Not so long to wait after all!

I forgot I made this a while ago and was meant to post it once the film had come out - well that time has come :)
Don't Forget to Fullscreen!



So this is a sample of the work I did on the newly released (in France), 'Titeuf Le Film'!

The rough drawings are done by various talented animators, and the Clean ones are the ones I did. Rather than linetests, or complete scenes, these are just a few frames to give the impression of flipping between the rough and clean drawing, so as to see the difference between each clearly.

So what does an assistant actually do?
The aim of the assistant is to take the rough animation and put the characters on model, making sure the volumes all move correctly and also making VERY sure that the intention of the animation is still maintained even with these changes (e.g an arm swings, but it is too short for the model, so it is lengthened but the arc of the swing has to be consistent. Obviously it can get more complicated than that but you get the idea!).
Some of these drawings are then cleaned up with the nice final line, and these become 'Spot Keys', which Clean-Up Artists would then follow and apply to the other keys (and possibly Breakdowns) in the scene. Then it would go to the Inbetweeners to finish off the job!

In some cases because of time and budget and all other lovely production related things, we just did the 'Spot Keys', so only a handful of drawings would have been put on model (usually the poses with the biggest variation in the scene, so as to give as much information to the people who would have to apply those changes to the other keys). This meant though that there had to be some leniency with the model, because if we changed it too drastically, it would have been harder for other studios to make the changes to the other drawings and maintain the animation within the small timeframe.

It may take a few views to see the subtle changes made (and yes, it was the design to have the eyes 'cross eyed' and to have the pupils slightly overlapping the line of the eye ball! :P).

With regards to the film itself, I saw it at the Cast and Crew Screening and really enjoyed it! It certainly isn't going to be in the running for any Best Animation EVER Awards, but aside from a few dodgy scenes, it looked lovely.
The big controversy though was the fact it was a 2D film in 3D! I say controversy because a lot of people in animation were against it, "They just want to make more money!", "Why draw something 2D to look volumous, to then convert it to look flat?" and other stuff along these lines.
It may come as surprise but generally, companies DO want to make money. Now I understand that that shouldn't be the reason driving what should be an artistic decision, but pushing that to one side, from a visual stand point, I thought the 3D worked very well!
Imagine the Multiplane Effect, with a bit more ooomf! It certainly wasn't over done. There were just a couple of shots it didn't work - one being a 360 pan around the characters (felt weird!) and the other was where the character ran off in the 'Z' direction (didn't give the right impression of depth). Was it THAT much better for being in 3D? No.... But I enjoyed the experience none the less!

That's enough for now!
'Till the Next,
L