Zeb's Blog

Master Piece : La maison en petit cubes

Zeb — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:07:00 -0800

Well, this blog has been idle for a few months now, and probably for a few more weeks. But I can't resist to share with you that wonderful short movie who won the academy award this year for best animated short movie. Beware that's just one of the best short I experienced, I hope you will enjoy as well.

Director : Kunio Kato
Production : Robots

Artist : Hamid Barhami

Zeb — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:00:00 -0800

Hamid is a really talented illustrator working in many different styles. I like his sketches a lot. thanks to stumbleupon who helped me discover him and I hope you would like to discover his work as well through his website.

Informations:
City: I'm from Iran but I live in the U.S Atlanta from 2007.
Age: I was born in 1972.(36 years old)
Job: I'm a freelancer concept artist and 2D animator so I have had cooperation experience with Turner Animation Studios and Primal Screen Studio in Atlanta.
School: After graduting from the Fine Arts School, I earned my B.A in painting from the Art University of Tehran
Prefered atists at the time: Egon schile .Johan Singer Sargent . Frank Frazeta . Ashley wood.

Short Movie : True Color

Zeb — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 10:00:00 -0800

Here is a great short, a lot of rythm and freshness, I love the editing and the simple but efficient idea.

Directors : Pierre Ducos and Bertrand Bey
Production : SUPINFOCOM ARLES 2004

Artist : Olivier Ponsonnet (Reiv)

Zeb — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 10:00:00 -0800

Most of you probably already know the work of Reiv, but I can make you discover his wonderfull character artwork, that would make my day. If so, hurry up to check out his website or his cgportfolio gallery

Informations
City: Bordeaux
Age: 26
Job: 3D Artist
School: Master in computer programmation ( 5 years)
Prefered artist at the time: Stephan Martiniere

Brazil 2 DVD with Gnomon Workshop

Zeb — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:20:00 -0800

After many weeks of hard work until September, I'm happy to announced the release of my first DVD with Gnomon Workshop The subject of interest is focused on creating materials with the rendering engine Brazil 2 for 3dsMax. The DVD would be helpfull as well for any Brazil 1 users and would be fit as well to be used along with Brazil Rio Edition (the free version of brazil)

I apologize in advance for my bad english which is coming with a really strong french accent

Let me detail the content of the DVD. There are hours of lecture going through all the different materials and textures coming with Brazil 2, and an overview of the general workflow. And I added a practical example in order to experiment all the knowledge shared in the lecture. The exercise consisted to reproduce in CG a still life photography set that I did, you can see the final CG render below. The picture is highly perfectible, but the purpose of this practical example was mainly didactic.

The DVD come with a browsable library of 400 reference pictures, 150 tileable textures and 100 materials.
All that content is usable for professional or personal projects. If you're not so interested about the lecture on the DVD you can buy (soon) the material library , the tileable textures or the photos references separately on Gnomology.com Below are some examples of materials coming from this library that I share for free throught the online material library from the offical Brazil website . Those are adding to some other materials I shared some months ago.

If you're interested in this materials library I encourage you ( of course) to buy either the DVD or the standalone material library. For anyone planning to buy the DVD I hope not to bore you too much with my long monologue and that you will find the content helpful.

Amazing 3d space interface

Zeb — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 11:21:00 -0800

Impossible to not think about the movie Minority Report when you see this demonstration of that amazing interface. I can't believe this technology is already out there and people start to implement it in systems. The perspective of using such an interface for graphic artist is simply mindbreaking for motion graphics as well as 3d artists. Can you imagine moving lights or scultping a model with this kind of worklfow... so amazing, right ?

via Fubiz

What's Up ? Madagascar 2 and Monsters Vs Aliens

Zeb — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

It's been a long time since I last updated this blog, I apologize for that and I will try to keep updating weekly from now on...

In the first place, I'd like to express my satisfaction about the election of Barack Obama in the country I live in, it makes me for confident and it profoundly moved me to follow the election night and speeches. Since 2003, so 5 years under the Bush administration, I can tell you that even for me a little French non-citizen it feels like a complete change of direction. I have not any huge expectation, but to see someone open to the dialog at the head of the US just made me feel a lot relieved. End of the policital chapter

Beside that, Madagascar Escape 2 Africa is done and will be released tomorrow November 7th. Of course I recommend you to get out to the theater with your family and watch it. That was a really entertaining movie, simple and without any pretentiousness, that I had the chance to see with my 2 years old daughter, it was her first movie ever on the big screen. She loved it, and so I did just by watching her dancing on the music of the ending credits, after she got scared by all the impressive shots or after she laughed intensely during the slapstick jokes. That was a truly moving moment to see my daughter having fun with a movie I contributed to.

In the meantime, The Gnomon DVD I was working on ( about brazil 2 materials and 3dsMax) will be released really soon. I will soon write a post about it and share a few free material samples coming from the library that will be on the DVD (100 materials, tons of references and tileables textures).

