 Thank you. Well, good morning everyone. I am Mauricio Flores. I'm a Mexican digital artist and I'm also the director of the Russell of Lips I'm here to tell you about our project, which as you may know, it is the production of a teaser for an animated feature But aside from that it is also an educational model because it happens that I am also a teacher so this Talk is going to be a combination of both art and education Which I believe is actually a pretty pretty powerful one, of course so Let me start by introducing these wonderful people. They are Carla Baskis and Andres Busso They are our school headmasters They returned to our country after graduating from Academy of Art in San Francisco and they founded the Sena animation school in Mexico City Initially it was this small place where you could attend courses and animation rigging, modeling, whatnot and it gradually has evolved into a very serious educational institution Surely nowadays it is one of the main choices for us Mexicans to study the art of animation without the necessity of living our beautiful country This is our logo. This is our school's logo I feel really proud of this story because I've had the privilege of being part of it since the early days of our school Mainly as an instructor and now for the last few years as the director of the animation studio We have an in-house animation studio, which is this one, the Sena animation studio Where we of course produce animation, but aside from it We also like to educate while producing it Okay, so there are three core concepts behind our studio Educate, collaborate and produce We like to call it the EDCA-PROD model It's designed to be a spinning wheel where everybody wins and How does this model actually work? Well we, excuse me, I just went forward in that we Select we recruit talented Students we then capacitate them and then we incorporate them into in a production environment I personally teach them solid art fundamentals and our friends From Studio Kuki are the ones who helped us teaching them Blender because as you should know Our school teaches on commercial software, but our studio Probably runs only on free and open software. Okay, so after doing some research on the web I I Went with CG Kuki because they had this beautiful learning flows thing going on which to me is this Really logical straightforward structured way of learning Blender So I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone involved in this wonderful Project CG Kuki, Pavle Caron, Wes Burke, Jonathan Williams and Kendra Mail and Timben Rudin and every single person behind this wonderful company Thank You CG Kuki. So Going back to our EDCA-PROD model the Educate part was covered our students already were learning. I Felt it the time to start collaborating came Finally came so we started pre-production of the teaser on March 2015 and and I Gathered together with all my students inside our school's conference room and I told them to close their eyes I Played some music on the computer and I started reading for them the story I wrote for the teaser Once this experience this experience finished they opened your eyes and I told them I want you to individually paint whatever you saw inside your mind Well, you were listening to the music and I was reading to you the story and This were the results of that experience with dims lights Thank you Hear me. Yes. Okay. So at the time we were doing this concept art phase I was the only professional working at our studio. So as workload began to increase it was obvious that I needed some help We hired a An amazing Story artist whom I knew from my very first job on the animation industry The great Victor Hernandez and I remembered his first day in our studio. I told him Victor, you know, since we are working on Since we are working with open and free tools these terms also apply for our project So here here's the story I wrote for the teaser. It is open So feel free to add your own delicious ingredients into it. And so he did We then continued working at full throttle on the sign and storyboarding. So I'm gonna show you what we did with this sign These lights Thank you. Well, then we did we had the privilege of hiring a A formidable artist. He is Javier Aventaño who was just returning from from his masters in also the the Academy of Arts in San Francisco And just as I opened the project for Victor, I opened the project also for Javier I told him, you know, Javier, here are our original designs, but they are open So feel free again to elaborate on top of them and bring your own fresh new ideas into our work. And so he did too The next big step we needed to take was to Turn our beautiful storyboard into a colorful animatic. So Javier Victor Cristóbal, which is one of the prominent students we recruited and myself joined forces together to create the following animatic I'm not gonna play all the animatic because I would be spoiling to you the end of our teaser But I'm sure you you will enjoy it a broad model. We were collaborating students and us professors teachers we're collaborating on this thing and Once we had our animatic done it was ready We decided it was time for us to start the next phase which was production. But before I I Before we started producing I Decided I needed a producer because I had no longer the intention to be director and producer as I as I've been through the whole Pre-production process. It's really exhausting. So I Grow to my beloved friend Mauricio Reuelta who at the time was working in Japan And I had to persuade him to come back to Mexico from the land of the rising Sun to work with us and Keep this thing going on Fortunately, he shared our in our enthusiasm for the project and he came back to Mexico