If you like you can find the teaser trailer online on the official ‘Die Konferenz der Tiere’ facebook page in high definition quality. HD requires flash player 10 or better so make sure that you have the latest version installed on your computer.

Furthermore you can visit the official ‘Die Konferenz der Tiere’ website at http://www.konferenz-der-tiere.film.de.

Here is some proof that this actually happened. ;)

This Tuesday the new corporate website of 5 PRIME was launched. Why do I tell you that? Because I did the graphic design for this website and created a short animation intro that welcomes you as you enter the website. Tons of credit goes to Felix who I believe must have been planning and hacking code together till his fingers bled and his brain started twisting especially during the last few weeks. :)

Personally I found it quite challenging to meet all the requirements (where to place all the different kinds of content) and still to deliver a usable and legible design, but it all worked out pretty well I think. Furthermore I learned a lot about visual conception, usability, and typography & web layout during this project.

So feel free to click HERE and visit the relaunched 5 PRIME website. Any comment or critic on the web design and the intro animation is of course appreciated. I’ll probably add a few making off pictures from the intro animation to my portfolio in the near future. As you can tell, I’m quite lazy regarding constant updates of my own website. To be honest the animation, which is showing a cute little frog trying to climb on top of a 5 PRIME box to reach another box fitting his small size, was already created about a year ago as an assignment at UTS (where it received a mark of 98%).

Anyway… as I’m talking about jobs and projects right now I may as well polish the image of my current job at Ambient Entertainment as one of my last posts on this topic seemed to be almost depressive (at least from my current perspective).

Actually I was given some very nice tasks since that last post about my work on ‘Animals United’ (which is now almost a year old). After the end of my internship I was offered a contract for a 20hours/week job so I could work alongside my studies at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Hanover. Although this did leave almost no spare time at all for me, it was (to my surprise) actually doable. Of course all the movie content is still top secret but I can tell you that I got the opportunity to work on some really gorgeous sets and environments like the home burrow of one of the main characters. It’s sad that for obvious reasons I’m not allowed to give away any further details.

To withdraw the last remaining minutes from my spare time I also worked as a ‘Hiwi’ (student assistant) at uni during the last semester teaching other students character modelling and sculpting using Maya and Mudbox. It’s amazing how much you learn when you teach others. ;)

As you can probably guess some projects for uni did therefore suffer under all the different workloads. This is why I am still busy finishing some projects from the last semester… like the crab thing for example. I don’t want to give away too much right now but it involved the setup of a character rig far more complex than any rig I’ve ever created before. The good thing is: I can do MEL scripting now.

The bad thing is: I see funny little crabs everywhere. No, just kidding. ;)

Here is a screenshot showing the self written user interface on the right side:

I just rendered a quick playblast showing parts of a dynamic walk cycle.

Take a look!

If you think I’m spending too much time producing crap crab - you’re totally right!

More info on this slightly grumpy little fellow and his lot coming soon (hopefully)!

The trailer indicates that the story will be about Carl Fredricksen, who appears to be a stubborn old man and who might have lived in his tiny, beloved house ever since while the rest of the city was growing bigger and bigger around him. The trailer then shows how Mr. Fredricksen is leaving this city with the help of a huge bunch of balloons tied at the top of his roof. Now the interesting thing is that although this plot sounds quite original it seems to be based on a rather true story.

Due to the lack of proper information so far, I could be totally wrong! But watching the trailer, a story came to my mind, which my old fellow Felix sent me a little while ago. It’s the story of Edith Macefield that you can read here.

Although Mrs. Macefield did not fly away with a bunch of balloons tied to her rooftop, I think there are some quite interesting similarities – especially concerning the set design!

Just compare this picture which I found via google with this photo from the article mentioned above.

I also managed to complete the report on my semester abroad at UTS which I mentioned in my last entry. It’s just a short and sketchy summary and it’s mainly written for future exchange students of the German Academic Exchange Service. You can download it here in German Language if you’re interested in reading it.

Apropos cinema and Pixar: I did what Woody, the cowboy from Toy Story, recommends in this awesome trailer:

I met WALL•E who finally arrived in German theatres on September 25^th. Kind of a good idea because this movie kicks ass! Although Ratatouille stays my favourite movie from Pixar, I highly recommend watching this masterpiece (definitely to everybody, not only to my fellow 3d animation students!) The only thing that bothers me a little bit is the implementation of live action characters during a few video messages on the human space ship. It’s not like it’s ruining the movie in any way but I just don’t understand the reason and from my point of view it simply does not fit in.

During the next few days I’m going to finish my report on the semester abroad in Sydney that I have to write for the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). That’s the support organisation that payed my scholarship. If I’m confident with the result I might upload it to this site (in German language). While writing this report I really feel like my German vocabulary and writing skills have degenerated rapidly in the past few years. Or maybe I’m just getting older. At least I am not 20 anymore, am I? ;)

Fortunately I found this nice website (German language)…

Hi everybody. I didn’t write too much since I’m back in Germany. I know. At least I managed to upload a gallery about ‘States of Convergence’ to my internet portfolio, as you can see on the sidebar.

Well, to be honest I was pretty lazy and was having a good time with friends, enjoying my holidays until my internship starts on September 1rst. This internship will last six months and will take place at Ambient Entertainment, a 3d animation studio from Hanover that is currently working on its 4th feature film. I’m not sure if I am allowed to talk about the project that I am going to be working on there… so to shrink responsibility I’ll simply provide you with this link to a blog entry of one of Ambient’s art department guys. ;)

In my opinion this seems to be a great project and I’m really looking forward to be a part of it. Now I am a little bit busy with moving to Hanover…

Well, and since 3d animation is quite addictive, I was not able to stay away from Maya for too long. So I modelled these two objects, which are intended to appear as background objects in the latest project of my fellow students Dennis and Patrick from FH Hannover (University of Applied Science and Arts, Hanover).

Smooth surfaces on both objects are simply achieved by changing the angle of the normals to 180° to save render time instead of using polygon smooth. So they’re both basically ‘low poly objects’. You clearly can see this on the slightly edgy wheels or the saddle but as I said: they’re not created for close ups.

Oh… and the bicycle is completely ‘riggable’, which I might take care of for my next demo reel. ;)

Finally I’d like to show you some interesting stuff that I found on the internet.

This is a project from Hyungkoo Lee, a South Korean artist who analysed the anatomic structure of famous cartoon characters like Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny and so on and created skeletons which seem to be believable from a biomechanical point of view. Here is the official German website about his exhibition at the ‘Naturhistorisches Museum Basel’. Since there were several seminars dealing with biomechanics in the multimedia class at FH Hannover during the past two semesters, this might be of particular interest for my fellow students. ;)

Cheers

Catwalk placed 8th out of 24 nominated films and I think we can be pretty confident with the result. Thanks to everybody who voted for Catwalk! :)