And finally a little update on what makes me busy for the last month and a half: Monsters Vs Aliens. The movie is coming along, there are a lot of really nice sequences and I need to say that's probably the hugest team of lighter ever with more than 100 people on both campus. I saw a screening last week, and the least I can tell is that the stereoscopic 3d is really good and will truly be a selling point for the movie. I won't talk too much about the storyline until I see the movie finalized, but I invite you to have a look at the trailer below :

Interview: Meet Méline project

Zeb — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:25:00 -0700

Méline is a superb short film project initiated by Virginie Goyons and Sebastien Laban. They both took kindly some time to answer a few questions about the project, once you read this I urge you to visit the links at the end of the article because their progress thread on the CGtalk forum is amazingly documented.

Residence: Lyon, France
Age: Virginie: 26 Sebastien: 25
Job / employer: Virginie: "Lead Environment" at Eden Games; Sebastien: "Director & Art Director" at Diplomatic Cover -
Education: Virginie: 3 years Computer ESRA; Sébastien: 3 years ESIA 3D computer graphics.
Prefered Artist of the moment: Virginie: Hayao Miyazaki , Sébastien: Steven Spielberg

1 - For those who are unfamiliar with your project, could you resume the story line?
"Meet Meline" follows the story of a little girl, Méline, who spends most of her time in the old barn of her grandparents. One day, while she is in the process of indulging in her passion, drawing, Méline finds herself faced with a unknown furry creature. "Meet Meline" follows our little girl in the discovery of this strange creature.

2 - How did you met each other and how did come the desire to do a project on your spare time?
We met at Eden Games, a video games company. Virginie was responsible for modeling sets and I was working on effects. We were both just out of school and we learnt to know each other for a year ... and voila! As we are both passionate about film animation, we asked ourselves "Why would we not do our own? It would be interesting to see how far we can go? Sharing our ideas, digg some more, in one word: Create". We all love to watch movies ... short movies made by other people. It is frustrating! So we decided to do our own!

This is the best way to express ourselves !

anyone is able to write a film critic, but when it comes to create a short movie, the amount of work and dedication needed is immediately much more intimidating. There are so many things to manage, and I'm not even mentioning the pre production work about the story and the narration of it.

That's the best context to learn, and learning is crucial in our opinion.

It offers so many personal challenges. The simple fact to finish a project is already fabulous. We've seen many projects during these two years, many were stopped even before moving into pre-production. A short film constraints you to go beyond what you think you can do best. Each day, you have to circumvent problems of all kinds and at all levels. But you continue, you seek, you test, you circumvent and in the end you find the exit door! ... then you can satrt fixing the next problem ... and it becomes a game after all

I like to have this quote from Walt Disney in mind: "Around here, however, we don't look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. "

3 - How far are you in the production process, and did you decide of a deadline to complete the short?
We're done with the Production! We're very proud! We will now proceed to the Post-Production, which will consist of:

- finess animations and make them more interesting, more meaningful
- arrange some shots to make them more readable (eg illuminate a particular area to accentuate the important narrative element) and resume some objects / textures to make them more interesting and, above all else
- create the soundtrack and music! Two people, Cédric DENOOZ for sound and Guillaume ROUSSEL for music, have very kindly offered their help! We met them and we had a really good connection with them. I listened to some of their works which are extremely convincing and Guillaume has already made proposals which are clearly beautiful! I am very eager to work effectively with them. : o)

4 - Do you already have a distributor helping you to diffuse the movie through festivals?
Not yet, but we just get in touch with a producer for any regard to this stage. It is therefore too early to talk about it, as nothing has been really settled down yet. This is passionating as well, creating a short film and push it as far as possible. We discover another side of creating an animated short. It makes us stand up from our chair and discover other really interesting aspects.

5-The film has 26 shots for a total of 6 minutes. This is quite a few shots for such a lenght, I guess there is an artistic reason behind that choice, could you tell us more?
It is a very good point! we created the movie bearing in mind the ambition to care as much as possible for the film direction. We tried to make sequences with the maximum amount of details and attention, creating exciting shots, which express the story at best and immerse the viewer into the world of Méline. The main thing on which we focused our efforts was to properly lead the sight of the viewer. To force them looking where you decided and at the right time. It is extremely difficult to accomplish. We're working hard! : o) And in order to create a movie as authentic as possible, we tried to avoid making any unneeded cuts. It leaves the camera "presents" very naturally Méline in her environment. And that leads us to only 26 shots in 6 minutes, with shots ranging from 30 seconds to 1 minute for the longest. It helps to create the geography of the location and allows the viewer to understand where he is for a good reading of the film. On the authencity side, we're working on the sound to emphasize coherently the direction. With that perspective in mind we're seeking to keep most of the sounds as rough / unaltered as possible. As if there had been no treatment clearly audible. Same logic for the animation which is very stiff and "broken" avoiding beautiful curves, beautiful stretchs and squashs and so on.

