A Doggy Bag from Supinfocom

[flv:http://motionographermedia.com/supinfocom/doggybag.flv 468 374]

Three students from France’s Supinfocom school—Guillaume Cassuto, Thomas Moine and Sylvain Perlot—have produced another fine CG short in their school’s tradition of fine CG shorts.

“Doggy Bag” is a macabre tale of the comically surreal lengths two men will go just to get a decent meal. Snappy animation, excellent lighting and inspired character design round out the rollicking narrative.

We’ve posted work from other Supinfocom graduates before, and I’ve always been curious about why that school, along with Gobelins and ESMA, seem to produce so many talented students.

For a little insight, I asked Guillaume Cassuto about the making of “Doggy Bag” and about his experience at Supinfocom in general. His answers are inspiring. In short, it’s about ideas and collaboration, not tools and technical skill.

1. How long did it take you to create the film?
We were three students, and we had two years to learn the software and produce the movie.

During the first year, we focused on learning 3D basics while we developed the story, produced a few storyboards and a first 2D animatic.

The second year was dedicated to production. We defined the pipeline, shared the work, learned the principles of animation and we made a 3D animatic used to lead the production, which really started in January. Then, we had six months to produce the short.

2. What was the most difficult part of the filmmaking process?
I think that definitely the most difficult part of the filmmaking process is the writing. It may seem clichéd, but it really is.

Precisely, it’s keeping your mind fresh and clear, which is, in my view, the hardest part, especially when you spend almost two years thinking about the same characters, same shots, and worse, the same jokes!

3. What software and hardware did you use?
We used 3ds Max, Photoshop, After Effects and Avid Express as a basic software set. We had no particular hardware; we did the whole short on just our three machines.

4. In your opinion, why does your school produce so many talented graduates?
I’ve tried to figure this one many times! First, I think there’s a bit of modesty to show, considering that many other schools are producing great short movies each year. Just in France we have Gobelins and ESMA.

I don’t know for the other schools, but as far as Supinfocom is concerned, I think three things are essential:

First is the selection of the students, which is focused on your ideas and your creative influences, not your technical skills at all. Techniques you can learn from scratch in two years, but the passion for filmmaking, the ideas—you’ve got to have that first if it’s going to grow at school.

Second is that, by being on a tight schedule, we all learned how to go to the more efficient solution, not the most difficult or most technical. And most of the time it was the really simple solution that worked better and faster!

Third is the time we spend all together. Really! The last year we spent 12 hours a day at the beginning and 24 at the end—all together, sharing ideas, solutions, motivating each other. It’s like a family: we eat, we work, we even sleep at school!

Its not very hygienic, but when it comes to making a short movie, it helps a lot, more than powerful machines and new plugins. When someone knows something, everybody knows…well, as far as work is concerned, I hope!

Thank you to everybody that helped us doing this movie, by eating or sleeping next to us! We hope that everybody will enjoy the movie at least as much as we enjoyed doing it. Thank you for watching!

Visit the official Doggy Bag site

About the author

Justin Cone

/ justincone.com
Together with Carlos El Asmar, Justin co-founded Motionographer, F5 and The Motion Awards. He currently lives in Austin, Texas with is wife, son and fluffball of a dog. Before taking on Motionographer full-time, Justin worked in various capacities at Psyop, NBC-Universal, Apple, Adobe and SCAD.

4 Comments

Ramin

Nice job guys, beeing a student myself its really inspiring for me to see your work and read about how you achieved it. I especialy like the animation techinques. Thumbs up!

ochyming

Lovely!
The kind that makes me think, Hey you can do it, even though you are all by yourself.

Thank you!

dhanai

I enjoyed this, I liked the animation of the pup.

kevinhyshen

very useful interview

Comments are closed.