synstudio-blog

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MOVIE SUGGESTION OF THE WEEK: THE GARDEN OF WORDS

I’ve had this movie on the back of my head for a long time but the reason why I waited so long to watch it and write a post about it is because I’m not a fan of love stories. But I cannot wait any longer. This movie is just visually breath taking.

The Garden of Words was written, directed and edited by Makoto Shinkai, animated by CoMix Wave Films and distributed by Toho. The movie was made using a combination of epic hand-drawn animation, rotoscopy and CGI. Half of the backgrounds were done using photographs over which Shinkai painted in Photoshop. The other half were fictional locations. The result is more than impressive. 

I will not say anything about the plot of the movie and will let you discover and enjoy it yourselves. What I will talk about more is Makoto Shinkai, the talented japanese director and former graphic designer.  He has been called the “new Miyazaki” in several reviews, comparison which he himself calls an “overestimation”. His repertoire also includes Children Who Chase Lost Voices, 5 Centimeters per Second, The Place Promised in Our Early Days among other titles. What pushed him on the path of directing is the animation short She and her Cat he released in 1999 which won several awards. 

But enough talking, click here to check out the trailer of The Gardens of Words. 

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LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION? ROADKILL REDEMPTION BY KARL HADRIKA

This animation short feels very different, which is why I am presenting it to you. The animation is way quicker than what we are used to and very exaggerated and expressive. We also have the adorable raccoon ghost that seems to be 2D animated to really sell it and a very strong story line. This proves that a good animation and story trumps crazy graphics and over the top VFX anytime!

Karl Hadrika has a Tumblr page so why don’t you go follow him and show some love people?

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COLLABORATION BETWEEN PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIO AND KHANACADEMY - FREE TUTORIALS FROM PIXAR

You are reading this right. Pixar has decided to release a bunch of free tutorials on modeling, animation, rendering and much more to encourage the up and coming 3D artists. What a great time to work in digital art!

Click here to check it out!

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SYN STYDIO PODCAST: SHADDY SAFADI AND EYTAN ZANA INTERVIEW

Artstation has released our latest and most fun Syn Studio interview yet. 

Shaddy Safadi and Eytan Zana have been working as a team for more than 5 years on the visual development of some of the industry’s most acclaimed video games.

Shaddy is an art director and concept artist with 14 years of experience working in the games’ industry. His designs can be seen in Naughty Dog’s award winning Last of Us and Uncharted Series. He recently started his own concept art studio, One Pixel Brush. Under Shaddy’s art direction, One Pixel Brush has created key designs for titles such as Bioshock Infinite,Ryse: Son of Rome and Tom Clancy’s The Division. Shaddy is also an experienced teacher and sought after workshop instructor all around the world.

Eytan Zana is a senior concept artist at Naughty Dog. His work includes Last of Us, all of the Uncharted series and illustrations for Magic the Gathering. Additionally he’s been widely recognized as a master of digital painting and his work has been featured at E3, by Imagine FX and other major industry publications.

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MPC MONTREAL OPEN HOUSE

VFX artist in the making? Want a get a sneak peek of the magical Hocus Pocus taking place at MPC? Well you are in luck as they are hosting an open house event on Sept. 30th.

It’s a great opportunity to meet the different teams, ask questions and make sure they remember you for when you apply for a job.

Click here to be directed to the link and register.

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ARTISTIC OBSTACLES: THE VALLEY OF THE SUCK

We’ve all had artistic block. Well here is a strategy to get through it. Enjoy!

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LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION? - BROKEN: ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS BY THE BROKEN TEAM

This short will hit you right in the feels. It’s without a doubt the most heartbreaking and beautiful game of Rock, Paper, Scissors ever, portraying the sacrifices one is willing to make in the name of love. 

What I love the most is the scissor character. The design and the symbolism is very strong with this one. Absolutely magnificent.

Broken: Rock, Paper, Scissors is a student short film produced at Ringling College of Art & Design by Garrett O’Neal, Gang Maria Yi and Bryan Locantore.

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LOST CIVILIZATION CONTEST SOME OF OUR FAVORITE SUBMISSIONS

The contest has officially ended. A big thank you to all the artist who have participated. Here are some of our favorite submissions:

Petra by Aurelien Fournier

The Lost Sanctrum of Shiva by Riley Dannenbring

Valley of the Dust Riders by Przemek Duda

The Entrance to the Slavic Underworld by Radomir Markovic

Object m86 by Igor Bulygin

Forgotten Era by Julian Hellwig

Temple of Ancient Ones by Timur Kvasov

Sacred Geometricians by Alex Boudreau O’Dowd

Observatory Mayans by Sinitsa Nikola

Entrance to Atlantis by Darius Kalinauskas

We will announce the three winners shortly. Good luck to all the participants!

