“Tangled” Joe Bowers thought process

Posted on October 3, 2012 | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation, Education

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.

Lord Macintosh (update)

Posted on September 26, 2012 | 4 Comments
Filed under Education, Modeling

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!

Septembre 2012 Box office grosses

Posted on September 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Filed under Business of animation

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

Dreamworks’ 12 pictures announcement

Posted on September 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Business of animation

I just saw an article on Animation Magazine announcing Dreamworks’ 12 next pictures.

Here is the important part:

The movies and their release dates are:

The Croods (March 22, 2013)
Turbo (July 19, 2013)
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (Nov. 1, 2013)
Me and My Shadow (March 14, 2014)
How to Train Your Dragon 2 (June 20, 2014)
Happy Smekday! (Nov. 26, 2014)
The Penguins of Madagascar (March 27, 2015)
Trolls (working title, June 5, 2015)
B.O.O: Bureau of Otherworldly Operations (Nov. 6, 2015)
Mumbai Musical (working title, Dec. 19, 2015)
Kung Fu Panda 3 (March 18, 2016)
How to Train Your Dragon 3 (June 18, 2016)

With 3 to 4 movies released per year, Dreamworks will certainly become the busiest studio in the next few years offering a hell of opportunity for animators and artists.

Animation Magazine article

MAndrews and the Google Doodle team

Posted on September 6, 2012 | 1 Comment
Filed under Education, Story

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

The 180 degree rule

Posted on August 18, 2012 | 5 Comments
Filed under Cinematography, Education, Story

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

Zoom vs Truck in

Posted on August 18, 2012 | 2 Comments
Filed under Cinematography, Education

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]

Madagascar “Gloria” wip

Posted on June 28, 2012 | 2 Comments
Filed under Education, Modeling, Portfolio

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

Valve’s “Source Filmmaker” (SFM)

Posted on June 28, 2012 | 1 Comment
Filed under Video Games

SFM logo

I went to see Madagascar 3 in 3d few days ago and I was struck by how efficiently they used the 3d.

Like most purist I don’t usually care about 3d and would usually go for the cheaper and flatter 2d version when/if available but this made me realize that we are living in a very exciting time.

As soon as I got out of the cinema I wanted to do some modeling and animation. Not because the movie was so good (you can swim from Tanzania to Monaco in 5 minutes, but can’t reach New York in 10? right….) but I am guessing because I had been sharing 90 minutes with CG puppets made alive, and, thanks to the use of 3d, those puppets were simply made real.

For the past few years we have merely tried to replicate in CG what had been done for 100 years with traditional 2d animation when we actually have the tools to take storytelling and cinematography to greater heights.

Let’s have a look at what video game company, Valve, just presented in a very compelling video today.

Non other than Gollum’s creator, Bay Raitt, is introducing Valve’s “Source filmmaker” (SFM).

From what I understand, they basically give you the best tool to create your own Machinimas.

We will be able to to use Valve’s realtime VFX, lighting, animation engine to create our own realtime shortfilms… for free? 😉

On top of that, we can already imagine that animation, props, VFX creators could sell the fruits of their labour on the Valve marketplace or Steam, for everyone to enjoy. Got some crazy walk/run cycles? Sell them! You missed out on the Iphone App market? This is your chance!

Those guys are definitely thinking outside the box and created a really fresh ecosystem and business model. I look forward to hearing more about it and seeing how the wider audience will react to it.

Hit to following link for loads of tutorials.

Sourcefilmmaker.com

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zri1c_If6Ic[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcYOq6bqK-M[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRfkXu5SzNg[/youtube]

While we are at it, check out that “Meet the Pyro” video I hadn’t seen before.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUhOnX8qt3I[/youtube]

37 degrees Celsius

Posted on June 27, 2012 | 5 Comments
Filed under Drawings, Modeling

Today was a really hot day. 37C or 100 Farenheit… HOT!

Nothing like going to the café down the road and sketch some of the patrons by such temperature! I have also started using a new 0.1 Uni Pen. I was recommended a similar Staedler felt pen but they don’t do that brand at my local art store.

There is no messing around with such tool, you got to be have a clear idea where you are going as each line counts.

If you are wondering, we are in delayed pre-production at work which means no work … or income. It sucks so I’d better make the most of it and keep myself busy.

[update] Well well well… I was reading James Robertson’s blog this evening and said to myself. What about if I added some colours in Photoshop?! Learning watercolours is a big struggle for me and once you put the paints on the paper, it is too late for corrections.

Crazy I never thought about using digital paints! I was probably in the mindset that retouching sketches afterwards is cheating. At the end of the day, it is only about the final product isn’t it? And the learning obviously 😉