Animation with a moustache

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

Category: Drawings

Car pantomime shot (planning first part) 1

Drawings / Tablet PC

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Car pantomime shot (planning first part)

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I just wanted to share with you my new planning method for CG animation… 2d animation! 😉 I am currently using the demo version of TVpaint 8.5 on my HP Tablet PC and that is just awesome.

Just like Zbrush, TV paint takes a bit of time to get used to but once you know your way around, it is very easy to start animating in 2d.

TVpaint doesn’t offer the bells and whistles of a good CG Fcurve editor but you can do some really decent flash like animation with a traditional feel to it, and that s all I need.

Animatic for my short 5

Animation Mentor / Drawings / Short film / Tablet PC

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Animatic for my short

Ok sorry about the delay but I was a bit paranoid that someone would steal my idea that I didn’t want to show it until now.

Anyway, here it is for the ones who haven’t seen it yet.

While working on the layout I realised that some areas still needed a bit more definition so back to the drawing boards.

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Sketches from Annecy 4

Drawings / Portfolio

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Sketches from Annecy

With all the screenings and all the people to meet, I found it really difficult to find the time to sketch but eventually forced myself to do it in the last days.

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Sitting at the terrasse of a coffee shop, I thought it would be a great place to draw people walking in the street but as usual they walk too fast so I ended up sketching the people around us.
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In a bar late at night
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Terrase of a coffee shop. I had to draw those 2 girls in brown. Same outfit, different proportions.
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View from the Café des Arts. I really struggle with colours but I still like to experiment. Sorry for the mess 😉
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Pixar animators Patty Kihm and Ross Stevenson during a presentation of their work on Ratatouillle. “Yeah man” is the stamp of approval from Brad Bird when a shot is approved.

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“Surf’s Up” co director Chris Jenkins and Chris Buck.

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Gary Rydstrom during the presentation of the Pixar’s “Lifted”. Very nice animation, very nice rendering, but I didn’t like the character designs or the story. The human seem to be coming straight from Pixar generig, and the aliens just looked like blobs put together. The story is okayish. The audience seemed to like it but I found it a bit weak compared to the more subtle “Gery’s game” or “For the birds”. Actually, Blur’s “Gentlemen Duel” got an even crazier response from the audience compared to Lifted.

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On the way back to London after the Customs confiscated the Reblochon cheese I intended to use for a nice tartiflette. Damn.

Watercolour kit 2

Drawings

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Watercolour kit

After countless hours spent on the net searching for the perfect kit I finally took the plunge. I just placed my order on the Ken Bromley Art supplies website for

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Pentel brush pen with 4 water proof ink cartridges

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A set of 3 pentel aquabrush, just in case I picked up the wrong size. Mind you the set of 3 cost the same as a single one at the London Graphic Center 😉

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And the obvious Winsor & Newton 12 half pans Watercolour pocket box. That was quite expensive for my first watercolour kit compared to the £6 for the student version but I have been told it was well worth it as the pigments are much stronger than the student kit. I have had various experiences with water colours in the past but I guess it was because I was using some cheap sets.

One last question is what kind of paper I should buy. The popular one is the new Moleskine sketchbook but I am not sure it is the most sensible choice for a first try. We will see as soon as I receive the kit.

Summer time, character concept 3

Animation Mentor / Drawings / Portfolio / Sculpture / Short film / Tablet PC

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Summer time, character concept

As promised, here are some concept art for the design of my character Thirsty, a cartoony looking vampire. I have modeled and alpha version of him in wax already but I will probably change the proportions and use a different material. I started using a dark red wax but it is too dark and most of the detail won’t show up properly. I did try some Super Sculpey I had laying around but it was too dry and brittle. I also tried some Chavant clay but it was too sticky for my liking. I will go to Tiranti tomorrow and see what they have on offer….. not that I trust them much anymore but well let’s see.

Here are my concept art, 2 hours of brainstorming with my TabletPC and Sketchbook pro.

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And here is the unfinished alpha version of the sculpt.

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pastels 0

Drawings / Portfolio / Tablet PC

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pastels

I should be getting in Class5 “Short preproduction” next week and I set my goals quite high. Here is a test I did in preparation using Caran d’Ache pastels on Canson 170g…. well that was more ArtRage2 on my Tablet pc but I won’t be taken seriously if I say so.

You might recognise the inspiration from some tiny company in california.

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Drawing 0

Drawings / Portfolio / Tablet PC

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Drawing

While checking Youtube, I was copying some of the Story Boredom’s caricatures today and realised that it would be better to do my own ones.

That one is not really a caricature but a simple painting I did just to get better at it. It’s a very intuitive drawing, I didn’t really use the Glen Vilppu checklist. I just wanted to test some Sketchbooks brushes.

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Les soeurs jumelles 1

Drawings / Portfolio / Tablet PC

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Les soeurs jumelles

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I couldn’t find sleep this morning and after a very early wake up 4am started drawing on my tabletPC. By the way, Sketchbook rocks. First because the sketching feeling is amaaazzzziiingg even with a 7 years old wacom UltraPad pen and second because the CPU use on my HP 4200 is a stable 20% which is great for the battery life when you are having a coffee at Starbucks.

Because of the wide array of customizable brushes Photoshop CS2 is excellent but the CPU use goes up to 100% which triggers the CPU fan too frequently for my liking.

Rooster 2

Drawings / Portfolio

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Rooster

this week’s AM drawing topic is the chineese horoscope. I chose the rooster.

First experiment with various sort of brushes, some more successful than others.

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Photoshop. Wacom tablet.

2 characters acting shot planning 0

Animation Mentor / Drawings

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2 characters acting shot planning

Here we go, we have now officially started the 2 characters acting shot, which will mark the end of Animation mentor’s first part training.
The 2 characters shot dialogue is one of the hardest things to do as it encompasses all the things we have seen so far: principles of animation, body mechanics and introduction to acting.

After selecting 3 interesting audio clips last week, we had to shoot the video references and work on the layout for that sequence.

The task is overwhelming. This is the first time we are gonna have to set few cameras and establish the cuts between them. Obviously we also have to make the two characters interact with each other in a believable manner.

Here are my video reference for this week (last week actually) and my 2d planning. I will show you the layout once I updated it, taking into consideration Morgan’s comments.

Video reference. This is something crucial to communicate in a rapid manner to your fellow animators or your supervisor what you are going for. It also allow you to explore different ideas and see what would or would ‘t work.

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Preparation sketches. Sketches is an other way to explore ideas through thumbnail poses and sequences of thumbnails. I normally operate a back and forth between Sketches and Video reference.

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