Animation with a moustache

November 12, 2012

Rich Moore “Wreck it Ralph” Talks at Google

I don’t like when people just post links to stuff without taking the time to write an introduction or some commentary but this is what I will do today 😉

Hehe, actually I still have to write a little blurb as Google’s Doodler Creative Lead Ryan Germick is once again hosting a great interview with this time “Wreck it Ralph”‘s director Rich Moore.

I love Ryan’s interviews as he always does a lot of research before interviewing people and has a lot of great questions which he asks with a lot of humour.

“Wreck it Ralph” hasn’t opened yet in France but I will certainly see it next week after attending CTN. By the way, I am free if someone wants to invite me at Disney for a visit next week, even if it is just to lead me to the gift shop 😉

Thanks Google, Ryan and obviously Rich Moore!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkxcO_MG4Gs[/youtube]

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Animation / Education

November 10, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

Looney Tunes Shorts online!

I just got told that the first two ReelFX’s “Looney tunes” shorts are now available online.

If you missed those look no further and watch them in their full 1080p glory on their own Youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/looneytunesshorts

The TDs did an incredible job to allow the animator to push CG animation to an extent that was never permitted before. Crazy smear frames, multi limbs, out of the ordinary facial and body poses.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZhlXAYtaMw[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cYMoxBWEZw[/youtube]

I am still waiting to see the entire Daffy’s Rhapsody but the wait shouldn’t take too long.

I also want to point out that ReelFX’s Supervising TD Josh Carey and the other guys from Rigging Dojo have an incredible source of information on their website so you must subscribe to both their newsletter, and blog’s RSS Feed, even if like me you are not a professional TD but only want to understand how things work and learn few things along the way.

Lately they have had some really good interviews with Sony’s Character and Animation TD Martin Orlowski for his work on “Pirates ! Band of Misfits” (I am wondering more and more how much was stop motion now….) and Sony’s TD Tim Coleman for his work on “Spiderman” and “Hotel Transylvania”. The latter was only available on the Newsletter so this is why you need to subscribe to both.

That’s it for today. I will write a longer article about the importance of communication between TDs and Animators an other day.

Thanks Amy for the heads up.

Schoolism – Designing with color and light

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Cinematography / Education / Painting

November 7, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

Schoolism – Designing with color and light

[update] Well the class sold out in probably less than two hours, this should give some ideas to other online schools like CGMA/CGMW (I can never remember the name, but I highly recommend the storyboard and character design class). CGMA has a 2 hours live class with the mentor every week, Schoolism doesn’t. Come on CGMA, there are plenty of great Feature Animation Vis Dev artist out there.

Check this out, Bobby Chiu’s Schoolism just announced a pretty awesome online class titled “Designing with Color and Light with Nathan Fowkes”.

I have been following Dreamworks visual dev artist Nathan Fowkes for a bit and I had to rush to book the course, granted I will have a slight issue compared to other students, I am slightly colour blind. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue, some people say Van Gogh was also colour blind and this is why the palette he used seems so vibrant to non-colour blind people.

Schoolism has also a bunch of other great classes from Zbrush to Storyboarding (with Kris Pearn) I would encourage you to check out

Schoolism online school

If you enroll to one of the courses and you want to support Animation with a Moustache, please give them the following promo code 75qs0

I should use this opportunity to thanks the two people who refereed me and I would like to hear which courses you took and how you found them.

I just found a 12 minutes introduction video to an other workshop he helds in L.A. that should give an idea to what to expect from his course.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32rLWfMzHTs[/youtube]

Related search:
Schoolism

3

Animation

October 31, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

Animation Podcast unofficial Tangled animator’s commentary

The Animation Podcast show 32

I was so upset when I realized there were no commentaries on the Tangled Bluray you wouldn’t believe. I understand Disney is trying to save money but how do you want people to truely appreciate your movies if you don’t give them an in-depth behind the scenes or at least some commentaries! I won’t be buying Blurays blindly anymore, that’s for sure.

On Pixar’s Incredible’s DVD there were 3 commentary tracks!

Anyway Clay Kaytis and a bunch of Disney animators came back with a bang. They gathered to record an unofficial Tangled Animator’s commentary to listen while watching the movie!

Excellent!

The Animation Podcast show 32 – The “Unofficial” Tangled Animators’ Audio Commentary

0

Acting / Animation

October 23, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

What is good acting?

I wouldn’t be able to give you a clear answer to that but I think we can all agree that the following example is a really fine piece of acting starring child prodigee Henry Thomas during an audition for 1982 Spielberg’s E.T.

The video just surfaced on the internet at the same time as an interview for Esquire magazine where he explains how he approached the audition.

