Two colleagues at Blue Sky Studios, David LaMattina and Chad Walker, have created a feature-length documentary about a pen pal program between a group of at-risk sixth graders living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and orphans from the war living in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This Postcard Art project is an extension of the their film "Brownstones To Red Dirt" which features children from both schools. The kids in both places have inspired us all to want to do more and so we're putting together an art auction of original postcards based around the same central theme of the film in a fundraising effort to build a school for the orphans in Freetown, Sierra Leone and create a library for the youth at their school in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn.
As an extension of the documentary BROWNSTONES TO RED DIRT, Copper Pot Pictures has paired with Schools for Salone to hold an online art auction to benefit kids in need in Sierra Leone and New York. The auction includes over 150 pieces created by some of the top names in animation as well as children’s book, graphic novel and comic illustration, including Oscar-winning director Chris Wedge, Toy Story 3 Art Director Daisuke Tsutsumi, renowned illustrator Peter DeSeve and legendary puppeteer Caroll "Big Bird" Spinney.
Each artist was given a blank birchwood postcard and asked to create a unique work based on the theme, “PEN PALS.” All proceeds will be used to build a school for war orphans in Freetown, Sierra Leone and to develop a library for at-risk youth in Brooklyn. Winning bids will be tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.
Another CG version of a 2d character. The Honeybee from Nestle cereal comercials. That was part of a pitch to convince the client that a CG bee would be more of the taste of current generations of consumers. The proposal went well I think and a couple of commercials where made.
I remodelled the character starting from and old geometry and posed it for the pitch image. Also did the shading and lighting.
Last year I was asked to create a CG turnaround of two popular Disney characters. The client was Walt Disney Products UK. I'm not sure if it ever was used for anything other than a reference for other artists, but I think that was the initial goal of the images. I Modeled, textured, iluminated and comped the images myself. For the Tiger Image I started from a previous model that I had to modify and pose.
Was good fun to work with such popular characters and try to make a CG version of them that was somehow respectful to their 2d original counterparts.
I had a lot of help from Disney artists that gave me the sketches and drawings with the pose they wanted. And they kept doing paintovers to my pose to improve every little detail, curve, shape or silhouette. I really love to collaborate with traditional artists. There is something to learn in every line they draw. All the process was supervised by Stephane Kardos (see his amazing blog on the links list).
Is been a while since I updated the blog. A lot of things happened meanwhile but I´ll talk about that another time. This time I´ll show you a video from a 2D animated TV show we put together last year at Uli Meyer Studios. It was directed by Michael Shlingmann who also designed the characters. The environment design was done by the visual sensei Alberto Mielgo. I had the honor of taking their creations and turning them into a glorious CG feast for a few shots . Basically I created the CG backgrounds and the vehicle. I modelled, textured, animated, illuminated, rendered and comped those shots. Good fun.
Concept designs by Alberto Mielgo (link on the right)
Finally it´s out!! I´m glad to present you the shortfilm "Bungle in the Jungle", my brother´s final project at the Master degree in computer animation of the Universitat de les Illes Balears, MA ISCA. I really hope you enjoy the film in which Miquel and myself have inverted so many time and effort.
Hi,here is a CG short film I created in 2002 for the Universitat de les Illes Balears (http://www.maisca.com/). Long time since I finished it, it's been through festivals but It's never been on the internet before. I guess is a good thing to share it with the CG community. I'm sure I would do things diferently now, specially the story, but I think it still stands a look. I'm really interested in your feedback so all comments are wellcome.
One workmate reminded me today that I had a blog (thanks Desiree). After going through the topical excuses I had to admit that I haven't posted anything for months due to pure lazzyness.
To retake again our relationship, dear unknown visitors, I have chosen the subject of an animated commercial. It was produced at Uli Meyer studios (http://www.ulimeyer.com/) in nov-dec 2005. The whole project consisted in the production of two comercials and a redesign of the product's mascot Captain Star. The new design would be the center of a new international product relaunch campaign for the Nestle Honeystars breakfast cereals.
I'm going to use a lot of artwork created by other artists from the studio, so I hope they don't mind. If some artwork is wrongly credited please let me know and I'll fix it.
The two comercials produced where: "Honeystars Birdmen" and "Honeystars Strawberry". Both are a mix of 2d animated characters, CG animated characters and CG starships. I was in charge of the cg look development,cg character development and cg animation. I worked directly in only one of the comercials, the birdmen, but the starships from that one where used in the strawberries one too.
I think it may result interesting to some of you see a bit of the process of producing a commercial and also the progress from the designs to the final animated film. So here we go.
The First step is the pitch. The agency shows the idea to different studios and every studio presents back his own vision of the commercial in a concept state. Then the agency shows one of the options to go ahead. The idea here was some robotic birds to atack a cargo of honeystars breakfast cereal? and then the captain stars (the bear) saves the day. Here are some of the concepts from the pitch (by Matt Jones http://mattjonezanimation.blogspot.com/ and Michael Shlingman http://drawnography.blogspot.com/:
The clients where looking for a new design of the Honeystars Captain Star main Character so the concept artists tried a few different styles. If I remember properly it was Matt Jones who designed the final version:
Here are some designs for the kids that travel in the starship with the captain also by Matt Jones. The sculpture is by Cako Facioli.
While the characters where designed, the CG starships where also modelled by Leo Sanchez. The idea was that the captain ship would combine with the kids ships to create a super defensive weapon with the shape of a star.
cg models by Leo Sanchez When those cg ships models where finished based on the concept designs you have seen in the pitch, Matt Jones took one of the cg renders in grey and painted over in Photoshop to determine the final look.
2D starship design by Matt Jones Having this fantastic references makes my life a lot easier when I have to reproduce that look in CG. All the details are perfectly defined: color, line color, line thickness, gradients, level of detail, etc. Achieving that kind of flat 2d look in cg is not easy, especially because of the outlines. Cg outlines tend to pop in an out in a single frame breaking the continuity in the animation, therefore ruining the experience. To avoid that the modelling should be very specific, creating geometry edges that draw lines in the exact positions and faces that break at certain angles... well, I'm not doing a tutorial so I'll stop the technical mumbo jumbo. Here is what you want to see: pictures!!
cg final starships by Joan Cabot
And now, finally, my favourite part of the show: The mighty Birdmen. I think is a cool character design by mr Matt Jones and I had a great time developing the it in CG and finally doing the animation. Here are some concept drawings and poses:
I started modelling a simple version of the character with simple shapes to set the main pose and proportions. I also did a simple rig and an animation to use it in the animatic.
Then, once the final high resolution model was finished I started to create the shaders that define the look of the character. That part is a back and forth process between me and the concept designers that keep refining the details of the character on the go. Here you can see a cg render of the birdman and the same image after been retouched in photoshop and the comments about the changes.
Finally when all the elements are ready the animation starts. The first step in the animation process is to create an animatic to set the camera position, the basic shot action, the shot duration and to test the rithm and flow of the action.
Then I took every shot and started the animation of the starships. That was priority because the 2d animators need the cg reference to animate the kids inside the starships.
The final step was animate the six birdmen for all shots. Here is the final result.
