THE BIRD IN THE CAGE

Honeybee Turnarounds

2009-05-30T01:11:00.004+02:00

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.

Disney Characters

2008-10-17T03:43:00.005+02:00

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).

Sugarfoot

2007-08-31T04:11:00.001+02:00

Sugarfoot CGI shots combo

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)

Have a look at some final images from the show.

Welcome to the Jungle (new blog)

2007-02-15T10:29:00.000+01:00

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.

Please visit the films blog for more information and images:
http://bunglejungle.blogspot.com/

Have fun!!

Quicktime movie in new window!

The Shadow Hunter (CG Short Film)

2007-01-08T14:47:00.000+01:00

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.

You can see other comments at:

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=441837

Joan.

Honeystars Birdmen Comercial

2006-12-13T01:59:00.000+01:00

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.

www.maisca.com

2006-06-04T15:16:00.000+02:00

MA ISCA is the strange name of a master degree in computer graphics and animation from the "Universitat de les Illes Balears" in Mallorca, Spain.

In 1990 was created as a colaboration between the Universitat de les Illes Balears (UIB), Middlesex University of London, Utrecht School of Arts in Holland and the Centre National de la Bande Dessinée et l'Image (CNBDI) in France. The main goal was to introduce young artists in the emerging area of computer animation.

Today any punk with a computer can claim to be a CG artist, but 15 years ago CG was more about using a megaexpensive computer to create a spinning cube on a green screen. Those guys at the Mathematics dep. at the UIB managed to get the proper hardware and started to push vertex around till the spinning cubes became walking characters.

After 15 years, the numbers are: 240 students → 240 shortfilms → 89 international prizes → 534 nominations in international festivals.

Today they are probably still the better option if you look for CG animation education in Spain.

Kudos to them.

Visit their website for a sample of the work:
http://www.maisca.com/

It's in spanish at the moment so if you want the visuals clic on "galeria"

This is a poster I did for them.

Batman Old Animation Test (July 2001)

2006-05-22T18:31:00.000+02:00

I wanted to test the youtube video broadcast system so I choosed this old animation test I did five years ago.

I was trying to use a Mike Mignola kind of style in CG animation. See the results and cry.

Testing Photoshop Brushes

2006-05-19T17:48:00.000+02:00

I was setting up some brushes in Phostoshop. And that's what I did to test them.

Jungle Bungle Jump

2006-05-06T13:05:00.000+02:00

Hi there,
here is a few frames from one shot of the film. I like the colors on this one so we will use it as a reference for other shots. In this shot the kiddo jumps from a tree and falls till the rope he's handling starts to drag him ahead. I like the expression of he's face just at the moment he gets close to the camera, but in the shot it happens so fast that it's impossible to be seen. I guess we'll have to fix the animation and rerender. Yuppiii!

Offline

2006-04-25T22:59:00.000+02:00

Hi all. It's been a while since the last post. First of all I want to thank all the comments recieved and invite you to keep visiting the blog. I know it's not updated as often as it should but this time I have a good excuse. As some of you may know I've moved to London. I finally have left my loved small quiet island in the mediterranean for a bigger and busier one. I'm here since the end of march, so it's been almost a month allready. To me, it looks like it's been half a year. I'm living an example of the relativity of time. If you fill a day with all the experiencies you usually have in a full month, somehow your memory stores them in a way that makes you feel like if actually a full month has passed.

From all the headaches, the worst has been finding a new flat. Those of you who have lived in london should know what I mean. Crappy places, pirates in the letting agencies, faux promises and a lot of money per sq feet. But, even with all those cons, we (me and my partner) managed to find a nice and bright flat at fritzrovia, walking distance from the soho and the british museum and picadilly and regents park and tragalfar, the strand, big ben, river thames, national art gallery, oxford street... whoa! everything is down there! Really, I love this place. And it looks pretty good after cleaning it for two full days, killing the rats, fixing the toilet, installing new blinds on the windows, buying a sofa... I guess the floor will hold up if I remember not to jump. It's a bit uneven but this way I feel like living in van gogh's room at Arles.

One of the sideffects of all this moving around, has been my temporary loss of connection with the ciberworld, where you, my friends, are living. I still don't have internet at home, but at least, thanks to the wifi magic and an anonymous unwary neighbour I can borrow a conexion to write this lines. So if my generous internet provider don't get a password I'll keep posting some stuff in the next days. Now it's too late and I'm too tired so I'll go sleep. Lukily the way to bed it's downhill from this side of the room. Good night.

