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Tofu Fury

Posted on July 11, 2014  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Drawings, Portfolio, Video Games

amazon_02

Dear blog, it has been a while since we last spoke. I was intending to finish and upload the shots I did while attending AnimSquad but things went a bit crazy since last December 😉

The last few month have been really busy with a secret project I can finally talk about.

I have been privileged to get involved with “Tofu Fury”, a launch game for Amazon’s Fire phone, a pretty cool mobile device that among many other features, can track the head of the user thanks to four additional cameras and simulate 3d in a manner that hasn’t been seen to that level of depth on a mobile device yet.

If you want to know more about the phone, The Verge got it all covered with several articles. The Mayday feature will be of a great help to my mom and dad who just don’t understand how to operate a smartphone.

I still can’t divulge too much about our game but it is coming very soon and it was awesome to have it demoed on stage by Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos himself when the device finally got announced two weeks ago. Funny enough, he called the game “Angry Tofu” because the idea delighted him and the title caught up with the press to the dismay of our producer and our studio owner.

Tofu Fury screenshot

Working on the game was a great challenge as on top of being the animator, I was also the Character TD and it was the first time I relied so much on Morph targets (blend shapes) in Unity (the game engine we used).

Since blend shapes are really new to the version of Unity we used and there were so many horror stories on the Unity forum, I tried everything I could to stay away from them and use bones and joints deformation instead but blend shapes were ultimately the best way to create the stylized deformations we were after.

As the main character is 100% animated with blend shapes, “Tofu Fury” is a testimony that blend shapes are perfectly reliable in Unity. I even went to the extent of using blend shapes for some of the bad guys and “non-playable-character’s” (NPC) skin deformation that are traditionally handled through joints and the result was visually more pleasing and less resource intensive, at least for the test we did we Martin, our programmer mostly involved with character animations.

Ok, I think that is all I can say for now so here is a video of Jeff Bezos demoing our game.

Tofu Fury on stage

Ah, one more thing. Like most cool kids I just created an Instagram page for my Life drawings and sketches. If you are also an Instagram user, feel free to follow me at
#oliveuktoon

#oliveuktoon

Pixar animation software part II

Posted on April 28, 2014  | 10 Comments
Filed under Animation

There has been some development in the secrecy surrounding Pixar’s animation software in the past few weeks but before we get started, you might want to refresh yourself with the previous article I wrote about Menv and Presto.

Pixar animation software part 1

Pixar officially revealed their software Presto (aka Menv 13) to the world, in a jaw-dropping tech demo illustrating the benefit of relying on GPU and Nvidia latest tech for that matter.

Maya and other 3d animation softwares look so antiquated compared to Presto. Unlike Autodesk and their mono-threaded CPU viewport, it is quite obvious that Pixar engineers are listening to the users.

In the following video you will get to see some features animators have been screaming for and no-one seems to be listening to it.

1. Invisible on-viewport local trigger controls.

Forget about having to constantly disconnect your sight from your model and having to keep half of your screen free for a silly GUI:

See how the presenter simply click on the geometry to activate the transformation gizmo. If you pay attention you will also notice that the smile to sad control he is activating, triggers automatically the mouth corners up/down and in/out values.

Invisible local trigger controls

2. Realtime animation WITH hair!

It is a lot more predictable to pose a character when you can see a closer representation of the final groom and if on top the playback is real time…. damn!

3. Realtime shadows

Nothing too exceptional here. Most 3d packages have been doing this for quite a while but definitely not with fur visible in realtime.

Real time shadows

4. The pose library is not that different from other software but some people might be interested to see it :

Here is the extract from the demo followed by the full presentation showing the realtime lighting engine:

http://www.ustream.tv/embed/recorded/45386636

Related posts:
Pixar animation software part 1
So you want to be a rigger (TD) huh?
Pixar Brave wireframes

Gena the Crocodile and Cheburashka

Posted on April 27, 2014  | 7 Comments
Filed under Animation, Education

Over the years I have come across many great TV series and short films produced in the former Eastern bloc, “Pat a Mat” being one of them, but I can’t believe it took me so long to come across 1969 “Cheburashka”.

Cheburashka, is a series of four Russian stop motion shortfilms made in the early 70s, featuring Gena, a Crocodile in suit officiating at the local Zoo, and Cheburashka (“tumble” in Russian), the baby bear/monkey looking character that fell into an orange crate to wake up in a Russia town.

The short films are a pure joy to watch. The characters and accompanying music are so sweet and the stories so funny and sad at the same time that you can only empathize with the characters. As a side note, Shapoklyak, the third short film of the series is definitely the one with the darkest moments. That sequence when Cheburashka, seeing how Gena is tired from their long walk back home on the train tracks after they had their train tickets stolen and suggests Gena that instead he could carry the heavy luggages while being carried by Gena is both hilarious and heart-wrenching.

I really love that series at it reminds me of the quirkiness and tenderness of Studio AKA’s short film “Lost and Found”, the sadness of René Clements, 1952 “Forbidden games” and the great physical acting from Jacques Tati’s “Mr Hulot”. There is also some “Sitting Ducks” (the first TV show animated in 3dsmax) in it but that is probably just because we see a civilized Crocodile 😉

Unsurprisingly the series was immensely popular in the Eastern Bloc and Cheburashka was the mascot of the Russian Olympic team several times.

