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Nico Martinez, photographer.

2007-09-14T16:08:00.000+02:00

A caricature for a birthday invitation.

Spanish translation: " I´m too old for this!!"

More sketching

2007-09-14T15:52:00.000+02:00

sketchbook update

2007-09-14T15:47:00.000+02:00

More metro sketching

2007-08-24T12:42:00.000+02:00

Metro Sketches

2007-07-27T00:02:00.000+02:00

Some quick ones done at Valencia´s subway on my way to the academy.

Small 2d animation

2007-07-04T13:57:00.000+02:00

I´ve done this for advertising a 2d animation course. Yes, I´m going to teach !!, for two weeks. Let´s see how it goes!.

New Demoreel!

2007-06-29T00:58:00.000+02:00

Check out my new demoreel including stuff from Keytoon Animation, as well as the "Valiant" shots and "Happilly N´Ever After".

Hope you guys like it!!

Head Sketch

2007-06-13T11:55:00.000+02:00

Gatito

2007-06-13T09:48:00.000+02:00

My dad´s cat...

Mi Mamma!

2007-05-18T16:39:00.000+02:00

Caricature of my mom!

Baggy Jeans

2007-05-07T11:39:00.000+02:00

How fashionable!

Charcoal sketches

2007-05-07T11:28:00.000+02:00

These are from 2004 , when I was working in "Valiant" we had life drawing sessions once a week . It was great , the teacher really pushed us to study the light and shade of what we had in front of us. I really enjoyed those times.

Motion sketches

2007-04-26T18:46:00.000+02:00

These are some of the sketches I did yesterday at life drawing, I had better ones the other day but that day I forgot my camera to snap them.

It´s really interesting, the model moves creating a pattern that repeats for, I don´t know 5 minutes, and we try to capture the key moments forcing you to simplify line of action, silouethe etc.

Tommy the unstoppable

2007-04-26T18:25:00.000+02:00

He´s not even really good at basketball , but he just goes on and on ...!!!

outdoors sketch

2007-04-20T19:55:00.000+02:00

Manu Bover

2007-04-20T19:50:00.000+02:00

A workmate at Keytoon, that likes to call himself... "the boss" .Sadly he´s going to live the studio and I´d like to desire him the best of lucks for the future and I really hope that he and the rest of the "bugwatch" guys come back !!

CHEERS MANU!! WE LOVE YOU!!

Life Drawing 2

2007-03-15T20:46:00.000+01:00

Another charcoal sketch!, I didn´t post in weeks because I ´ve been real busy in the studio. I´m now animation supervisor for a 15 minute short film we are doing . We have been leaving work late everyday , really exhausting work, no social life, but now is getting better!

Hope to make it next week for another drawing session.

See ya!!

Back to Life Drawing!!

2007-02-01T10:43:00.000+01:00

I found a great place in Valencia next to the studio where we can go to do life drawing sessions at a reasonable price!!. God , I forgot how much I love using charcoals!!

I asked to the girls in charge if we could maybe do the kind of things I used to do when I studied animation many moons ago. Quick poses , motion poses, thumbnailing. And then a longer pose to do a light/shadow study.

Feels good doing something that doesn´t force you to be in front of a monitor screen for a while.

Another silly sketch.

2007-01-31T16:41:00.000+01:00

3deMotions interviews Keytoon

2007-01-31T16:38:00.000+01:00

http://www.3demotions.com/keytoon01en.htm

There is a nice interview there, have a look!

Bungle in the Jungle!

2007-01-12T13:53:00.000+01:00

Have a look at this student short film created by Miquel Cabot, brother of my good friend Joan Cabot ( http://birdinthecage.blogspot.com/) Who also worked in the film.

Animation Progression

2007-01-11T16:51:00.000+01:00

Hi guys!, for the short film "The Grandfather of Soul" I bring you three videos showing the making of the last shot.

First of all, I reccomend you to follow this link: http://www.keytoon.com/grandfather to see the finalised short film , to avoid possible spoilers since I´m gonna be talking about the ending of the short.

------------ Spoilers start here----------------

In this shot , "Maxwell " the character who´s dancing at James Brown´s "I feel good" is reaching the end of his dancing frenesi. He kicks his legs in the air with the last notes of the song and the last kick destroys the old phonograph. He gasps and in the silence we hear some scary banging noise, the door opens making a creepy sound and his mother gets in the room.She gets really annoyed and with a severe gesture makes him go back to his room or something like that. Maxwell goes out of the room disappointed and before leaving , his mom slaps him in the head.

The first video you´ll see is the 2d blocking. I usually do this with flash and it allows me to preview timing, posing, and also the staging of my shot. In this case it was specially important the pace , and the momentum when the mother comes to the room , scaring the hell out of our character. It was also essential to rough out the staging, since the shot is wide and with no cuts , similar to a theatre stage, I needed to plan how to direct the audience´s attention from side to side of the screen.