More Jungle Bungle

2006-02-09T13:34:00.000+01:00

Can you feel the determination in the eyes of the hunter?

Here is a new comp test of the short film my brother is working on under my supervision. Still a lot to do but is good to see some rendered images. Is not the final look, but is the best we have right now. We are trying to keep the jungle very simple and a bit flat. Make it look deep but unreal. We wan't to stay out of the sharp hiperreal look used in most films and put some 'atmosphere' and softness to it. And of course still make it beliveable. It's me or does it souds like I'm lost. What do you think (about the picture)? Is looking good to you? Any comments?.

The Airship Chronicles

2006-01-27T03:02:00.000+01:00

Inspired by the amazing art posted by Sean Hayden at The Airship Chronicles Blog I've done my own homage to those magnificent flying beast from the past: The zeppelins.

Don't forget to visit Sean's Blog. http://www.seansairships.blogspot.com/

Bungle in the jungle

2006-01-19T20:53:00.000+01:00

My younger brother, Miquel, has joined our big band of doodlelers, pupeteers and 'pintamonas' and the next month will finish his final project at the Maisca course (www.maisca.com) . He has learned about the craftmanship of making animated cg movies for almost a year, from the script to the final render, and now is trying to put all this toghether in his first work as a director. He is working in a short film about a boy hunting a strange criature through the jungle. This criature is a mix between a dog and a mutant velociraptor smashed by a truck, and is really funny to look at. I hope he will be able to finish it on time. Everything done till now looks great. I'll keep posting about this as the short evolves.

Right now I can show you the hunter character, the kid, and a comp test of the cg jungle.

Bona sort!!

Molts D'anys (Happy New Year)

2006-01-05T14:34:00.000+01:00

Molts d'anys a tothom, feliz año nuevo and happy new year.
Salud.

Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - Goya Awards 2005

2006-01-04T09:44:00.000+01:00

The Goya Awards are the prize offered every year by The Spanish Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to the best works. The spanish version of the american Oscars or the english Bafta.

In this year edition, there are two short films nominated in the 'Best Animation Short Film' category, produced by two students of the Maisca, the Master in Animation and Image syntesis of the 'Universitat de les Illes Balears' where I work as animation and traditional media integration teacher.

The two films are:

- "La luz de la esperanza" by Ricardo Puertas.

- "Semila del recuerdo" by Renato Roldan.

I have seen this two guys evolving all along the last year and I'm still amazed about the giant leap in quality they have achieved in this short time. Both of them have a background in traditional media and illustration and this is reflected in their shortfilms. The backgrounds and enviroment are a mix of CG, matte paints and painted textures. Also the CG characters are rendered in a style inherited from the traditional cel animation.

In the near future you'll be able to see the films at www.maisca.com . Right now the site is being redesigned so its not accessible, but I will post it here when it's online again.

Congratulations to Ricardo and Renato for they achievement and I wish them a long career in this media, so we all will be able to enjoy their work.

Samurai Mini Film and Hiroshi Yoshida

2005-12-12T12:15:00.000+01:00

Back in 2002, I was working in a research project about 2d an CG integration. That gave me the chance to produce a few very short films to test different techniques and softwares. Under that premise and with the help of Pau Rodriguez, a comic book artist, I did a mini film named "The revenge of the mother ninja pumpkin". I have to say it was good fun to do it. It's so short we could make it in a few weeks, so we never had time to get bored with it. But we had fun specially because the story was so stupid that we never put any pretension in the film, other than have fun and test some integration techniques.

The story is about a samurai. He uses pumpkins as dummy enemies to train his skills. A lot of pumpkins are slayed in the session. At the end a giant ninja pumpkin apears to take revenge for all its dead breed.

For the visuals we where inspired by the amazing work of Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), a japanese painter from the beginning of the 20th century that inpired the anime industry. I love all his work but I specially like his water scenes. I love the sea and I bet he loved it too by the way the water becomes the main theme of most of his paintings. Here are some of them:

Pau Rodriguez ( www.escapula.com ) painted the backgrounds and had the story idea. He is a wild guy and a very creative person. I hope some day his comic books will be published by a mainstream editor so more people will be able to enjoy them. His last adventure has been dubbing part of Braveheart, Mel Gibson's movie, to the mallorquin, Mallorca local language, changing the story to suit local themes (catalan soldiers take all the mallorcan girls so the hero is so horny that starts a war against them). It has been a real hit. Of course you have to be from mallorca to understand all the 'subtleties' of the story. www.vaigfort.com

Shadow Hunter Poses

2005-09-23T14:24:00.000+02:00

Some poses of the character from "The Shadow Hunter" Short film.

