Zeb's Blog

Pixar's Last short movie : Presto

Zeb — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:22:00 -0700

Here is the latest short movie from Pixar which was shown before Wall-E in the theaters
I can't wait to have more time so I can finally wath Wall-E on the big screen

At work : what project will fit you the best ?

Zeb — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Once again it is time... Third ticket about my different experiences of production. This time we'll discuss the different types of projects open to careers in computer graphics. For this entry I urges you to participate and share so I can fill the gaps I left because I can't pretend to have enough knowledge in each sector. So don;'t be afraid to leave comments about your experiences and I will synthesize them and edit the post whenever you'll provide me some extra information.

It's been 7 years since I work in the 3d computer graphic field. From commercials, to feature film via music videos and video game cinematics. Throughout this journey I was able to observe the structure of each of these companies, their pipeline , what was working, or not. I will therefore try to make a synthesis through several posts. This is the second post about that topic. I encourage you to write comments about your own experiences in order to enrich the debate.

Here is a small and non-exhaustive list of typical projects on which CG artists are used to work. I will list their pros and cons, the skills necessary to integrate each kind of projects. Help me complete each section, and please feel free to confirm or refute anything I wrote. Consider that article as a first draft and don't be afraid to mention the tons of orthographic and grammatical errors in the text.

Architecture

I had no real professional experience in this field, the job seems to be focusing heavily on the texture work, materials and lighting. I wonder if the use of compositing is very regular. Many artists seems to use a lot materials and objects libraries in order to increase efficiency.
Pros: ?
Cons: ?
Softwares: 3dsMax and 3dsViz with rendering packages such as Vray or Brazil. Mental ray seems to be used more and more lately.

Illustration

I do not have much experience professionally with illustration work and my few tests have never been very conclusive. However, it seems to me that this discipline is often the area of free-lance artist and must require a large address book. I think about work from Matt Roussel or Loic Zimmermann for example
Pros:?
Cons:?
Softwares: 3dsMax or Lightwave for their ease of use standalone and their price. Photoshop is of course essential.

Simulation

Medical application, concept cars etc. ... Surely the field I know the least. The approach seems to be much more linked to science and mathematics. The artistic development seems to be way smaller compare to the technical needs.
Pros:?
Cons:?
Softwares: Autocad, proprietary softwares, others ?

TV Commercials

Many artists are working once in a while on tv commercials. The projects are very diverse and can be very interesting, with short deadlines (sometimes too short), but usually offering comfortable budgets with enough room for research and development. Being able to switch between projects in a short time is a great way to fill out you demo reel, try different styles and face multiple challenges. In general the most unpleasant side comes from the communication between customers, advertising agency, director and the company you're working for. Misunderstandings can compromise the project and you will feel a lot of political issues when it comes to who is taking credit for any new ideas. So be prepared to be frustrated once in a while when the client will give huge notes on the last minutes because he discovered the result of weeks of work that the advertising agency was holding away from his sight.
Pros: Varied projects, short deadlines, generous budget in general, large visibility of his work
Cons: Work with advertising agencies, difficult clients, short deadlines
Softwares: No software seems to dominate the market, and many studio uses proprietary softwares.

Music Video

This is probably the kind of project that I prefer the most (I've had one experience so far, but it was very interesting). Despite tight deadlines, illustrating music with great pictures is more attractive to me than selling a commercial product. The music videos are a great opportunity to express creativity : they increasingly tend to be made on the same schema than short film. Music is always a great source of inspiration, the challenge being to transcend it by developing stunning visuals and bringing many narrative elements through the pictures. And that can be extremely rewarding
Pros: Greater creative freedom, large audience
Cons: Small budgets, short deadlines for generally huge workload
Softwares: No software seems to dominate the market, and many studio uses proprietary softwares.

