Three new items of shameless self-promotion, in all kinds of flavors.

First, an interview for the French site Pixar Planet, available in English and French.  Then, one more for the Brazilian online school OnFire, available in Portuguese and English, and divided into Part 1 and Part 2. Last but not least, another one for the Brazilian portal Nimbo CG, available here in Portuguese. Enjoy!

This is one of the coolest animations I've seen recently. Perfect art direction and soundtrack. I love Kevin Dart's painting style, it's so nice to see how well it can be translated into an animated piece when done right. They really nailed the tone in this one. 

What is it about Sword and Sworcery that's enraging iPad dislikers all around gaming blogs? You can see the thread discussion at Kotaku and at TIG Source, for instance. Sure it's an exclusive game for Apple's iOS, but such games aren't new - Infinity Blade comes to my mind as a good example of an iOS exclusive with high production values - and I haven't seen this reaction on other games like that. It looks like a wonderful game, one of the first things I'll get when I buy my iPad . Full disclosure: I work for a company that belongs to Steve Jobs, so i get awesome discounts buying Apple products, yay!

From what reviewers who played it are saying, it seems designed for that device, which to me is a great thing. Isn't that one of the definitions of a console-exclusive game? A game created for a specific hardware, with its strengths in mind? But this developer's stance is annoying the hell out of people who have philosophical qualms with Apple's devices. So here's a question: would you rather get  a dumbed down version for a PC? Isn't that akin to watching a Cinemascope movie on a regular non-widescreen tv, or in other words, to sacrifice the original artistic vision and design in order to make it more easily mass consumed? I don't know about you, but that's pretty much a crime in my book. I still believe that some movies are better enjoyed at movie theaters instead of a convenient, easily accessible TV, but it seems like I may be the minority on that one.

People tend to polarize themselves too much. They let those little things define they very identities. You see it all the time with XBox vs PS3 vs Nintendo fanboys. Once they make a decision like "Apple is evil and if we don't stop them their way of doing things will take over the world and we'll be doomed", it becomes part of their ideology and you can't separate it anymore.

Me? I'm very practical. In the long run, an iPad used as a game platform has costs similar to PSP or a DS, when you consider the games. The cost of a game in those platforms is usually between $20 and $40, even for remakes or reissues of old classics. Decent iPad games cost between $5 and $15, so if you buy one game per month, over the course of a year a portable console will cost you an additional $360 (assuming an average of $30 per game), while iPad games will cost $120 (assuming a $10 average). Right there an iPad's total cost is $240 closer to a portable console after a year, and considering that an iPad has a fantastic hi-res 10 inch screen, a great battery and is actually useful for non-games related activities, it makes a lot of sense to me as a gaming platform. All it needs now is more games designed for it, instead of ones clumsily adapted using "virtual sticks" or things like that.

And those games, apparently, are coming. Can't wait to play that one! 

This beautiful little film was short listed for an Academy Award nomination, but didn't make the final cut. It was one of my favorites, though, and the author Joanna Lurie has posted the entire film on Vimeo. I really like the atmosphere, the characters and the music. Enjoy!

Some people are complaining, but I like it a lot. It's simple, which means you can do a lot of things to it and it will still preserve its integrity. It's understated, which probably is what most people seem to have a problem with, but I see it as a subtle sense of corporate humor that fits very well shows like The Colbert Report where the humor is between the lines. And it's very elegant and modern in a number of different situations, like demonstrated on the video above.

Good to see that good design still gets some spotlight, and here's hoping that we won't see it replaced with random fonts and Layer Effects some day!

I apparently missed this trailer when it was released, but I caught up to it via Keith Lango's blog. There's also a ton of other Portal 2 gameplay videos in Valve's Youtube channel. Watching this makes me very, very happy.

One thing really goes without saying, and that is how gorgeous every frame is, both through very expressive animation and fantastic art direction and lighting. This is one of these cases where "every frame" is not just an expression, it is quite literal here. On top of Glen Keane's stellar supervision, the thing that stood out the most for me was how amazingly the lighting manages to convey the mood AND keep the action extremely clear at all times. The picture on the left is a good example: the area with most contrast is, by far, near Rapunzel's face, the background has little contrast and feels pushed back, but it still manages to feel natural and spontaneous, not manipulated and fake. Every scene in the movie has this painted feel achieved by careful use of color and light.

But that's the obvious part, what's not obvious are subtle things like the "healing incantation" song, whose lyrics have different meaning depending on who's singing it, although the words are the same. I only noticed that on my second viewing.

