Santa's had enough

Hey everybody!

Here is a small animation I made with the sound from the septembre's 11 seconds club.
Yes, I know. If I wanted to be a part in the contest, I should have done in septembre but no.
That said, I'd like to animate new things every once in a while so I don't forget how to actually begin an animation so I'm ending this one.
Which means, even if it is finnished, it can still get better so feel free to review. That's what I'm here for



Santa's had enough from Foehn Gallet on Vimeo.

It's crazy how much you can see post-render that you didn't see in the playblast.
anyway, the next one will be better, and the one after that and so on...
I could say "until I become the master of all animators" with an evil laugh at the end but I'm not sure how you would take it.

See you web surfer...

HoT news!

Yeah! HoT like Heads or Tales.
That's what dragons are all about right? hot...
Ok, let's move on...

Plenty of news today :
   -We have a Facebook page (wich you can see on the right side of this page ->)
   -The movie is on Vimeo... Wait... that's not new.
   -But it is also on Youtube.
   -There's a Screenrush page... but the Allociné page has more info and the movie.
   -We have an Article on Catsuka (popular french animation website).
   -One on 3DVF (popular french CG community website).
   -An other on Kuriositas.
   -Yet an other one on Maximilien Bertrand's Blog.
   -An article on a blog from Nederland (I did say world wide), Animatie (Thank google for the translation).
   -And finally, Heads or Tales is on Oanim.

Then, about the man behind the picture, our movie being on screenrush, we all have our personnal screenrush page too.
So Pierre, Kevin, Adrien, Gauthier and I are directors and co-producters of Haeds or Tales on screenrush... Classy, right?

There. That's all I got for now.
If I forgot something you'll still find it later here or on the Facebook page

Earlier I put a link to the "making of" but not the video.
And let's face it, it looks good so here it is :


The Making Of Heads Or Tales from MrDragon on Vimeo

See you space cowboy...

Heads or Tales world wide

Here it is!
Heads or Tales is on the web with bonus blog.
Here, you'll find the blog with the movie, a "making of", our contacts and some news.

And for the slacker, Here is the movie :

Heads Or Tales from akram44 on Vimeo.

Voilà;
Donc hesitate to spam your friends with it.
Like some enlighted wise person would say : "If you liked it, tell your friends. If you didn't like it, tell your foes"


See you space roamer...

Festival

Wouhaaa!!!
That Classy.
Anyone knows the ACM SIGGRAPH?
Well, there is one in Paris the student movie I made with Pierre, Kevin, Adrien and Gauthier will be shown there tomorow.
But there aren't any places anymore so, no need to try and go there.

That's it.

http://paris.siggraph.org/calendrier/rencontres-ecoles

Flag

EDIT :
Here it is. I didn't look far for the texture, it's just a picture I changed on photoshop to make it a drawing.
It's an inifinite loop but, well, a loop on an internet video player still stops once in a while.


Looping flag simulation from Foehn Gallet on Vimeo.

OLD:
After a job interview, I started learning CG cloth simulation.
So I made a loop of flapping flag in simulation.
Once the simulation was made and looped, I had to fix some penetrations to.
So many things to learn and it's only the beginning :)

BUT, being away from home, I don't have the softwares to compile the images.
So I can't post it right now but I'll do it as soon as I'm home.

See ya

Back to it

So, last time, I posted a first demo reel quickly made in case somebody would like it but it wasn't really conclusive.

I heard to short, not enough exercises (no exercises at all actually).
Here is a new one with new stuff.

So now I'll call everybody again.


Foehn Reel 2011 v2 from Foehn Gallet on Vimeo.

Obviously, I'll replace the one on the resumé page by this one.

See ya space cowboy...

Let's get to work

It's time to get to work.
   -First thing First : A demo reel (at the end of the post or you won't read what's next).
   -Second : Call my possible bosses to be.
   -Third : Send them the adresse to this blog so when they see this, they think it's sooo awesome, they'll have to hire me.

Ok. More seriously, I also put it on my "resumé" page and I'll update it when needed

Foehn Reel 2011 v1 from Foehn Gallet on Vimeo.

I love what I do, I have lot's to learn and I expect to learn along my long years of work.

That's done

Hi everybody.

I'm back from the dead.

My student movie's finished which means, I can get back on my personnal projects like Oca.

But for now, I need to make a demo reel. And for that, I'll have to animate new stuff.

So I'll work with an almost ready character that I'll introduce to you if you donc already know him.

Voilà.

in the meantime, here is a picture of my movie.

Warning: if you don't like bright colors, you'll be risking turning blind by watching this.

I'm not posting it for now because some festivals don't accept movies that already are on the internet and we don't how we will proceed about that yet.

A new comer is approaching

Hey everybody.
Today, I shall introduce you to a old budy I met in my head a few years back.
I drew him so I could model him in CG and make some shorts with him.

so here's Oca's model sheets:

Model sheet:

a model sheet is document used to standardise the appearance of a character.

we can find poses, the whole turn around of a character and everything that would help the animators to have the character to stay the same if a new animator has to work on him.

when we model a character in CG, we need a model sheet with the face and the profile of the character.