Ride movies

I have not yet had the opportunity to work on such projects, but I have followed closely a few productions that took place within Blur Studio. The productions are long, very long, and on the technical side the rendering times are huge, no need to speak about the technical issue with super large format and huge geometry sets, this can end up being a nightmare or a great challenge depending on your love for technical issues. But the budgets are generally very fat, it helps to spend time on R & D which is not necessarily unpleasant. And then seeing your work in large format, sometime in stereoscopy is a great moment.
Pros: Technical challenges, large budgets.
Cons: Rendering times, heavy scenes, easy to get bored on long schedules
Softwares: Maya, XSI but some are produced with 3dsMax.

Games cinematics

The cinematics usually are being spread on 4 to 8 months of production which is a great ioption in between commercials and feature. The work is rather interesting as far as building a whole narrative world associated to a game, but tends to be repetitive from project to project. For animators the lack of cartoon characters in most of the cinematic games will be a huge issue, cleaning motion capture is far less enoyable than creating some keyframe animation. While I worked on game cinematics I had the chance to work at many level: character modeling, environment and props modeling and texturing, set dressing, lighting or compositing. One of the major drawbacks is the irregularity of the budgets which is really frustrating because even some major companies are trying to save money on cinematics despite a market that is booming and very profitable.
Pros: Perfect project to experiment all your skills.
Cons: Motion capture for animation, redundancy of the subjects (especially around violence), budgets too small
Softwares: 3dsmax, and a little Maya and Lightwave.

Video Games

I haven't worked in the game industry at all. The work focuses on long-term projects in general, which unfortunately sometimes fails for marketing reasons, so be prepared to work on project that might never make it to the market. I think My Friend Nicolas could certainly help me to complete this section (thanks to his long experience of the game:) ).
Pros: ?
Cons: ?
Softwares: 3dsMax, some Maya and XSI?

Animated Series

Same here , never worked in this area. However, many of my colleagues did and all of them said that this kind of production focus on the production rate rather than quality ( surprising ? ;)). What can be frustrating depending on the level of quality required and the constraints that this will involve creatively. Moreover I do not believe that working on series is the best way to keep its motivation up on the very long term. It could be a great way to familiarize with efficient workflow and add a lot of shots to your demo reel, but I think you better make sure the company you're working for offers from time to time the possibility to work on different projects so you can relax and diversify.
Pros: Job stability provided by a long production, opportunity to learn how a really efficient pipeline work.
Cons: Constraint on quality, easy to get tired of the project
Softwares:?

Animated Short Film

In many cases as a student that would be the first kind of project you will ever work on. Since Pixar and few other studios started to produce regularly short movies internally , that developped a trend in many studio. And that's great it helps the companies to promote themselves creatively through festivals and to experiment new technics and it creates great creative opportunitties for artists. I had the chance to participate to shorts at Partizan, and while I worked at Blur: a few weeks on Rockfish and Gopher Broke and I had the chance to supervise the lighting and compositing of " A Gentlemen's Duel". The process is frankly very pleasant since all decisions are made internally, the work can be harassing just because festivals submissions deadlines such as the academy awards are unmovable.But this is really great project to work for even when you need to give some extra time to it.
Pros: Very rewarding, a lot of visibility to professionals through festivals
Cons: Can be exhausting if you invest yourself a lot in the project
Softwares: It seems to me that 3dsmax is widely used for short films students.

Animated Feature Film

I'm working on my third feature film within Dreamworks, that's a great experience, very different than my previous projects. Generally the movies are developed by department which is requesting everyione to be specialized. The daily load of work is managed differently too, those production can be a lot slower due to the number of people involved. And the hierarchy can be another reason to slow down the process just because you will need to validate your work with your supervisor, the artistic director, the production designer, the director and even the marketing department. But the final project is always rewarding.
Pros: Very gratifying, huge value added on a resume
Cons: Length of production and validation process
Softwares: Proprietary software, a few projects on 3dsmax or Maya.

