Animation with a moustache

The animation with a .... je ne sais quoi!

Animation with a moustache Blog

Phantom test render 0

Portfolio

 by 

Phantom test render

phantom_test_render.jpg Because of a discussion with my friend Arno yesterday, I decided to try some renderings with Maya.

After about 3 hours, here is what I came up with.

Interiors shots are the hardest thing to do for me but I think that I managed to do something pretty decent.

As you can see I enlarged the window and moved it screen right in order to make Bishop’s body stand out a bit more. That’s a classic composition trick that Glen Keane used heavily when storyboarding Pocahontas.

I also tried my luck with colour harmony using Pink, green, blue and white. That should be alright don’t you think?

Acting shot 1 char (getting there) 0

Portfolio

 by 

Acting shot 1 char (getting there)

01-09-07.jpg

Here is my latest version just before going for dinner.

I still haven’t done much changes on the body mechanics (I actually made things worse;-) ) but decided to focus on my lip sync and the facial work instead. I never managed to get into that kind of stuff before as I normally get stuck just before.

This time was a lot of experimentation and I am really enjoying it. I am mainly working in linear and keying all my eases and overshoots. I will clean the redundant keys later using the G buffer curves in the graph editor. Some people like Victor Navone would have done it all in spline but I still don’t trust maya or I haven’t quite reach Victor’s level yet 😉

Ideally I would need to learn how to import and render displacement  maps in Maya so I could use a low level hat wrapped deformed to Bishops head instead of this million polygon hat straight out of Zbrush. If anyone knows how to do that, let me know!

1 character acting shot 1

Animation Mentor / Portfolio

 by 

1 character acting shot

philmon11.jpg

Do no worry, I haven’t given up on my pantomime shot yet but I still have to polish my old shots so here is one of the oldies.

That one was on the back burner for a long time since I didn’t have a clue how to tackle the animation for the towel. Maya 8.5 and Ncloth have certainly gone a long way since the first years of cloth simulation but I finally had to resort to something else after few hours of research and failure.

Wrap deformers… that s all was needed!!! no need of fancy dynamics! Thanks to Ninja Philip To for the tip.

How do you like his hat? this was a quick test in Zbrush, I really liked the idea but I am not sure it will work with Bishop very odd shaped cranium.

Un Monstre a Paris 6

Animation

 by 

Un Monstre a Paris

monstrelogmon10.jpgSince I first saw some animation test and renderings of this feature, I fell in love with it. The story takes place at the begining of the 20th century in Paris, at the time of the Moulin Rouge and the universal exhibition.

The movie is directed by Eric Bergeron “Bibo”, ex Dreamworks director on “The Road to Eldorado” and “Shark Tales”. I wasn’t moved much by the story on Shark Tales but I really liked the work done by the concept artists and the designs. “Eldorado” is also one of my favourite 2d cartoons.

The production is said to be starting in Septembre in Nice (France).

Here are some pics found on internet. Unfortunately that s all you can see. The trailer shown at Annecy will not be shown to the public unfortunately.
monstreaparis01.jpg

monstre2006-05-26_11-30-38_a1.jpg

voeuxumap2007a.jpg

The website for the movie seems to be down at the moment but you can always have a look at Bibo films website

bibo_film_studio.jpg

here is a list of blogs from people involved in its production, gorgeous work:

Matt Jones

Antoine Antin

ex Gobelin Aurelien Predal

Neil Campbell Ross

Related post:
Monstre a Paris short clip

TVPaint FX 0

Drawings / Tablet PC

 by 

TVPaint FX

olive_car_panto_planning06.jpg

Because TVPaint allows to do that kind of stuff fairly easily, why not use it? I just rerendered my previous planning, adding a white contour and a drop shadow to some of the elements of the scene and I really like it. What do you think?

Who is Jason Ryan? 5

Animation Mentor

 by 

Who is Jason Ryan?

[update. Just so I don’t mislead animation students, I don’t use Jason Ryan’s “2d to 3d workflow” anymore. Instead I do my posing straight into Maya, with preparatory sketches once in a while. The main reason being my inability to draw subtle acting shots]

jason_ryan1.jpg

Jason Ryan

Yesterday I was talking to an animator friend that had recently converted from 2d animation to 3d. For few minutes, I had been explaining to him why I was making a 2d animation of my pantomime shot before shooting it in 3d but he couldn’t understand why or where I got this idea from. “This workflow is inspired by Jason Ryan” I told him, to which he replied: “but who the * is Jason Ryan?”

Jason Ryan grew up in Ireland, worked for disney for the past 12 years, where he was supervising animator on Chicken Little (Eamonn Butler was the animation supervisor). His last film at Disney was Meet the Robinsons and probably “Enchanted” before accepting a position at Dreamworks.

Before AM I didn’t know who he was either but once in….. Jason Ryan became a regular topic amongst students, especially around class 2 and 3, when we were trying to figure out how to animate a shot. He was only a mentor for 3 classes I think but he was a great source of inspiration to his students and the followings.

There used to be a section on the Animation Mentor forum where students would discuss topics raised during the week lecture or assignment on the “My Mentor” section dedicated to their class.

This section has diseapeared now but at the time Jason Ryan was a mentor, his section grew up to 40 pages!!! 40 pages!! That should tell you how infectious his passion for animation is.

His workflow is strongly influenced by his traditional 2d animation background and I would highly suggest you to check a video he recorded for Digicel

http://www.flipbookpro.com/movies/mayabowlingdemoSTRMED.mov

basically what he does is to first rought out his animation on a Cintiq equipped computer or a Tablet PC, using a digital 2d software like PAP, Digicel or TV Paint (my favourite). The final animation is then exported as an image sequence in Maya and will be the base for the posing of the character.

jason_ryan_cintiq.jpg

This workflow is very good especially when working in production as it only takes few hours to communicate with your supervisor what you are going for. It would take much more time if you were to reach a similar level of definition in Maya.

Being quicker at this allows for more changes and experimentation.

I also like that very much to fine tune my timing. Playblasting takes few minutes, 2d animating takes much less.

Few more links:

The place for his future animation training and a quick trailer:


An interview on radiofree.com
http://movies.radiofree.com/interviews/chickenl_jason_ryan.shtml

Two videos of him at work on Chicken Little (check around 2:07):
http://movies.aol.com/movie/chicken-little/18895/video/inside-the-dvd-chicken-little/1479195

http://movies.aol.com/movie/chicken-little/18895/video/video-qanda/1423201

Ahhh this makes me want to watch Chicken Little again!

Car pantomime shot (planning first part) 3

Drawings / Tablet PC

 by 

Car pantomime shot (planning first part)

I don’t know how this happened but I lost the post I published few minutes ago…. anyway let’s type it again…

car_plan011.jpg

I am currently using TVpaint to plan my CG shots on a Tablet PC. It is just like working in 2d without the burden of storing, scanning, shooting paper and you can work anywhere.

Here is the first part of my planning for my new Pantomime shot.

Car pantomime shot (planning first part) 1

Drawings / Tablet PC

 by 

Car pantomime shot (planning first part)

car_plan01.jpg

I just wanted to share with you my new planning method for CG animation… 2d animation! 😉 I am currently using the demo version of TVpaint 8.5 on my HP Tablet PC and that is just awesome.

Just like Zbrush, TV paint takes a bit of time to get used to but once you know your way around, it is very easy to start animating in 2d.

TVpaint doesn’t offer the bells and whistles of a good CG Fcurve editor but you can do some really decent flash like animation with a traditional feel to it, and that s all I need.