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“Monstre à Paris” short video clip

Posted on July 16, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation

Ah ah! I just found a very short clip from “Monstre à Paris” on Zalex’s lighting showreel! 😉

This is Vanessa Paradis’ character singing.

[update]this post is gaining a lot of popularity those days so I would like to point the readers to an older post with an other clip from the movie

http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/2009/07/05/monstre-a-paris-short-clip/ .

Related posts:
Monstre again
Monstre à Paris short clip

“Albator/Captain Harlock”

Posted on July 16, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

Man I grew up with the 2d series and the 3d trailer looks awesome!!!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH7ZjB7lzgI[/youtube]

“Despicable Me” triumph

Posted on July 16, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Animation, Business of animation

With a worldwide boxoffice of $92M after only 1 week of domestic release, “Despicable Me” is a huge success for Mac Guff and Pierre Coffin.

“Planet 51” only totalled $105M in 16 weeks.

“The Tale of Despereaux” $86M in 11 weeks

“Valiant” did $61M in 13 weeks

“Triplets of Belleville” $14M in 32 weeks

Would the success of Despicable Me (DM) due to the large pool of talents found in France?

I have been told that during Annecy, Pierre Coffin was really really excited by the release of the movie and on stage, he even thanked the french government for its help.

Related post:
The magic of IP
“Despicable Me” fourth trailer

2010 TAG wage survey

Posted on July 16, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Animation, Business of animation

The numbers are out.

http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/2010-tag-wage-survey-part-two.html

Here is cut down version for most of you:

Remember it is only an anonymous survey and only 690 people replied.

While we are at it, here is the link to the “Foreign Labor Certification Data Center”

http://www.flcdatacenter.com/CaseH1B.aspx

Ah, I just discovered that website

http://www.mydanwei.com/

No wonder a lot of europeans want to emigrate to the USA and a lot of american companies want to outsource in europe.

Light and colours

Posted on July 13, 2010  | 8 Comments
Filed under Portfolio



I came across some Dice Tsutsumi‘s Toy Story3 color script thumbnail this week end and was blown away by his understanding of colours and lighting!!!! As rought as they are, all the information is there for the lighters to start their work. Amazing stuff. This guy is a rendering engine equipped with all the radiosity features you can dream of!

Check out the subtle nuances in the shadows, the reflected light under the chin of Buzz and Woody, the contrast between cold and warm hues.

This made me want to go back to oil painting and experiment with those things on Monday. This is only my third painting so please forgive the basic technique. I am pretty much self taught. I spent most of the time on the right shoulder, trying to get the highlight and reflected light. The model kept moving so I wasn’t able to do much work on the legs. Really enjoyable!

Related post:
Lines and colors

Game showreel 2010 wip

Posted on June 27, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, EA, Portfolio

Game showreel 2010 / Quicktime H264, NTSC, 11Mo

Well since some of my work has gone public with the release of the Spare Parts trailer, why not create a new temporary game showreel!? 😉

You will find it in the Showreel section of my blog
http://www.olivier-ladeuix.com/blog/portfolio/

Disclaimer:
No motion capture data was harmed in the making of that video.

EA “Spare Parts” teaser

Posted on June 24, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation, EA, Portfolio, Video Games

Spare parts

Spare parts EA

The teaser for the game I am currently working on at EA Brightlight is finally online. You can even find a HD version on Gametrailers!

This game and the team I am working with are awesome. I have only been in the game industry for few years but making a downloadable XBLA/PSN game is probably the closest thing to what it was back in the mid 80s/90s. Unlike the 70 and upward teams most games require nowadays, in a project of that size, every team member can truly participate to the direction of the game.

All the character animation has been done by Neil, my lead animator, and myself.

Related posts:
Lee Sullivan
“Shower Power” shortfilm
Working at EA Brightlight

E3 Highlights

Posted on June 17, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Video Games

E3 2010 just finished. Microsoft stole the show with the announcement of Kinect, the newly renamed Natal system, and a slim version of the Xbox but for the time being, my 2010 favourite games are pretty much all for the WII. Could companies bring more cartoony games to next gen consoles?!

Here are this year’s announcement.

Donkey Kong Country returns. Donkey Kong country is the reason I decided to work in games and join Rare. I fulfilled part of my dream and managed to work on Banjo Kazooie but I still have to work on Donkey Kong country. Well looks like it could happen!

