Personal Information

I am Dwayne Elahie. I work at a video game company called Artificial Mind & Movement (A2M.) I am currently the lead technical animator for The Ironman Project (the video game for the movie for coming out May 2, 2008, for PS2 and Nintendo Wii.) I am also an Animation Mentor animation student. I live in Montreal, Canada, the video game hub. Besides for the art of animation, I am a self taught CG Artist. Prior to 3D, I was studying Chemical Engineering at McGill University. I prior to Chemical Engineering, I graduated in Health Science at Marianopolis College. I love CG because it is best of both worlds: science and art. I read a lot of CG related books on various topics, lighting, modeling, etc... I especially love both rigging and animation. I think I think I have a knack for rigging because of my technical background. However, I realized quickly animation is not something that can be learned from a book, so I applied for Campus Ubisoft 3D Animation Program in the year 2006. Campus Ubisoft is a great school that teaches both production techniques (modeled after Ubisoft's) and animation, the art. Graduates are production-ready, straight out of school. I have successfully completed the program as well as a double internships offered within the program with the position as technical director for two projects:

Technical Director for Half-Life 2 Mod - La Nuée des Diables (Full Feature Video Game)
(60+ person team consisting of animators, modelers, and level designers)
View trailer for La Nuée des Diables

Techinical Director Canadian Nationwide Television Advertisement - Enfants Retour
(~10 person production team consisting of animators, modelers)
View television advertisement.

View my final demo reel from Campus Ubisoft.

I work at Artificial Mind & Movement - Lead Technical Animator – Ironman Video Game Project for PS2 and Wii

definitely one of the best companies to work for in Montreal. Everybody here is talented. The environment is relaxing, the projects are great...and it is fun. What more can you ask for :) I rigged every character in the game and animated the entire animation set for one of the bosses (as well as other animations,) created animation tools/character graphic user interfaces/production specific MEL scripts for this project. All without every needing to do any overtime :) During my time here, the company allowed me to go to Ed Hook seminar, SIGGRAPH 2007, and //Adapt 2007. I also get internal training because I might help define pipeline for future projects. Training included so far, advance MEL script, animation techniques (taught by Emile Ghorayeb,) Motion Builder workflow integration (taught by Marc Beaudoin, he worked on Motion Builder at Autodesk.)

If you want to work here, contact me and I will see if I can put in a good word for you ;)

I cannot talk any more on the project until the movie is released :(

Animation Mentor - My Current School

Currently, I am a student at Animation Mentor. My mentor is Elliot Roberts (http://imdb.com/name/nm1677150/). The school is truly amazing and the community is great, lively, and ethusiastic. Compared to my last school, Campus Ubisoft, the cirriculum and a lot of the assignments are similar for the foundation and body mechanics sections. They branch off where Animation Mentor focuses on acting, planning for short films, animating to camera things to that nature. Campus Ubisoft focused on production techniques by simulating a real work environment, working closely with different departments (level designers, modelers, programmers to make sure what you are doing is exportable to the game,) working with limitations, and animating for all camera angles. I went to SIGGRAPH 2007 and met A LOT of animation mentor students. I went to Animation Mentor party they held at SIGGRAPH 2007. Here is a word from Bobby Beck at the Animation Mentor party.

BOBBY BECK VIDEO

Campus Ubisoft – Jean-François Malouin (my former animation teacher)

They say there is a fine line between genius and insanity...I think JF erased it. I must say he is truly a talented individual with a well defined workflow and great understanding of both the artistic and technical side of CG animation. I definitely learned a lot about animation through his critiques, insight and tips. He kind of reminds me of myself in some ways where he seems to be doing a billion-and-one things at the same time. I used to think he put gel in his hair to get it to stick up like that, now I believe his hair sticks up because he is running all over the place doing one project or another. His most recent CG project is a short film, entitled “Jambalaya au diable” that is (at the time of this writing) competing in a Radio-Canada contest (http://www.rcinet.ca/rci/fr/concours.asp?pauseatstart=1) . At this time, you can view the film. Please note, that this 5 minute plus film was done in a month while Jean-François was working full time. The production value is insane. I have no idea how that is possible. I animated a couple of small shots in there, but the production, planning, idea...that's all him. It can be misleading when you are a student under him with no work experience. You get the impression that everyone in the industry is at this level, I can assure you the majority is not. Campus Ubisoft is a great school and I would recommend it to anyone. One last note on the school, it is completely in French. That was a huge challenge for me since I am anglophone, but I think it is worth the extra effort.

