Animation with a moustache

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

Category: Animation

Animation Mentor not yet world domination 0

Animation / Animation Mentor

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Animation Mentor not yet world domination

Animation Mentor

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 đŸ˜‰

http://www.animationmentor.com/students/student-work.html

“Monstre Ă  Paris” short clip 4

Animation / Character design

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“Monstre Ă  Paris” short clip

Un Monstre a Paris

Un Monstre a Paris

Curious about “Monstre à Paris”? Max Vallon, one of the animators just posted a short video clip from the teaser that was shown in Annecy last year. The animation is 3d and the backgrounds are matte painted/camera mapped. For having seen the whole sequence, I can tell you that the rest is even better.

[update] most links are dead but I just found a video on youtube
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le7WJpYi12E[/youtube]

Read more:
Un monstre a Paris

Keith Lango “Funky” behind the scenes 0

Animation

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Keith Lango “Funky” behind the scenes

Funkiest man alive

Funkiest man alive

Keith just posted a behind the scene of his “Funkiest man alive” animation. It is so nice of him to share how he went about his latest experimentation. I am in the process of rigging my own characters so it was really cool to be able to get some tips about what techniques are out there. I did know about the rivet script and hair follicles to parent stuff to geometry but I didn’t know about the DJ rivet script. Looks like this is gonna be really useful for parent local face controls to a blend shaped deformed geometry.

Annecy 2009 2

Animation

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Annecy 2009

Peter Sohn

Peter Sohn

As usual Annecy 2009 was a blast and once again there wasn’t enough time to see all the great short films and features or attend all the parties but one of the highlights was to see “Partly cloudy” and get to know what went into the making of the short film which was presented by Peter Sohn, the director himself.

I also managed to ask Peter few questions about storyboarding and I could have asked him few more if only I had thought about preparing some. Something interesting is that he kept talking about showing the emotion the character is going through when storyboarding. I am not sure what he exactly meant but that was still an interesting little chat and I will go through Ratatouille again to try to figure this out. […] (more…)

Enrico Casarosa 1

Animation

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Enrico Casarosa

Venice Chronicles

Venice Chronicles

Enrico Casarosa is a storyboard artist from Pixar which I discovered through his watercolour sketchbook “The Venice Chronicles”. I had been reading the book through Flikr and loved it so much that I ended up buying the book immediately on Amazon when it came out and ordered an other dedicated copy through his blog few weeks ago.

Being a fan of sketchbooks, watercolours and comics with japanese influences I could only fall in love with his work. Enrico has been a storyboard artist at Pixar since Ratatouille and did a lot of work on UP which I am really looking forward to watching when it comes out. […] (more…)

Princess Mononoke backstage 1

Animation

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Princess Mononoke backstage

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi3LRn7EKx8[/youtube]

A series of videos showing the behind the scenes of Miyasaki’s “Princess Mononoke” surfaced on the Youtube a while ago. I would recommend anyone interested in Miyasaki’s work to watch that really long documentary (3 x 15 videos) showing some exceptional footage from Ghibli’s backstage.

Some interesting moments are when Miyazaki works out the story plot using schematic drawings but also how he goes about choosing colours or framing the action. It is also fascinating to see him working on a messy desk amongst the other artists in a cramped office which is probably the old studio.

From the author:
“This Backstage of Princess Mononoke consists of 3 documentary series directed by Toshio URATANI, who rolled a small VCR for overall of 300 hours (before editing of course!)during his 2-year reporting of Studio Ghibli and its struggles in making the phenomenal animation film Princess Mononoke (released in 1997).

[…] (more…)

TV animation 5

Animation

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TV animation

2 minutes in Angouleme

2 minutes in Angouleme

While in Annecy I got told that I was hired to work on a pilot for a TV series at french production company “2 minutes” in Angouleme, starting the 1st of July.

“2 minutes” is well known for their 2d work but for the past few years they have started working in 3d as well and went on producing the new Pierre Coffin “Pat and Stan” series for Mac Guff.

I am not too sure how long the project will run for but it is already a great experience and a great opportunity to visit Angouleme which is the capital of “Bande dessinĂ©es” (“european Comics”).