Demo reel 2014

[cableon]

Ronald Grandpey - Animation demo reel 2014 :



Including various works (2004-2014), mostly made with ASP, even though not always vectorial.

More animations : http://www.ronald-grandpey.net/?animations

Soundtrack : http://edisonbuttons.bandcamp.com

More soon!

[Danimal]

Good demo showing a wide array of animation styles - nice!

That music though, egads how it makes me want to punch someone.

[3deeguy]

I like work that is unique and that displays talent. To me it means there is only one place you can get it. That's one of the reasons I think we should all have our own style. Nice.

[cableon]

Thank you Danimal and 3deeguy for your kind comments!
As for the soundtrack -- well, musical tastes...
Not only do I love this very joint's kick, but the title itself also seemed pretty appropriate.
Having borrowed another track from Edison before (with his permission), it only felt natural to holler back this time.



However thanks again for your feedback, sirs!

[Little Yamori]

Cohesive and brilliant,

(though not all of it is my style)

I think that's what I like most about this forum. I check my personal preferences at the door, and just look at what people have been able to do using this software and evaluate based on that.

Great work

[heyvern]

Ha ha! I actually LOVED the soundtrack. I went to their site and listened to all of the tracks.

Everyone has different musical tastes.

[cableon]

Agreed! I could hardly work for monthes on animated videos for artists/albums/tracks whom/which I can't relate to, or at least feel, but there are so many gems out there, in so many different styles, so many directions. The possibilities are countless. Animating something on a cooler, tropical mood for instance would be great fun too, or even harder, louder, starker stuff. Or something really weird. Or dubstep. Wait, not dubstep. Unless… Well it's just a matter of feeling I guess.

[heyvern]

Musical preference is so... fluid.

I find on one day I will hate a particular style of music. Then on another day... I love it. It depends on my mood. If I listen non stop to a particular style, it starts to get old and I have to cleanse my musical palette with something completely different.

I suppose that's where "Muzak" came from. Innocuous, non offensive background music that can't possibly offend or disturb the majority of people. It's not going to win awards, and people still "hate it" but it won't make them run and hide and it sort of disappears in the background.

Picking background music for a demo reel is probably almost as difficult and as important as putting together the visual content. If the people you pitch to don't like that music, will they not like the demo content? Or will the actual animation stand out despite the music?

[cableon]

As a matter of fact, things usually tend to work the other way round in my experience, music leading inspiration and "picking" me rather than only serving a functional purpose or remaining an innocuous background buzz. Music leads, in my perspective, as the tremendous source of inspiration it has always been.

In this very case for instance, "Tonka Truck" simply made me want to make a music video on the spot when I first heard it -- the album already being out for a little while at the time, I asked Edison's permission to use it for a reel of my own work, which I had never done before. That is how things just happened. Several other unexpected projects kept me delaying it again and again, but I still had that terrific joint in mind for monthes, yearning to make something out of it, at least to pay it honor -- so much that turning off the volume to watch that reel should hopefully make you miss half of it...

There again however, I guess that there is no absolute rule. Should you pick your reel soundtrack according to a supposed audience ? As far as inspiration goes, anything is possible.

[slowtiger]

I prefer to do my own music, just for fun. But I like your choices, it's so refreshing to listen to something which is not mainstream. And I agree that music is great inspiration.

I like your style and animation a lot, it's very original. I prefer the hand-drawn stuff over the vector work though, and this watercolor colouring is just great. Did you ever experimented with getting the vector stuff look like the hand-drawn stuff, by means of living textures, brushes, and animated outlines?

I must confess that I don't get your stories. It's all fun to watch, but I miss a bit of dynamic in the movements, and even your complete films I don't really understand. Well, matter of personal preferences maybe.

[lwaxana]

Nice work! I like your style.

[cableon]

Thanks Slowtiger and lwaxana!

I have indeed tried a couple footholds into vector animation, mostly for short commissioned works (ie the bike trainer in the demo reel, in which the character's legs are made of bones and vector layers), but those ventures have been seldom and very careful so far.

Discovering Selgin's amazing showreel and animations a few weeks ago was a huge breakthrough though, and an undeniably powerful impulse to move further into vector animation : how couldn't you be willing to play with smart bones and physics with the same ease and fun as he does, especially after watching his brilliant ASP presentation at NCSA ? --> Selgin, if you ever get to read this : THANKS!!

My own humble attempts in that direction have barely exceeded training level so far, though : I might post a couple trials here now and then if anything ever gets achieved, and worth showing. Vector animation does require a wholly different approach from the semi-traditional homemade technique that I have been pursuing so far however, demanding to set up your sequences & elements before animating them, and therefore seemingly not letting you the same field of improvisation... yet it does look so attractive and promising that I will surely keep exploring this path.

As for hand-drawn looking vector shapes, they were a serious bone of contention I reckon, until I found out, very recently again, how easy it was to add custom tool shapes in ASP… yeah I'm a bit slow at understanding simple, obvious things sometimes. I will most probably use them a lot more in the future. Animated outlines are great too for sure!

As for understanding my stories, well almost none of the animations here are actually stories : I have precisely tried to avoid linear narratives in music videos (as well as mere illustration/paraphrase of the lyrics), and such animations as the one above ("Ils ont des nouveaux pouvoirs" in black & white) are comic book trailers, hence mostly consisting in strings of animated excerpts, and somehow working as music videos, too. I totally admit it might seem a little puzzling if you do expect "regular" movies, but those are usually contextualized, such as here or there on my French publisher Misma editions' website for instance.

Anyway thanks a lot once again for your appreciations!

[Greenlaw]

Cableon,

Wow, I really like your designs--animation is very nice too! Keep up the great work.

G.

[3deeguy]

Quote by Cableon
As for understanding my stories, well almost none of the animations here are actually stories...

I don't feel so bad now. I thought I couldn't understand it because the pace was so quick!

[cableon]

Thanks Greenlaw!

And yes 3deeguy, the pace IS quick! Stomp the pedal!!!