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Spare Parts Cutscene 02b progress reel

Posted on February 22, 2011  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation, EA, Portfolio

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20234441[/vimeo]

And an other progress reel for Spare Parts Cutscene 02b. That sequence followed Cutscene 02a during the game. The lighting is “In Game” and the shadows are baked or faked.

For that sequence I used the famous shot from Tim Burton’s “Mars Attack” and an other one from Dreamworks “Monsters vs Aliens”. (click on the thumbnail for an edited animation)

For the layout, I reused a run cycle I had done for in-game animation and quickly tweaked it so the character could come to a stop and restart. As you can see there is no offset in the cycle yet.

The idea at that stage was to convey that an entire army was getting ready for the fight and a long queue of enemy would go throught the suit-up machine. This eventually got ditched as I didn’t have time to animate all those guys reacting to what was happening in front of them. The rigs were also really really slow and I couldn’t get more than 2 of those guys in Maya at the same time.

After pitching the idea to the executive producer, he suggested that one of the characters would get his helmet the other way round to give a more comical effect. I was delighted as it meant I could have a bit more time and went a bit further by having the guy getting stuck to the machine.

The chair is missing here as Ross our concept artist was working on the final environment and I changed the colour of the tube to match the colour of the LCD screen in the previous shot. At that stage I had establish that the good guy would use a variation of blue colours and the bad guys a variation of greens, ultimately we went for purples in final.

If you pay close attention to the end of the shot, you will notice that the arms on the poor fellow have been inverted when he has his helmet the other way round. As the helmet and the arms were constrained to the same control, this was the only way I could achieve that effect. Talking about constraints, while in the air, I parented the upper body of the character to the transparent box you can see at the top to allow for the flailling legs and rotation of the main control without affecting the upper body. Originally the tube was supposed to be transparent and show that but when in game, we ran out of time to make it work.

I hope you found this interesting!

Related posts:
Spare parts
Spare parts cutscene 2a

Spare Parts Cutscene 02a progress reel

Posted on February 21, 2011  | 4 Comments
Filed under Animation, EA, Portfolio

Some of the work I did at EA last year

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20195334[/vimeo]

Related posts:
Spare Parts Cutscene 02b progress reel
Spare parts

Last Chac Little Gaga

Posted on February 10, 2011  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation, Video Games

Few weeks ago “Last Chac” shared with me a lovely animation he just finished, a lovely cartoony singer/pianist on a Lady Gaga acoustic sound track beautifully rendered.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCfZN7GK_PA&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Last Chac also happen to be a very good animator performing his duties at Ubisoft Montpellier in the south of France and I was immediately seduced by his “Raving rabbids” showreel. The Wii is too last-gen for me so I have never tried any of the cartoony titles it offers but that one would be one of my favourite games on Xbox 360 or PS3.

I don’t have a direct link to his Raving Rabbids reel but you will find it in the Demo reel section and “Lapins Crétins” section. Really fun work Chac and obviously no motion capture went into the making of that game!

http://www.last-chac.com/DemoReel.html

Smallriders first teaser

Posted on February 6, 2011  | 3 Comments
Filed under Animation, Friends

Smallriders

Joan Delmont and Chloé Bocktaels, two of the animators I worked with on the Chico Chica Boumba pilot last year are finally releasing the first teaser video for their personal project: “Small riders”.

“Small riders” is a series of animation featuring two very appealing cartoony characters, Camille Beaumaison and Eugénie Schlhert, a michievous skaterboarder and an angry inline rider who share the same passion for skateparks.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qMUVbZkGLo[/youtube]

“Small riders” is produced by Zeilt, the good people behind the very quirky Mr Hublot, and they are hoping to find some financial backing if “Small riders” generates enough response.

Come on, show your love for “Small riders” and get updated when the next teaser comes out!

“Small riders” on Facebook

Related posts:
Back from Angoulême
Chico Chica Boumba pilot

Animation Conversation podcast

Posted on February 2, 2011  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Education

Nothing to listen to at work? Hungry for Animation related podcast?
Run to Animation Conversation! A fresh podcast with a nordic taste by my APT buddy Erlend and his friends.

“Spare parts” daily demo

Posted on January 31, 2011  | 2 Comments
Filed under EA, Portfolio

“Spare Parts” came out last week and despite a lot of praise for the fancy graphics and ANIMATION the game didn’t get very good reviews among the hardcore game critics who weren’t too pleased to see a game renewing with the tradition with simple and fun action adventure games.

If you haven’t got an internet enabled Xbox360 or PS3 and didn’t get a chance to check out Spare Parts démo on PSN or XBLA, here is a “Gamespot Daily demo” where you will be able to get a glimpse of the actual game play, in-game music AND, for once, what EA normally hides for screenshot purposes, the fancy frontend graphics Kim created for the game.

Doesn’t that game look stunning?

Related posts:
EA category

EA “Spare parts” is out!

Posted on January 20, 2011  | 3 Comments
Filed under Animation, EA, Portfolio

Spare parts, the game I worked on last year at EA Brightlight is finally out on Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Spare Parts is a game that renews with the tradition of fun action adventure games for all we all love.

At less than $10, downloadable on XBLA and PSN, you can’t go wrong!

Related posts:
EA category

Toy Story 3 by the numbers

Posted on January 16, 2011  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Business of animation

Great charts I found on my friend Martin’s blog

This chart is even more interesting as it shows that Despicable Me, at $541Millions, generated a bit more money than WallE and a bit less than Ratatouille.

Would this mean that we could finally see a european competitor to Dreamworks, Pixar, Blue Sky and Sony?

Via http://milo.com/blog/toy-story-3-by-the-numbers/

Related post:
The magic of IP

“The Gruffalo” making of

Posted on January 15, 2011  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Animation Mentor, Friends

I meant to write a very long post on that brilliant shortfilm by Studio Soi but never found the time to start working on it. The release of a making of for “the Gruffalo” will be a new opportunity to feature Soi, one of my favourite animation studio since I discovered “Ernst Im Herbst”, a CG shortfilm using watercolour looking background, “Strasse Der Spezialisten”, “Olis chance” and “Tom and Lily”. I hope one day Soi will make a compilation of all their work.

The Gruffalo is a great shortfilm with a very fresh look and purely british quirkiness and I am even more proud to share with you the making of as several of my Animation Mentor classmates and fellow graduates worked on it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uFld7yatGo[/youtube]

and don’t forget to check Studio Soi’s new blog!
http://www.studiosoi.de/blog/

Related posts:
There is no such a thing as a Gruffalo
Studio Soi computer love
Harald Siepermann
Maciek’s planning

How to assemble an animation crew

Posted on January 13, 2011  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Education

Messy goes to Okido office

Here is a great post by Keith Lango that should reassure fresh animation graduates who think they will never make it into feature animation or just in the animation professional world.

As a summary, companies can’t afford to have a staff of 100% senior animation ninjas and those are not needed for all the shots. Less experienced animators can cut their teeth on those background characters, props animation, reaction shots and “helicopter shots” before becoming a more expensive seasoned professional.

How to assemble an animation crew by Keith Lango

Thanks to several great posters and a wealth of passionate animators, the 11 seconds club is establishing itself as one of the best website for animation related discussion I am finding.

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