Animation with a moustache

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

Category: Animation

World orient Head and shoulders 7

Animation / Education

 by 

World orient Head and shoulders

Nope, that’s not an advert for cosmetics, I just wanted to draw people to two great rig features I can’t live without nowadays: World orient Head and shoulders.

To tell you everything, I also use a complete world orient spine but I will post about this an other time.

In the past I didn’t mind spending countless hours redoing my animation while in polish or even counter-animating things but after few years of production experience, I have adopted some new workflows that are necessary in that type of environments.

Being able to layer finer levels of polish on every part of the body (spine included) at a very late stage, without destroying a head or arm motion is such a helper.

Word orient attributes (Align on the abAutorig) have now become my best friends and if you still don’t know what they are, let me show you an example using Norman

The good thing about that feature is that the curves always make sense in my graph editor. Everything is completely independent from any hierarchy.


With Josh Burton’s Morpheus rig, you would need to set the m_neck_IK__anim parent attribute to m_neck_FK_Cntrl and Follow to all_anim

 

 

Related posts:

World space head
Megamind third trailer 0

Animation

 by 

Megamind third trailer

so Metroman wasn’t dead? ohhhhh, Dreamworks is playing with us!!! 😉

The new Megamind trailer just came out and looking really sweet!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOGoyNEIJQw[/youtube]

Michael the Turtle 2

Animation

 by 

Michael the Turtle

Before I got into the industry, I was religiously attending every single Autodesk roadshow and in 2006, got to see “Michael the Turtle”, a highly paced music video by french commercial studio “Chez Eddy”, featuring a wacky cartoony turtle, animated in a very Warner brother kind of way, few years before Chicken Little and Madagascar hit the cinemas.

I had been trying to find that video for a long time and eventually found it today on the ….. on the “Chez Eddy” website 😉

The animation might be a bit too much for some but I still love the character and set design, lighting, compositing and the broad animation style. Here it is!

Related post:
Kaelou

abAutorig part I Pyro tutorial 16

Animation / Education

 by 

abAutorig part I Pyro tutorial

If some of you are still struggling to use Supercrumbly’s awesome abAutorig auto-rigging script, or have no clue on how to rig/skin, here is something for you!

The video is real time and has now, me, commenting on the different steps involved. If you double click on the video this will sent you to Vimeo where you can save the Quicktime file in HD!

Let me know what you think!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14722424[/vimeo]






Related post:
abAutorig Part II and III, Pyro tutorial

Animation Mentor 2010 showcase 0

Animation / Animation Mentor / Friends

 by 

Animation Mentor 2010 showcase

Well it’s out! Some really really nice work from my fellow graduates and ex coworkers.

http://www.animationmentor.com/showcase2010/

Some of them have already landed top animation jobs and others will very soon.

And while we are at it, let me introduce you Bishop 2.0, the latest version of my favourite Animation Mentor rig. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet but this looks very promising and I have to mention that my friend the awesome Keith Ribbons helped out with the facial rigging.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WT7_F5wsQk[/youtube]

Related post:
Dan Carey “Shower Power” short film

Kaeloo 5

Animation

 by 

Kaeloo

Few years ago, Supinfocom alumni and “Making of” french co-director, Rémy Chapotot, released the trailer for a crazy cartoony TV series produced by Cube Creative, Kaelou.

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/12422185[/vimeo]

It took a bit of time but the 52×7 TV series finally got produced between french Blue Spirit and Belgium Sinematik and the series finally aired on french cable TV this summer. I tried to get on board last year but they were already fully staffed and my experience with Character Studio was way too limited.  (it is rendered in Vray by the way)

Here are few short videos that are getting me really excited and upset I didn’t work on it 😉

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/11648356[/vimeo]

[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/14002633[/vimeo]

a bit more reading and behind the scenes here:

http://www.qualia-international.com/works/animation/kaelou/index.html

Looking at the links he is featuring on his blog I understand immediately why his work looks so appealing to me, I have the same influences!

http://remichapotot.blogspot.com/

And here the Vimeo version of his graduate shortfilm
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/12994244[/vimeo]

Composition 101 0

Animation / Education

 by 

Composition 101

In the next few days I will be adding some content to that post but in the meantime, check out those two great illustrations on how to direct your audience and compose your “pictures” for a better readability.

Disney/Pixar - Cars

Disney/Pixar - Cars

Disney/Pixar - Incredibles

Disney/Pixar - Incredibles

iAnimate, Jason Ryan interview 4

Animation

 by 

iAnimate, Jason Ryan interview

A school were all the teachers are full time animators working at Dreamworks. Live instructor critique. Sounds pretty exciting doesn’t it?

Speaking of Animation just posted an interview with iAnimate creator Jason Ryan.

http://www.speakingofanimation.com/2010/08/podcast-jason-ryan/

If I were to study animation nowadays, I wouldn’t know where to go! It will take a long time before iAnimate’s community reaches Animation Mentor’s size but the facts that all the mentors come from one of the top feature animation studio and are all still employed is definitely a big plus. Also, people with experience can already start in the advance classes without having to start from the very basics.

Rig wise, I am not keen on the Boris rig at all but I have heard that a top rigger would provide iAnimate with a much more interesting one and it is also possible to use a rig like Norman.

Related posts:
Stretchy rig or broken bishop
The downfall of traditional animation
Who is Jason Ryan?

great Disney links 0

Animation / Character design

 by 

great Disney links

I was busy collecting some references for my shortfilm today and found some really good Disney links.

Animation Background. As the name implies, you will find a large collection of old classic Disney shorts/features and also more recent backgrounds. It is so cool to finally be able to take a close look at those beautiful watercolours.
http://animationbackgrounds.blogspot.com

The Art of Disney Animation
http://artofdisney.canalblog.com
That one is mainly in french but you will find a lot of artwork from the house of the mouse, among them a larger collection of colour scripts from Toy Story 3 than was had been available in the past.

and 2 more links that have been around for a while but a lot of people don’t know about.

The Pixar blog
http://pixarblog.blogspot.com/

Upcoming Pixar
http://pixarplanet.com/blog/

oops I was about to forget a great resources if you intend to do some research on old Disney short films
The encyclopedia of Disney Animation shorts. A great website if you want to track a Disney director or artist.
http://www.disneyshorts.org/sitemap.html

By the way, does anyone know who was the main character designer on Jungle Book, Sword in the stone, 101 dalmatians, Robin Hood and other features sharing the same angular look? With my colleague Karim we are not able to agree on this. I am aware Milt Kahl reluctantly became character designer but I am pretty sure he was only drawing in that very characteristicstyle. For some reason Ken Anderson keeps coming back to me but I can’t find any information about it. Any idea?

Related post:
Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream

MunQi 0

Animation

 by 

MunQi

My friend and now Pixar animator Jude Brownbill was one of the two animators who animated that really wacky and fun pilot for London based animation studio BlueZoo.

Looking at the recent success of “Despicable Me”, investors should get really excited by that trailer!

Check it out!
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14088312[/vimeo]