Live Action Movies

My only experience on the subject is very, but very anecdotal. It was a feature called "Mr. Fix It" I worked on while I was at Blur. A project which I frankly don't mind to not mention in my resume. I was repairing mistake from the shooting or doing few cheap FX shots which could not be shot in live action for budgetary issues (a gliding scene for example). I even erased the penis of a poodle on 200 pictures because the dog was supposed to be a female, big time for the casting crew. So any developed experiences on the subject would be welcome. From what I understand it involves a lot of compositing work, and FX skills . You need also to be familiar with the many constraints to integrate computer graphics into the 35 mm format.
Pros: Very gratifying, Big value added on a resume, the challenge of creating innovative effects regularly.
Cons: Length of productions, all feature films are not equal and working on future flop can be a waste of time for your demo or resume
Softwares: Maya, proprietary software.

Short Movie : Michael Dudok de Wit

Zeb — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0700

I could be starting a long presentation of Dudok de Wit, and those two shorts, express comments about the emotions those shorts brought me the first time I saw them, but the best is probably to just let you watch them and get back on their content later.
Two true jewels of traditionnal animation from a wonderfull director.

Father and daughter need no explanation, no comment, if you haven't felt anything then that's it! you missed it, too bad... Let's speak about the Monk and the Fish

This second short is probably the first than opened my eyes on the huge ability of animated short movies to treat such deep and meaningfull subjects. I was 17 and I was amazed by the simplicity of the short and how complex its message was.

One comment on youtube is covering he subject really well :

"I think the fish is a metaphor for the truth of faith. The monk finally "see" the truth and try to catch it. He is near but more he tries more he fails. Try to explain to others to find help, but it is impossible. He is obsessed and finally he realize that the truth of faith can't be catch, just followed and embraced. When he embrace the fish he discover the freedom, piety and peace."

I won't say this metaphor is linked to religion, this is really more about faith as a general matter. Probably comparable IMHO to the meaning of the alchemist from Paulo Coelho.

Artist : Patrick Beaulieu

Zeb — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:00:00 -0700

again I'm publishing a link to a really famous artist, but if for some reason you're discovering him, I'm sure that would be a great add on to your bookmarks. Patrick Beaulieu aka "SqueezeStudio" is the king of acidulated colors and completly crazy character design. I love it.

Some more info about Patrick:
Location: Quebec , Canada
Age: 26
Job : Lead animator , Activision
School: AEC, Institut Athena, 3D cinema television (Quebec)
Prefered artist of the moment: Jason Ryan

CGSphere.com : The Sphere project

Zeb — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Sometime disoovering a wonderfull project after it ran for 3 years make me feel stupid, this is typically what happened when I discovered this one The Sphere project is meant to be a permanent contest with no price but much pride (if you make it to the homepage) on the Sphere thema. It has been initiated by Richard Rosenman et Michael Kocurek. The principle is amazingly simple: illustrate the sphere thema in CG using any kind of software.

Check out the official website and if you're eager to see more here is the shortcut to the gallery.

Here are a few submissions from Richard Rosenman himself ( thanks to him for the authorization to publish them here):

And here are a few of my prefered one

An egg yolk
A tunnel
Aquarium
Match

Kung Fu Panda Latest Trailer

Zeb — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:43:00 -0700

I just figured out that a new trailer came out for Kung Fu Panda, 3 weeks ago .

Well I was in vacation at this time which is why I didn't post about it. Anyway, I was happy to see that one of my shot is in this trailer (TaiLung, the lepard jumping in slow motion toward the cam, at 1:00). It's always cool to see a shot you've worked on in a trailer, so I decided to mention it :D (happy lighter) I wanted to show the trailer embedded in the post but if you want a better quality than the poor YouTube compression just go see the trailer on the official website.

Movie will be released on june 6th... 10 more days

Artist: Damien Canderle

Zeb — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:24:00 -0700

I would be more than surprised if anyone have never seen any artwork from Damien. If you're discovering him thru this post then just jump directly to his wonderfull gallery. Modeling skills as well as rendering skills at their highest level.

