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Last day at EA Brightlight

Posted on September 20, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under EA, Video Games

Friday was my last day at EA Brightlight and I received some really really cool presents! One of them was a Moleskine sketchbook with an 8 Bit version of me on the cover, an original “Spare Parts” drawing by Ross our concept artist extraordinaire and nice words from my teammates inside. My time at EA had been really good.

After a great experience in Angouleme and 2minutes last year, I wasn’t too keen on coming back to the UK and the insane cost of housing but working on “Spare Parts” and moving to Guildford was one of the best things that could have happened to me. I have met some incredible artists and improved my skills tremendously.

Working on a downloadable game with such a small team allowed me to understand the intricacy of how a game gets done and this was a very challenging but enjoyable experience. Unlike my experience at Rare, I was entirely involved in the whole process and tackled in-game cycle, marketing videos and cutscenes (those look amazing by the way). I really want to make my own game now! 😉

“Spare Parts” comes out this winter and you should definitely keep an eye on it, at around $10 it is one of those must buy games for the whole family to enjoy. Thanks you EA Brightlight and my team for such an awesome experience!

Related posts:
“Spare Parts” gameplay
“EA” blog category

“Listen Philbin”

Posted on September 18, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Animation Mentor, Portfolio

While polishing the spine of Bishop in that shot I realised that I had completely lost the original acting idea and I would probably be better off restarting from scratch but I still think it is still worth posting it.

Yes the right forearm intersects with the body and the left hand is still really rough, I have never said it was finished! 😉

Spare Parts Gameplay

Posted on September 16, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, EA, Portfolio, Video Games

so we have a new gameplay trailer, a poster and a Facebook page!

ah I wish you could see the cutscenes…..

Related posts:
Spare parts” interview
Spare Parts E3 2010 teaser
WIP showreel

Going deeper into Despicable Me

Posted on September 15, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Business of animation

AWN published a short but very interesting article on the partnership between Chris Meledandri and french animation studio Mac Guff and the technical and financial challenges of making an independent animated feature. Check this out

http://www.awn.com/articles/3d/going-deeper-despicable-me

“Tangled” new official trailer

Posted on September 15, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Animation

Just to make things even more complicated, Disney just posted a new “Tangled” official trailer.

I am not a big fan of Princesses stories but the action packed sequences and gorgeous animation are making me very excited! The arcs are a bit overstylised in places but no one will notice.

Great character design, lighting, rendering, animation, that movie surely will be a hit and I can’t wait to see it!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycoY201RTRo[/youtube]

Use Keepvid.com to download the trailer in .mp4 HD format

[edit]
Well here is an other cut….. soooo confusing…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxY35VkI0NI[/youtube]

Related post:
Applying painterly concepts in a CG film – Bolt

Applying painterly concepts in a CG film – Bolt

Posted on September 13, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Animation, Education

Bolt painterly effect

I was doing some research on rigging and more specifically Pose Space Deformation (PSD) when I came across a bunch of really cool papers published on the Disney Animation website.

Among them was a very abstract paper I was looking for but also a much more appealing one for the artist and keen painter in me.
Applying painterly concepts in a CG Film – Bolt

In that paper, the authors discuss the shortfalls of traditional CG Renders and how they applied the traditional painting concepts of Edges and Massing .

I now understand why the various trailers and teasers from “Rapunzel/Tangled” look so appealing. If only I knew how to apply this in Maya….

Josh Burton’s Morphy rig

Posted on September 12, 2010  | 3 Comments
Filed under Animation, Education

Animation Mentor students got a very sweet surprise this summer with the release of Bishop 2.0 but if you are not part of those privileged animators don’t despair! Squirrely Rig’s creator, Josh Burton, is working on a very very promising character, Morphy, Josh Burton’s morpheus rig.

If you have never heard about it, let me embed some very impressive videos that will certainly make your mouth salivate!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14077119[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14165154[/vimeo]

This is seriously impressive I must say and it is amazing how much the rigs keeps its appeal despite the crazy amount of transformation.

I did a very quick test as a tribute to my friends who just wrapped Megamind and I am very pleased with what I was able to achieve in only few minutes.

Great job Josh!


Related post:
Animation Mentor 2010 showcase

World orient Head and shoulders

Posted on September 12, 2010  | 7 Comments
Filed under Animation, Education

Nope, that’s not an advert for cosmetics, I just wanted to draw people to two great rig features I can’t live without nowadays: World orient Head and shoulders.

To tell you everything, I also use a complete world orient spine but I will post about this an other time.

In the past I didn’t mind spending countless hours redoing my animation while in polish or even counter-animating things but after few years of production experience, I have adopted some new workflows that are necessary in that type of environments.

Being able to layer finer levels of polish on every part of the body (spine included) at a very late stage, without destroying a head or arm motion is such a helper.

Word orient attributes (Align on the abAutorig) have now become my best friends and if you still don’t know what they are, let me show you an example using Norman

The good thing about that feature is that the curves always make sense in my graph editor. Everything is completely independent from any hierarchy.


With Josh Burton’s Morpheus rig, you would need to set the m_neck_IK__anim parent attribute to m_neck_FK_Cntrl and Follow to all_anim

 

 

Related posts:

World space head

Megamind third trailer

Posted on September 11, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

so Metroman wasn’t dead? ohhhhh, Dreamworks is playing with us!!! 😉

The new Megamind trailer just came out and looking really sweet!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOGoyNEIJQw[/youtube]

Michael the Turtle

Posted on September 6, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation

Before I got into the industry, I was religiously attending every single Autodesk roadshow and in 2006, got to see “Michael the Turtle”, a highly paced music video by french commercial studio “Chez Eddy”, featuring a wacky cartoony turtle, animated in a very Warner brother kind of way, few years before Chicken Little and Madagascar hit the cinemas.

I had been trying to find that video for a long time and eventually found it today on the ….. on the “Chez Eddy” website 😉

The animation might be a bit too much for some but I still love the character and set design, lighting, compositing and the broad animation style. Here it is!

Related post:
Kaelou

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