The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!
I had to Google the french name, I will never be able to remember how to spell the name of 1958 Peyo comic strips “Les Schtroumpfs”, Smurfs for the english speakers.
You know what? They are coming back in 3d! Not sure when it is gonna come out but you can see a quick video and some production pictures on Comingsoon.net
There is even a short video in french if you click on the picture.
Yes I found the movie a bit dull and nearly fell asleep watching it twice but it’s still a Pixar movie so today I bought the Ratatouille DVD to be able to finally watch it frame by frame. Isn’t it the way every animated feature should be watched?? The animation is outstanding and watching frame by frame is the only way to see how you create entertaining performances.
I bought the DVD because it is still a very nice piece of work but also for the beautifull end credits, the 100% keyframed animation logo, the awesome “Your friend the rat” short and ultimately for the Directors comments. Come on who doesn’t want to hear the guy who started at Disney under Milt Kahl aged 14 telling you a bit more about HIS movie? (ok he rewrote it).
I bought the DVD to hear Brad Bird and some animators talking me through the film and did I get this??? Did I get this??? NOOOOOOO. There are NO DIRECTORS COMMENTS!!!. I am really disapointed Pixar. It ‘s the second time after Cars!!! Except the “Your friend the rat” short (did I say how brilliant it is already?) I don’t see why anyone would buy the 2 DISCS EDITION!!! Most of the “Extra features” are already on AOL website or Itunes!!! It’s like if they were encouraging piracy to me. Give me something meaty Pixar or I am not gonna buy your DVDs anymore!
I am soooo disappointed.
Has anyone seen “Your friend the rat”? They won an Annie award for best short few weeks ago did you know?
Directed by Jim Capobianco. The production design was led by Nate Wragg, with Teddy Newton doing the character design, with the help of Bob Scott and Scott Morse handled backgrounds.
some new pictures from Dreamworks show Kung Fu Panda have been posted on Character Design blog.
Doesn’t this show look awesome???
Ratatouille took most of the awards yesterday night but Surf’s Up didn’t do too bad either.
One of the highlights is Pixar Michal Makarewicz for Character Animation in a Feature Production the same week we have a lecture with him on Advanced Polishing at Animation Mentor. I don’t know which shots he worked on on Rat but I am sure he pushed them to the top.
Now regarding the Character Design in an Animated Feature Production, I am not too sure I would have given it to Carter Goodrich instead of Sylvain Deboissy,. Rats character designs to me were much weaker than Surf’s Up. They were too many of those Pixar generigs for my liking and on few shots I thought I was looking at The Incredibles. Too many rounded shapes with no contrasting sharp angles. Only few characters on Rat had original designs compared to Surf’s Up.
I am upset …. 🙂
My friend Blandine Dubos is the creator of wall light Louis 5D and the more recent Josephine 5D both edited by Ligne Roset
We have known each other for a long time and regularly work together in order to produce visualisations for her products.
Here is some of her work and some visualisations I did for her.
Animation Mentor just started and many class 1 students are asking how they can produce a quicktime presentation.
Here are the settings you should pay attention to
This is the important bit. If you want your slides to last few seconds, you should select “4 seconds per frame” or upwards. No need to copy the frames 24times to get 4 seconds like I heard some people are doing.
Lately the topic came back few time. Which movie should we see this week. Well if you are interested in acting, go and watch “American gangster”. I don’t think there is anything else worth mentioning at the moment 😉
Ok, we spent nearly one hour debating this at work some time ago and watching the Jason Ryan latest video the question came back to me.
If I have an animation in 24fps and I change it to 60fps.
Is this gonna affect the spacing?
Is this gonna affect the timing?
Give me your answers in the comment section! 😉
I was going through Christopher Finch “The Art of Disney” this week end and stopped on few drawings from 1931 “The Beach Party” and 1935 “the Band concert”. Both shorts feature the supporting character Horace Horsecollar
I looked up this little guy on Youtube and google and finally found a full comic strip dating from the begining of the 40s and drawn by the excellent Floyd Gottfredson. Like me you probably don’t know this artist so listen to that. In 1935, he took over Ubi Werks and for 45 years, was in charge of all the Mickey Mouse comic strips after a very short career as a Disney inbetweener.
His style has evolved a lot in 45 years and probably in line with what people were doing in the animation department. If you want to know a bit more about him and his style, head to the following website http://stp.ling.uu.se/~starback/dcml/creators/floyd-gottfredson.html You will find there some example of the different art periods but as a summary, here is the classification made by the author.
1930 Primordial
1930-33 Mosozoic
1933-36 Classic 1
1937-1939 Classic 2
1939-1942 Hellenistic
1943-1946 Gothic
1947-1955 Neomezozoic
Personallly I really like the latest style but my favourite is the 1935 when characters didn’t have pupils and limbs were still rubber hose like. Here is an example:
Funny enough that strip is dated from 1935 but the author mentioned above would have called that style the 1933 “Mosozoic” instead of Classic 1.
If you like this designs, go and have a look on Clark Snyder’s Inspiration Grab Bag blog. He posted 100 of Floyd Gottfredson Disney’s comic strips.
This week I had the great pleasure to see a wonderful movie which used the traditional Captured Performance technology. You know the one where the picture of actors get printed onto celluloid not the crappy lifeless motion capture stuff.
Olivier Dahan “La Vie en Rose” (2007) is probably the best movie I have seen for a long time. Yes the editing is a bit confusing, yes Dahan omitted to mention the second world war and some important parts in the life of 1950 french singer Edith Piaf, yes it is a bit long, but this dark, emotional tale is such a pleasure to watch and even if you don’t fancy 1950’s song you can only succumb to the stunning interpretation of the first famous french Rockstar by Marion Cotillard.
If just like me you don’t understand why Zemekis wastes his time and my time releasing crappy lifeless movies then “La vie en Rose” is for you!
