The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
I have some good and bad news.
Bad news is that a lot of accommodations are already booked out so instead of our luxurious flat in the old town we had to take a much smaller one next to the Imperial hotel… which is not too bad in the end as there is a great cheese shop and bakery right behind the building 😉
Good news is that my friends Seb and Babasse got their short film selected at Annecy. Unfortunately they didn’t make it to the main competition but will still be featured at the “Out of competition” showcase.
Sebastien’s short is a very cool stop motion video clip using clay and Babass short film is a 3d animated watercolour work relating his trip to Madagascar (the real one, not the one from Dreamworks).
See you there!
[edit] You can see some clips from Madagascar on Babass’s latest showreel (you might want to turn down the volume 😉 )
show reel 2009 from bastien dubois on Vimeo.
As you might have noticed, I have a fixation on Mike Mignola’s Hellboy character. I am not too sure it is because of Red’s skin colour or the very graphical design of the character and the toys or even the fact that I met Mignola at the Birmingham comic convention 2 years ago.
Anyway I found this great blog relating the production of the Hellboy TV serie. Have a look, it is pretty interesting. They talk about all the different aspects that go into the making of an outsourced Direct to DVD animated feature.
Communicating with the oversea studio
Colours, there was an other one on the choice of colours but I lost the link
Here is where I am right now. Floatiness fun and ackward mouth shapes. Don’t worry it is all gonna be fixed in the next pass 😉
I kind of took onboard some of the suggestions but the most noticeable change would be the framing. I was going through few DVDs this week end and realised the cutting the hands wasn’t too much of a big deal so here I am. I think the shot works better this way. We can focus a bit more on the face and the character takes more screen space.
Few people commented on the fact that I kind of go back to the same pose but I didn’t want the character to move too much on the screen so I don’t think I had much choice.
Some people wanted a progression which I would normally agree with but the audio doesn’t have that much contrast in the intensity so I d rather go for something much more contained.
Ah if someone knows how to do the breathing with Brussel/Bishop, please let me know.
I feel it is time to bump up some of the cool links from my bookmarks:
My friend Maciek’s blog:
http://maciekgliwa.com/blog/
Sylvain Marc’s blog:
http://polyminthe.blogspot.com/
Mayerson on Animation:
http://mayersononanimation.blogspot.com/
Temple of The Seven Camels, great posts about composition, storyboarding, cinematography:
http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/
Alan Cook “Cooked Art”:
http://cookedart.blogspot.com/
Character design blog:
http://www.characterdesign.blogspot.com/
Animation treasures:
http://one1more2time3.wordpress.com/
Mc Cloud Framefilter:
http://framefilter.blogspot.com/
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.
No matter what you think about PC/Macs, I have to share the new Microsoft ad with you. I can’t help smiling while watching it. There is so much emotion coming out of this ad that I can’t help loving those 2 characters.
Shoe Circus from Windows Videos on Vimeo.
If we study this ad on an animation point of view we can see so many great touches. It is obviously a bit wacky with Seinfield explaining that he has a shower with his shoes on to save time or when he asks if Microsoft will every gonna come up with something that will make our computers moist and chewie like a cake but there are some more interesting elements.
Secondary action:
1. Seinfield and the churro. He holds it, bite it, offers it to Gates. At the end they both walk out, each holding their churros.
2. Gates and Seinfield softening the sole. Seinfield has a very accurate gesture while Gates can only ackwardly mimic him.
Both action happen while they are talking about something else and are still not distracting but help them to look more alive. They are real characters in a real store, not two actors delivering lines.
Timing and pacing
The beats in the add are dictated by the delivery of the lines. There is a lot of talk but there are also some long moments of silence filled with emotions like the “what is it?” “the leather” sequence. The beats slow down, accelerate, stop and start again. Isn’t that a nice texture?
Now on a marketing point of view I think it is very clever. A lot of people are commenting negatively on it saying that they don’t understand it but the advert is not a soap advert hammering that the microsoft products are better and shinnier, it is much more clever than that. They have already tried the soap marketing campaign and it only partially worked so why not trying something a bit more “wacky”? Don’t forget that it is only the first one of a series of advert so let’s wait and see what else they have in store.
What they are trying to do here is to portray Bill Gates as a really simple guy, someone really down to earth with really simple values in which most people will recognise themselves.
He is a very rich person but still buys his shoes at the discount shop in the shopping mall because that’s the only place he can find the best price for value products. Shoes like computers are a commodity, they shouldn’t become a lifestyle and paying a high price for them is silly.The message is quite clear: he doesn’t like to be ripped off.
There is one little details than hardly anyone will notice and that the ad company probably placed there for a reason. I am not too sure why exactly. Maybe to show that Bill Gates hasn’t always been the straight guy we know but just like everyone made some mistakes in his life? If you don’t know, the picture on the Platinium Shoe card is the one from his arrest in 1977 for a traffic violation.
excellent blog here
The Art of Disney Animation Blog
Norman rig
We normally refer to AAU when we talk about the Pixar Character animation class from AAU. You probably know them through the rig above, Norman or “the virgin voyage” or “Creampuff”. The Pixar class doesn’t exist anymore as most Pixar animator/teacher are now teaching in other school or working on personal projects.
Check the following links to see how good the work was .
http://splinedoctors.com/stuff/student_work/
http://www.jeandenis.net/Animation.htm
http://erikleeanimation.com/animation.html
http://www.atsushikojima.com/
http://www.imjuliechoi.com/3dani_frame.html
Mark Harris
http://www.sangwoolee.com/ani.htm
actually all the links from Leif website
http://www.leifjeffers.com/animation.htm
Jean Denis teaching website Spungella and his previous Academy animation blog
Guilherme Jacinto
Aaron Koressel
Ed Hooks and Andrew Gordon kept referring to Paul Ekman and his concept of micro expressions, here are few video as an introduction:
and something a bit more entertaining, “Why we lie”:
