Dédicace/Signing

Je serai présent pour dédicacer le livre Sketchtravel à la librairie  "Cook and Book" à Bruxelles, le jeudi 13 Octobre avec Véronique Joffre, Nicolas de Crécy, Juanjo Guarnido, Grégoire Villermaux, Eric Gosselet, James Jean, Maïlys Vallade, Rébecca Dautremer, Aurélien Prédal, Pierre Alary, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Gérald Guerlais et Tadahiro Uesugi.
Si vous êtes dans le coin, venez donc!

 I will be signing the Sketchtravel book at the book store "Cook and Book" in Brussels, on thursday the 13th of October with Véronique Joffre, Nicolas de Crécy, Juanjo Guarnido, Grégoire Villermaux, Eric Gosselet, James Jean, Maïlys Vallade, Rébecca Dautremer, Aurélien Prédal, Pierre Alary, Daisuke Tsutsumi, Gérald Guerlais and Tadahiro Uesugi.
If you're arounf there, please come!

This will be an other Sketchtravel-related post, as the last chapter is about to be written soon..
(New real posts will hopefully come soon again. Thank you for your patience!)

The final Art auction is coming on October 17th in Brussels and you can find all the details about it on the brand new SketchTravel website.
One of the important things SketchTravel has done, thanks to Gérald and Dice, was to create a diverse and amazing community of artists from around the world, but even more importantly the project’s goal is to build one library ($20k) and sponsor one local children’s book publishing ($15k) in developing countries. 
Indeed, all the benefits will go to Room to Read, an international non-profit dedicated to increase child literacy in such parts of the world.
It would be great if you could support in anyway you can this wonderful project. There are different ways to give a hand:
1) Donate to Room to Read.
2) Visit and “like” SketchTravel’s Facebook page.
3) Re-share this information to spread the word.

Thank you for your support everyone!

Making-of

Voici un court making-of de notre contribution à Sketchtravel. (Désolé si ça gigote et fout la gerbe).

Here is a short making-of our contribution for Sketchtravel I did for fun.
 

Sketchtravel making-of from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.

Sketchtravel available for pre-order! (+ my contribution)

La vente aux enchères du Sketchtravel aura lieue chez Pierre Bergé & Associés le 17 Octobre, le carnet original étant estimé à 30 000 euros. L'argent sera reversé à l'association Room to read.
La version livre (aux éditions du chêne) est prévue dans la foulée.Vous pouvez le pré-commander sur amazon en cliquant ici. Une version collector sera aussi éditée, qui reproduira le coffret en bois réalisé par Daniel Lopez Munoz de Pixar. Et elle est disponible ici.
Pour l'occasion, je peux vous montrer ma contribution réalisée il y a deux ans presque jour pour jour.

The auction sale of the Sketchtravel  is due on the 17th of October at Pierre Bergé & Associés and is estimated at 30 000 euros. The money raised will go to the Room to read charity. The book version will follow soon after. You can pre order it on amazon here. A collector version will be made, including the wooden case made by Pixar artist Daniel Lopez Munoz. It's available here.
For the occasion, I can show you my contribution I've made almost two years ago. 

Quelques details...
Some details...

Véro et moi travaillant au même moment et au même endroit, nous avons voulu en tirer parti et faire quelque chose qui ne pouvait être fait qu'en travaillant ensemble. Nous voulions aussi user pleinement du concept collaboratif du carnet. Nous avons donc découpé un morceau de notre page en commun, pour laisser un trou qui lierait nos deux travaux. Un morceau de chaque illus étant donc visible dans celle de l'autre et un dialogue étant possible. Si c'est pas très clair, quelques images:

Véro and I were able to contribute at the same time and at the same place, so we decided to somehow do something that would reflect this, that could be done only if we were working together. We also wanted to literally use the collaborative concept of the sketchbook. So, we cutted out a piece of our middle page, to leave a hole that would link our two pieces. So you can see a bit of each other's piece in each one, and the sketchbook travels through it. It doesn't seem really clear, so here are some pictures:

 

The hole in my picture

Vero's fishes through the hole

The hole in Véro's picture

Mon petit perso réapparait à la fin, dans l'image de Véro, apporté par le carnet.

My little character pops back in the end in her piece, brought in the sketcbook that travels through our pictures.

Allez voir son blog pour voir sa contribution en entier! 
Go check her blog to see her full contribution!

Annecy / Variety

Pour des raisons qui m'échappent un peu, j'ai été sélectionné par Variety (magazine US consacré à l’industrie du spectacle) qui ont organisé une rencontre à Annecy.
Il y a aussi un court article dans Variety ici.

For some (nice) reason, I was featured in Variety and they organised an event at the Annecy festival .
There is also a short article in Variety here.

Oldies

Une vieillerie de 2004 à l'école, en fouillant dans mes fichiers: trois plans (qui ne se suivent pas) de ce qui devait être un mini-film jamais terminé. Ça parlait d'un club de mamies, d'amour et de mécanique.
Fait entièrement sur flash pour apprendre le logiciel. J'avais essayé d'utiliser les images bitmap et la technique du papier découpé en plus du keyframe normal. J'ai une petite tendresse pour ces plans, donc je les ressort. J'avais posté des dessins du projet ici il y a longtemps.

2004 Flash shots from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.

Cleaning my files, I found an old stuff from school, back in 2004: three shots (they don't follow each other) from what was supposed to be a mini film never finished. It was about a grandmother's club, love and mechanics.
It was all done on flash only to learn the software. I wanted to try it with bitmaps, paper cut style animation, as well as keyframe. I still kind of like it so I take it out the drawer. I posted some concept art here ages ago.