“I read a scene from some early version of the script, and then I was asked to do an improvisation. I think the gist of the improv was, “You found someone, and they’re going to take them away from you, and it’s your friend, and you really don’t want your friend to go away.” So I started crying, and really going for it I guess.”

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/henry-thomas-et-interview-13541489

According to the Huffington Post, legend has it that Thomas drew his inspiration for the scene from a deceased family dog.

Okay kid, you got the job!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV0vYQcmWK0[/youtube]

“The Quest of Digduguesclin” in Pixel glory

1

Animation

October 11, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

“The Quest of Digduguesclin” in Pixel glory

My friend Sebastien Lasserre just released his 34 minutes shortfilm to the public and an official website showcasing some of the artwork that went into the making of the “short”. (few more minutes and it was a feature 😉 )

Sebastien took a year off from work to dedicate to this project, a shorfilm mixing medieval storyline and 8 bits video game references all animated in Pixels.

My only contribution was moral support as I only discovered the finished shortfilm when it premiered last year in Bayonne.

I should also note that the music and sound design was handled by my good buddy Vincil from Ummo whom I mentionned a while back on this blog.

http://sebastienlasserre.net/films/

Grab some drinks and popcorn, sit back and enjoy.

In the year of grace 1351, the entire kingdom is devastated.
Begged for by the king in order to reverse the cursed Malsanto,
Bertrand sets off on a long journey…
Scénario, director : Sébastien Lasserre
Dialogues : Michel Pasut et Sébastien Lasserre
Music : Sylvain Aubert,

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/50612323[/vimeo]

Character design research

After viewing the short don’t forget to check his other stop motion short films, and especially “Christmas time” which was selected at Annecy few years ago.

Related posts:
Christmas time is here
Saint Louis video clip

2

Comics / Drawings / Education / Portfolio / Story

October 4, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

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

2

Animation / Education

October 3, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

“Tangled” Joe Bowers thought process

Joe Bowers gave a great walkthrough of some of his shots from Disney’s “Tangled” and “Bolt”.

I love when an artist explains what his thought process was when creating a piece of work. The thought process is as much important as the finished piece itself I feel and Tangled is a perfect example for that as Glen Keane really helped the animators to push their work to a new level in CG animation. Those days people are so focused on performance that they forget about stylisation. If performance is all that counts you might as well using motion capture.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/48497275[/vimeo]

On a side note, the more I look at Bolt and Tangled, the more I am amazed at the look Disney created for those movies with the use of their revolutionary Painterly rendering

if you missed them I am also posting two older but still great walkthroughs by David Anthony Gibson for his work on Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs and some, related to my work at EA.

4

Education / Modeling

September 26, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

Lord Macintosh (update)

I had already modeled Brave’s Lord Macintosh last year but working from a single concept art proved to be really tricky and I completely missed his nose and chin. Now that the movie is out and many trailers are available, I felt it was time to correct few things.

As you can see, I still wasn’t able to tackle the hair and didn’t want to use the old school textured cards. Most Maya based Animated Feature studios probably use Joe Alter’s Shave and Haircut plugin nowadays and I ordered a trial license to give it a go but I still haven’t received it so … proxy hair will do for now.

Here are some screenshots and wireframes for you.

If you know a ‘Shave and haircut’ expert willing to help me learn the software, please let me know. Cheers!

0

Business of animation

September 23, 2012

by Olivier Ladeuix

Septembre 2012 Box office grosses

Summer is gone, time for a Box office grosses update with a lot of surprises. I decided to add the domestic grosses as those numbers could be particularly useful to understand the trend.

at M $337, one of the surprises was the really low score made by Lorax despite a record opening week-end in the US that pretty much covered their budget. With a 3+ month gap between the US release and the rest of the world, I wouldn’t be surprised if piracy has had a significant impact but we should also remember that Dr Seuss’s books are completely unknown outside the USA. Some people also got put off by the fact the movie was peppered with several musical sequences.

I think Madagascar 2 is superior than Madagascar 3 but the sequel was extremely well received by the public this summer. Proof that animators are not the best judges to what will sell?

I was also surprised to see that Ice Age 4 still does very well with the public, especially on the foreign market. As a matter of fact, Ice Age 4 made more money than what Lorax and ….. Brave together.

Pixar’s Brave is still showing across the world (I saw it this afternoon one more time) but the movie is really far from the score achieved by Toy Story 3. At M $500, Brave has made slightly more than Toy Story 2 and a little bit less than Wall-E. Who would have thought?

Here is the latest chart and I am attaching a pdf file with the complete chart starting in 2008 with hyperlinks to the related Boxofficemojo pages.

Box office grosses Sept 2012