IA: What tools did you use? How did these tools help and did you need other tools?

Sylvain: As you certainly know all the 3D software do pretty much the same things, the difference is in the user communities where you can exchange technical knowledge. The richer the community is the more knowledge it holds. Let’s take for instance the Maya community which holds millions of users. You can find many melscripts that can be very useful and save you a lot of time. I’m also working with XSI and the last version is very convincing, I’m totally hooked. For compositing we used EYEON FUSION 5.1 which has a very intuitive interface contrary to AFTER EFFECT. FUSION 5.1 allows a permanent supervision of all the nodes and the settings of the composited plans. If you count the number of alterations per plan as well as the visual effects it is much easier to work on Fusion. For the image part we used Unfold 3D, Premiere Pro2 and Photoshop CS2 as well as the Digital Performer for the audio part. For managing the project we used Excel and Gant Project that helped a lot in distributing the work.

IA: What do you think you have gained from this experience?

Sylvain: We earned a lot of experience on directing the movie. Personally, I think that the hardest part was the teamwork, it is not easy to convince everybody of your ideas.

Mathieu: Team work is really delicate, you have to give each others space and be a real diplomat, but it’s a great experience and I learned so much from it. Working on this project made me realize that it wasn’t as simple as I used to believe but I also discovered that I can work much harder when I’m motivated. Finally, it is a great satisfaction to have created something of your own. The joy of having finished a movie is everlasting.

IA: Now that it’s done how do you like your short? Do you fell it is a complete work? Do you have some frustrations?

Sylvain: Of course one year working on the same project leads to many frustrations. There are some sequences that we wished were better but there was a deadline and we had to respect it. Without a deadline we could have worked on it for years and years and we would still find something to change.

Mathieu: It is hard to be objective when talking about a project that you have worked on for one year. For me when I watch it over and over all I can see is where we could have done better and sometimes I just close my eyes on certain sequences that I think are really bad. But in general we ended up showing what we initially wanted to show. I wanted it to be better prepared and I wanted many things changed in it but hey, we worked as a team and we had tight deadlines. I regret one thing too, we should have had a horse in the 2D sequences but we ended up doing without it.

IA: What are your future projects?

Sylvain: We have presented a file to the French TV stations with the production house Cube Creative ( http://www.cube-creative.fr ). I hope we’ll do well. If not I just joined the Allegorithmic Team in Clermont Ferrand and we are developing tools for real time.

Mathieur: I just joined Nwave Digital, a studio in Brussels that produces full length 3D movies. For “Hugh” we are in contact with Cube Creative and we will try to have an animation series that is of the same style as “Hugh.” We hope we can get a project of 52 episodes of 7’. But nothing is sure yet, it is still under study.

IA: Would you like to add anything else?

Sylvain: I think I already said too much, I’m going to leave some space for others in your website ;-)

Mathieu: Thank you for the interview and thanks to all the readers that will take the time to read this interview. I hope that you will like our short and that you will recommend it. Getting it out there is our biggest challenge.

Credits :

MATHIEU NAVARRO
Facial rigging, Character animation, Character modeling (shaman), Character design, Lighting etc...

SYLVAIN NOUVEAU
2D animation, Fur, Rigging, Cloth, Texturing, Rendering, Compositing, Website etc...

AURORE TURBE
Set modeling / texturing,
Lighting, 2D animation etc...

FRANCOIS POMMIEZ
Character modeling (children), Character design, 2D animation etc...

Links

Hugh Website : www.hugh-lefilm.com

Discuss in the Forum : Go here

interview published in IT'S ART Vol #12

See Also

Animation : Replay