Charlie Bean's COSMO for CNEurope

More of CN Europe Development Studio.
Back in early 2009, I've helped the talented Charlie Bean on his project: "COSMO". This was an interesting and very funny one, which was developped as twenty-two minutes episodes, telling one big story throughout, which is pretty rare now in animated TV shows.  The series follows the journey through space of a regular and unadapted family...in charge of the secret of the universe. Despite the qualities of it, the project was shelved.

We chose to do the opening sequence of the full animatic, as a fully fleshed out test to show how the series could look like. Only the main character was made in 3D for time and budget reasons.
As the first 3D project of the studio, I was responsible to hire a small team to complement my skills. I supervised the sequence, animated it, did most of the compositing and kept an eye on the schedule. This was a rich experience and challenge for me to find the right people and forsee their potential in the areas I had limited skills in.
It took around ten weeks to complete the sequence, including four weeks of animation.
I'd like to thank Charlie who gave me such opportunity and had faith in me, the talented John Martin who developed and managed the technical CG side, and all the talented people involved (Go on vimeo for full credits). We had good time doing it.

Here's the sequence:


"Cosmo" opening sequence from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.


Here's a selection of the development art I did for the project.
I've tried some environmental pictures. Charlie wanted to get a miniature feel to the space, as if it was small scale and made out of objects. This was later abandonned. 

Then I made a quick after effect test of the last image:

Planet test from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.

little aliens living on ice and desert planets.

The brief was to try many different styles.

 

Jerry as a space tourist and family man

 After trying a lot of different things, we finally decided the characters were better as Charlie was  drawing them, they felt right and legitimate with his own style, we then decided to go that route.

Ideas for the ship as a family car/camping car

Rendering test. Ship drawing by Dave Needham.

 Render test made with Ben Bocquelet

 This is a walk cycle I made to test the Rig as it was being made by John:

Cosmo walk test from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.

Finally, these are the low-fi CPU screens and 2D animations I've done to put on the different screens in the ship:

Cosmo CPU screens from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.

In addition, you can see the title sequence Stephane Coedel made, for a bit more backstory of Charlie's concept, here.

Charlie was the creative director of our studio and is now directing the upcoming Tron series for Disney. Good luck to him!

I hope you've enjoyed watching all this!

Le 3D c'est quand même formidable...

Je n'avais jamais mis en ligne mes démos reel. Voilà qui est fait avant que ça ne devienne trop vieux.
I never uploaded my reels. Here they are before it gets too old.

La première présente mes exercices d'anim 3D de 3e année aux gobelins en 2006. (La video est déformée sur vimeo, j'essaierai de régler le problème.)
The first one shows my 3D animation exercises from Gobelins, made during the third year, in 2006. (The video got squashed on vimeo, I'll try to fix the problem)


3D Animation Showreel-Gobelins 2006 from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.


La deuxième date de 2007, et représente une année comme animateur à Framestore-CFC, en pub et sur le film "The tale of Despereaux", sur lequel j'ai travaillé deux mois avant de partir chez Cartoon Network.

The second one is from 2007 and represent a year as an animator at Framestore-CFC, working in commercials and on the film "The tale of Desperaux" on which I've worked for two months before moving to CN.

Showreel Framestore 2007 from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.

Verne, encore.

So, here is a selection of the development art (2008/2009) from Verne for you to enjoy.
Our brief was to create something short, funny and that could show potential for being developed further towards a TV series. It was produced in 3 months with a small budget and a small team.

I also would like to thank all the great people who worked with me on the short. The part I enjoyed the most as a first time director was to keep the team happy and motivated on the project, despite the pressure. I was then rewarded with amazing involvement, work and great talent.
So, a big thank you to Ale and Alf who animated those characters with me, Celine who work on the 3D bit and the compositing, Stephane for most of the compositing as well, Jen for producing it, and my old friend Sylvain who wrote the music, played by his amazing band OMP from Berlin.
Thank you all!

These are some of the very first drawings back in 2007.

The forest background. Tatoo drawing by Alan Kerswell

Mammy doesn't appear in the short, but she's a pretty good inventor and is responsible for why Gaston is half-robot.

Sculpt by Angela Smaldone

Verne on vacation from Sylvain MARC /Polyminthe on Vimeo.


FULL CREDITS:
Created, written and Directed by Sylvain Marc
Storyboards - Sylvain Marc
Lead Animator - Sylvain Marc
Animation - Sylvain Marc, Alessandra Sorrentino, Alfredo Cassano
Art Director, designs, backgrounds - Sylvain Marc
Additional backgrounds - Chris Garbutt and Alan Kerswell.
CGI - Celine Desrumaux
Colouring - Melissa Choong
Compositing - Stephane Coedel, Celine Desrumeaux
Editing - Sylvain Marc
Voice Talent - Charlie Graff and Rob Rackstraw
Music - Ochestre Miniature in the Park (OMP)
SFX and Final Mix - Angel sound
Big Thanks to - Veronique Joffre, Sylvain Mazas, Angela Smaldone, Charlie Bean, Tim Bjorklund and the CNdevstudio team!
Production - Angelica Jung-Woo and Jen Coatsworth
Exec Producers - Suzanne Berman and Daniel Lennard


The following drawings were made after the short, for the 11min pilot, developping the concept further more. I defined more precisely what Verne's "special island"is. I also started revising the designs of the characters.

painting by my talented friend: Aurélien Predal

painting by Aurélien Predal

Of course the short was made with the idea to make a TV series, so the designs were thought in that way, to make it possible to do in a TV show's budget/schedule. As I said in the previous post, the project is being considered as a one-shot long form, which means the designs will be reviewed accordingly.

I hope you liked them!