A short bio about Damien :
Residence: Lyon
Age: 29
Job: modeler (mainly characters:)) for Ubisoft or freelance
School: bachelor degree of Economy :D
His inspiration at the moment : wow really tough question, there are so many... But so far what really inspired me lately is the work from ILM on Pirates of the carribeans, Especially Davy Jones: Latest article on ZbrushCentral

Back from Hawaii

Zeb — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:07:00 -0700

No entry on the blog for more than two weeks. Iwas enjoying some great vacation time in Hawaii with my family. I will not dwell on the subject, but I strongly recommend this destination (Maui) for all those who want spend a great time with their family in ideal conditions.

So I'm ready to start production on Madagascar 2 very soon, just enough time to finish my work for the Gnomon.

The critics which followed the Cannes Premiere of Kung Fu Panda are very good which built many hopes for this film to be a huge success. I keep my fingers crossed because I sincerely think that the film deserves it.

Since I have a full plate of work to do I will not update the blog as often as usual, I'll try to keep a pace of one post a week and maybe one post from time to time in order to cover any urgent event.

Mahalo

Artist : Romain Segaud

Zeb — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:30:00 -0700

To break the rule, here is an artist who became director (music video and tv commercials, feature film soon, who knows?)

Romain is 27 years old, lives in Paris and works for Passion Pictures. He graduated from Supinfocom (2 promotions later than me) where of course I met him. He's very nice and enthusiastic, but be carefull when talking about movies, I remember Romain being really critical and passionated about it ! Well this is from what I remember at school...

Take a look at his website where you can discover all his work. I love the overall graphic style of it.

Just so you remember he also directed the student film : Tim Tom (co-directed with Christel Pougeoise) which received a great feedback from festivals: main prize at Imagina, jury prize at Siggraph, official selection at Sundance and Annecy)

Short Movies : Totalitarianism, Wars, Revolutions ...

Zeb — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:20:00 -0700

These are themas that european animation movies tend to illustrate really often. Here is a selection of 4 movies treating the subject brilliantly and with some great and strong graphic style
Let's debate on the message/morale of those movies in the comments as they might be interpreted in many different ways.

La marche des sans-nom
Directors : Lucas Vigroux, Nicolas Laverdure, Jean Constantial
Production : Supinfocom

La marche des sans-nom

Theros
Director : Georgios Cherouvim

Le Processus
Directors : Philippe Grammaticopoulos, Xavier de L'hermuziere
Production : Supinfocom

A fourth short which is a lot less dark and way more cartoony, just to get a little less depressed, or not ?
Changes
Directors : Daniel Martinez Lara

Pepeland Changements Changes

Life Drawing : After 6 months, no real improvement !

Zeb — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:30:00 -0700

As you might have observed I'm taking more and more time to post the results of my drawing classes. Well, for the last few months I participated in the courses with less attendance than at the beginning, and certainly I do not necessarily spend the entire 3 hours of the class in order to preserve a little bit of family life during those evening. But it is clear to me that my drawings are not showing any particular improvements. I think I really need to study my anatomy books again and to focus a little more on theory as well as participating to the class. Another great excuse: drawing at the end of a full work day does not offer the best conditions to draw. So I promised to myself to relax a little before joining the class. Let see next time I will post if there is any sort of progress.

I decided to join the life drawing classes offered by Dreamworks. This class is a 3 hours weekly session teached by Karl Gnass . Let's face it, I'm REALLY bad at that, I just hope to make some progress and that's why I will keep posting those galleries monthly, in order to put pressure on myself and also to see if I will effectively progress.

Artist : Zamak ( Olivier Bucheron)

Zeb — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Here is a great artist I just discovered using StumbleUpon (fantastic tool that I highly recommend, if you already have an account or want to sign up feel free to add me to your contact list http://lezeb.stumbleupon.com/).

Zamak is an incredible artist, I completely love his work, some great designs and composition work with a really minimalistic modeling techinc. Probably the artist who surprised me the most since the beginning of this year. Enjoy his great artwork blog

Good old time : The Amiga

Zeb — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:00:00 -0700

This post is probably out of the usual scope of the blog, but while surfing I ended up on that video. All of a sudden I jumped back in time when I was 12 and faced a lot of souvenirs. Without the acquisition of that computer I don't think I would have developed such a strong interest to computer graphics. You might want to turn off your sounds for the first video.

