mercredi 2 mai 2012

mercredi 11 avril 2012

Tribute

Cyril LeFebvre 1947-2012.
Farewell dear friend.


mercredi 14 mars 2012

mercredi 7 mars 2012

"A Monster In Paris" Pre-production teaser 2d crowd animation.

A special teaser made in  2006 for the Cannes festival film market offers a oportunity to test 2d/3d
mixes in the backgrounds, including 2d painted crowds . The more we had distance between backgrounds and the main characters , the more we choose to use a painted aspect.
 This choice was expensive, from a budget point of view and the final movie offers a more "classic" all CG environnement with matte paintings in the distance.
I designed the environement and crowds and animated 2d characters in After Effects.





The 2d  animated cycles :

"A Monster In Paris" Tonals









"A Monster In Paris" Preproduction drawings

















An early script version flea market sequence in St Ouen , Paris suburbs.





















These was pre-production "old Paris" buildings and roofs designs, later Sebastien Piquet joined us as set design supervisor, and gave us great designs, full of poetry with a complete comprehension of the real "organic" roofs and little buildings imbrication in old Monmartre, and "le Marais" ...
You can check that here : Sebastien portfolio blog


"A Monster In Paris" Posters paintings

Drawing gag in a sequence, illustrated posters, framed photo portraits, fake Melies film poster...I had sometime to quickly draw some artwork for the surfaçing departement.










































 This one completed with framing and typography design by Elise Toublanc :

vendredi 13 janvier 2012

jeudi 12 janvier 2012

"A Monster in Paris" early drawings

Back in 2006 Bibo asked me to join the "A Monster in Paris" concept team as production designer.
At this time Zébé was ending some great main chara designs, each of them bringing a bouncy attractive burlesque touch at Bibo's romantic 1910 comedy, blending zests of terror silent films, crazy inventors, and showtime songs.
Michel Guillemin was sitting near Zébé, bringing the life of his drawings into fantastic modeled face shapes, hot ingredients was boiling and the smell of fine acting and great animation was pushing the teams...
800 kilometers away on the french riviera, Bibo was on stage with the storyboarders building heartfull sequences on the walls, timing and sounding with Pascal Chevé in their secret lab.
At this time I was in great "1910 immersion", looking at Paris roofs around me, flicking through thousands of dusty pages, falling in love with bowler hats and tin boxes, with Anouck, my archivist detective, reporting surrealistic dialogues at the Paris police archives, dançing joyfully when she brought back an obscure illustrated "traité" about the hydrolic cable railway of Monmartre.
Hard to find time to draw with a CG team counting on you to achieve a 1 minute trailer for a film market but at this time I felt in love with the project, just as the many artists that came aboard in the next five years....