Are there any plug-ins you wouldn't be without?

Aurélien: Bandsaw… err… I don't really know what LightWave looks like without plenty of plug-ins running… :)

Loïc: In Modeler I use 3DD-PointRail Selector, Bevel ++, EdgeBevel, EdgeTool and Poz Extender a lot. In Layout, umm, Follower… I can't think of anything else.

Before we go onto specifics, I should inform our non-French readers of what exactly a "morpion" is. I'm not going to use a translation of the word, because it has three definitions in French: medically speaking, a morpion is the kind of crab-louse that you might get when you get "friendly" with someone who isn't overly nice, but colloquially it also means the game of noughts and crosses or tic-tac-toe; or a brat (because it's something small that irritates). Obviously, it was a good choice for a scratchcard kind of game…

Aurélien: In effect, the work was to translate the 2D designs that had already been done into a supple 3D mesh. That took some time and resulted in plenty of test morpions…

What did you do in the animation of the morpions?

Aurélien: At the start, we needed to define the characters for the situations they were in. With Loïc, we recorded ourselves. Then we made 3D animatics to place the camera and pose the morpions during the animations. Once we (and the clients) were happy with the animatics, we called on the team and some friends to finalise the animations.

Loïc: I did a bit of the modelling and some of the animation. There was also a lot to do on the pre-production side. Aurélien and I make drawings of the characters and the environments, then the storyboard.

Which do you prefer: modelling, texturing or animation?

Aurélien: I like all three! In addition to the role of director I took pleasure in modelling a few bits of the scenery and animating some parts.

Loïc: I love modelling and animation. It's a real pleasure to model in LightWave. At college, I learned a different 3D package and it nearly drove me mad modelling in it. Of course, I quickly went back to modelling in LightWave, and thanks to the import/export plug-ins I could easily load those LightWave objects in the 3D software that we used at college.

For animation, I think that LightWave is a bit behind. I really only started animating in LightWave when it reached version 6.5 or 7 (I don't remember which!), once the graph editor was done in OpenGL and you could parent both bones and objects together…

I saw your animation (Anti-Puce 2000) at SIGGRAPH 2000. How did you come to be there?

Aurélien: It was our final year animation created with Loïc and two other friends: Sebastien Ebzant and Benjamin Lauwick. It was made at Supinfocom in 2000 and the school sent it around different competitions.

Loïc: The fact that you saw it at SIGGRAPH is thanks to the school which took it upon itself to enter it in for loads of festivals.

Have you got some kind of thing going on with creepy crawlies? After all, I've seen fleas (in Anti-Puce 2000) and lice (in the Morpion ads for Française des jeux)?

Aurélien: Hehe… perhaps in a past life?

Loïc: When I was really, really small I loved walking on all fours around the house — maybe it stayed at the bottom of my subconscious, besides, those little monsters are really cute!

Thanks for taking time out to talk to NewTek Europe guys!