Let's do a quick briefing for those who have not experienced the amiga. This was the first computer to offer the general public a range of high-quality video games from 1985 to 1994, with a "new generation" graphic ability offering more than 8 colors and playing music on 4 tracks:).
The competition at that time was the Atari ST / STE, and the PC but they were no match regarding the quality of the games. Toward the end of the amiga reign, Pentiums revolutionized the PC world and consoles grew even bigger on the market. This is a personal interpretation and very probably wrong, but this is how I experienced the funeral of my super cool Amiga 500.

I remember even having made my first step towards the graphics on this machine with deluxe paint, and later the 3d graphics with Sculpt 4d and Real 3d. I will be curious to review those first images I did back then.
Here is a list of the games that have marked my childhood, so many great intros, great moments that I hope some of you also remember.

Deuteros

Monkey Island

Cruise for a Corpse

Another World

Dune

Moonstone

Heimdall

An some more :

Battle Isle
BAT (1 et 2)
Civilization
Pang
Project X
Zool
Operation Stealth
Populous
Vroom
Speedball
Rodland
Alien Breed
Lemmings
Captain Blood
Jim Power
Rainbow Island
Shufflepuck Cafe
Superfrog
Worms
Megalomania
Push Over
Wizzkid

I could easily add 50 more titles which kept me stucked in front of my old computer.

If you really want to play again with those great games , then install WINUAE on your PC and I let you find the games using your favorite search engine.

Have fun !

Artist : Stephane Tartelin

Zeb — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:00:00 -0700

I've been watching closely the work from Stephane (aka BOZ) for a long time now I love his pencil stroke and the style that comes with it.

A gallery to discover urgently for maximum enjoyment.

From Kung Fu Panda to Madagascar

Zeb — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Kung Fu Panda comes to its end of production, another two weeks to fix the last small technical problems and give a hand on a few extra shots. And the least I can say is that the final movie will be a great success, all the ingredients are here and everybody in the studio believes fervently in this success However a slight disappointment that the project was not realized in 3D stereoscopic: indeed we have had the right to a projection last week showing a sequence of Kung Fu Panda and two other from Monsters Vs Aliens.The sequence of Kung Fu Panda was very dynamic and the addition of the stereoscopic 3d was extremely impressive.

To add another layer of positiveness here is a great short review from Cartoon Brew on Kung Fu Panda, it's a great surprise to get such feedback from them as they're usually really tough on Dreamworks movies.
This film is perhaps a turning point for the studio, I think the following films "How to train your dragon "or" Master Mind "have the potential to get extremely good critics from both the public and the pros as well. Arriving at the end of this project, Dreamworks has renewed my contract and I'll start in mid-May on Madagascar, The crate escape. This project would be for a really short term because the film is scheduled to be done in mid-September for a release in the USA in November 2008.

I am quite pleased to avoid Monsters vs. Aliens for a time because of the complexity of the project, but it is highly probable that I'll join their team right after Madagascar is done. I'm not going to complain, I like that projects are turning around quickly, just hope that the pace will not be absolutely crazy. To give a preliminary taste of what will be the film here is a short video presented by Ben Stiller:

Short movies : 3 graphical and musical experiences

Zeb — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:15:00 -0700

Another great selection from Supinfocom, those 3 shorts are definitely great achievements in design and visual entertainment. I hope you will like those experimental shorts as well.

Musicotherapie
Directors : Amael Isnard, Manuel Javelle, Clement Picon
Production : Supinfocom

Jalopy
Directors : Jordane Menard, Vincent Viriot
Production : Supinfocom

envoyé par -Igins-

90 degrees
Directors : Jules Janaud, Raphael Martinez-Bachel, François Roisin
Production : Supinfocom

Heavy Metal the movie: Fincher, Eastman, Blur and Paramount

Zeb — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 18:10:00 -0700

I am very happy this info is now official as I knew about it more than two months ago without being allowed to talk about it:) But what info?