What could be surprising is the fact that the series was brought to Japan by non other than legendary Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The first episode, or second one appearing in the entire compilation below, was animated by Miyasaki’s friend and inspirational director, Yuriy Norshteyn. The series gained a lot of popularity in Japan and a feature produced by both Ffango Entertoyment of South Korea and Frontier Works of Japan, supposedly came out in 2010 but I wasn’t able to find any footage of it, just the movie poster and some wonderful screenshots.

If you don’t have time to watch the four shorts, I would at least recommend watching the great pantomime animation in the following sequence.

The script probably said something like “Gena signs form and postal worker returns to his van”. What the animators added to it is just wonderful. Keep an eye on that hat, a lot of nice little touches made the characters so alive. There is definitely some Mr Hulot in there.

Here is the link to the exact sequence => postal worker deliver birthday package

And here is the the entire series with English subtitles. You definitely want to hear the original Russian song and sweet voice over work.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOZpUDMj9t8&t=0m00s[/youtube]

Related post:
Amandine Pecharman “Lost and Found”
“Kuky se vraci”, Kuky is coming back

Painting with a Moustache

Posted on March 17, 2014  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

Having moved back to London to work on a really cool cartoony game I can’t talk much of for now, I am currently focusing on life drawing and painting most of my evenings. London is probably the only place in the world where Life drawing classes happen pretty much every day.

For that reason, I decided to start a new blog and I will be posting all sort of useful information I come across on it and I might even post some of my drawings. Hopefully you might find some information helpful .

I have a bit of experience with Life drawing, painting is something very new to me so if you are interested in the same topic, point your RSS reader to the following link, I will be posting all the great material I find useful in my learning.

http://moustachepaint.blogspot.co.uk/

The blog look a bit rough around the edges but the content should easily compensate for the look in my opinion. On a side note, I am not going with WordPress this time as I am a bit tired of having to constantly update it and always fear that something will be broken. Also, I have started suggesting to my friends who need a Content Management System to also use Blogger so this might prove useful to test the levels of customisation it supports.

Surprisingly Animation with a Moustache hasn’t been hacked for quite a while ….. or so I hope 😉

As an effort to better market myself and increase my chances of getting new jobs after my current contract, I have also just made a new temp title card featuring my best work. An updated one will appear in few month.

Keep pushing yourself!

CGTarian Animation Half circle

Posted on February 26, 2014  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Education

someone just pointed at a great series of videos posted by online school CGTarian. The videos feature a bunch of top Dreamworks animators (is Joe Bower at Disney or Dreamworks now?) discussing animation.

It has been a long time since I last heard a group of animators talk shop and it is really refreshing. Too bad they are not invited to comment on DVDs and Blurays anymore.

The series starts with the crucial “thumbs or no thumbs” and having Ted Ty comment makes it even more interesting.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjrJgzzUjV0[/youtube]

CGTarian online school Youtube channel.

Related posts:
Tangled Joe Bowers thought process

“Krampus” by Screen Novelties

Posted on January 12, 2014  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation

Fun stop motion animated greeting card by L.A. based Studio Novelties, the people behind the Stop motion Sponge Bob Xmas special.

I love the design of Krampus. Check out the following links to see some behind the scenes and their blog to see past work

“Krampus” behind the scenes

Screen Novelties blog

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/82356351[/vimeo]

Well…. I have to post that video about their past Spongebob special in case you missed the link. That would be sad. I also love 2d but there is something about seeing those characters in volume….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFrVIDgfD0U[/youtube]

via: Cartoon Brew

Paul Lasaine Schoolism interview

Posted on December 31, 2013  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Education, Painting

Since Facebook has decided to widen the use of their awful Ranking system to Newsfeed, I have decided to refocus my efforts on updating this blog more often than I have done in the past few month.

I would also encourage other “content makers” to do the same as you don’t want a third party to interfere in your communication with your audience and in a way, “censor” your posts by applying a silly celebrity ranking system. Getting statistics of your website’s usage is also much easier with a blog than on Facebook and I am not even talking about the immense improvement on searching your blog.

I would also suggest smart readers to use a RSS reader like Feedly and its mobile equivalent (Phonly for Windows Mobile users) just so they can get all their favorite content from an organised central location (GTD) on their phone/tablet or desktop.

I might post a screenshot of my reader one day. Actually here are the different categories. John Nevarez’s blog should probably be a category by himself 😉

My RSS Feed

And to start those new year’s resolutions, here is a rare interview with one of the top Matte Painters and Vis dev guy in the industry, Paul Lasaine. Thanks Schoolism and Bobby Chiu for a great interview again.

By the way, I just logged onto the Schoolism website and realised I still have access to all the courses with Video Feedback I took.. Really cool!!! I look forward to watching Nathan Fowkes lectures again next year.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/81736696[/vimeo]

CTNX 2013 Live

Posted on November 17, 2013  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Animation, Business of animation, Education

CTN on demand

If like me you couldn’t make it to CTNX this year, don’t despair. Tina Price and her crew are offering a free broadcast with demos and live interviews of several participants. Click on the following picture to access it. I think you can also ask questions in realtime….. too bad I only realized that late yesterday.

