Blue Sky “Epic”

Posted on June 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

Well well well…. no farting or burping jokes, no pop culture references, fairly realistic look …. this definitely seems different! The trailer reminds us a bit of “Arthur and the invisibles” but it is obviously too early to know what this is about.

At a time where most Animated Features look alike, it is nice to see Blue Sky is trying something different. Let’s hope it works out.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xu3JLXfuwQ[/youtube]

Pixar Brave Wireframes

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

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 😉 )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuw1_JCNBVs

via Keith Ribbons

Sony’s “Hotel Transylvania” June trailer

Posted on June 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

Compared to “Brave”, “Cloudy with a chance of Meatbals”, “Open Season”, the character designs feel really uninspired and pretty generic to me. Could this be because Sony finally settled for a TV Series director?

Some TV shows like “Samurai Jack” have great artistic direction but unlike most Genndy Tartakovsky fans, I can’t watch more than one episode of a TV series.

This looks like an interesting movie though and I am sure Kris Pearn and his team added a lot of magic to the script.

Since I have a thing for animated vampires and most Sony’s Animated Features were good surprises for me, I will probably go and see that one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4RK3jY7AVk[/youtube]

CGMA Character Design Week 06

Posted on June 18, 2012 | 2 Comments
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio, Tablet PC

In week 06, Nate asked us to design an animal by focusing on its iconic features.

I went for my favourite animal, the elephant, and decided to give it a Ronald Searle treatment, just to show that I could draw in a different style. Character Design is not just about designing things in your own manner, in production you need to be able to adapt to other people’s style.

This little guy was done in Sketchbook pro with custom brushes on my poor man’s Cintiq aka Tablet PC (hence the small size). I tried real hard to obtain a nice line quality with my Intuos 3 but I feel it is not going to happen.

Related posts:
CGMA Character Design Week 05

Jamaal Bradley “Tangled” (Raiponce)

Posted on June 18, 2012 | 1 Comment
Filed under Animation

Let’s take a break from Storyboarding today.

Jamaal just posted a awesome shot walkthrough. Really lovely work.

I am not a Disney Princesses fanboy but if you still haven’t watched Tangled, rush to the DVD rental place near your house immediately, Disney made a magical timeless movie that instantly outdated a lot of its 2d production. The acting of Rapunzel is one of the most genuine ever seen in Animated Features.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/44181679[/vimeo]

‘Pressing matters’ 03 rough first pass

Posted on June 15, 2012 | 1 Comment
Filed under Drawings, Short film, Story

This is part 03. I started to use a more classic Photoshop brush, I am still not sure which one looks best, not that I am fluent with any of them though 😉

Ah Toby Shelton just updated his blog with some awesome Kung Fu Panda boards. I really like his Sharpie looking brush… might try that one! (Thanks Nolwenn for the heads up)

‘Pressing matters’ 02 rough first pass

Posted on June 14, 2012 | 3 Comments
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio, Short film, Story

This is the second panel, you read it from left to right.

‘Pressing matters’ 01 rough first pass

Posted on June 13, 2012 | 1 Comment
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio, Short film, Story

You saw it here first ! 😉

Just so you don’t get mistaken, this is a short film I am working on. Well, I am only interested in telling stories those days so it might just stay in the state of boards.

This is the first time I use Photoshop for storyboarding so bare with me if it looks a bit rough. I will probably do a clean up version afterwards anyway. I have few more sheets coming in the next few days and you can expect the character design and the drawing style to change a bit as we go along. Let me know what you think!

Annecy, the weather

Posted on June 11, 2012 | 4 Comments
Filed under Comics, Drawings

Annecy 2012

Posted on June 8, 2012 | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation

Quick report on my Annecy trip.

I got to attend a workshop with Bill Perkins, a talk with Disney Story artist Josie Trinidad and Disney Vis dev guy Jeffrey Turley. I was also part of a classic 1h30 long queue for a pay-to-see “Lorax behind the scenes” that nearly ended in blood bath. The “Brave” and “Paperman” queues were 2h so I passed on those (my knees and elbows were still swollen from previous brawls). On a side note, Pixar didn’t hold their regular Mifa presentations which was really unexpected and sad.

Josie Trinidad won us over with her enthusiasm and Jeffrey Turley gave a very funny talk spiced up with lovely cartoony ink-brushed beatboards at the Disney booth. We were not allowed to take any pictures or report anything on their Wreck-it-Ralph presentation so I can only share with you the following pictures. (sorry for the picture quality, I had forgotten my charger and used my phone instead)