//Adapt Conference – Emile Ghorayeb

This guy is a monster. He really doesn't stop at all. He is always doing something. Emile (http://www.emiliog.com/) is CEO and co-founders of //Adapt and Digital04 Animation. He is also the person who interviewed me for my current position as lead technical animator for the Ironman project at the company, Artificial Mind & Movement. He is an amazing animator, (formerly at Dreamworks for Shrek 2, Madagascar, Over the Hedge, and Shrek the Third.) I attended a two day animation training he held where he went over animation techniques and workflows. It just so happens to be identical to how we were taught at Campus Ubisoft by Jean-François Malouin, pose-to-pose and keyframe the entire body. That way, it is quicker to get approve, super-easy to change timing and to edit sections without ruining the rest of your animation. Overall, Emile is a super great person. Last year, he let me use one of his characters, fully rigged, for a lecture on video games and animation I had to give for the McGill university chapter of NSBE. For SIGGRAPH 2007, we happen to be on the same plane (1 sit a part) traveling to San Diego. I met up with them a few times during the week for dinner and the Softimage party. Definitely a cool person. He also mentored at the Dreamworks – FJORG!, Iron Animator Competition, while wearing the viking hat the entire time....good times.

Acting for Animators - Ed Hooks

Ed Hooks finally came to Montreal and my company sent us to his seminar he was supposed to stay for a day, but the demand was so high he stayed for 3 days. He did some pretty amazing excersises. One of which was he would take two people from the audience and ask them to walk by each other. But...he would tell each person who they are supposed to be (i.e. A king, a servant...) As they pass by each other, even if they didn't say anything to each other, you can tell who is who and their status relative to each other. For example, an excited servant would bow in the presence of a king while a king might not acknowledge the servant. It would be weird if a king stop what he was doing and acknowledged or even bowed back. Things like that amongst other things to denote the thought process of a character or how facial expression reads. It is really good stuff.

Aaron Holly

You cannot animate a character if you do not have a character to animate with (that sounds confusing...) Being mostly self-taught in CG (accept for animation,) I read a lot of books on rigging a mesh. Aaron Holly's (http://www.fahrenheitdigital.com/) techniques are definitely some of the best available if you want to get great deformations for your character. He is really a great guy, very willing to discuss new techniques and offer help. Prior to using Maya while being the lead technical animator for the Ironman Project, for PS2 and Wii, I was working on an internship as a technical director for a Half-Life 2 mod at Campus Ubisoft using 3ds Max. Aaron's techniques help me port over a lot of my maxscripting and rigging knowledge form 3ds Max to MEL scripting and rigging in Maya.

Kwesi Davis

I met Kwesi Davis in Boston 2005. There was a National NSBE conference for engineers, I attended representing the Chemical Engineering department at McGill university (the department paid 100% of my traveling expenses and accommodations, I went for a week for free, that was really cool!!!) Kwesi Davis works for DreamWorks Animation SKG as a Production Engineer/Senior Level TD. He had a presentation at the NSBE conference on the creation of a CG film. I was inspired because at the time, I was only reading 3d books that were on sale in the subway (when, for example, a new version of a software like 3ds max version 6 came out, a book for 3ds max version 3 that once cost 80 dollars cost only 2 dollars, so I bought a lot of cheap books on various software and read them all.) When I saw his presentation, I was really inspired because I actually understood everything he was saying (even the acronym NURBS, non-uniform rational bezier-spline, since that was the modeling style Dreamworks was doing at the time for Shrek.) I .I would say Kwesi is a very “on-point” kind of person and can multi-task really efficiently (I don't think he sleeps.) If he says he'll call you at 8 o'clock, at exactly 8 o'clock he will call.

Recently, I've been working on a great independent project by a California based digital arts collective called Fear Not Films. The project, Take Too Long, is a 3D animated short film that deals with the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. Fear Not Films is founded by Kwesi Davis. This project, Take Too Long, recently won the Seahorse Award for the Best Short Screenplay at the 2007 Moondance International Film Festival (http://www.moondancefilmfestival.com/45-Winners.html) The project is pretty cool, I get to work with a lot of very talented people remotely. One of them is an Animation Mentor student like me, but in a more advanced class.