Doctor Cerebro

Kung Fu Movie Auditions

2008-04-26T16:58:00.006+01:00

Hi there. I know I haven't posted anything in a while, so I thought I would share this clip to keep this blog alive (and maybe DMCA and Wesley will give me a break now).

"I hope you like pain!"

Animation Reel 2007

2007-11-01T16:10:00.000Z

My animation showreel, at last!
All comments are welcome.
UPDATE 4-11-07: New cut after feedback

Showreel 2007

I was joking

2007-10-25T20:01:00.000+01:00

I was joking from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo.

While I´m Here I´d Like to Thank...

2007-09-10T21:44:00.000+01:00

So this is it. Many thanks to my buddy David Beer (AKA The Dude, 3D Animator from Central Saint Martins) for making the wacky music and for his dedication. Many thanks to Thibaud Floutier (AKA Teapot, Supinfocom student and the next Spike Jonze) for his lighting and rendering masterclasses. And many thanks to Yann Boyer (AKA Boyer, animator from Gobelins, Paris), who tried to work out some cool textures for my movie (but time run out!).

The Rise and Fall of Doctor Cerebro from Coolio Iglesias and Vimeo.

Rendering Lessons

2007-08-08T20:47:00.000+01:00

I can spend hours animating but I feel totally unable to work out a proper lighting. I am grateful there are people out there with an infinite patience and great talent willing to help. People like Thibaud Floutier (lighting intern at Framestore CFC), who, after seeing the lousy renders I was doing for my final project decided to give me a hand in such a task.
Here you can see my disgusting and crappy render, after ten minutes tweaking the lights:

And this one is Thibaud's work:

2D-3D Collaboration

2007-07-06T13:36:00.000+01:00

I thought I might share this animation as I really like it. It is the pairs project we did at the studio. We were given a line (a dad talking about his daughter: "She's very good at sports") and we came up with this idea. The hand drawn animation was done by my 2d mate Shouren Ho, and I animated the little girl.
We acted it out first, and shot some reference videos where DMCA hit my head quite hard with a ball. He enjoyed it.

Very Good At Sports from Coolio Iglesias and Vimeo.

TRAKTOR: Great Inspiration

2007-06-22T13:14:00.000+01:00

One of my heroes. TRAKTOR is the L.A. based scandinavian collective of filmmakers responsible for some of the wackiest and funniest and craziest commercials ever done. Every time I watch their ads I think: I wish I had done that!
These are some commercials from the Discovery.com campaign, in which TRAKTOR's non-actors casting reached its pinnacle. Always an inspiration. Hats off!

The Revenge of Jiminy Fetus

2007-06-20T22:12:00.000+01:00

This is the last bit of my animation project. I really enjoyed doing it and it is the first scene I am happy with. It was fun working with Jiminy Fetus. Although being so tiny, the fellow has got a strong personality.

Jiminy Fetus Returns from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

Dance Animation

2007-06-11T16:44:00.000+01:00

Some of the dances were already pretty clear in my head before animating. I spent a day dancing and recording myself, but i will not post those videos as they are too embarrasing.
I researched on the web and found some fantastic material.

These are the thumbnails of the dancing routines.

I started with the cowboy dance. It was pretty straight forward, I set the key poses and built quickly some ease in and outs in the dope sheet. No breakdown positions. It seemed to work pretty good since the dance was quite spasmodic.

Cowboy Dance from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

I tried the same approach with the fighter dance but it didn't work at all. It took me much more time as I had many poses. It is twice as fast as the cowboy and he is always down on the beat. I think that is why it works better.

The Figther Dance from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

I animated the first part of the beaver dance pretty quick. Now it feels to me too much "pose to pose". I still have to animate the holds at the start.

Beaver dance 1st part from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

For the second part I set the key poses and animated straight ahead from there, trying to get rid of that robotic feeling. I am not happy with any of these two animations, by the way.