Paramount is launching the Heavy Metal project, a CG animated movie with 8 or 9 sequences (short films to be clearer) which will be compiled together as a feature film. The whole thing is inspired by the famous 70's magazine of the same name ! The film will be Rated R, and therefore intended for adult audiences, which make a lot of sense regarding the content "sex, drug and rock and roll" of the magazine.

Even better news is the list of the project contributors : David Fincher will be directing one of the shorts, Kevin Eastman (inventor of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, co-founder and publisher of Heavy Metal Mag) will conduct another and Tim Miller (Founder of Blur Studio) will direct his own short as well. This means that the entire work will be done at Blur Studio and so the project will surely be the first feature film for the studio (maybe in a competition race with Rockfish, but I bet Heavy Metal would come first). It is a great news for my former colleagues and company, such a project is really tailored for them!

I've seen very quickly some concept art on this project and it looked very interesting, with a broad range of style for each shorts. That make sense to me as the magazine is publishing more and more graphic novels from Europe which are stylized way differently than american comics in general. If I still know my maths they would need 5 or 6 directors to complete the director's team, so I'm eagerly waiting to meet with Tim again and get some info about it.

I have no doubt , this opus will be far beyond what were the first animated films released in 1981 and 2000 related to the heavy metal universe. This is a really exciting project in my opinion, especially from Blur point of view.

Go Blur Go

Monsters Vs Aliens at Showest

Zeb — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Las Vegas is hosting Showest which is a conference promoting movies to the key people in the film industry (distributors, producers etc ...) On this occasion Dreamworks has decided to show a final sequence of Aliens vs. Monster in exclusivity and in 3D stereoscopic format. Kung Fu Panda will also be broadcast in its entirety at almost final stage.

This is an opportunity to reveal a little more about the content of this delirious movie.

Here is the official pitch : When California girl Susan Murphy is unexpectedly clobbered by a meteor full of outer space gunk, she mysteriously grows to 49-feet-11-inches tall and is instantly labeled a “monster” named Ginormica. The military jumps into action, and she is captured and held in a secret government compound. The world learns that the military has been quietly rounding up other monsters over the years. This ragtag group consists of the brilliant but insect-headed Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D.; the macho half-ape, half-fish The Missing Link; the gelatinous and indestructible B.O.B.; and the 350-foot grub called Insectosaurus. Their confinement time is cut short however, when a mysterious alien robot lands on Earth and begins storming the country.

The film is clearly a 2nd degree humor movie inspired from the B movies from the fifties, and humor ranges from a Monty Python to Jim Abrahams movies (not a big fan of that last reference, but I think that might work well as an cartoony movie)

I was lucky enough to see two sequences already, unfortunately, not in stereo, I'm eager to have a screening ( probably next month). And I must say that the result is visually very good. And I have to confess that I smiled many times and laugh instantly at many stupid jokes :). I can't wait to know whether this will be the next project for me after Kung Fu Panda or not.

Here is the voice casting : Reese Witherspoon plays Ginormica (the giant 50 feet woman), Hugh Laurie of Dr House is the insect scientist, Kiefer Sutherland is voicing the General and Stephen Colbert in the role of the President

The movie release is scheduled for March 27, 2009 in the USA.

Artist : Goro Fujita

Zeb — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 10:00:00 -0800

I discovered Goro Fujita while I was digging into CGPortfolios. His 2d Folio artworks are offering a rare spontaneity, his color and composition work are really inspiring. Those who doesn't know his images yet would love it. Everyone else: just spend a little bit more time on his gallery as there are many awesome artworks you won't find anywhere else.

Gallery Update : my last work at Blur Studio

Zeb — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:00:00 -0800

So you will find picture from 3 different projects : Hellgate, Jericho and Spiderman Friend or Foe. I mainly work on Scene Assembly for those projects (Lighting+ compositing) except for Jericho which I did all the environment background. To see more follow that link
I just updated my 3d gallery section on the main website, after I realized I never published the last projects I worked on before I left Blur.

Little Extra : Videos from Jericho and Spiderman