In this second video you´ll see the 3d Blocking. Basically I copied the results of my 2d flash animation and posed the 3d character as close as possible to my sketches.Then the poses are put in the right frame , and also new additional poses were added, to give more "push" to the main poses, or also to create anticipations.I would say that here I have my "extreme" keyframes plus the "contact" keyframes. When I did this I also thought on having the character looking at the portrait of his mom a couple of times back and forth when he realises who´s behind the door. But later we thought it was too much and I toned it down. You´ll see that I used "stepped" tangents for this, that allows me to see only the poses I generate without the distraction of automatic interpolations. The hardest thing here was also to animate the phonograph splitting in pieces. I animated each piece individually , no simulation here, just wanted to keep it cartoony.

And this third video is the final shot, without rendering. Just the animation , and a fixed background.After converting the tangents to spline, and tweaking all the little parts , the director asked me for some extension in the shot, it was going to be a bit longer. He wanted more waiting time before the mother comes in. I also had to be really careful to not move the two characters at the same time, to keep the attention in one of them only, otherwise the audience could get confused, not knowing where to look. The moving holds where really hard to get right, without distracting too much. The interaction of the mother slapping the guy in the head was also pretty tricky to get right without the characters intersecting with each other.But in the end , after hundreds of previews , checks , etc etc , the shot was finally approved by the director!!.

I hope you enjoyed this mini "making of"!

Thanks!

Small Sketch

2007-01-11T12:56:00.000+01:00

The GrandFather of Soul

2007-01-10T12:49:00.000+01:00

Have a look at this short film we worked on last summer. I did most of the animation togheter with Jaime Maestro, who also is the director and creator of the short. I have to give credit to Luis SanJuan for his amazing facial setup and also to Jonatan Catalan for the great lighting/shading.
Santi Agustí was the comopositor, and Rudi Hammad did the setup for the "Mamma" character.

Tell me guys what you think!

Cheers!

Oh my god!!! the iphone!!

2007-01-10T11:01:00.000+01:00

Look at this beauty of technology coming this year from Apple.Check out the features on the official web.
Yes! I´m also a tech geek , I know you might think , "you should post more sketches, or animations" blablablih and you know what? , you´d be right!!

HNA teared apart by critics...

2007-01-08T16:22:00.000+01:00

Somehow I could smell it... since the first moment I was shown the leica reel.

"Happily N'Ever After is proof-positive that Europeans may have us beaten in soccer, wine and luxury cars, but they still can't make a decent 3-D cartoon"

...sight!...

30 already??

2006-12-14T12:52:00.000+01:00

Yes, 30 already!!, maybe most of you will say..." you´re still a baby, 30 is nothing..." Yeeeah , I know but, it is the big change for me.I still feel that there is so much to learn in life, and it feels weird for me to be 30 when I don´t even have a house of my own , nor a wife , nor a stable life. I don´t get the typical "old guy" kind of stuff, I keep doing the same stuff as I was when I was 23, animating , playing games, watching animated movies, moving from one city to another...

I say that because most people from my generation already are married, have houses, even kids.And I guess that causes me some kind of internal reflexions about my life... I don´t know...!!

If you happen to be in Mallorca...

2006-10-10T11:05:00.000+02:00

There´ll be an exhibition of majorquin ilustrators , in wich will be some original artwork of mine and of lots from my island cammerades. Including my good friend Pau www.escapula.com , Marcos Mateu http://marcosmateu.blogspot.com/ or Guillermo Sanna http://galeon.hispavista.com/guillermosanna/ to name a few of the guys I know.

Fishing with Dad!

2006-09-27T12:02:00.000+02:00

De pesca con Papa!

Jul 27, 2006 - 51 Photos

Picasa Web Album test. This is a test to post a link to my picasa web photo album.
If you don´t know it , Picasa is a free software from Google to browse and organize you pictures, it´s really fast and it has great features.Have a look here

I want this THING!!

2006-09-26T13:44:00.000+02:00

Seems like the perfect combination beetween the old days and modern technology in animation. I usually draw in my Wacom tablet and I got used to it. But I can´t wait to have something like this in my hands, just been able to look down where my hand and my pencil is as I draw.

By the way sorry about the lack of post lately.No real excuse , really, just lazyness.

Popstars at the beach

2006-07-27T14:04:00.000+02:00

This guy was next to us at the beach the other day and he WOULDN´T stop singing along with his little MP3 doing weird poses. It was a pain for the ears!! he looked like he was training for "Popstars" or the spanish "Operacion Triunfo"singing really bad songs badly !!

Funny though!