French kiss

Hey everybody!

Here's a little job I did for the director en actress Géraldine Fréry during my second year.
This animation appears at the end of the short movie Cocculinelidae.

Making-of a kiss from Foehn Gallet on Vimeo.

For this animation, I took the 2 opposite frame on the timeline and drew an other one, just between them.

This is not a good solution for the timing but it's more simple for people who can't draw.
Then I can delete or add frames where I want them, to adjust the timing.
Still, this is pretty much efficiency killing. and it's still better to plan your animation before :D

P.S.: Gauthier's gonna kill me for the typography of the movie ^^'

Rotoscoping:

Rotoscoping is an animation method. the point is to draw over a live-action movie.

in english, it seems to have a more complexe definition so here it is, on wikipedia (yes, again).

The ball goes nuts

This ball is the direct result  of a very dangerous experiment in which we mixed a young animation student with a computer, the software called Maya and the idea of animateing a living ball.



The ball goes nuts from Foehn Gallet on Vimeo.

Last year, we learned (among other things) à animate with Maya.
As some of you might know it already one of the first exercices to do to learn the basics of timing, spacing, anticipation, squash and stretch and slowin and slow out is to animate balls.
(sounds so weird in english)

the last exercice we had after we'd done the classics like perpetual bouncing ball, the boucing that finally stops and others, we had to animate a living ball.

The 12 principles of basic animation:
in animation there are 12 basics principles that if they're all well used, make really cool animations:
-Squash and stretch
-Anticipation
-Staging
-Straight ahead action/Pose to pose
-Overlapping action
-Slow in / Slow out
-Arcs
-Secondary action
-Timing/Spacing
-Exaggeration
-Solid posing
-Appeal
I'm not giving you a course  but there is a pretty good article about it on wikipedia.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

I wish you all an awesome revolution of our planet around the sun !

During those soothing holidays, I still took some time to work and when I came back I made a animation test of my autorig.

The first video is a walking cycle made with a character a teacher gave us during the second year and rigged by me.

The second video is a small animation that follows the walking cycle. it's just supposed to test the Bends, the IK spline and my IK_FK matching tool.
(some definitions at the and of this article)

the matching tool is not completly accurate, mostly when the articulations are bended the wrong way or on an other axis than the x one. but it's still very usefull to switch from a mode to the other.

just one more detail. I didn't plan any of these animations and I spent only one day to make the two of them.
I already feel my animation teacher's wrath about the planning ^^'

Voilà. I wich you all lots of happiness for this year, except if you're a cold blooded baby killer of course or something alike.
See ya.

Modeling:
When you create a CG movie, you need to model your characters and environment.
it's like sculpting whatever you want from a simple shape created by the software and by adding it points (or vertices), edges (lines between vertices) and faces. there are many other ways but I learned with this one.

Rigging:
When the modeling is done, to be able to animate the character, we need make it... movable.
yes, a modeled character at first, cannot move. except if you scuplt in it even more.
so we will cearte a skeleton (with "bones" attached by "joints"), attach the model to it (a process called "skinning") and and create controlers so the animators don't need to get the bones hidden inside the model.
we give it lots of other options to distort the character or object in different ways so the animators can have maximum control over it.
all this is called rigging.

IK and FK:
there are several modes of manipulation for the bones (cf rigging):
-FK or Forward Kinematic: it's the default mode to move the bones.
when you move one, all the others in the hierarchie wil follow.
it's mostly used on the arms, the spine or the leg when the character is falling.

-IK or Inverse Kinematic: when you use IKs, you create a tool that goes from one bone to an other and when you move one in space, the other one won't but all the others between them will rotate so the bone chain will stay coherent.it's often used on the legs or on the arms when the hand is attached or posed on something.

IK_FK matching tool:
when you create a rig with a switch to go from IK to FK or FK to IK, the targeted object will go back to it's last positionof the mode it's going back to.
so we can create a tool (IK_FK matching tool) so the arms, for exemple, will go to the other  mode but won't move.
very usefull for the animator

Autorig:
Rigging is a long process in CG animation and very repetitive.
but on maya (cg software) and probably others (I only learned this one), when you do something, it writes it down in what's called the "script editor".

exemple: I put the z translate of my cube from 0 to 3.5:
setAttr "pCube1.translate" 3.5;

And anything I write in the script editor (and it understands) the software will do.
So I rig as usual, except I take note of what maya writes. then with language trick I can make it do the same thing with the left arm that it did with the right one and all sort s of things like that.
it took me 2 month to make mine but now I need 1 day to make my character movable instead of 2 weeks.(on maya, the language is MEL or Maya Embeded Language and on 3D studio Max it's Maxscript).

IK Spline:
an IK spline puts a curve in the selected bone chain. then you can't wove the chain by moving the bones themselves but when you move and distort the curve, the bones will follow.
pretty cool for a spine.