Animation with a moustache

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

Category: Portfolio

Walk challenge – refine 3

Animation / Portfolio

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Walk challenge – refine

Sorry for the lack of update but I just came back from a great trip in beautiful Slovakia. I love Europe.

So, the results are in :

Walk challenge Winners

Well with the amount of work I set myself to, I didn’t expect to win but man…. to not even be featured!!! That really sucks! (Syndrome’s voice). I know my entry is not finished but still….. was it about the branding or the fact that it doesn’t …. well… that it doesn’t cycle 🙂 ? ahah yes that could be the reason.

Tyler Kakac’s disco walk was really funny and highly polished despite being a bit off topic. Disco in the early 70s? It is more like late 70s to me. Anyway he is my winner amongst all the other entries, lot of character in that cycle. Check out his showreel (not Apple handset friendly at all, remember, Flash blows up your batteries so you are not allowed to use it on your expensive device) http://tylerkakac.com/

It is nice to see Eleonor, a friend AMer, win third place with a not so customized Bishop rig. Congrat girl!

The winner is a really cool cycle too. I would have voted that one second though. He also has a nice reel! http://www.drewwiney.com/

Ah and here is the entry I sent by the way. It would have benefited from 2 more days of work but it was really difficult to find more time for it and I was really looking forward to my first holidays in 6 month.

I hope you like it and have a look at the related posts if you are interested in watching thought process, layout, blocking and changes. I won’t spend more time on it though, I have more important shots to finish. Time to get back to my short film!!!

Related posts:
Pervers Pepere – Spline 01
The walk challenge – a contest – Blocking
The walk challenge – a contest – Thought process

Fredricksen house part 02 4

Education / Modeling / Portfolio

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Fredricksen house part 02

Here is where I am today. Only spent one hour on this. The weather was way too nice to stay home today.

I mainly worked on the windows and some detailing work. I added some basic colours and did a quick mental ray rendering just for giggles, nothing too elaborate.

The shingles will be modelled at the latest stage, I still have a major issue with the roof proportions to solve. Don Shank blueprints are very useful but the final model seems a bit different.

Click on the pic for bigger version

and here is the timelapse, 6 hours of work in 12 minutes.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/11983854[/vimeo]

Related post:
Fredricksen house part 01

Fredricksen house 1

Education / Modeling / Portfolio

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Fredricksen house

I saw this yesterday and thought it would be fun to model it over the week end….

I didn’t think it would take so long but this is where I am 5 hours later. Click on the picture for a bigger version.

If you are interested, I have also recorded a timelapse video as usual and will post it when done with the modeling tomorrow.

The Walk Challenge – A contest 9

Animation / Portfolio

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The Walk Challenge – A contest

[this article will be revisited everytime I have some updates as well as my Public Review on the Animation Mentor workspace so keep an eye on the following post.]

Since I pretty much do Walk cycles for a living, I got really excited when the Spline Doctors started a contest few weeks ago.

“The walk challenge – a contest”

This should allow me to demonstrate my understanding on walks but also to add a bit of acting. Isn’t it what this challenge is about rather than just a 24 frames cycle?

Because I intend to have some facial animation and since the walk might be used for an article, I thought I would be better off using the Norman rig rather than Bishop or a self made one using abAutorig. Norman is also pretty generic and adapts very well to modifications so it is easy to make it look less…. “stock” 😉

Out of the 4 choices, I chose the Period character from the Victorian era for the following reasons:

[…] (more…)

Life drawing, second term just started 1

Drawings / Portfolio

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Life drawing, second term just started

This term I have gone a bit mad and enrolled for 3 classes a week for a total of 7h. I can already see a lot of progress compared to last term. Better composition, better line work, better shading, better proportions, speed. Good thing I didn’t walk out or gave up like other students.

Here is a 2 hours pose. My Thursday tutor keeps telling me that I would be a great forger. That’s not a good thing for him. As artists, we shouldn’t try to copy the model like a camera would.

I don’t care much for the moment, being a camera is still a good thing for me until I have mastered anatomy and proportions.

This term is very exciting, I am sharing two classes with a lot of very talented concept artists and artists from the Video game industry. That is a lot of competition but at least that pushes us to get better.

Long chair modeling timelapse 1

Education / Modeling / Portfolio / Short film

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Long chair modeling timelapse

What are you supposed to do on Easter bank holiday, work on your short film right?

Here is a series of timelapse video where you can follow me modeling one of the main props for my short film.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10620178[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10629348[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10642272[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/10649139[/vimeo]

Today I am gonna tackle the cartoony rigging of this guy so it ties a bit better with shot 12. I am keeping in mind to make the props looks a bit more wonkey but the rig could help for that.

Related post:
Short film blog category

Shot 12 final
Props done

Autorig tutorial prep work 04 3

Animation / Modeling / Portfolio

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Autorig tutorial prep work 04

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/9936173[/vimeo]

This time I am modeling the hands. I am not looking at references yet, just blocking out the shapes.

You will see me starting from a cube, which I subdivide manually to extrude faces and create the fingers.

I push the details on one fingers then duplicate it to create the other ones. Very often you will see me going from low poly to high poly using the 1 and 3 keys in maya 2009.

and here is the second pass
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/9924238[/vimeo]

Third pass, refining the shape, cleaning up some edges, adding more detail
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNHxU-TFHSM[/youtube]

Related posts:
Autorig tutorial prep work 03
Autorig tutorial prep work 02
Autorig tutorial prep work 01
Low polygon modeling tools

Autorig tutorial prep work 03 4

Animation / Modeling / Portfolio

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Autorig tutorial prep work 03

CharlesF. Muntz

Here is the nearly final model. Click on the picture for full screen version.

I will work on the hands tomorrow.I am still not entirely happy about the junction between the chin and the cheek bone, the eye/nose area also need a bit more work but that should be enough for the Autorig tutorial.

Related posts:
Autorig tutorial prep work 02
Autorig tutorial prep work 01
Low polygon modeling tools

Autorig tutorial prep work 02 6

Animation / Modeling / Portfolio

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Autorig tutorial prep work 02

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/9780845[/vimeo]

Here is a video showing the modeling process for my tribute to Pixar’s “Up”.

You can double click to see the video in Full screen but if you first click on the Vimeo logo you will be able to see it in full 1600×1200. You might also be able to download the video from Vimeo, it is in Xvid/Divx, sorry I don’t have Quicktime pro but Virtual Dub or KMplayer allow you to go frame by frame if needed.

[…] (more…)

Life drawing week 03 0

Drawings / Portfolio

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Life drawing week 03

Here are my latest drawings. Two long poses.

I tried to think about the composition a bit more this time. The thumbnails on the top left corner are the base for my composition.

I wasn’t too happy the way things were going for the first one and restarted from scratch, which didn’t leave me with enough time to finish the pose. I had in mind to incorporate the little platform the model was standing on originally but realised that it didn’t present much interest so I decided to go for something tighter, with the feet fading away.

The second one is pretty good, but the model is way to high on the page. The foot is better than my last attempt but the hands, especially the right one would have needed more work. The quality of the line is still very poor but I am working on that.

Things are getting better and better I feel and there is definitely some improvements compared my first drawings. My skills in drawing from imagination have also dramatically improved and I can now draw different body parts without reference.

Those two drawing will probably be my last pencil shaded piece as I feel it is now time to move to Oil painting. I have been told that moving to paint would help me to improve my drawing skills and Painting is also something I always wanted to try but never found a good teacher/course until now.

Marc

Robert