LaCruz

2006-07-27T13:58:00.000+02:00

Yet another Keytoon caricature. This is the guy who takes care of all the artists at the studio, he can get EVERYTHING for you, If you need a flat , he´ll find it for you, if you need coffee , he´ll get it, if you have tax problems he´ll sort everything out for you!!.

Multi-task, ultra-effective, David La Cruz!!

Blue

2006-07-27T13:56:00.000+02:00

Life Drawing

2006-07-27T13:51:00.000+02:00

My beautiful Elena posed for me on the beach the other day.Oh I missed life drawing!.

Mayordomo

2006-07-27T13:48:00.000+02:00

Mad Inventor

2006-07-27T13:45:00.000+02:00

Girly sketches

2006-07-19T13:18:00.000+02:00

My little tribute to pixar "Cars"

2006-07-19T12:25:00.000+02:00

Just did this in my sketchbook the other day. I love the simplicity and appeal of those cars designs. I specially love the "cuteness" in wich they are designed, specially "Sally" the female Porche.

I take this opportunity to say that I was really impressed with this movie , the way they managed to make believable breathing , living characters out of inanimate objects , is just jaw dropping.My most sincere congratulations to Lasseter and all the team involved in "Cars".

Fat

2006-07-19T12:24:00.000+02:00

Final Disney Channel spots

2006-06-27T18:59:00.000+02:00

Here are the animatics I did for four little spots in Disney channel Spain.These are done in Flash, just like the other silly animations I posted before.They where very useful to previsualize the whole thing and make changes on the fly. When they were fully approved by the client all the team used them as reference to move on to CG
Next to the animatic are the final spots beautifully rendered by Johnatan Catalan , and with great matte paintings by Toni Reyna.Character rigging is by Luis Sanjuan and modelling and supervision by Jaime Maestro.I also supervised animation in all of them.

This one was animated by David Cuevas

This is Johnatan Cuevas´s animation

This was animated by Alex Mateo

AAAnd this is the one I animated.

Hope you guys like it!!

Toni

2006-06-27T13:54:00.000+02:00

Another caricature of one of the Keytooners.

He´s the character/concept designer of the studio, check out his blog:

http://www.tonireyna.blogspot.com/

Cheerio!!

The Spa

2006-06-14T11:09:00.000+02:00

I know it´s stupid, I know it´s silly , I know it´s rough, but what the hell!!!.In beetwen projects I get the spare time to enjoy a bit of fun wacom doodling.

Hope you like it!

CARS TOYS!!

2006-06-04T19:14:00.000+02:00

Don´t you just love feeling like a small kid again?
This is what happened when somebody brought the "Cars"toys at the studio...

More "Lost"

2006-05-31T12:11:00.000+02:00

Charlie , Kate and Sawyer. Unfourtunely the series has stopped til October!! shiiit!! there´s still too much mystery and questions to be answered! . Can´t wait for season 03!

Straight ahead animation

2006-05-18T17:59:00.000+02:00

It´s been long since I don´t do this: simply animate , no planning, no pose-to-pose , simply one drawing after the other. I missed the freshness of it, so I took Macromedia Flash and doodled away!

"Lost"

2006-05-18T17:43:00.000+02:00

Some characters from the TV show "LOST". I´m hooked to that shit.

Do not litter in the park!

2006-05-17T20:16:00.000+02:00

To the beach again...

2006-05-17T20:09:00.000+02:00

"THEY´RE EVERYWHERE!!! I CAN´T STAND IT ANYMORE!!!"

This time I didn´t draw , just contemplate.

Last winter...

2006-05-17T20:01:00.000+02:00

I was riding bike to go to work everyday in freezing cold Madrid... I don´t miss those times too much.

Keytoon´s render guy

2006-05-17T18:12:00.000+02:00

He´s Johnny our render-lighting guy at Keytoon.He cut his bloddy hair after I did the caricature...

Bastard...!

The girls of Malvarosa beach

2006-05-10T17:01:00.000+02:00

In Valencia there is a huge beach, the Malvarosa.Last Sunday we went there with our sketchbooks in the hunt for beauty!.

Eing?

2006-05-10T16:55:00.000+02:00

Another sketch done during playblast render times...

Red haired girl

2006-05-07T23:20:00.000+02:00

Bearded fella

2006-05-07T23:04:00.000+02:00

There is one guy at the documentary "Dream on Sill dreamer"that inspired this sketch.

The documentary has some interesting interviews with the experiences of the last group of Disney traditional animators who one day were told to leave their desks.

Johnny

2006-05-07T22:56:00.000+02:00

Last year I designed this character for a friend of mine who wanted to model and rig a character in the spare time and , maybe in the future make a small short film with him. But , things got busy , specially moving to Berlin to work and the little project never happened.

Pity.

Rough...

2006-05-04T13:28:00.000+02:00

...very rough

Give me my fuckin clothes!!