The Shadow Hunter

2005-09-16T18:32:00.000+02:00

This is the concept ilustration for a short film I did in 2002. The film is mainly CG, but I wanted to achieve a cel animation look on it. I was inspired by the 50's animation background art and by the character from "The Iron Giant" movie. I loved the simplicity of the production pipeline in this project. Most of the color was done in post, like in a 2d film . After that... CG things would never be the same again (simple, I mean).

This is an actual shot from the film. The color palete is quite, ummm... Blue. Ok, I see the duck in the floor is yellow , but this is because of a liver disease.

More Hellboy

2005-09-09T02:24:00.000+02:00

Some more pictures of Hellboy without posing. I never finished a proper rig for him so was difficult to animate. If I find some time... Hellboy Animated Series!!!.

Hellboy

2005-09-07T18:49:00.000+02:00

I've been a Mike Mignola fan since long ago. I love the graphic style of the drawings, the taste in the colors and the huge black areas in the compositions. I tried a few times to translate something of this style to CG animation. I had poor results I have to say. But I think is because I haven't pushed hard enough. Of course I know a 2d drawing can't be reproduced in 3D CG exactly as the original, expecially in animation, but translations or interpretations can be perfectly achieved. So that's what I did with Hellboy. I did a model, a very simple rigging and I tried to find a combination of shaders and outline renders as close as possible to the original artwork, but within the requirements of an animatable character. So had to be a bit simplified and correct from diferent angles/view. Then I did some animated shots to test it in movement. Well, I'm not really happy with the results, but, you know... next time will be better.

Singer

2005-09-06T12:50:00.000+02:00

Here is a picture of a character I did the last year. I did the model, the rigging, the textures and shaders and finally some animation. It's part of a research project of the CG Lab (LADAT) at the University of the Balearic Islands. I work there ocasionally as traditional and CG animation teacher and I also like to help in any project they may have. The project is on hold right now due to other jobs, but I hope I'll find some time in the near future to finish the animation.

The character is a female singer and I have to animate her for a whole videoclip about 3 min long. I have done more or less 30 seconds of rought animation, so there is a hard way ahead. At least we achieved some goals already in the development of a new facial rigging system that allows for flexibility and natural movement of the muscular structure and also is simple and fast for the animators. I will keep you informed about the progress of the project.

Leo Sanchez Website

2005-09-02T20:54:00.000+02:00

If you wanna see some of the best cartoony cg models arround, pay a visit to this site:

www.leo-sanchez.com

the virtual home of Leonardo Sanchez work. He is an spanish artist form Barcelona who works in London. I met him at Uli Meyer Studios few years ago and since then I haven't stoped learning from him. For example I've learned what a blog is ;)

Venga, un saludo.

Uli Meyer Studio

2005-09-02T20:05:00.000+02:00

Uli meyer studio is an amazing animation studio located in the colorful area of Candem Town in London, UK. I've been working with them for the last two years and there I've known a fistful of talented artists from who I've been learning tons about animation, drawing, moviemaking and pubs. Some of them have started blogs recently and introduced me to this curious way to spread your words in the void... so I will return them the favor adding a link to their blogs. Here we go:

http://ulimeyer1000.blogspot.com/
http://sanchezleo.blogspot.com/
http://mattjonezanimation.blogspot.com/
http://drawnography.blogspot.com/
http://gur-b.blogspot.com/
http://limbolo.blogspot.com/

And don't forget to visit the Uli Meyer Studio website for an amazing travel trough all the work done in this imaginative place. With videos of the comercials and samples of the artwork.

http://www.ulimeyer.com

And finally un saludo a los amigos in the studio.

Myself?

2005-09-02T18:51:00.000+02:00

Here is my caricature. As you can see sleepy is my default mode.
It was done by Daniel Peixe. Pero que cachondo eres, chaval. He is a fantastic bombastic animator working in feature films all over Europe. And maybe is moving soon to Las Americas to work at the mice house.
Have a look at his great website:
www.danielpeixe.com