The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
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
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
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….
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
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:
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]
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
If some of you are still struggling to use Supercrumbly’s awesome abAutorig auto-rigging script, or have no clue on how to rig/skin, here is something for you!
The video is real time and has now, me, commenting on the different steps involved. If you double click on the video this will sent you to Vimeo where you can save the Quicktime file in HD!
Let me know what you think!
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14722424[/vimeo]
Related post:
abAutorig Part II and III, Pyro tutorial
Well it’s out! Some really really nice work from my fellow graduates and ex coworkers.
http://www.animationmentor.com/showcase2010/
Some of them have already landed top animation jobs and others will very soon.
And while we are at it, let me introduce you Bishop 2.0, the latest version of my favourite Animation Mentor rig. I haven’t had a chance to test it yet but this looks very promising and I have to mention that my friend the awesome Keith Ribbons helped out with the facial rigging.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WT7_F5wsQk[/youtube]
Related post:
Dan Carey “Shower Power” short film
Few years ago, Supinfocom alumni and “Making of” french co-director, Rémy Chapotot, released the trailer for a crazy cartoony TV series produced by Cube Creative, Kaelou.
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/12422185[/vimeo]
It took a bit of time but the 52×7 TV series finally got produced between french Blue Spirit and Belgium Sinematik and the series finally aired on french cable TV this summer. I tried to get on board last year but they were already fully staffed and my experience with Character Studio was way too limited. (it is rendered in Vray by the way)
Here are few short videos that are getting me really excited and upset I didn’t work on it 😉
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/11648356[/vimeo]
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/14002633[/vimeo]
a bit more reading and behind the scenes here:
http://www.qualia-international.com/works/animation/kaelou/index.html
Looking at the links he is featuring on his blog I understand immediately why his work looks so appealing to me, I have the same influences!
http://remichapotot.blogspot.com/
And here the Vimeo version of his graduate shortfilm
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/12994244[/vimeo]
