Big News!
I’m done with the teaser of the movie! Woohoo! 😀
It took me a long time as I had to learn much about the whole process. I was already familiar with animation of course, and I knew a bit about modeling and rigging, but I had to work hard to learn about surfacing, lighting and compositing. Well, at least the basics so I could develop a mini-pipeline to take the shots from 2d drawings to 3d animatic to final compositing without too much hassle. And boy was that hard! But it is definitely rewarding to see the scenes and characters coming to “life” which were for almost two years simple figments of my imagination…
The teaser is very short and the music is only a temp track. The real soundtrack you’ll hear in the movie is a beautiful choral piece composed by the very talented Thomas Hjort Jensen.
(Also, at the end it says “2009”, but I’m afraid it’s only wishful thinking!)
In other unrelated big news, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be directing the animation of a movie being produced by Universal in a French studio called Mac Guff Line (located in Paris). So I’ll be moving back to France in the month of January. Exciting times! 
HUGE kongratz!!!!!! oh man, its AWESOME!!!!!! both the teaser and seeing all the little sneak peaks of your progress!!! cant wait to see it all!!
(oh, and thanks 4 sharing all the cool tools you have developed while doing so:) )
and HUGE kongrats on the directors gig!!!!
Happy Christmas!! and all the best for the new year!!!!!!
Très court mais tellement bien
tout en douceur et en finesse, du beau travail vraiment. J’aime.
Mes félicitations également pour ton projet chez Mac Guff Line, j’en suis très heureuse pour toi.
Je te souhaite de joyeuses fêtes de Noël & que tes rêves se réalisent…
Hello Seith! looks great! ive been following your progress and all i have to say is congratulations!
I have a technical question thou, what type of shader did you use for the boy skin, this is one that always eludes me cause i have tried the miss fast shader within mental ray but never quite got a good result.
Thank you for your time
Ed.
@David & Nathalyee: Thanks, and the same to you!
@Ed: The skin shader for the kid is indeed a misss fast shader. In order to get nice results you really have to play a lot with the various settings, and most of all the scale factor, which is totally dependent of the size of your scene (in terms of Maya world units). Also, it’s of course best if you test each and every shader with the same lighting setup/camera position. The danger with subsurface scattering is to always rotate the camera during the tests; that gives you inconsistent results and can lead to a lot of frustration and back-tracking!
Thank you very much!!! Seith that will really help me!
Happy Hollidays and may the next year be full of blessings in all your ventures, im sure it will be! here on earth and beyond! 😉
Ed.
Je te souhaite Lionel une merveilleuse année 2009 !!
@+
It’s amazing!!!….cant wait to see it all!!
This teaser looks great!
Love the design and the interior of the ship. The tilted chairs is a nice touch.
Congratulation for your new job!
Have fun in France.
Ciao,
Gabriele
Oh wow. I actually can’t wait to see this.
Great work Seith!
Nice trailer, would love to see finish movie, for a mean will why don’t u post more info about it on http://www.animwatch.com
and start posting podcast about your movie update and process.
Salut Lionel!
Je suis content de te retrouver via le web et d apprendre que tu es de retour sur paname!
J ai hate de voir ton projet evoluer! si tu as besoin d un coup de main , fais moi sign..je suis specialiser aujourd hui en concept, textures et matte painting ainsi qu en direction artistique.
bon courage!
Ps :si je repasse a Paris ,je te le dirai qu on puisse aller se boire un café sur une terasse car je vis a montréal depuis 8 ans.