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

DeBlob2 on Next Gen consoles

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eOocRhiRko[/youtube]

Disney Epic Mickey

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz8jD4LJ_o0[/youtube]

Scott Pilgrim

Spare parts

Spare parts

Rayman origins. 2d!!!!! Love it!!!!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwrHV43RR64[/youtube]

Raving Rabbids. No game play visible here but it still sounds very promising
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6U-9_ba8Lk[/youtube]

KMPlayer, best video player ever!

Posted on June 12, 2010  | 25 Comments
Filed under Animation, Life hack

Update May 08 2013/ I just installed version 3.6.0.87 and I am delighted to say that H264 files now loop but there is a big issue for us animators….. The audio feedback doesn’t work anymore when step framing!

Right let’s see if I have an older version on my hard drive.

It's like Magic!

If you don’t know about KMPlayer, you probably think that VLC IS the best player ever. Very wrong! VLC is alright, but KMPlayer is much better, especially if you happen to be an animator.

KMP is a Korean Windows Media player on Steroids. It has thousands of features but for animators, the ones that makes it standout are the following:

– Opens and play XVID/Divx footage frame by frame, forward and backward …. with sound feedback. Except Premiere, do you know any player that does that? This function alone makes it perfectly suited for troubleshooting lipsync.
– Plays H264 quicktimes
– Setup In and out points and loop between the two (A-B function)
– Takes automatic screenshots (great for generating colorscripts)
– Hotkeys that make sense! Space bar to toggle the playback, 1 to play in half size, 2 original and 3 double size.
– You can autohide the interface so only the video is visible
– You can loads as many videos as you want and have them all playing. Great to pretend you are the master of the univers.

I made a walkthrough as a PDF file. Check it out:

KMPlayer walkthrough v. 1.5

Direct download link
http://download.cnet.com/KMPlayer/3000-13632_4-10659939.html

Life drawing obscurantism

Posted on June 12, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio

Some time ago, my friend Annes sent me a link to a different Life Drawing class that I would possibly enjoy more than the one I am currently attending and everything finally made sense.

In life drawing, there seem to be a predominant “school of thought” that believes in learning by pure academic observation. That “London Atelier of Representational Art” (LARA) in Clapham Junction, even goes to the extreme of forcing you to draw using a “Sight-size method”. As they describe it, here is how it works:

“the artist first sets a vantage point where the subject and the drawing surface appear to be the same size. Then, using a variety of measuring tools – which can include strings, sticks, mirrors, levels, and plumb-bobs – the artist draws the subject so that, when viewed from the set vantage point, the drawing and the subject have exactly the same dimensions.”

I think “academic observation” is very valuable when drawing from the model but as Glenn Villpu implies it in his theory and instructional material. This is just, one tool!

How long is it going to take you to finally be able to work as an animator, illustrator, storyboard artist and draw from imagination then? Years and years and years and years!

Why not instead, add more tools to your toolset. Why no try to understand the underlying structure of the figure? What about learning proportions and the different parts of the skeleton but also the few muscles that shape the surface of the skin? How to represent the figure in simple geometric shapes?

What about learning … the Structure!

The big problem with the “Academic observation” approach is that you only discover the elements of the structure through experiencing them, this can take a very long time. It is what I would call “brute force life drawing” teaching. But there is a smarter way!

K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer published a great paper a while ago, about “the Role of deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance”. The paper is a bit dry so you would be forgiven to skip to something a bit more approachable and that great article from CNN called “The secret of greatness”.

What those articles try to demonstrate is the importance of having a plan when learning and focus your practice on specific areas. This is what they call “Deliberate practice“. “Brute force” learning is great but it is definitely not the deliberate practice sort of approach.

Where can we learn about structure? well Glenn Villpu is the obvious start, then all the AWESOME blogs, Dreamworks storyboard artist and life drawing teacher, Rad Sechrist, is part of!

Rad How To
Analytical figure drawing
Advance figure drawing
The Art Center

Reading those blogs and learning what is on display should help you improve tenfolds!

I would also recommend Andrew Loomis pdfs as a start actually and this great 1890 book by french Dr Paul Richer
http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k205846w.planchecontact.r=richer.f145.langEN where he shows the relationship of the head height to the rest of the body.

To finish this post, here are my two last drawings from my thursday class:
Contains nudity
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