Animation with a moustache

January 31, 2011

“Spare parts” daily demo

“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

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Animation / EA / Portfolio

January 20, 2011

by Olivier Ladeuix

EA “Spare parts” is out!

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

0

Business of animation

January 16, 2011

by Olivier Ladeuix

Toy Story 3 by the numbers

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

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Animation / Animation Mentor / Friends

January 15, 2011

by Olivier Ladeuix

“The Gruffalo” making of

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/

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Animation / Education

January 13, 2011

by Olivier Ladeuix

How to assemble an animation crew

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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Animation / EA / Friends

January 13, 2011

by Olivier Ladeuix

Rise of the Zombians

Neil Parkinson, my lead from EA just posted a short animation piece he has been working on for a bit during his rare spare time. Check it out it is really cool.

Neil didn’t just animate the shots, he also came up with the designs, rigged the characters and rendered the shots…. pretty impressive if you ask me!

I am also posting his 2010 showreel where you will be able to see some of the great projects he worked on at EA: a longer version of the shot he animated for the Spare Parts trailer I posted a while back, some Zubo animation and some other really funny Western inspired personal animation.

Rize of the Zombians
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCiRNlplbkA[/youtube]

Neil Parkinson 2010 showreel
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DG9pxDLDA9E[/youtube]

Related posts:
EA category

0

Animation

January 11, 2011

by Olivier Ladeuix

Can you sing WIP

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/18665839[/vimeo]

hey could you throw some quick ideas and comments? I am finding really hard to keep an objective view on that shot.

The very last shot has been reframed and the animation will be changed to work in that view>

The rest is pretty much final, even if Brussels facial expression doesnt really work on the third shot.

4

Miscellaneous

January 1, 2011

by Olivier Ladeuix

SketchTravel – Frederic Back

What a way to start the new year, Dice Tsutsumi picking up the Sketchtravel book from Frederic Back’s home in Montreal
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/17042129[/vimeo]

Happy new year from Paris!
Ignore the naysayers , be passionate about what you do!

As a side note I will be using Dice’s work for a post on painting, lighting and reflected light very soon.

via Enrico’s blog

Related posts:
Dice Tsutsumi on the Chiustream
Light and colors

2

Animation / Animation Mentor / Portfolio

December 29, 2010

by Olivier Ladeuix

La fete. Done

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/18268452[/vimeo]

Here we go, I am pretty much done with that shot. It is still in French but I added some subtitles for those who want to understand what this is about.

The audio clip came from a funny french candid camera show my friend animator extraordinaire and BYOA organiser Samy shared on Facebook.

In that clip the host was pretending to be a tattoo artist until, looking at the work he had started on their body, people realised with horror he didn’t know how to draw. Fortunately the needle was in fact a felt pen.

I really liked the audio as it couldn’t get more genuine, presented with an opportunity for a “take/gear change” and allowed for something broad without looking overanimated.

The original character was standing fairly still but I believe entertainment doesn’t come from under-animation or over-animation but instead in stylised choices situated at the edge of both. A good showreel should demonstrate understanding in broad and subtle acting. This will be my broad piece.

Link to the original video

I will leave it in playblast for now and do a full render if I do an other pass. My goal wasn’t to have the best shot ever but just to get more experience with some of the concepts I rediscovered studying “the work of the masters” few weeks ago and hopefully get a junior or even a regular animation job in a french feature animation studio.

For the technical nitty gritty, I used my world orient FK spine again, world orient head and arms. I really like that workflow as it allows me to work in a layered method and keep adding levels of detail even when in polish. For my next close up shots I will be using an IK spine instead but I am still unsure how Bishop handles that.

For the nose I did something a bit fancy that I think is participating to make the face look more organic. In real life, if you observe people talking you will notice that the tip of their nose, nostrils and cheeks keep moving up and down following the opening and closing of the mouth.

Bishop has cheeks controls but with my custom nose, moving the nose control up and down wouldn’t have looked realistic. The skin of the face doesn’t just move up and down shifting the nose, it actually slides over its cartilage and the skull, causing a stretch of the soft parts of the head. (the ears also move actually)

Instead, I created a custom blend shape where the side and lower part of the nose came down simulating the pull of the skin according to the opening of the mouth. The effect is very subtle right now and I would have liked to push it further but after breaking the rig several time and using up few evenings with technical things I think this will do for that shot, time to move on, I think it is a nice close up shot with very stylised facial animation.