The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
Great 58 mins interview with Brave’s Director Mark Andrews at the Google campus. Not your average, “how difficult was it to make Merida’s hair?” kind of questions fortunately.
There was also a tricky question at the very end regarding the Japanese trailer and I let you find out how he got out of it.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOwq4zLcH8Q[/youtube]
Related posts:
Mark Andrews CalArts lecture
The 180 degrees rule
Few weeks ago, Karim my younger brother from an other mum and dad, reminded me that Mark Andrews (aka Mandrews) and Ted Mathot had been interviewed by Andrew Gordon for a great Story Splinecast back in 2007.
I had completely forgotten about that one and was surprised to see that I even left a blurb in the comment section 😉
With the release of Brave which Mandrews directed, I HAD to listen to that interview again and I certainly had forgotten all the great gems it contained and how different Mandrews profile is compared to other Pixar directors. Well we didn’t know he would go on directing a Pixar movie in 2007 and I expected him to go on directing live action instead.
The little gem I wanted to shed light on today is the one where he talks about the “180 degree rule”. Some directors Mandrews worked with would never break it but others seem to be a bit more partial. Check it out
“Mark Andrews 180 degree rule”
I would recommend you to listen to the entire Spline cast.
Story Spline Cast with Mark Andrews and Ted Mathot
Sorry for the lack of posts but I am addicted to internet and Social websites so the last remedy I found to be more productive is to cut off my internet connection. I do post some WIPs on Twitter once in a while though.
Right, since I am doing a lot of research in Storyboarding and Layout those days, I have decided to add a new Cinematography tag to my blog and “Zoom” vs “Truck-in” will be my first post.
“Zoom vs Truck-In” is something I have had to deal with a lot lately and I found a great example in the first iteration of Kung Fu Panda and the awesome bridge sequence. It is not very often that you find the two concepts applied on two consecutive shots but they did it, starting with a Truck-in and followed by a dramatic Zoom on Tai Lung
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/47750317[/vimeo]
Here is where I am. I haven’t worked on the feet yet. Two days into it, I just need to adjust some edge loops, get rid of triangles then it will be done. Next is Vitaly then some Brave characters, just because modeling characters is fun!
Ah and some wireframes. The arms are still pretty low polygon.
Related post:
37 degrees celcius
Ever wondered how dense those Pixar meshes are? I have!
You are in luck, Pixar just released some video footage where we can see the wireframe mesh of both Queen Elinor and King Fergus!
Except the helmet, hair and moustache the mesh is pretty dense. I wonder whether they add one more pass of smoothing at render time though.
Those are probably not the low poly meshes anyway but we can already notice an E pole on the cheeks. This could possibly means Pixar doesn’t use Nurbs surfaces anymore.
Click to zoom in.
And here is the Behind the Scenes video with, 2 minutes into it, Animation Collaborative‘s Michal Makarewicz. (a great school to attend if you are in the San Francisco area or crazy enough to relocate for three month 😉 )
via Keith Ribbons
Related posts:
3d modeling portfolio
Low polygon modeling
Brave concept art and teaser
I was browsing this kid’s blog the other day http://devon-stubblefield-interview.blogspot.fr/ and something he left in his comments section struck me.
I think he said he regularly fills up one sketchbook per week., granted they are only 100 pages, but still…
Anonymous asked: How big are the sketchbooks that you fill weekly? and like what kind of paper?
I use either a “Strathmore Sketchbook (green book) 100 sheets, 9×12 inches” or “Strathmore Windpower Sketch (blue book) 70 sheets, 9×12 inches.” The sketchbooks contain recycled sketch paper (fine tooth surface) (
In term of hours, he said that’s about 4 to 7 hours a day 😉
I never believed in talent so this only confirmed what I always thought. Success comes with dedication and drive. The more you want something, the more likely you are to reach it.
For the little story, the guy is only 17 years old, he already interned at Disney and is now heading for a summer internship at Pixar with my friend Pris and Richie…
Since I attended Animation Collaborative with a bunch of crazy artists (I will post about it as soon as I can), I have also started carrying a sketchbook and mechanical pencil in my hands at all time. As soon as I find myself waiting or idling, I open the sketchbook and start drawing. This is a great way to improve and also to remember situations and events.
Here are two of my latest sketches drawn while waiting for my friend Sebastien and an other one on the Ferry between France and England. I was really surprised to see that guy on the second drawing with a pen in his hand, I thought he was also sketching but he seemed to be composing some music. Nothing like pen and paper I am telling you! 😉
This week Steve asked us to analyse some movie sequences in thumbnails, I chose one of the first sequence from Akira Kurosawa’s very graphic movie Ran. I could have used some tones but I am not very good at that yet. Instead I went for clean sketches. This exercise is very interesting as it makes us really pay attention to the kind of decisions directors take. The use of long lenses here is very unusual.
The second assignment was to get acquainted with camera lenses and different type of cinematographic shots. I now a thing or two about camera lenses so instead I decided to do some sort of tutorial. The panel 03 (Change of lens with moving camera) is probably the most interesting. For that one, I wanted to show how flat the picture can look when using long lenses. It is a great trick when you want to frame two character of different height or if you want to make the distance between two characters seem smaller.
Related post:
Story week 02
This is my assignment for the CGMA Character Design workshop. We were to design a monster based on a basic circle, triangle or square shape. It is a similar exercise to what we did at the Animation Collaborative. Those three shapes are the basic foundations, the building blocks of strong character design.
Here is what I came up with. The line work and painting job are a bit poor for the moment. Nate will help us with those in the next few weeks so expect a new version soon. The bottom picture are explorations that I first did with pen and paper then cleaned up in Sketchbook pro.
With the recent departure of Glen Keane from Disney to, I am guessing, an other studio in the North of LA, I feel that we should show Disney a bit more appreciation for the amazing work they did on Tangled. Here is a repost of something I wrote last year.
In a recent article published on the CNN website about the poor reception received by Robert Zemeckis latest motion capture movie “Mars needs mom”. A blogger was quoted explaining the difference between motion capture and keyframe animation in those terms.
the style of animation featured in “Mars Needs Moms.” It’s known as motion capture or “mo cap,” a process that involves attaching sensors to actors to capture their movements. Computers transform the data into realistic-looking animation. (“Kung Fu Panda 2” and “Cars 2”, by contrast, are completely computer-generated).
What the hell is this mumbo-jumbo supposed to mean? How are the readers supposed to understand what the writer call “completely computer-generated”?
Reading this article, it became obvious to me that the general public has no idea was kind of work is going into making an animated feature and why motion capture is so different from keyframe animation.
To be fair, before I got into animation, I also had no idea about the actual process and just assumed they got done by maybe some sort of machine but certainly not an army of artists working for month or years, frame by frame.
So, what I think we need, is to give the audience more information about the animation process and put the artists forward. This is what this post is about.
A really cool and inspiring montage of Disney’s Tangled animation crew surfaced on the net a while back and disappeared quickly after to finally reappear few days ago. Here it is
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg6A6qx3-74[/youtube]
and here is an other fun video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oWhovB02Hg[/youtube]
I just came across a really good 3d model review by Dave Gallagher and I found it verry interesting as Dave is giving some really good tips on how to best adapt a 2d concept art into a working 3d model.
It is only 15 minutes but I have never seen anything like that online before. Don’t expect anything technical except at the very end where he talks about adding more edges to the chin to create more volume and the problem it will cause. The video is mainly about translating a 2d concept into 3d and spotting areas that usually get overlooked.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdqsvG_vjD4#![/youtube]
