Walking dead comic

Looking for more information on the latest Extension upgrade released for Maya 2013 this week, youre at the right place going through the help files (F1). Its nice to see the guys at Autodesk stuck an image of their Hyperspace Madness project up there. I just love it.

For those of you not aware, Autodesk created their own little 10-minute shooter game, which was revealed at the GDC this year to showcase their Gameware products. Its a so-called proof-of-concept game, which looks somewhat like Insomniacs Ratchett & Clank and gives you all kinds of information on Autodesks Gameware tools while playing. It looked really awesome. Check out the interview with Frank Delise below and have a look for your self.

Animation software producer Toon Boom has announced that LuxAnimation is creating a new animated TV-series based on Le Petit Spirou, the popular Belgian comic book series by Tome (Philippe vandevelde) and Janry (Jean-Richard Geurts).78 Episodes will be produced of 7 minutes length each, using the Toon Boom Harmony pipeline. The French TV channel M6 and RTBF, the public broadcasting organisation of French Belgium, will be the first to air the show in the spring of 2012.

Le Petit Spirou, or Little Spirou is a comic books series with short stories about the trials and tribulations of childhood, featuring a young adolescent Spirou, a tongue-in-cheeck spin-off of the original adventurous Spirou stories, started by Tome & Janry with a volume of shorter Spirou stories collected in La Jeunesse de Spirou (Spirous Youth), the 38th book in the series published in 1987 by Dupuis. Nineteen books have been published so far, including four Little Spirou presents comic books. While Tome and Janry have stopped creating stories for the original series in 1998 after fourteen books, they continued creating Little Spirou short stories.












Above: two covers of the comic books. Cest pas de ton age (Thats not something for your age!) and Tiens-toi droit (stand up straight!) published in 2000 and 2010.

For the animated series, LuxAnimation (based in Doncols, Luxembourg) works together with HLC in Paris and Dreamwall in Marcinelle. The series is produced by Léon Perahia (Dupuis) and Eric Anselin (LuxAnimation) and directed by Virginie Jallot. Although the studio has only been founded as early as 2002 by Lilian Eche and Ariane Payen, their list of animation productions is very impressive, including Iron Man, The Animated Series (2007), RobotBoy (2005) and the CGI animated theatrical features Dragon Chasers (2008), Tim Burtons 9 (2009) and Luke and Lucy: The Texas Rangers(2009), based on the longrunning popular Belgian comic book series Suske & Wiske by Willy Vandersteen and his studio.





Above: The creative team at LuxAnimation. In 2006 the company was acquired by the MoonScoop Group, the French company that also owns Mike Young Productions in L.A. (Voltron: the third dimension, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, Bratz and Clifford, the big red dog).












Above: Animation on 9 started with LuxAnimation and Attitude Studio in Luxembourg and ended with Arc Productions (then known as Starz Animation) in Toronto, Canada. It was produced by Tim Burton and Russian director Timur Bekmambetov. Directed by Shane Acker, it is based on his animated short by the same name, a student project at the UCLA Animation Workshop which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005. Bekmambetov himself became very succesful in 2008 when he turned the Top Cow comic book Wanted (written by Mark Millars with art by J.G. Jones) into a hit action movie starring Angelina Jolie and James McAvoy.

Spirou: past and present.

In 1984, French publisher Dupuis chose Tome & Janry to succeed the team of Nic Broca and Raoul Cauvin, who had created three books in the Spirou comic book series. Popularised by Belgian authors Jijé (Joseph Gillain) and André Franquin between 1943 and 1968, the original character was conceived in 1938 by Rob-vel (Robert Velter) for Dupuis famous comic magazine Spirou (Which is still published today). Velter himself had worked operating the elevator at the London Ritz Charlton as a young man and thus created his character working as a bellhop too. Up to today, Spirou remains dressed that way throughout the series. When Jijé started working on the series in 1943, after Dupuis had aqcuired the rights, he added the character Fantasio, Spirous best friend and fellow adventurer. Another important character, the Marsupilami, was introduced after Jijé handed the series to André Franquin, who was then his assistent.












Above: cover for the first comic book published in 1950 and the fourth book, which introduced Franquins longtailed yellow Marsupilami in 1952 (right).

Franquin, who like Tintin creator Hergé has a god-like status in Europe, created a total of 20 books in the series, cooperating on several titles with fellow artists Will (Willy Maltaite), Greg (Michel Regnier) and Jidéhim, Jean Roba, Gos and smurfs creator Peyo (Pierre Culliford).
Jean-Claude Fournier took the series upon him after Franquin retired and created nine more books between 1970 and 1980. After Tome & Janry, the comic was again created by several other creators, including the teams of Morvan & Munuera and Yoann & Vehlman. Below: All three covers of La Face cachée Du Z (The shadow side of Z), the 51st and lastest book by Yoann and Vehlmann, released on October 21.

If your interested in designing Multi-media projects, if your into the latest Flash developments or just a New media geek make sure to attend the FITC in Amsterdam March 7-10 2011!

The FITC is an event that brings together the best and brightest Flash developers and gives all Multi-media producers the chance to catch up with the latest developments. And of course, there is the infamous after party!
FITC (Flash in the Can) Started out in 2002 as as Flash Festival in Canada. Today, is organised around the world, from Toronto to Tokyo and LA with over 20,000 attendees.

The programming of the event has diversified a bit since, moving onto motion graphics and mobile technology as they put it themselves: The event covers the coolest and best the industry has to offer !
The FITC covers presentations by several speakers for beginners to the advanced designers. Couple of people attending the FITC to bring you the latest insights this year are Tommy Pallota (producer of
A Scanner Darkly),  Carlos Ulloa, designer of Papervision 3D (which enables designers to bring 3D content with Adobe Flash) MK12, Kansas City based designers collective who worked on Quantum of Solace and of course GMUNK, design lead for Graphic Design & Animation for Tron Legacy.



Also speaking at the FITC 2011 is Valentijn Destoop, founder of Little Miss Robot, who created and engineered the digital version of Belgiums favourite contemporary comic series Suske & Wiske 311 (De Stuivende Stad). The I-Pad edition featured sound and FX and was part of the Special edition, and could be downloaded as an app. They registered 100.000 downloads within the first week.
At their presentation, Destoop and Thomas Joos will give you a look behind the scenes and show you how they created their killer app! So, If youre gonna go, make sure to be there! (their presentation is the second day, March 9 at 10:00 AM).

For a full schedule of the FITC Amsterdam this year check out the full details here. For more on all speakers at this years event go here! Check the vid beneath for some of last years highlights !

In the 1940s Morris, Franquin, Jijé and worked together at the same studio. in 1946 they even traveled to the US and Mexico together while working for Spirou magazine from overseas. Beside Spirou, Dupuis also published Le Moustique, a weekly TV and radio magazine that also had lots of news and other informative articles.

The Belgian comic authors frequently created gags and covers for the magazine. Tilleux even published his comic César in it from December 31, 1959 until July 28, 1966 and Morris also had two comics published in 1954, Lucky Luke and Phil Wire (Lucky Luke contre Phil Defer) followed by the short Lucky Luke et Pilule, both collected in 1957 in his eighth book from Dupuis.

Here are some of the rare covers I was able to find. First some that were created by André Franquin (click to enlarge):