here is something I am working on. A secret project due in 30 days 😉

Ok the first articles, videos and interviews have emerged on the internet. Today is the annoucement day for “Viva Pinata2 – Trouble in Paradise” and “Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts”.

WordPress doesn’t allow me to embed videos so jump on the following links for a tour of our studios and a video trailer of one of the games I have been working on since Septembre 2007

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/18831

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/18830

The Annecy festival is taking place in June from the 9th to 14th . In case you haven’t booked your flat or hotel room yet, here is a map from Google maps. I drew 2 circles around the Main Bonlieu festival center and the Mifa. The distance between Mifa and Bonlieu is around 10 minutes walk. You can also rent bicycles for free to travel between the two locations.

Hey guys I found a really nice little script that allows you to hide the standard Channel box and use a flying one instead. You can download the script from here: Highend 3d and here is a little demo to show you how I use it I guess the next step would be to make the Layer box fly as well. Let me know if you have any idea how to do that too.

[edit] David Bernal pointed me to a Layer Manager that can replace the Maya one and also brings the Photoshop layer folders to Maya. Here it is Hierarchic Display Manager

some of the regulars on the french animation forum I regularly visit, have release a short extract from their new short “Train, Train”. I really like it! All the shots with the car have been animated in After Effect… Insane 😉
Train train, un short by Gilles Cuvelier, Samuel Guénolé, Gabriel Jacquel and Claire Trollé.

I am also posting a link to Mister Coq, which wasn’t selected for Annecy this year 🙁

At Animation Mentor I was lucky to have some great mentors but also to to be in the same class as few animators extraordinaire. Here are two I would like to mention today, Ales Mav and Maciek Gliwa

Ales Mav was featured few times I think on the Animation Mentor showreel and he is also the director of CG Talk front page short “Daphne’s new broom”

He obviously animated the entire short but also took care of the rigging, modeling, lighting and rendering. The facial could have benefited of a little bit more work but for a 2 minutes 30 short done by one guy in half a year, I think this is just amazing.

Now Maciek Gliwa was equally featured on the animation mentor showreel at least once or twice for his famous baseball pitch but I wanted to feature him because he is a very nice guy despite being very tall 😉 and because he should be joining a prestigious feature animation studio in California sometime this year. Don’t forget to check this animatic he did a while ago for a football kick.

 I previously posted few links to differents showreels of animators who worked on it but Blue Sky wasn’t too happy about them I guess as they have all been brought down. 

I saw the movie yesterday. It is really fun and the animation is really much to my liking. Really really entertaining.
The only problem I have is that I saw too many behind the scenes and trailers than I had seen pretty much all the funny animation beforehand.

Here are few links for you:

Kenny’s pictures [working link]
Nick Bruno’s Horton showreel [reel taken off]
Jeff Gabor animation stages from video ref to final animation  [reel taken off]

A colleague from work (animator extraordinaire Jon 😉 ) showed me this webiste a while ago but I had lost the url until today. Brazilian animator Virgilio Vasconcelos has a great blog and one of the posts he wrote was an image composition walkthrough using the Hortons Hears a Who trailer.

There is nothing really new here but it is always good to see how much work goes into crafting those movies. Which reminds me that I wanted to do the same with a scene from Elia Kazan (1951) “A streetcar named Desire”.

Ed Hook did an acting walkthrough of the Steeeeeelllaaaaa scene during his workshop last month showing the change of status, psychological gesture, imaginary centers using Marlon Brando and Kim Hunger but I also noticed how beautifully Elia Kazan played with the shadows. Without the sound or even the acting, just by paying attention to the shadows or the graphic pattern, you would quickly understand the story.

I didn’t know the work of Dr Seuss before the movie but I am starting to like it very much. Some of the shots are really really funny! If the videos weren’t streamed I would watch some of the shots or sequences in loop. The one with Horton and the feather has a great cartoon timing. The one with the mayor at the dentist with his flappy arm…… there are soooo many great shots that I wonder how they managed to cram so much fun in same movie.
Here is a selection of Blue Sky new feature’s behind the scenes.

Horton comes to life:

the tech talk is very interesting too.

http://www6.comcast.net/entertainment/horton/wacAEW2WR4U
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