6 - Do you have a specific anecdote about the film which would be memorable for you?
Yes, there is one rather cool to the origin of the name "Méline." The name was proposed by Virginie and it seemed natural that we call it like that. It sounded good, it's fresh and cute. 6 months ago Virginie has noticed something very interesting with the names of her 3 lovely nieces: they're named Melanie, Aurélie and Marine. It was therefore: MELANIE AURELIE MARINE = MELINE... It doesn't mean much, but we had a good laugh around this Freudian discovery! : o)

2 links to follow the project on its road to completion :

http://www.meetmeline.com/
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?threadid=400888

Artist: Montier, figuratif urbain

Zeb — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:39:00 -0700

Here is an artist a little atypical, most of his work is focused on architecture, but with a really stylized treatment. Have fun discovering his portfolio, you won't be deceipt.

City: chabadabada......Normandie
Age: 32
Profession: artiste peintre 'S' archi and urbanistic
Formation: Technical drawing DPLG
Artistes préfères: randomly Felice Varini, GLENN BARR, Jack Vettriano, John Currin, Justin Bua,francine Van Hove , Robert McGinnis and the great the unique Lucian Freud

Short Movie : Oktapodi

Zeb — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:46:00 -0700

Bravo to the students from the french school "les Gobelins" who directed the short movie Okatpodi:

Directors :

Julien Bocabeille
Francois-Xavier Chanioux
Olivier Delabarre
Thierry Marchand
Quentin Marmier
Emud Mokhberi

They won the general prize at Siggraph as well as the audience prize.
Don't forget to have a look at their official website to enjoy a great making of.

Coraline : 3 sneak peak videos

Zeb — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:20:00 -0700

Coraline is the next stop motion animated movie from Henry Selick, following "James and the giant peach" and "Nightmare before Christmas". The movie is based on a success novel from Neil Gaiman. I feel I'll always love this "genre" of animated movies, despite many constraints they always end up being way more interesting graphically than most of the animated CG feature films.

Here is a quick resume of the synopsis:
"A young girl (Fanning) walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. On the surface, this parallel reality is eerily similar to her real life – only much better. But when her adventure turns dangerous, and her counterfeit parents (including Other Mother [Hatcher]) try to keep her forever, Coraline must count on her resourcefulness, determination, and bravery to get back home – and save her family." (Source IMDB)

Movie release date is febuary 2009 in the States The whole production took place at the Laika studio

Short Movie : Un Temps Pour Elle

Zeb — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:03:00 -0700

There are a few short unforgetable (such as Migrations which I presented in a previous entry) . "Un temps pour elle", by Erwin Charrier is one of them. Erwin graduated from Supinfocom two years before me , so I had the chance to meet him and see how he created this wonderfull short At that time I considered this movie photorealistic and I think it's still a really nice piece lighting wise. Remember that Pixar at that time had released Toy story recently and it wasn't as credible on a rendering level.
I recall the meticulous work Erwin did on the ligthing, simulating global illumination and bounce lighting with omni and spots using shadow maps. This was really striking to see simple tools pushed so far in order to achieve such a great look
I need to mention that Erwin did this movie within one year (from the first synopsis to the final product) and he was alone

For the little story, I kissed my wife for the first time on a full solar eclipse day ( back in 1999), so seeing the short today brings back that memory as well

Director : Erwin Charrier
Production : Supinfocom

Artist : Benoit Godde

Zeb — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:30:00 -0700

So much talent, Benoit Godde offers you an amazing portfolio, make some room in your bookmarks messieurs dames ! his webdesign gallery is pretty cool as well...

Location: Paris, France
Age: 37
Job: Illustrator, graphist
School: graphic school in Paris (esag)
Prefered artist of the moment: Ashley Wood

This blog is one year old, so what ?

Zeb — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:00:00 -0700

one year ago I posted my really first entry on this blog, and then I really started to publish regularly during fall. The report for that one year is mostly positive : over 200 000 visitors for a little more than 50 posts, 125+ feed readers, but less than 100 comments on the whole blog, which compared to the french version of the blog is a really low ratio ( on the french version over 70 000 visitors left about 250 comments).

I'm wondering what could cause the lack of participation and interaction. I can't think my bad english skills could be the only reason. And getting some interaction with my readers is really something important to keep up the motivation and feed this blog. Big thanks to you that are reading me regularly !

So, as I want to better satisfy my few readers, I wish I could gather your views about the content, tutorials and other items you would like to see here. Let me know what are your thoughts and what post you liked the most during the past weeks.

Here is what's on my list for the time being:

Links to artists (regular post)
Short movies (regular post)
Life Drawing (Monthly)
Series of articles on the pipeline, work in business etc. .. (monthly )
My work in progress (posting depends on my progress:))
A review on Brazil 2
Tutorials bearing on the light and compositing (I have some ideas , but if you have specific requests let me know)
I intend to offer some "light rigs" for 3dsmax, mental ray and brazil.
I would also post articles on the basis of interesting event happening at Dreamworks .

I have two or three other ideas, but I would be happy to collect your opinion as well.

Pixar's Last short movie : Presto

Zeb — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 21:22:00 -0700

Here is a sneak preview of 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 watch Wall-E on the big screen

You can find the full length movie on iTunes for 2 dollars

At work : what project will fit you the best ?

Zeb — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:00:00 -0700

Once again it is time... Third entry about my different experiences of production. This time we'll discuss the different types of projects available computer graphics artists. 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