Dancing Beaver Smashed by a Mexican Wrestler from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

Raging Bull

2007-06-11T16:38:00.000+01:00

I checked out Martin Scorsese's "Raging Bull" for inspiration, and to see if I could steal any shot.

Richard Williams said: We just show the result of the punch. There is no point of contact. We leave out the contact and show the hand past the hitting point: 10 times the impact.

This is my black and white ring. It looks cool to me, but it is coloured at the end.

The Music

2007-06-11T16:07:00.000+01:00

The music is extremely important in this piece of animation. I wanted to have different kinds of music for every character to accentuate the contrast, till I came accross a wonderful tune called "Gossipo perpetuo" by Jean-Jacques Perrey. Mr. Perrey is a french man who did some wacky electronic music in the 60's with Moog synthethizers, and this song added an extra layer of crazyness to my animation. It was perfect.
Unfortunately i was not able to pay the license. Now my buddy Dave Beer will compose the music for me instead.
Thanks Dave, Yaw and DMCA for helping me!
And thanks to lovely Patricia Leroy, daughter of Jean-Jacques Perrey. Too bad we couldn't work it out.

The Characters

2007-06-11T15:06:00.000+01:00

I don't know why but I ended up with four characters. I kept the design very simple in order to have enough time to model and rig them. I wanted to focus on the body language so I didn't do many facial expressions. That was my first mistake.

This is a rough sketch showing the size relationship.

Beaver

I had a very clear idea of this character and I modelled it straight away without spending much time sketching. It is a muppett-Sesame Street style beaver. It is actually based on a puppett I made like ten years ago.
There are no blend shapes for this little fellow, as I wanted to keep his silly face all over the shot and concentrate on the dance. There is just a mouth control, and a lattice on the eyes so I could stretch them at the moment of the punch. Now I reckon he lacks some kind of expression.From the very begining I imagined him disco dancing.

I intended to use the pluggin "Advanced Skeleton", that creates an already rigged skeleton you can adjust to your model and then just skin it. I had some troubles in the skinning proccess and I decided to build my own rigs. Too bad. Thanks to Yaw's mentors for their help.

The Luchador

This is the mains character. He opens up the movie, alone in the ring, waiting for a rival worth fighting. Being this big I was expecting skinning issues, but at the end it works pretty good and I am happy with the model. I did a few blend shapes to show the mood change.
In my initial idea he dances to the sound of percussion music in a tribal fashion.

The Redneck Cowboy

For this character I wanted a redneck crazy looking man. The only reason he is a cowboy is because in my initial idea he danced to some some crazy country music. Again, no blend shapes for the face, just his eyes and mouth open and close.The modelling is extremely simple, just a box with some extrusions. The design is a tribute to one of my childhood heroes: Don Quijote.

Jiminy Fetus

In my original idea he was a kind of supernatural being that knocked everyone out and finished the movie blowing his trumpet. The he evolved into this sort of flying fetus. When I decided to use the same music all through the movie it seemed to me that this guy could be the conductor that drives the music to the end and closes the film.

I did some blend shapes for this guy, which were pretty straight forward to do using the soft deformation tool that MCA showed me. I modeled the body in half an hour. It is almost an exact replica of the beaver's body. He is very ugly.

Initial Idea and Inspiration

2007-06-10T21:10:00.000+01:00

The Inspiration

Looks like I am following the freaky steps of filmmaker Jared Hess. His first movie, "Napoleon Dynamite", portrayed the pathetic life of a nerd. My task project animation was about a nerd trying to be a superhero.
Then I watched his second movie "Nacho Libre" and I remembered my childhood, when I used to love wrestling and thought it was for real. It is, again, about normal people trying to be heroes, maybe because their life is boring, or, like in the movie, because they are just romantic dreamers. And maybe a combination of both.
I used to read a lot of comic books when I was a kid and I also wanted to be a superhero. I was convinced I was a mutant and my superpowers were just about to develope. And I was fascinated with Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior. It was a big shock to realise that everything was just a big performance.