2006-05-04T13:22:00.000+02:00

Don´t you hate when the washing machine just wont open???

Sleepy guy

2006-04-26T13:10:00.000+02:00

Just a silly sketch.

The Uli influence...

2006-04-26T12:29:00.000+02:00

I went to London last weekend and I visited Uli´s studio . If there is an animation heaven this must be it. At least in Europe!! , the place is full of amazing sculptures and beautiful drawings .And the man himself , he also inspires with his energy and great talent. Here is a little sketch I did on the plane back to Spain, clearly inspired in Uli´s style of drawing.

Gym Poster

2006-03-09T18:27:00.000+01:00

I did this just recently, is a poster for the gym next door! I know the founders since I´m seven years old!! They do martial arts and general fitness.
I used Flash to clean up the rough drawings to give the "manga" look I wanted for the lines and colors.

I like doing this small jobs, but I can´t wait to get started in animation again. I´m going to head to Valencia to a studio called Keytoon , www.keytoon.com . Have a look at their stuff it´s brilliant!. The thing about this new job is that I´m going to have to animate in 3dMax witch I hate..! but nevermind.

I´ve sent some reels up in Los Angeles but no answer yet, I guess I´m spending this summer in Spain.... yeeehooow!

Animated smilies

2006-02-15T12:34:00.000+01:00

I love doing those, feel free to download them and use them in your IM sofware, messenger or whaterver. Hope you like them!!

Cheers!!

The Place I was suposed to be...

2006-02-07T17:34:00.000+01:00

...in May this year and now all is turned down.Well nobody seems to know for sure the fate of the employers that were working on Toy Story 3 until last week.
I was meant to be part of the animation team so , now its jobhunting time again...
Who knows where I will end up in the next few months??? This is an unconfortable feeling I hope it alls gets clearer in the near future....!!

Cheers!!

Girl...

2006-01-24T02:45:00.000+01:00

I might get this in photoshop and render it some more.

The Real Joselito ...

2006-01-23T20:04:00.000+01:00

That's the real one !
... just observe the eyebrow naturally pointing up.Impossible to miss it when doing a caricature!!I tend to observe people a lot , sometimes too much without me being able to control myself, its a kind of impulsive thing.
He doesn't normally look this serious though.That's another thing , I also love to observe the actitude of people, just getting the features right is not enough. It's important to know the person you're drawing , that's why I don't really like drawing famous people so much. I like to register somebody that I knew and sort of take that essence and try to put it in that drawing.That's a lot more fun , but something that not everybody can apreciate, only the people who knows the "victim". Well I hope you liked the drawing anyways even if you don't know Jose!!

Bye!

Joselito el peluquero

2006-01-23T19:57:00.000+01:00

I'm very fund of doing this kind of caricatures, to people I know , friends , workmates etc. I will be posting some more of those.

He's Jose the hairdresser also friend of my mate Leo sanchez :http://www.leo-sanchez.com
He was pleased with the drawing.. well at least that's what he told me....

Problems posting

2006-01-20T17:31:00.000+01:00

Today I've been having problems posting images, I doing this post from Picassa because from the blogger site something goes wrong and just doesn't post my images.Seems to work well in Picassa.

I accidentally deleted the Wansee post , but there I leave you the image again.Cheers!!

Annecy

2006-01-19T21:34:00.000+01:00

Some amazingly beautiful french girls laying in the main green in fron of the Annecy animation festival building.We were waiting for the huge screen to start playing some animation shorts.

Cans

2006-01-19T12:18:00.000+01:00

This is something that I did in the London Animation School as a final project of a 6 month post graduate degree on animation. It was a great experience to learn in that small London basement.I still like it even though is a bit old already ( year 2000!)

Hope you like it!

2006-01-19T12:17:00.000+01:00

Here is a little test to post videos on this blog.Observe the agility, the grace, the beauty... the commanding voice you hear is from german talent Robert Kuczera, and the performer is no other than myself.
I used this as reference for a shot in "Happily N'ever After"

...eeem , ok , I promise I will post some animation as well, someday...

See ya!

And my first post will be about....

2006-01-19T02:59:00.000+01:00

ME!!! yes! look at my web , my lonely and forgotten website ! , with tons of stuff, not necessarily good stuff .... well , not even tons of it. but there they are.

http://www.danielpeixe.com

Thanks!

Blog up and running!!!

2006-01-19T02:38:00.000+01:00

After several test and long hours sweating, here you have!! the blog is up and running !...

Everybody seems to have this thing nowadays sooo , I decided it was about time to create my own little bloggie thingy. It wasn't enough with a website!! now people is specting more, more updates, more images, more posts!! That's a lot of work!! , Well I hope I can keep this up and running, updated with fresh stuff ( not like my website) and above all, I hope you guys like it.