CTNX 2013 Live

There is also a paying option to access some of the conferences Live and On Demand for $55 but I can’t find much informations about it. I think it is only the main conferences held in the Marriott’s ballroom. It is a pretty cool option as it is like being at CTN and avoiding the schedules reshuffles, long queues and accompanying queue jumpers without paying for the unattainable VIP pass 😉

It would be awesome if the conferences held in the tents and secondary venues were also broadcast as those were just as much interesting and sometimes even better last year.

Here is where you would order the paying option and I have been told the content will still be available 15 days after the show ends.

http://www.eventbrite.com/e/ctnx-2013-attendees-tickets-4867768627

Here are some of my favourite artists being interviewed: Bobby Chiu and Jesse Aclin. There was a quick demo with the awesomely nice John Nevarez which I will post when I find it.

Thanks Tina, your crew and all the volunteers. With the addition of the live broadcast and recording, CTN is definitely a one of a kind event.

Related posts:
Back from CTN 2012

“Rob ‘n’ Ron” by Tumblehead

Posted on September 20, 2013  | 2 Comments
Filed under Animation, Education

Very fun short by Tumblehead, a bunch of graduates from Viborg’s finest “Animation Workshop“. You might remember those chaps from “Elk Hair Caddis“.

They were so nice they even shared some behind the scenes videos showing their process, the rendering (using Arnold) and a rig demo.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/68307465[/vimeo]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/69272039[/vimeo]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/61904692[/vimeo]

Monoprice drawing tablet

Posted on September 7, 2013  | Leave a Comment
Filed under Education, Life hack

[Update after 3 years] Like I mentioned in my original review, the Monoprice is far better for clean drawing than the Wacom offering so I still use the Monoprice but only on my laptop. Having upgraded my desktop to Windows 10, I didn’t manage to test or make the Monoprice  work on it so currently using a Wacom Intuos 5 pro on the desktop and the Monoprice on my Windows 7 laptop. The following pictures were drawn or sculpted on the Monoprice. Ah and the battery is a non issue as I haven’t changed it in…… 3 freaking years!!!!

zbrush

baba

asterix

Uderzo

 

 

[Update after 6 month of use and upgrading to Windows 8] I gave up on Monoprice. There is absolutely no support whatsoever from Monoprice and the current drivers are way to flacky for me to recommend the tablet to anyone. I loved the light weight, small size and larger usable surface than similar Wacom but the drivers are unusable and like I said, Monoprice doesn’t care about customer support. Good bye Monoprice and cheap tablets, I am back to the Wacom monopoly and just bought an Intuos (5) Pro medium. (can’t stand the touch thing and disabled it but at least the drivers are stable). [/update]

[update after three month of use] The issues I was having in Photoshop CS6 and CC were caused by old buggy ATI/AMD graphic card driver which hasn’t been updated for 2 years…. Battery is a non issue as I haven’t changed it in 3 month. Pressure sensitivity is definitely better than the Intuos 3 but there is a bit of jitter if you don’t draw fast. Do I still recommend it? well…. it is only $50 right. Digitizer is larger than the Medium Wacom, tablet is lighter and smaller than Wacom so it fits nicely in my backpack even in the Medium version. I would really like the line to have no jitter but for the ease of use, that’s a keeper. Oh! I was about to forget. It appears that the Middle Mouse button doesn’t work on Macs which really suck for OSX fans. [/update]

After reading a very positive review by an artist called Frenden, I wanted to see if that $50 tablet was really so much better than the much beloved Wacom branded tablets that cost three to four times more.

I have been using Wacom tablets since 1998, the Ultrapad A5 being my first model. I have also owned several Windows TabletPCs equipped with Wacom digitizers. To put it bluntly, I used to be a Wacom fanboy and would regularly make fun of people buying other brands.

One day, a post on the now defunct Drawn.ca attracted my attention. Frenden was claiming that he had switched from his $2.500 Cintiq to a mere $55 Monoprice tablet and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I witnessed how clean his lines are (see for yourself). The Monoprice tablet is not available in France so I made the most of my recent London Life Drawing boot camp to order the 10×6 model and give it a try.

I have only been using the tablet for a week so hopefully I will be able to iron out some little issues I am having in the following weeks. So far it works amazingly well in Manga Studio Pro, Paint Tool SAI and Zbrush. The quality of the line and the pressure sensitivity is way better than my Intuos 3.

I do have an issue with the line quality in Photoshop CS6 64bit on Windows 7 but I will be testing it on Windows 8 next week.

So far, I am really liking it and the Intuos 3 has been gathering dust for the past 7 days. It is very likely that I will sell the Intuos 3, UNLESS, I can’t fix the Photoshop issue.

Let’s see how it goes, more to follow.

Just as a reminder, the Monoprice is equipped with an UC Logic digitizer which is the digitizer used in the Yiynova MSP 19U, an impressive piece of hardware usually refered as the Cintiq killer

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