Despite the whole industry having embraced the Bluray format for several years, they still don’t seem to be able to fit any “Behind the scene” videos or director’s comments on the enormous space that offer bluray discs. This is why we’d better celebrate the release of videos like that one, especially since it is a studio that is well known for being very secretive.
Steve Carell shows you how 3d is done at Mac Guff. It is great to see that Zébé is actually a real person. I thought he was just a myth, a machine that could crank up great drawings after great drawings 😉 Interesting he doesn’t work on a Cintiq. Make me feel better for not coughing up for one myself.
I would love to be paid to draw more and realized the best way to achieve that would be to put together a 2d portfolio and apply for 2d animation related jobs when they come up.
I am certainly not giving up on 3d animation don’t worry, I just live in a place where there are just as many 2d and 3d positions. Ultimately, 2d and 3d skills work hand in hand so cultivate one and you will get stronger in the other one.
Here is a selection of work done in my free time or during the AnimC and CGMW character design classes.
Thanks to Nate Wragg, Chris Sasaki and Albert Lozano for being such great mentors and inspiring artists.
I just discovered some really fun and catchy music videos based on News footage with very colorful characters and doing a bit more research on how those were done, I realized they were using a music software plug-in called Auto-Tune which allows to tweak the pitch of an audio clip.
So I am not going to talk about Auto-tune, instead, I want to share with you a nice video clip where X-factor’s Simon Cowell does a great “Take” following a contestant’s attack on one of the jury. This is almost a “double take” and it is so cool to be able to see his thought process so clearly and more than anything, the fact that it happens at the same time he was finishing his previous action (he was lowering his “cold pop”).
Obviously, I also have to share those other fun music videos I found. Those are real characters!
Having studied Psychology and Ergonomy at University, it always bothers me when I have to use tools that haven’t been carefully thought out with the final user in mind.
Personally I like to stay in the flow when I animate so I don’t want to have to look at my keyboard constantly when I animate. The least my hands and fingers travel, the more focused on my viewport and the more efficient I stay.
If you haven’t realised yet, on a keyboard, you have two bumps on the F and J key. This is a feature for “touch typists” that allows you to quickly locate where you are on the keyboard by feeling those two keys without looking at them. Touch typist would lay their index on them and muscle memorize the surrounding keys.
For Maya users, the F key is the most important one as Selection, Translation, Rotation and Scale (QWER) are just above it. To make things more efficient, I like to have my additional animation hotkeys, just below that area. Have a look at the attached picture.
Note the position of the next/previous keys and frames, this is the most important thing when like me you work in the manner of a traditional 2d animator and constantly “flip your drawings”.
Wondering what animation software Pixar uses to bring us magical movies like Monsters inc 2? Wonder no more!
In a latest Open Subdiv demo, Autodesk Meet the experts presentation, Pixar’s engineer lead Dirk Van Gelder lets us have a quick peek at his computer screen so we get to see what Pixar’s Marionette looks like.
If you didn’t know, the software’s 30th iteration of Marionette or Menv (the name comes from the original name, Modeling environment), is now called Presto, as a tribute to Doug Sweetland’s 2008 short film.
Around 18 minutes into the presentation, we can have a good look at the interface and see Monsters University’s character, Dean Hardscrabble, the dean of the School of Scaring faculty, in motion. Here is a screenshot.
Pixar Marionette
Instead of being displayed in the viewport as we are accustomed to, the controls or Avars (this is how they are called at Pixar) are tucked to the bottom right of the screen and displayed as some sort of advanced channel box or spreadsheet since this is the term used in Animation Language AL, the ancestor of Pixar’s Menv.
An other interesting thing we notice is that Presto runs on Linux and the Gnome environment. This could be surprising when we think that Pixar’s CEO was also Apple’s CEO.
Animator working on Brave
If you want to see Presto in action a little bit more, check out that Guardian’s interview with Toy Story 3’s Animation Supervisor Bobby Podesta : (the video seems to have been pulled out, here is an other one instead)
or that one with Sanjay Patel:
Ah and to finish this post, what a better way than posting Monsters University’s third trailer!!! As a side note, Monsters Inc is still my favourite Pixar feature 😉
Oops, I guess I should have mentionned that before…. and it was actually planned month in advance…
After the success of Meet Ze Artist 2012. The good people from TigoboAnimation are organizing a new event this week in Angouleme.
The top guests this year will be Dreamworks’ Croods Art Director Christophe Lautrette, Dreamworks’ Vis Dev artist Arthur Fong, Character designer Florian Satzinger alias Paperwalker, Character designer Sylvain Deboissy who previously worked at Sony Pictures Animation and did a great job on Surf’s Up…
Check out the full schedule for the other conferences and workshops
I have been watching a lot of movies lately, hoping to find some great audio clips for my soon starting AnimSquad workshop.
Since I don’t like to feel I am wasting my time, I am also doodling in Paint Tool SAI, just to get better at it.
Drawing in SAI is a very relaxing activity, you should try, it will make you rediscover your Wacom tablet. In fact, I even stopped using my TabletPC and I don’t feel the need for a Cintiq.
Here is a drawing I did while watching Tombstone with my custom Tombow brushpen.
Just to let you know, I have decided to slow down the amount of posts related to animation news in order to dedicate my rare free time to my portfolio and showreel.
I should however direct you to three great websites that should get you covered with everything that goes on in the Animation industry. Splinebomb, Cartoon Brew and for the Spanish speakers, Arte y Animación.
Arte y animacion just posted a cool 12 minutes video podcast by the way. A nice interview with Carlos and Jordi Grangel, the Directors of Grangel Studio
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/60947375[/vimeo]
To my RSS addicts friends. With Google killing Google Reader in few month, what are your plans for the aftermath? Feedemon relying on Google Reader, I am out of luck and will need to switch to something else (Windows user here)
My friends Sebastien Lasserre and Sylvain Aubert just posted a funny video on the Vampire theme. It is mainly French play-on-words kind of humour but the facial expressions and fun acting backed by a catchy sound track and quirky sound design should make you laugh.