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MTG CARDS BY EYTAN ZANA

As a MTG enthusiast, I am twice as excited to welcome Eytan Zana to Syn Studio for the Concept Art Master Class we are hosting in july. For those who are unfamiliar with his work, here are a few of the card he has created art for. Urban Evolution Foil is absolutely gorgeous! My favorite though is Soul of the Harvest Foil, probably because it was by far the hardest one to find too. All I need now is to put my hands on Tectonic Edge FNM 2012 and I will be happy.

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Here’s a new personal painting! I’ll be going over the entire process of this painting as part of the workshop I’m doing with Shaddy Safadi in July, hope to see some of you there!

High-res: http://tinyurl.com/qxl85cm http://synstudio.ca/concept-art-masterclass/

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E3: OUR IMPRESSIONS

It’s the 90′s all over again! Doom, Shenmue, Final Fantasy VII, Star Fox... all the game that only 90′s kids can remember are coming back! 

Playstation 4 is stealing the show Although Xbox had a great conference, the fact that most of the highly anticipated games will be (temporarily or not) exclusive to PS4 makes it the favorite this year at the E3 convention. Not only will Shenmue III, Final Fantasy VII Remake and The Last Guardian be exclusive to Playstation, Sony also announced that Playstation users will be the first to have access to the maps pack for Black Ops III.

The Wii U is having difficulty? Unfortunately, Nintendo had a disappointing conference with very few titles announced and close to no major announcement. Super Mario Maker seems pretty cool but Star Fox Zero is not all that exciting and Blast Ball did not get a very good reaction, not because the game sucks but because we were all expecting a new “real” Metroid game for the Wii U. Let’s hope they will come back strong next year. 

Very slow progress for virtual reality The technology has evolved, some bugs were corrected but very little fully playable games were presented and developers are not hiding the fact that more time is needed for development, fine tuning and tests. We will have to wait a little more but I’d rather wait for a great product rather than get a faulty one now.

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SYN STUDIO PODCAST - JUNG PARK

In this episode of the Syn Studio podcast, we spoke with Jung Park, Lead Concept Artist at Sony Santa Monica working on God Of War Ascension. He’s also designed and illustrated for Lineage, Guild War 2, Transformers 4, Hawken, Battle Los Angeles and Magic the Gathering, among others. We spoke about his experience at Midway, on Lineage and as a co-founder and instructor of Red Engine Studios, a top art school in Los Angles.

Enjoy!

Sponsored by Wacom

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LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION? - LOCKED UP BY GABRIEL GRAPPERON

Completely different style this time, I present to you a clever short produced by young CG artist Gabriel Grapperon in his third year at Supinfocom.

The environment is beautiful and the animation is well executed but what inspires me the most is the idea, which is pretty simple and yet the end result is impressive! This comes to show that when it comes to ideas and plot for an animation short, less is more because it is very difficult to tell a whole story in a minute and a half.

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LOOKING FOR INSPIRATION? - CONTRE TEMPS BY THE CONTRE TEMPS TEAM

Submerged city, obsession with the passing of time, beautiful environments, this CG short is just candy to the eye. A beautiful piece of art born from the collaboration of  Jérémi Boutelet, Thibaud Clergue, Gaël Megherbi, Tristan Ménard, Camille Perrin and Lucas Veber at Supinfocom Arles. 

Music by Nathan Blais & Sylvain Livenais.

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E3 - WHAT WE’RE ECSTATIC ABOUT

Who has two thumbs and is beyond excited about Battlefront? ME! Sure, it is still in development... but from what I’ve seen in the multiplayer footage, it looks absolutely beautiful and very promising. 

Mark the date everyone! Because on November 17th, thousands of people will get nerdgasms as Star Wars Battlefront will be released for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. In the mean time, who’s down for a Star Wars marathon!? 

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WHERE ARE OUR STUDENTS AT? - CATCHING UP WITH DENG YI-JIA LIU 

We had the chance to count among our students Deng Yi-Jia Liu for about two years. What is he up to now? he is working as a Concept Artis at Triotech Amusement Inc.

Here we are showing some of his personal work but you ABSOLUTELY MUST take a look at his portfolio, his ArtStation or his Deviant Art, or all three at the same time to gaze upon the masterpieces he has created for Triotech. He is crazy talented and will continue to produce jaw-dropping art for a while so don’t let him out of your sight!

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FEATURED STUDENT ARTWORK - MICHAEL DAVINI

Here’s a little sneak peek of what is going down in our exterior environments class! Looks hella good!

Sponsored by Wacom