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Fresh and not so fresh ideas

Posted on February 7, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Graphic design

It is amazing how often the same ideas have to keep coming back in movies ….. no I didn’t mention Avatar…. well I just did .. The same ideas keep coming back but where the issue is the most acute is with student short films.

Last year I had an interesting conversation with Cedric Villain from french animation forum “Fousdanim.org“.

As a 2008 Annecy short film award winner, he was invited to participate in the selection of the 2009 Annecy nominees and went through 50 hours of program. After such an experience, he confirmed that the same topics or even stories kept coming back.

The reason I want to talk about this today is because my friend Joost posted a very very cool short film which really stood out aesthetically for me but not so much in term of story. Without further due here “Pivot”

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/9178331[/vimeo]

Because I have been into design in motion for quite a while, I immediately thought about the Psyop arrows from the Lugz campaign which in 2002 led to the …. the “arrow craze”…. Every motion design video had to have its variation at that time and even I came up with my own flavour. The Robot on my modeling showreel was supposed to fire them in an explosion of colours ala DeBlob.

[…] Read more

Overdoing it

Posted on February 3, 2010  | 2 Comments
Filed under Acting, Animation, Education

Avatar’s producer Jon Landau made a very interesting comments some time ago and a lot of people failed to understand what he was talking about.

Here is an extract from the article published in the Australian http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/titanic-director-james-cameron-grabs-films-holy-grail-in-new-film-avatar/story-e6frg8pf-1225766563195

To me, it’s the exact opposite,” Landau says. “Our goal on this movie was not to replace the actor, it was to replace the animator. If you think about it, what a great actor does and what a great animator does are antithetical to one another.

“A great actor withholds information. Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men can sit there and do nothing. No animator would ever allow that, they would put in a twitch. So our objective was to preserve Sam Worthington’s performance and have that be what you see in those characters.”

As animator we find it difficult to keep our characters completly still. Because we get paid to animate and because we love to see animated things we feel compelled to add twich, eye darts, shoulder raise. Top Disney animator Mark Hen made a similar comment in one of the Animation Mentor lectures and more recently the good people from the “Speaking of animation”.

The reason I am bringing this topic today is because I found a very cool clip that will illustrate something very similar.

The modelling industry has very specialised professionals called “Body parts models”. Don’t believe me? Hit the link (http://www.bodypartsmodels.com/home.html). Those people get hired for photo-shoots mainly when nice looking hands, arms, shoulders, bums …. are required. They are obviously cheaper than full body models but do the trick for close ups. Now the problem is that very often those “body part models”, similarly to animators, just… just overdo it! Instead of “straight acting” their part, and just display what they are supposed to display, they feel compelled to “hit the pose” and come up with the most over-the-top gesture or poses that will justify their pay check.

Now I have a very cool clip where you can see one of those models illustrating this perfectly. Pay attention, well, how could you not pay attention to the silly hand gestures of the woman holding the Emmy award on the right hand side. It is so over the top that Ellen DeGeneres can’t help mimicking her towards the end of the clip.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoLL1Xp1FAk[/youtube]

Life drawing week 03

Posted on February 2, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio

Here are my latest drawings. Two long poses.

I tried to think about the composition a bit more this time. The thumbnails on the top left corner are the base for my composition.

I wasn’t too happy the way things were going for the first one and restarted from scratch, which didn’t leave me with enough time to finish the pose. I had in mind to incorporate the little platform the model was standing on originally but realised that it didn’t present much interest so I decided to go for something tighter, with the feet fading away.

The second one is pretty good, but the model is way to high on the page. The foot is better than my last attempt but the hands, especially the right one would have needed more work. The quality of the line is still very poor but I am working on that.

Things are getting better and better I feel and there is definitely some improvements compared my first drawings. My skills in drawing from imagination have also dramatically improved and I can now draw different body parts without reference.

Those two drawing will probably be my last pencil shaded piece as I feel it is now time to move to Oil painting. I have been told that moving to paint would help me to improve my drawing skills and Painting is also something I always wanted to try but never found a good teacher/course until now.

Marc

Robert

“TACHAAAN!” short film

Posted on January 28, 2010  | 5 Comments
Filed under Animation

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/8723796[/vimeo]

The short film finally surfaced. Really, really nice. I think the pacing is a bit off in places but it is still very appealing visually.

[…] Read more

Annecy 2010

Posted on January 27, 2010  | 3 Comments
Filed under Animation

Life drawing session 03

Posted on January 26, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio

Here is the pose we worked on yesterday with Marc again. 1h40 pose. Longer poses are great as they allow for corrections and trying different techniques. I got stuck with the feet so moved on to do some shading in order to define the belly a bit better and try to create some volume.

Contains nudity

session 03

Craig Penn’s showreel

Posted on January 22, 2010  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

I rarely go to CGTalk but looking for tips on rigging I came across that really cool Animation showreel from Mill/Framestore animator Craig Penn. He has everything that people would recommend to avoid. Fully rendered shots, funky Frutty Loops sounding music, animated titles 😉 . I still think it is great and I must admit that I love his low proxy pig animation on the end titles. Brilliant!

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/7020377[/vimeo]

Life drawing session 01

Posted on January 21, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio

Working in Guildford is just as good as London as I found an Art center offering evening life drawing classes. I enrolled to two life drawing classes and 1 watercolour painting class. It has only been a week but this is looking really promising. The teachers in both classes are really good artists … which doesn’t mean they are good teachers but I have some of Glen Vilppu tapes and the Force: Dynamic Life drawing for animators book which are really helpful.

I regularly sketch from memory while commuting on the train but the first drawing proved really overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start!

Hit the link for my drawings. Obviously this post contains nudity

Here are my first drawings for this week, mainly 20 minutes poses. I was trying to get the proportions right but also experimenting with different styles and type of shading and I am learning a lot!

Faking it

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

“Fake it until you make it” they say. If you are interested in personal development and want to see some individuals pushing through their comfort zone to become the exact opposite of what they have been until now to eventually participate to a competition where they will have to pretend to be someone else.

From Kickboxer to Ballroom Dancer, Ballet Dancer to Wrestler, Webdesigner to Surfer, the series aired few years ago and is now available online for the UK residents. A lot of fun!

One of the funniest would probably be the one where a country boy fan of Haendel and 17th century french painter Poussin is challenged to become a Graffiti artist in few weeks. Getting ready for his new life he tells his mum: “I will have to pack some working clothes” to which is mum replies “you don’t have working clothes” 😉

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/faking-it/4od

No matter your background, with the right mentors and a serious boot camp, you can achieve pretty much anything.

Jamie in “3d World” issue 126

Posted on January 16, 2010  | 1 Comment
Filed under Friends

3dworld magazine

3dworld magazine

Following the release of his new book “Realistic Architectural visualization with 3ds max and mental ray”, my friend Jamie Cardoso was asked to write an article about Mental Ray for the january edition of “3d world” (issue 126).

I didn’t get a chance to read it yet but knowing Jamie, this is probably a very thorough article demonstrating the abilities of Mental Ray when used in Visualization.

http://www.3dworldmag.com/page/3dworld?entry=3d_world_126_now_on

Related post:
Mental Ray for visualisation second edition

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