to collaborate with us The first thing we did after his arrival was turning this Animatic into a 3d layout for our teaser. So let's take a look at it Okay, I'm gonna stop it there There was no no point in seeing everything All together again, right so Our Edke brought model was finally completed. We have educated capacitated our students We were collaborating together. We were producing the teaser for this film So Now before I show more Content of our teaser. I would like to tell you a bit about the story because we don't know anything about it, right? so the Russell of Leafs is intended to be a Quite emotional, but most of all honest story about redemption This story emerged from a deep darkness that surrounded me after experiencing a very tragic incident in my life and it was Right out from that from that darkness that our main character emerged. He is Julian and Every single character of our project is actually a metaphor Okay Julian is here to play the innocence role He of course then evolves through the whole movie into a multi-dimensional character But the core idea behind him is to symbolize The innocence we all have back in our childhood days, you know, so here's Julian Then we have of course his mother Lucy Loving and charming mother sweet and we have Roman who happens to be his strict firm rigid pragmatic father They three together come Come together into something I'd like to call the equilibrium. Okay, they live in a Country house of some European country. There's actually a good reason for why they live far from town or from far from the city But I won't rebuild that to you because it's a very important plot point in our story So I wouldn't like to spoil it to spoil anything. Okay, then we have the murmurs this funny little clank clanky creatures Built from our protagonist hands with nature's elements and some things he steals away from his father's workshop They are Julian's Playmates and imaginary beloved friends We have Lummi, Lily, Bucky, Hermie and Button Okay, so the last character I'm gonna mention at least in this conference because of course there are many other characters for the film Is our other main character which are the Leafs The Leafs are actually the most powerful character in this story They are the strongest metaphor of our story and They act as the conjunctive element which brings together this whole epic adventure for redemption. Okay This character this place itself or shows itself or built itself in many forms and we now can see it as a bird, but Well, later you will know what happens to the Leafs. Okay That's everything I'm gonna say about the story right now. I want I don't want to spoil anything I think we have a really strong story here a really good one and I won't spoil it to you I want to leave the ending of our teaser To to to the point where it's finished, right? Then something great happened Ricardo Carrera joined our team He when I when I met him he was only 18 years old I was working as a reading supervisor for another project and he was this young man with Only 18 years of age and he came to our studio And he said, you know what? I don't know much about animation, but I want to learn so he didn't want to college We embrace him as a trainee and I'm glad to say and I'm really proud to say that now at the age of 26 Years he is our animation supervisor and it happens That today is his birthday. So please join me in giving him some some love and let's Once we well now that we're talking about animation, how about we show you some of the progress we've been doing on on animation? It's it's far from finished, but I think it's it's it's worth showing. Okay, so let's have a look at it I have to stop it right here because I'm running out of time. There's a lot of animation being done right now, but Time is Nearly done. Okay, so If you are all echoing this beautiful melody inside your heads by now because we've already heard it a few times There's only one guy we could Hold responsible for this and this is Mauricio Padillo our music composer. I know he's watching us live So thank you Mauricio. You're doing a terrific job. I also want to thank my team my whole team our whole team Oh, that's gorgeous This is us look at this beautiful picture is it's for me. It's the culmination of this model. I've been talking about the whole Conference, right? We are in structures and students together conforming this beautiful family Happily working on the teaser for the film. So I would like to say hi to the students who are Obviously watching us live in Mexico We love you guys. We're really proud of you. You've done a great job Finally feel free to contact us We we are now starting to Think about how are we gonna render this thing? We have on one side cycles, but I'm not a huge fan of realism or the a pixory dream work see look I'm not going for that. I think we should maybe pull it to the more stylized to the finished look So maybe use open GL and few tricks to to obtain that look and now that there's Evie and the birch of the horizon I don't know maybe open the project for if it development We would like to remain open in this part of rendering the project and being open means to us that if any of you who Are here attending this presentation are interested in collaborating with us by any means please speak to us let's have a talk and maybe we can collaborate and keep this thing going so finally I would like to thank Tom because the part of the story came from an inspiration of a tragic incident, but the part of taking the time to Do this teacher with students and sharing my knowledge was inspired by this man right here So I would like to give him a big round of applause because he's the seed of this Okay, okay. Well, thank you all