Ratatouille

The wife is making some ratatouille which is a poor excuse to post some hi-res images of the Pixar film of the same name. Ratatouille is my favourite Pixar film. If you’re an artist or anyone who is involved in some sort of creativity, and you live for that creativity, then this film will hopefully resonate with you. It took me a couple of viewings before it clicked but ever since it’s just one of those films that miraculously gets better and better each time I watch it. Only a couple of other films do that for me: 2001 A Space Odyssey and The Big Lebowski. Maybe the common thread here is that all three can leave you a bit cold on a first viewing but reward repeated ones. A strange trio. Ratatouille, 2001 and The Big Lebowski.

I’m a CG lighting artist and it’s another reason Ratatouille inspires me. Sharan Callahan was the DOP on it and it’s her finest work. I finally worked out how to get some screen grabs from my Blu-ray version of it and so here are just a few.

Showreel

Hopefully, my showreel should be viewable below.

As ever, I’m building up some new shots to make a new one. At some point Not To Scale might even give me a copy of the commercial I worked on recently because I’d like to include that in here too.

When you click play you’ll see that, if you hover your cursor over the vid, there’s a little 360p tab. Click and hold this tab and you should get the option to view the reel in 720p(HD) which I heartily encourage you to do.

A couple more

Just some recent shots. Trying to be focused with my lighting. As usual, I don’t get that much direction – it’s sort of left up to me to decide the tone and mood of these things. Occassionally I’ll push it too far and get told to reign in the darkness which is cool. I need feedback afterall.

Early lighting test for kids show.

This was one of the first shots I tackled for the new tv show. The background hadn’t been textured up yet but I actually like it that way. If it were up to me, I would’ve had untextured, monochromatic backgrounds – coloured coded to mood and location.

But it isn’t up to me

Lighting breakdown

A friend asked me about how I light a character shot recently so I made this for him to give an idea of roughly how I approach it.

Some colour sketches.

Quick, half hour colour sketches done in Photoshop. Tried to limit my self to only using a basic chalk brush and a soft brush.

Yet more.

Just some more from my work.

Some new pics

Crikey, I feel rough.

Anyways, here’s a few more pics I’ve been working on.

More shots and a sketch

A few more recent lighting tests and a pre-liminary sketch for a matte painting that’s going to be a 3D move.

Screenshots

Some screen grabs of recent work I’ve been doing.

My involvement was: All lighting/rendering, second pass shading, art direction of Sofi’s “Room”, background matte painting and comping/post.