Luchadores

Then I found "Lucha Loco" a wonderful book about mexican wrestling in the library and I knew that I definitely had to do something about it. The pictures were amazing, the colors and design of the costumes, the characters, their names: everything lies somewhere between the fascinating and the pathetic.
What is quite moving is that mexican wrestling is made by and for poor people. The wrestlers make their own costumes. They are not stars. They are ordinary people with daily jobs, and at night, they become luchadores. Some of them reckon that their masks are their real faces. Like Superman, they only become themselves when dressed in their outfits. Check this pictures out.

The Initial Idea

To accentuate the contrast in the animation I thought of radically different characters fighting in different styles. But then I thought that fighting would be a little boring, and, instead of that, it would be funnier to make them dance, when everyone was expecting a game of fistycuffs. So each character does a different kind of dance to a different kind of music. As well I tried to do something I could have fun animating.
One night I just saw the whole movie in front of my eyes and I started sketching like mad. This is one of these early sketches with all the characters. At the end of the movie, to break the cycle and to add a bit of surrealism, I wanted to have a kind of creature that didn't dance at all, but just do something weird to finish the piece.

Making of Final Project

2007-06-10T21:07:00.000+01:00

The Painting

"Time Orders Old Age to Destroy Beauty" by Pompeo Girolamo Batoni.
This painting made me think in terms of rythm instead of a story. There are two opposite characters, Beauty and Old Age, linked by a third one, which happens to be Time. Like in a cycle where everythings that is beautiful gets old and die, and then something beautiful is born again, I thought of a pace where an action would suddenly start, stop, and then start all over again. So I looked for that contrast in my animation, a constant change of rythm and attitude. No real story behind it.

Run Cycle

2007-06-07T19:36:00.000+01:00

I did this cartoony run cycle yesterday, trying to keep my mind away from the final project. I had some troubles with the rig (always excuses) so I couldn't push it as much as I wanted. I've seen it so many times that I can't tell wether it's good or crap. Somebody help me!

Run Cycle from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

SmackDown!

2007-06-04T19:58:00.000+01:00

This is a scene from my final project, the dancing beaver busting moves. Crits are welcome. I need them.

Dancing Beaver Smashed by a Mexican Wrestler from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

Jiminy Fetus

2007-05-29T00:04:00.000+01:00

At last! I've just finished the last character for my animation. This weird guy is my tribute to another childhood film, "Pinocchio", and also one of the ugliest things I've done so far.

Final Project Characters

2007-05-26T19:28:00.000+01:00

These are some characters I have made for my final project at Saint Martins. It is a one minute animation in collaboration with the National Gallery.
The big guy is a mexican wrestler who is supossed to fight with the beaver. My mates at the studio say it doesn't look like a beaver. It's been named a rat, a dog, a mouse... The third character is a kind of redneck cowboy. He is my tribute to one of my childhood heroes, Don Quijote.

Flying Nerd

2007-05-20T13:17:00.000+01:00

And this is from last term task project. Had to produce a 30 second animation of a single character trying to achieve a difficult task. It was fun acting it out as a nerd.

Flying Nerd from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

Chupagomas Lip Sync

2007-05-20T13:03:00.000+01:00

Last term at the London Animation Studio we had to look for a piece of dialogue and animate it. I found a really funny line from one the greatest old school spanish actors, Jose Luis López Vázquez. Quality. I just had to do it.

"Chupagomas" Lipsyinc from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

And now something completely different...

2007-05-18T23:34:00.002+01:00

From my very first animation to some of the latest stuff I've done. Practicing walk cycles.

Walk Cycle from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo

My First Character Animation Ever

2007-05-18T21:21:00.000+01:00

I did this piece before coming to London to study animation at the London Animation Studio at Central Saint Martins. I didn't have a clue about how to animate anything, I just read four pages of Richard Williams' book and went for it.
It took me like, i don't know, four or five months to model and rig the monkey. Of course I knew nothing about animation curves, graph editor and stuff, I just keyframed the whole thing through and had a lot of fun.

Monkey Dance from Coolio Iglesias on Vimeo