Speaking about songs, yes, Disney didn't mention it at all in the marketing campaign, but that's understandable given how much some people are put off by musicals. And to be fair, I didn't enjoy all of the music in the film. Some moments do feel like they're Disney musical parodies, and some songs, like the "I have a dream" number, are very cliché and repetitive. That particular sequence seems to have some character introductions that drag for too long, despite some funny moments. But maybe I'm just saying that because I've recently re-watched Aladdin, and that one has amazingly entertaining musical sequences like my favorite, "One jump ahead", which manages to have great music, great gags, great timing and no obvious exposition. Of course that's a very high standard to compare to, but hey, this is a new Disney film we're talking about. They do have some great music, like the already mentioned "Healing Incantation", and music that grew on me after I watched the second time, like "Mother knows best". And the incidental musical score is great. In the end, I wish those little things were better, but I still think it's a great movie.

Disclaimer: I didn't see it in 3D, which probably made me appreciate the art direction more than if I had a pair of dark grey glasses covering my eyes!

I did this interview for a Brazilian CG website in 2005. The original in Portuguese is still on their site, but I'm posting an English translation here too.

3D4ALL - Tell us about you and how you ended up hired by Blur Studio

Leo - I started working with animation in 1998, when I got hired by Multirio, a studio in Rio de Janeiro that created educational TV shows. Besides doing 3D, I used to help the 2D team with compositing, editing, etc. From there, I went to the News Department at Globo TV, where I had the opportunity to work for a few months on animations for a mascot named " Zé do Pulo", created by Sergio Yamasaki and animated by him, me and Marcio Bukowski. Despite the extremely tight deadlines and often having to work simultaneously on many projects, it was a great experience, and it was also the first time I worked animating a character over a long period of time. Then I went to Twister Studio, looking forward to working on different projects, where I worked for about a year with Marcelo Souza. Along the way, I did many freelance jobs, some with Studio Conseqüência, including the award winning music video "Segredos". I got invited to work at Blur in 2002, when Tim Miller saw my online portfolio (which was actually updated back then).

Before starting to work on this field, I studied Graphic Design at School of Fine Arts - UFRJ. It would have been a big waste of time, if it wasn't for the fact that I met "The Scoundrels" there, a group of friends interested, like me, in doing animation. Among them were Marcio Tatagiba, Renan Moraes, Ricardo Biriba, Miguel Angelo Rego, Sergio Yamasaki, Luciano Viana... most of them work with animation today, and I believe that is mostly thanks to us helping each other to learn it. It was easy to see all of us in the stairs of CCBB during the Anima Mundi Festival...

<EDIT-09-2009> Keep in mind there were very few animation schools back then, and I wouldn't have been able to afford the ones that existed anyway.

3D4ALL - How do you see Brazilian CG looking from outside?

Leo - The only thing that really bothers me in Brazilian CG is that usually the only way to make money with character animation is working with TV advertising, which isn't my favorite. But that's not only in Brazil, I have friends from Spain, France and Turkey that tell me their situation is similar. You either do TV ads or get yourself in risky projects that usually result in nothing. But there's no shortage of talents, no doubt about it, just look at a studio like Vetor Zero, exporting CG commercials to other countries.

As my first post, here's an interview I've done recently for a british magazine called 3D Artist. Enjoy, and feel free to comment at the end!

3D Artist: What is your current job and what are you working on right now?
Leo: I'm an Animation and Layout supervisor at Blur Studio in Venice, California. My current job is directing a campaign of 10 commercials for Pepperidge Farms' Goldfish Crackers. We are also doing a new short film whenever we find time to work on it.

3D Artist: What kind of course did you do at university and was that helpful in getting into the animation industry?
Leo: Animation schools weren't as popular and common as they are now when I went to university, so first I went to Film school, but then switched to Graphic Design. I always shaped my studies towards animation, though, so I ended up landing on an animation related job before I finished school. It was at a small company in Rio de Janeiro that did mostly 2D animation and had some amazingly talented artists who inspired me tremendously. At the same time, I made many friends in the University who shared the same interest in animation, which also helped me to build some momentum and made me more confident in the direction I wanted to follow.

3D Artist: For today’s generation of student’s, what is the kind of educational grounding they should be looking to undertake to get a first job in computer animation?
Leo: This has become some sort of cliché, but it is still true: they need to learn the basics. They need to learn timing, acting, staging...they need to branch out and watch films they would never watch before, read books that stimulate new ideas, study drawing, comics, videogames, even TV series. They need to know what makes a work of art timeless, but also what makes it work for today's audiences.

3D Artist: How did you get it and what was the motivation for getting a job at Blur Studio?
Leo: Actually, I wasn't looking for a job at the time, but a website posted a link to my demo reel and Tim Miller, one of the studio owners, happened to be looking for animators for an upcoming direct-to-dvd project that Blur was making for Disney. So he sent me an email asking if I wanted to work there, and I said "Sure!".

3D Artist: What software packages and tools do you use at Blur?
Leo: Mostly 3DS Max for layout, modeling and rendering, Softimage XSI for rigging, layout and animation, Mudbox and Zbrush for sculpting. We've also developed many pipeline tools that hold the whole studio together and help us be more efficient, with Python as the scripting language of choice.