It’s out! that’s it! done!

“The Tale of Despereaux” officially made it’s debut yesterday at cinemas. It has been released in USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Portugal, and will be released in other countries around January/February.

Of course, as expected, there are already very different opinions about the film, some people really like it, some people don’t. However, lucky for us, everyone agrees that the look of the film and animation are what makes it unique, which is where we had to put most of our effort at Framestore.

Now is up to you, and the real critics ( the kids! ) to decide if what we’ve done if worth watching or not. If you are interested, I’ve collected a few links to technical reviews.

Link: [ AWN “Building a Better Mousetrap for Despereaux” ]
Link: [ AnimationMangazine “Despereaux’s Tale Told in Theaters” ]
Link: [ Inquirer: “Framestore releases its first full-length animation” ]
Link: [ Wales Online: “Modeller Ben Lambert helped bring Despereaux and co to life” ]
Link: [ Searchstorage: “Despereaux” posed steep challenge for clustered storage system” ]

and a link to play Framestore’s Despereaux online videogame, damm mousetraps!

Link: [ Framestore’s online Despereaux game ]

 Thanks for watching!

Oh man! finally they are out! Blur Studio has made available Blur Beta tools. I was heavily involved in the creation of most of them working alongside with Eric Hulser and Remi McGill during the time I was at the amazing Blur Studio.

You will find a lot of maxscript code there, xsi python scripts, and probably a few interesting plugins.

In my opinion Element Storm is one of the most complex ones, and the transform cache plugins for XSI and Max as super interesting from the pipeline point of view. Take a look at the plugin for max to use the Blur’s naming convention, also very important is the Qt integration with XSI scripts, we could not live without it

Remember that all those scripts/plugins are used in production in the studio, some of them will work with no problem independently anywhere, but some of them are very attached to the way we had setup the pipeline at Blur.

Enjoy!

Link: [ Blur Beta Tools ]

Link: [ Blur Beta Tools Descriptions ]

Updated (06/11/2008): 

We are closer and closer to the release date! ( 19th Decemeber ). We have just release the Theatrical trailer, I hope you like it:

Link: [ The Tale of Despereaux ( Trailer #2 ) ]

Don’t forget to visit the official website were you can find a lot about the movie!

Link: [ The Tale of Despereaux website ]

Finally the trailer is out! This is the film I’ve been working on at Framestore for the last year. You can have a peek here, or also watch it in High Definition at:

The Tale of despereaux ( HD trailer )

Hope you enjoy!

Quick update: I’ve moved to London!. I’m working on the project ‘The Tale of Despereaux’ since last September, that is why my website has been a little bit quiet for a while.
It is the first animated feature from Framestore CFC / Universal Pictures, which is very exciting. I’m working as Animation Pipeline Technical Director, being responsible for the pipeline and tools for the animation department. I cannot say much more at the moment, but as soon as we release any images or any more information I will post it here.

On the 3dsmax side, I’m trying to get some time to update Unwrap tools. It seems to be working fine for 3dsmax 2008 ( also sloft plugins seems to be working too ), but in the update process I will add a few new features that people have asked me for, nothing fancy but useful, like to be able to use shortcuts, or remember the state of the panels, etc …

Link: [ Framestore CFC ]

Link: [ The Tale of Desperaux (book) ]

Veni vini vinci! Mundos DIGITALES 2007 was everything I hoped it would be and much much more. I went as speaker of one of the conferences and ended participating in two and receiving the best animated shortfilm award for ‘A Gentleman’s Duel’.

I cannot say more of Mundos Digitales and its organization, really interesting conferences, good vibes between the speakers, good food, and fun fun fun in A Coruña. A must for anyone than wants to know what has been cooking in VFX during the year, and the perfect warm up for Siggraph.

Don’t forget also to check out my interview at: www.mundosdigitales.tv , where I talk a little bit more about the studio and the duties of a pipeline developer ( although it is only available in spanish language )