Animation with a moustache

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

Category: Comics

“Messy goes to Okido”. Lolly’s Ice Cream van (environment rigging) 1

Animation / Character design / Comics / Education / Portfolio

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“Messy goes to Okido”. Lolly’s Ice Cream van (environment rigging)

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/138861480[/vimeo]

At the begining of Messy goes to Okido”‘s production, our TD needed some help to rig various props and environment so I gave him a hand for few weeks and mostly for the “Taste buddies” episode. I never got credits for this but I don’t care much since I don’t really want to advertise those skills too much. I am an animator and don’t want to land rigging jobs.

Among those props was the rigging of Lolly’s Ice cream van which was a lot of fun.

It was a bit of challenge as I hadn’t done that kind of stuff in Max for a very long time but at the end of the day it didn’t take too long since I was able to use the exact same techniques I would have used in Maya. I could have spend a bit more time on some areas but TV series require a really fast turnaround unfortunately so the entire rig had to be done and tested in less than two weeks I think I remember.

If you live in UK, you can see the rig in action on the BBC Iplayer right here:
bbc.co.uk/iplayer/cbeebies/episode/b069r3gk/messy-goes-to-okido-4-tastebuddies

Enjoy!

Lolly's van

2d Portfolio June 2013 0

Comics / Drawings / Portfolio

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2d Portfolio June 2013

I would love to be paid to draw more and realized the best way to achieve that would be to put together a 2d portfolio and apply for 2d animation related jobs when they come up.

I am certainly not giving up on 3d animation don’t worry, I just live in a place where there are just as many 2d and 3d positions. Ultimately, 2d and 3d skills work hand in hand so cultivate one and you will get stronger in the other one.

Here is a selection of work done in my free time or during the AnimC and CGMW character design classes.

Thanks to Nate Wragg, Chris Sasaki and Albert Lozano for being such great mentors and inspiring artists.

Facebook birthdays comics part 01 2

Comics / Drawings / Education / Portfolio / Story

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Facebook birthdays comics part 01

In order to broaden my range of skills and improve my employability I have started making comics. I think this could be a great training for storyboarding. My storyboarding teacher Steven MacLeod told us how much it helped him to clean up his boards so that should work for me too.

Here is the first story, well the first part. The first panels were drawn in Photoshop and the last one in PaintToolSAI. If you are a Twitter subscriber you have already seen some pictures I posted few weeks ago, that software is great.

Forgive the rudimentary colors and inking, I am really new to all of that and few month ago I couldn’t even draw with a wacom tablet. Things will get better with practice.

The second page will be uploaded tomorrow (I’d better finish it! ;-)). Enjoy

Related posts:
Pressing matters 01 rough first pass
Pressing matters 02 rough first pass
Pressing matters 03 rough first pass

Story week 02 1

Comics / Portfolio

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Story week 02

Sorry for the lack of updates lately but believe me, I was REALLY BUSY. As a side note, I cut down my Facebook use DRAMATICALLY, as in, I only open Facebook to check my mails twice a week and I am way more productive now.

Anyway so, after few weeks attending the Schoolism Gesture class, I grew more confident about my drawing skills and when a friend told me about the CGMWA Character design and Story classes, I knew I couldn’t pass on those rare opportunities, especially seeing who the mentors are.

AnimC has a great character design class with Chris Sasaki this term and an awesome Storyboard class with Louis Gonzales but moving back to San Francisco for three month is not doable at the moment, and summer coming, I am better off being on the French sunny sea side rather than cloudy/cold SF.

CGMWA is offering two great classes this term with the incredible Character Designer/Vis Dev guy, Nate Wragg and Dreamworks story artist, Steven Mac Leod.

I have been following Steven Mc Leod’s blog since he was at CalArts and always found it inspiring, the class is said to be for beginners but we are already creating some solid portfolios.

As for Nate, I discovered his blog by Googling the Ratatouille End Credits and immediately bought his first video lecture when it came out. I love the way he paints digitally as it looks like real brushes.

When he announced he was starting a Character design class, I loved his first video so much that I HAD to enroll. Now, I get to pick his brain and watch him work every week.

The CGMWA classes are only 8 weeks but they are pretty cheap compared to whatever is out there and certainly cheaper than CalArt that both mentors graduated from.

For the Story class, we had to submit few pages of sketches on the first week and this week was about creating one picture gags. I was busy moving house so I only did one which I used for both Character Design and Story. Clever hey!

This week’s Character Design assignment was to design a Templar. I am never really short of gag ideas, let’s see if that one makes sense!

Forgive the rough line work, I am very new to Photoshop for clean up and still have to find a good brush. I am getting there though. I will post something more worked out in few days.

My upcoming comic, sneak peek 0

Comics

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My upcoming comic, sneak peek

Thanks to the Schoolism gesture drawing class, I am feeling inspired to do a bit more work on my, many years ongoing comic strip, or Bédé (Bandes Dessinées), as they are called in France.

I have a whole series about my rediscovery of France and the French town of Angoulême two years ago, an other one about my addiction to coffee and Moka coffee makers, and a third one about my life in San Francisco.

I will be starting slowly with a bunch of random stories as a warm up and to try different worklfows.

As a teaser, here is a rough drawing from the first story I will be publishing. The story is well fleshed out but I started drawing on newsprint paper and I got stuck when I wanted to import this into the computer. Good thing a friend asked me to clean his Tablet PC last week. I also had one laying around and realised it would be a very handy tool for my comics!

Related posts:
Tablet PC
Schoolism gesture drawing week 03