Le chat du rabbin, some color set ups

I did some color experiments for Le chat du Rabbin, the movie, while I was still in Jerusalem. This didn't go very far. I didn't have much time to give to this project. It was a good experience nethertheless and meeting Joan Sfar was a pleasure. It is rare enough in this profession to find people who have some other interests apart from animation; who know were all this comes from. We talked about Matisse, the orientalists in general, especially some very graphic color solutions which were used for travel posters during the Twenties. Some art deco stuff to talk brifely.
The result is a highly saturated and non-realistic use of color. It is subjective and allusive.
Blue is not the color of anything in the room. It is the color that piano music gives to this chamber.
I might publish some more of this color script later on.

Beatles Harmonix artwork

 This one was a test. The only thing we kept is probably the rhino textures. I tried to
create a visual correspondance between the rhino horns and a small excentricity in the distant
cliffs, which looks  like Etretat, in France. You only notice it if you watch carefuly.

This is an early version of the final set, where you can see the flowers roughly inserted just for
composition, scale and color.

This is a Tower Bridge vision. I don't think one has a chance to see this in the final movie. When the camera pans down, the Rhino is already in frame and it's almost entirely covered with flowers.

That was a particularly enjoyable piece. The effort was about making sure that it realy looked
like a painting and not  like a photograph. That's why the brushmarks are emphasized.

This is a bluer version of what you actually see in the final picture.

This is the final shot, only a detail with Saint Paul's Cathedral, plus some Battersea and Liverpool features in the distance.

Nine artwork

I enjoyed very much working, even briefly, with Shane on his feature Nine, which a few people have seen.
Here are a few samples of shots I had in mind.

This parachute shot is probably the first thing I did on the project. There are a few versions of it.

There was a tendancy to try several color schemes for this particular shot. It is a moment of relative
hope in a completely post-trauma world. The sepia version is probably the most succesfull; it is spectacular without losing the hauting silhouette of the parachute. It now looks like a ghost.

What shall we find on this new blog?

I will display things that haven't been released previously. A lot of my work is still under copyright restrictions, which means that the last three features I produced artwork for, you won't find here.
Among the few things I enjoyed doing lately are of course the Beatles concept design.

This is one sample.

I always do a color script before starting any rendered pieces. Well, this is not entirely true. In fact
they both progress together. They influence each other. When this is done, it contains more infos than just the finished artwork. CG artists can refer to this and understand the general feeling. Regarding this one, anybody will notice that changes have been made for the final piece.
You can watch it on http://vimeo.com/6629525
For those who want to know more about doing it step by step, I'll post more preliminary artwork in the next days.
D.

This new blog is intended to split my production in different parts. My website will now be devoted to
oil paintings exclusively. It seems people have difficulties identifying who I am and what I do. My personal preference was to make no selection and let pictures speak by themselves, without any comment. Experience shows how utopian this is.
Pictures don't speak by themselves, they need support.
My website will be emptied from whatever is more than three years old. It's time to download.

Pourquoi ce nouveau blog? Why having this new blog?