Animation with a moustache

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

Category: Animation

Animschool interview Josh Carey 0

Animation / Education

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Animschool interview Josh Carey

If you want to know a little bit more about those crazy cartoony Looney Tunes short films Reel FX has been producing since last year, head out to the AnimSchool blog!

They just interviewed Reel FX Rigging Department supervisor Josh Carey and the article is pretty informative regarding their pipeline and the kind of R&D they do. I had never imagined anyone would create a “data mining” tool to evaluate controls usage and I think it is a great idea for a TD to see which ones are the most used.

There are also so useful tips for aspiring TD so check it out!

AnimSchool interview Josh Carey

Related posts:
Daffy’s Rhapsody
Josh Carey, VES rigging submission
ReelFX Looney Tunes theatrical shorts online
Ray Chase showreel

Daffy’s Rhapsody 4

Animation

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Daffy’s Rhapsody

I love naturalistic animation but cartoony animation with that kind of rigs must be a LOT of fun!

Great work by ReelFX and if you missed Josh Carey’s VES rigging submission, hit the link below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5cwY4qsqkQ&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

Shorter clip but more accurate colours here

I think that Pixar logo would fit nicely after so much keyframe awesomeness. In your face Serkis! 😉

Related post:

Josh Carey, VES rigging submission
ReelFX Looney Tunes theatrical shorts online
Ray Chase showreel

Pick my brain…with a Moustache 2

Animation

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Pick my brain…with a Moustache

Pick my brain with a Moustache

Pick my brain with a Moustache

Ever wanted to participate to a one hour one-to-one Q&A with an expert in a field related to animation?

There will be a free beta test for the first 5 people who sign up next week after the official announcement.

And if You are an expert in Character design, Modeling, Rigging, Animation… make yourself known! olivier.ladeuix@gmail.com. Use “I am an expert” in the subject line and provide me with a link to your showreel video or portolio

“Yummy” – short film 2

Animation / Friends

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“Yummy” – short film

After many years, my friend Maciek finally finished his short film “Yummy”.

Maciek and I started Animation Mentor together in Cassidy Curtis’ first class and after some struggles and set back, he eventually fulfilled his dream to became an animator in Feature Animation. I just hope he gets interviewed one day so he can explain how tenacious one needs to be to succeed. Ah and he could probably talk about his current workflow compared to when he started 😉

He recently revamped his blog, check it out http://www.maciekgliwa.com/

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/35064505[/vimeo]

Related posts:
Daphne’s new broom
102 Q&A

A day in the production of La Luna 0

Animation / Education

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A day in the production of La Luna


Pixar’s story artist Enrico Cassarosa wrote a nice series of article where we follow him for a day, during the production of his short film “La Luna”.

One thing that surprised me was to see Mudbox being used at Pixar. I thought they were still using that stylus and digital arm we have seen in the past but it looks like they have now fully embraced digital modeling and chosen a tool that doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. No Zbrush nonsense here. I wonder if they also use 3d coat or Topogun.

The series of articles starts from the following post and you can access the next ones by clicking on the link above the posts to the right, “9am off to work” being next.

A day in the production of La Luna

While we are at it, you can also have a look at that nice 30 minutes interview with Enrico

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olxTcA18lXo#![/youtube]

Related post:
Enrico Cassarosa

Food for thoughts 5

Animation / Education

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Food for thoughts

Doing some research for my shortfilm, I went through the first twenty of the 49 Wile E Coyote and Road Runner short films and it saddens me to say….. I didn’t break one laugh.

The worst is that those were all directed by animation legend Chuck Jones, a man that is wildly accepted as one of the funniest men in the animation industry.

Despite the great Carl Stalling soundtrack, gorgeous stylized Maurice Noble backgrounds, the crazy animation, brush work and comedic timing, nothing helped. I might have smiled few times to how Chuck Jones played with our expectation on the final gag but I didn’t find anything worthy of a laugh.

The Wile E. Coyote series came out at the end of the 1950s and was probably really funny at that time but I feel that the humor didn’t age well.

Would this be due to the fact that, he … invented it all? So many variations have been seen for the past 50 years that maybe we have now become desensitized to the original material?

If you want to do the same test you are in luck, Youtube user CoyoteAndRoadRunner uploaded pretty much all the shortfilms, by chronological order, to his channel .

While watching the shorts, one thing struck me…. For some reasons, Youtube kept suggesting the viewing of a series of candid/hidden camera gags and I eventually did.

Man, I didn’t expect what would follow.

After only watching one video, I was in stitches.

“Just for Laughs Gags” is an hilarious Canadian secret camera show using all the comedic elements of cartoony pantomime. The gags are beautifully set up, staged and acted by a cast of very likable characters. Even with the inevitable “background laughs” muted, it is impossible to resist laughing hysterically.

For comparison, here is a selection of Chuck Jones directed “Wile E. Coyote” short films followed by “Just for laughs gags”. See what you respond the most to. Maybe you will differ from me but if not, we need to rethink what constitutes comedy in animation.

Coyote and RoadRunner – Gee Whiz-z-z-z (05.05.1956)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_xJmvk9utA[/youtube]

Coyote and RoadRunner – Chariots of Fur (21.12.1994)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nrLIcdOdE[/youtube]

Infinite Ice Cream
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsGplFM6Ue4[/youtube]

Honking At Hookers
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEos0ej9CEY[/youtube]

Worker Stuck In Ceiling
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdlaZQyVxxM[/youtube]

Mall metal detector
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-pPusCToyY[/youtube]

Stretcher In Water Prank
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IX6SLDCIJzA[/youtube]

Related posts:
Reel FX Looney Tunes shorts online
Josh Carey VFS rigging submission

Electroshock – ESMA 2011 7

Animation

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Electroshock – ESMA 2011

Look at what we got today! Elliot Maren just sent me a link to that great short film he made with four others ESMA students. Electroshock is a very good looking 8 minutes shortfilm done at French animation school ESMA and YES! it is not a FREAKING CHASE!!!! It is good to see that students still care about storytelling and acting.

The shortfilm is probably inspired by “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs” and it really matches the visual quality of Sony’s movie. I especially love the colours they put in the shadows and how they handled the SSS.

I have featured several short films from that school already and it is good to see that Gobelins and Supinfocom have a really strong competition.

The pool of talents in France is increasing dramatically, I just hope that one day the demand could match the offer. Investors, are you hearing me??? 😉

Great job guys!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/29193046[/vimeo]

There is no making of or blog but hopefully they will put more infos on the Facebook page
http://www.facebook.com/Electroshockmovie

[update] We don’t have a website/blog or Making of but see what I just found!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJxMWxxo0gk[/youtube]


Related posts:
ESMA
ESMA Mythologique shortfilm is out

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! 😉 I wonder if software makers ever have users test their softwares nowadays or is it the result of the current recession?

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! 😉

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]