Nierva was talking about in his very funny Splinecast, yes, the guy with a tight tshirt 😉
Working on a new short film and a series of comics stips, I am really into story and storyboarding those days so expect several posts about the topic.
If the only copy of Incredibles you have is a pirated version without the exceptional behind the scenes (they don’t do extras like this anymore unfortunately), then you probably don’t know how intense Mark Andrews can be.
You are in luck though, someone just posted part of a lecture he gave at Calart.
As a Splinedoctor podcasts listener, you know there is a new trend at Pixar where people don’t pitch storyboards by performing as an actor in front of the audience anymore. Instead they totally down-play the pitch and that is exactly what Andrews does here.
An other interesting note is, DO NOT THUMBNAIL! Thumbnailing is about being precious. Instead you must draw rough. You must communicate your ideas as fast as possible so the bad ideas get put aside quickly.
Check it out, it is very entertaining and as a side note, it looks like Michael Giacchino is in the audience with his kid.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmd7YIHUI5M[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ayjNzBnFXo[/youtube]
With the recent departure of Glen Keane from Disney to, I am guessing, an other studio in the North of LA, I feel that we should show Disney a bit more appreciation for the amazing work they did on Tangled. Here is a repost of something I wrote last year.
In a recent article published on the CNN website about the poor reception received by Robert Zemeckis latest motion capture movie “Mars needs mom”. A blogger was quoted explaining the difference between motion capture and keyframe animation in those terms.
the style of animation featured in “Mars Needs Moms.” It’s known as motion capture or “mo cap,” a process that involves attaching sensors to actors to capture their movements. Computers transform the data into realistic-looking animation. (“Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Cars 2”, by contrast, are completely computer-generated).
What the hell is this mumbo-jumbo supposed to mean? How are the readers supposed to understand what the writer call “completely computer-generated”?
Reading this article, it became obvious to me that the general public has no idea was kind of work is going into making an animated feature and why motion capture is so different from keyframe animation.
To be fair, before I got into animation, I also had no idea about the actual process and just assumed they got done by maybe some sort of machine but certainly not an army of artists working for month or years, frame by frame.
So, what I think we need, is to give the audience more information about the animation process and put the artists forward. This is what this post is about.
A really cool and inspiring montage of Disney’s Tangled animation crew surfaced on the net a while back and disappeared quickly after to finally reappear few days ago. Here it is
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg6A6qx3-74[/youtube]
and here is an other fun video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWhovB02Hg[/youtube]
A friend showed me Jelly Jam, a great looking Spanish TV show with a style in the great tradition of Pocoyo.
I think the show is being done by Madrid based Studio 737shaker. One thing that surprised me is the use of Arnold as a rendering engine. Arnold is a pretty complex software that was primarly aimed at Feature Animation (Sony uses it) but I am guessing the Spanish creator has made it more friendly to smaller production by integrating to XSI.
I must admit I wasn’t too excited by the first trailer but that one is looking a bit more promising. For some reason it reminds me of a mix between “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs”, “Open Season 3” and “Despicable Me”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXgav4_hDOk[/youtube]
[updated with higher quality trailer]
I’d better warn you, there are plenty of spoilers here but a Japanese “Brave” trailer just came out and it is very interesting how they edited it. Like most French kids, I always had a fascination for Japanese movies and culture in general I must admit, so this makes the movie even more exciting.
In that trailer, the movie looks way different with much less emphasis on the gags and the comedy. Instead, they brought forward all the elements we would normally find in a Miyazaki movie: a magical forrest, evanescent glowing figures…. That probably says a lot about the division between Eastern and Western taste. Anyway, check it out it is really sexy especially with those really deep Japanese voices and fancy Japanese titles.
Only watch if you don’t mind spoilers!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zzSqWUmlts[/youtube]
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Having read the book, I already know the story will be more compelling than Avatar’s. The movie is coming out in only few weeks!!!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owAqujhSf_Q[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_hma5zkVXA&feature=related[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LuyOHVxt40&feature=related[/youtube]
Ah and a series of new clips just came out as well
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPc9nzGEfvk&feature=related[/youtube]
Something new from Emeryville just came out and it is looking really nice. If you still needed to be convinced to go and watch Pixar’s next feature, Brave, you are in for a treat.
I like the sound they put at the end of the clip, reminds me of a “Lost” episode.
I am not too sure about the rendering/compositing though. I feel some reflected light and maybe some colours in the shadows are missing. The dark areas seem too bright in places and the green of the “straw like grass” seems a bit strange for such a rainy kingdom but this could be due to the Youtube compression and my taste for saturated colours 😉
Character design wise, I was worried Merida and Queen Elinor’s design would be too bland but they have some nice subtle wrinkles and sharp features that work very well in animation.
I can’t wait!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1SBjAuMN6A[/youtube]
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“Brave” Concept art and teaser
