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TVPaint FX

Posted on August 27, 2007  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Drawings, Tablet PC

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?

Posted on August 26, 2007  | 5 Comments
Filed under Animation Mentor

[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]

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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.

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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: full planning 1st pass

Posted on August 25, 2007  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Drawings, Tablet PC

olive_car_panto_planning05.jpg

Hi there! Ok here is a rough version of my planning. I still need to tweak the anticipation of the second push but that will do for today. I am too eager to start animating in 3d and the begining should be defined enough to fire up maya.

Car pantomime shot (planning first part)

Posted on August 21, 2007  | 3 Comments
Filed under Drawings, Tablet PC

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)

Posted on August 21, 2007  | 1 Comment
Filed under Drawings, Tablet PC

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.

New pantomime shot (blocking first part)

Posted on August 20, 2007  | 4 Comments
Filed under Animation

car_block01.jpg

I have decided to start a new pantomime shot in order to replace the class 2 and 3 assignments that were on my showreel. KISS being far from my school of thought, the idea is to combine a heavy push exercise with a little story.

Here is the synopsis. Stewie decides to force his way in a parking space until he realises that it was the worse idea he has ever had 😉

This is a spliney kind of blocking for the first part. There should be plenty more little details in the next pass. 5:40am time to sleep.

Animatic for my short

Posted on August 12, 2007  | 5 Comments
Filed under Animation Mentor, Drawings, Short film, Tablet PC

Ok sorry about the delay but I was a bit paranoid that someone would steal my idea that I didn’t want to show it until now.

Anyway, here it is for the ones who haven’t seen it yet.

While working on the layout I realised that some areas still needed a bit more definition so back to the drawing boards.

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Modeling showreel, finally done!

Posted on July 29, 2007  | 2 Comments
Filed under Modeling, Portfolio, Sculpture

I could have easily worked 10 more years on it but one day you need to say stop and post your work.

Ladies and gentlemen, here is my july 2007 modeling showreel.

This is a quicktime 7 version in Pal resolution (720*576) which is about 22Mo. It is mirrored on two servers just in case. The second mirror is probably slower but more reliable. Enjoy.

modeling_showreel_cover.jpg

Music beat and animation

Posted on June 29, 2007  | 7 Comments
Filed under Animation, Education

As a follow up to my last post, here is an attempt at understanding timing by comparing animation timing to musical timing.

From the age of 7 to 15, I received an intense classical music training which allowed me to tell if a score was being played at 60, 120 or 180 bpm without much difficulty.

I am much older now but I realised that if I were able to do the same thing again, I would have a serious advantage compared to other animators. I am not one to keep stuff for myself so let me share with you a little secret. This might be a bit tedious to read but bear with me, this should be an invaluable little trick.

When you start learning music, the very first thing you have to get used to is to hit, one beat, two beats, three beats and four beats per second. “Sounds great but how can this help me Mister Fancy pants?”

Well the first thing you need to do is to train yourself to count one second. One easy way would be to look at at a clock and say “one thousand” everytime the big hand hits a second. After a while this will become a second nature.

Now, to divide that second in smaller chunks I have an other trick. You use a hand gesture going, up and down for 2 beats, down, right and up/left for 3 beats, and down, left, right, up/left for 4 beats.

In bpm (Beats per minutes) this translates to 60 bpm for 1 beat per second, 120 bpm for 2 beats per second, 180 for 3 beats per seconds and 240 for 4 beats per seconds. How can we relate this to animation?

Simple. At 24 fps:

– one beat per second is one beat every 24 frames

– two beats per second is one beat every 12 frames (divide 24 by 2)

– three beats per second is one beat every 8 frames (divide 24 by 3)

– four beats per second is one beat every 6 frames (divide 24 by 4)

Here is a summary that you might want to print next to your computer screen.

music-and-beats.gif

With a bit of practice, just like Richard Williams, you will be able to go to the nearest park and see motion in animation beats. Go out, get some fresh air and experiement.

Have fun, hopefully this will help you too.

Sketches from Annecy

Posted on June 19, 2007  | 4 Comments
Filed under Drawings, Portfolio

With all the screenings and all the people to meet, I found it really difficult to find the time to sketch but eventually forced myself to do it in the last days.

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Sitting at the terrasse of a coffee shop, I thought it would be a great place to draw people walking in the street but as usual they walk too fast so I ended up sketching the people around us.
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In a bar late at night
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Terrase of a coffee shop. I had to draw those 2 girls in brown. Same outfit, different proportions.
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View from the Café des Arts. I really struggle with colours but I still like to experiment. Sorry for the mess 😉
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Pixar animators Patty Kihm and Ross Stevenson during a presentation of their work on Ratatouillle. “Yeah man” is the stamp of approval from Brad Bird when a shot is approved.

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“Surf’s Up” co director Chris Jenkins and Chris Buck.

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Gary Rydstrom during the presentation of the Pixar’s “Lifted”. Very nice animation, very nice rendering, but I didn’t like the character designs or the story. The human seem to be coming straight from Pixar generig, and the aliens just looked like blobs put together. The story is okayish. The audience seemed to like it but I found it a bit weak compared to the more subtle “Gery’s game” or “For the birds”. Actually, Blur’s “Gentlemen Duel” got an even crazier response from the audience compared to Lifted.

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On the way back to London after the Customs confiscated the Reblochon cheese I intended to use for a nice tartiflette. Damn.

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