Animation with a moustache

March 8, 2008

my toys

a lot of people at work have toys on their desks here is a pictures of mine! Carla has probably the best ones but I don’t have a picture yet. Mine are all sorts of toys collected over the years. They all keep me inspired for different reasons.

The Pixar pot is a freebie from the Annecy festival last year, there is an african sculpture at the back which comes …. from Africa 😉 The muppet show and Aardman characters are coming from Forbidden Planet in London, Shadow is a designer toy from Nathan Jurevinius’s “Scary girl”, it comes from Playground in Soho, the Zombie robot is from a comics shop in Annecy, the Smurfs are a new addition I just bought in a comic shop in Bayonne. I just got Wario from a collegue at work who has an online shop (I can’t remember the url…) and there are few more toys which I bought from Forbidden Planet just for the proportions, or because the anatomy is well defined or the way they have sculputed the hair or the creases on the clothing.

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Animation Mentor

March 6, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

Short film class 6, 3 weeks left

After few weeks working like a mad man. Class6 is finally coming to an end. Unfortunately I won’t be able to finish my short on time and will have to redo class 6 but it was a blast again and for this class I was privileged to have animator extraordinaire Jason Schleifer as a mentor..

For those who don’t know, Jason is an animation superstar who started his animation career at Weta and after few years at Dreamworks working on everything that was thrown at him 😉 he is currently a supervising animator on the sequel of my favourite Dreamworks show: “Madagascar 2” (Prince of Egypt and Eldorado are my second favourite).

He was really inspiring and having him for mentor for my short was a god send. He really helped me out in defining my character’s personality and without him I am not sure if my short would have been as strong. Obviously I am paying the consequences as well and some of the shots that were meant to last 4 seconds ended up well over 20 seconds 😉 anyway this will make my short even better and I don’t regret it at all! Instead of a 30seconds short I will end up around 2 minutes which is … perfect for festivals 😉

caricature by the great Mark Behm

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Animation

March 4, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

James Baxter Animation podcast part 2

Did you listen to the Animation Podcast number 24! the first James Baxter interview was great but that one! Oh my god! Probably the most informative animation interview I ever listened to. You will probably want to listen to it in loop for at least 3 or 4 times. A lot of really really interesting informations on planning and acting for animation. It also made a lot of sense to me after my 6 month working as an animator but mostly after the great Ed Hooks masterclass.

It s here!

Ah I forgot to mention that I fixed the link to my 2d planning from few weeks back and also that I found a great flat in Annecy for the festival in june. I am signing the contract tomorrow.

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Miscellaneous

March 4, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

College isn’t worth a dime

Not related to animation today.

After my experience with Animation Mentor this is something I have been thinking about for a while and is being relayed here by financial reporter James Altucher on an interesting interview with Farnoosh Torabi for TheStreet.com

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Drawings

March 3, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

Paintings and sketches

Here are a collection of old drawings and paintings dating from when I lived in Africa… 10 years ago. One of the digital painting is from yesterday night. I was playing with my Clean up brush in TV Paint and I love it. It gives such a clean and sharp line with a beautifull transition from thick to thin. Even better than Sketchbook pro.

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Miscellaneous

February 26, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

Awesome!

I love this new Verizon advert featuring Transformers Director Michael Bay.
It’s like a cartoon, incredible timing, pacing, staging, composition, acting. I could loop it for hours !!!

Awesome 😉

4

Animation

February 18, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

Cats don’t dance

actually, here is my last post of the week 😉

8 videos of 10 minutes each. Yeah the entire Turner’s feature animation “Cats don’t dance”. Jay Jackson was telling us about it during a Q&A this week end. Who is Jay Jackson? well he was a student of Eric Larson during the first days of the Disney animation program and happen to be a mentor this term at Animation Mentor, he incidentally worked on “Cats don’t dance”

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Tablet PC

February 18, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

Creating a time code in TV Paint

TV Paint is a great software for digital 2d animation but also to create animatics. Here is how you would start, by creating a timecode. Can Digicel do that? I don’t think so! Can PAP do that? I don’t think so! 😉

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Animation Mentor / Tablet PC

February 18, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

Blocking from 2d to 3d

Nothing really new here. You are all subscribers to Jason Ryan’s newsletter and know his workflow very well. Personally I love it especially for broad animations or physical shots.

Here is one shot I planned using this technique with my favourite 2d digital software: TV Paint

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Animation

February 18, 2008

by Olivier Ladeuix

Ed Hooks workshop

My lead animator Louise organised a day out for all the animators from Rare to attend a “workshop” on acting for animators hosted by the famous Ed Hooks which you probably know for his book “Acting for animators”. My friend Andy gave it to me back in the days and I never managed to finish it.

I was a bit apprehensive at first but Ed Hooks is a very entertaining character and his workshop was really great. I took loaaddddss of notes and it will probably take me few weeks to organise them. Richie found some similar notes on Thinking Animation blog but I can’t find them anymore. I will update the link tomorrow from work.

I also got to sit next to him at lunch and have a quick chat on acting but that was really brief. I told him that his talk reminded me of the Uta Hagen masterclass and to which he replied “I learnt from her in NY…. and others”

The others he was refering to were probably Meisner and Michael Chekhov which I recognised immediately

Chekhov: Archetypes, Imaginary Centers, Imaginary body, Character Atmospheres, Overall scenic Atmospheres, Qualities of Movement, Imaginary Place and Psychological Gesture,