Michael Cawood - Director's Posts - Devils Angels and Dating

Film-making tips on Artella

2015-07-24T18:32:49.000Z

I gave some tips on the Artella Blog.

http://blog.artella.com/post/123889131956/distributed-projects-devils-angels-dating…

Interview with Bobb Strongman

2015-02-28T18:00:00.000Z

To celebrate 'Devils, Angels & Dating' reaching 2 Million views on YouTube, we wanted to check in on our talented team members to see where they are and what they've been up to since they worked on the film. This is a conversation with, Animated Filmmaker, Bobb Strongman.

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.
I wrote some shaders for the film and worked on some of the tests for the light rays.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

It helped me move forward with my own animation project. I was looking for a way of creating an online team to produce an animated short and the production process Mike was using on Devils, Angels and Dating seemed to fit. It's been very encouraging to follow the success that the film has had.

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Not directly although I've done a lot more texture work since creating the shaders for Devils.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I work as a freelance animator, compositor and VFX artist in London for companies such as Disney Channel, ITV, Cartoon Network and Smoke & Mirrors - a variety of things from children's animations, channel indents and commercials to compositing work on a music video for Iggy Azalea and Rita Ora.

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

I've worked on a few shorts and I designed and animated a 15 minute film for The Victoria and Albert Museum. I'm also continuing to work on my own animation project, "The Gondolier's Dog". I'm using a similar production process to that which Mike used on Devils. It's very much two steps forward, one step back but it is progressing. The render tests are very encouraging and the main character has been voiced by a well known British actor.

It takes up most of my spare time. There are still a couple of things to iron out and the scenes that are ready to render are quite heavy - in one case 3 days for a single 10 second render pass. I haven't looked at render farms yet because although it's slow it's manageable by rendering every night.

Is there anything you'd like to promote?

I'm still in need of a facial rigger who can work on Maya 2012. It's for one character and should only take one or two days.

The modelling is pretty much done although I'm always happy to hear from anyone who would like to help out there as well. And animators of course…

You can find out more about the film here:

http://thegondoliersdog.ning.com

Interview with Edgardo Padilla

2014-10-07T21:00:00.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I discovered Devils, Angels and Dating when I was browsing around in the 11 Second Club forums. I was a fresh graduate from Animation Mentor and wanted to work on a project that required collaboration rather than just animating on my own.

I ended up working on shots with all the characters. I also animated some of Deaths shadow hands scenes.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now.

Well this is my 1^st collaborative film, I was really hopeful, seeing the characters and how far the project was progressing. One of my concerns was since we’re all meeting up in the forums, the feedback would be a bit of a challenge since I was used to face to face feedback with my peers. In the end though it worked out fine, feedback was fast and Micheal would actually make a video if we needed more feedback on our shots.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

My approach in animation no, not really. But it helped me talk and collaborate with others better. Back at school its usually just you and your teacher.

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Oh yeah, the project helped me a lot, it opened up a lot of opportunities for me and it made my portfolio stronger.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I’ve been very busy with different projects after Devils. Some short term some more than a year. Lately though I have worked more in the gaming side of animation. I worked as a gameplay animator for Carbine Studios' Wildstar and currently working on Red5 Studios Free to Play Game Firefall.

I was also able to work with Michael again as a cinematic animator for Skylanders Giants.

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

I was able to work on 2 short films: Caldera and The Collectors Gift. Both seemed to have garnered numerous awards.

Are you working on any personal projects?

At the moment no, But I do have an idea in my head for a long time. Maybe someday Ill finally start this project of mine. Ill keep you posted.

Is there anything you'd like to Promote?

Try out Firefall, it’s a 3^rd Person Shooter MMO that’s fastpaced and rely more on skill than gear (Headshots count here). You can choose what class you want to play by selecting your frame, each frame is different from another. Its fun and its totally free, its available on Steam now.

www.firefall.com/

Interview with Mohammad Sadeh

2014-10-02T21:33:39.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

The discovery of Devils Angles and Dating was very interesting experience to me, it was the first time that I entered the 11 second club monthly competition and then I received a comment from Mike about my entry in the forums and he give me some very constructive feedback that helped me a lot back then, then I followed his links and finally found out about his new short film and then we got in touch with each other and it was such great opportunity for me to start because at that time I had just finished my 3d animation diploma.

Basically Devils was my first real animation project after my graduation, and I'm glad that Mike gave me the opportunity cause it paved the road for me to keep climbing up from there into feature film studios.

I started kinda early in the animation phase, so I started animating the peeps cycles doing all kinda cool stuff. I enjoyed animating them a lot and then when the rigs were solid and ready for animation I animated Cupid, Devil and Death, it was super fun animating all the characters!

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

I was very excited and I consider myself lucky to have been chosen to work on the project. As far as I know that's the first time an idea to work online with people from around the world and all join their creative forces to create awesome short film from start to finish worked, and I'm very honored to be part of the team that created it. It was also my first IMDB credit, so that was really fun!

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Yes. Working on Devils helped a lot to develop my animation skills and also my communication skills as well, which is extremely important when it comes to working in the 3D industry. No matter how good you are if you are not a team player then you will not go far in this industry. That was great for me since English is not my first language so it gave me a great learning experience on how to work well with teams and how to communicate with the supervisor and address all the notes without slowing down anyone. Animation-wise that was another awesome learning experience since I just graduated at that time and it was pretty tough to find a job for an international student in Canada, so Devils sharpened my animation skills a lot and I'm grateful for that experience!

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Working on Devils did affect my personal life in a very positive way it helped me to work hard to stay in north america cause that's where most of the animation and VFX studios are and all the work paid off. I'm a permanent resident in Canada now, it was inspiring experience that guided me to make the right decisions and move in the right direction.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

After Devils I worked with multiple companies here in Canada at the beginning as a 3D generalist and then I worked at Image Engine in Vancouver on previs animations and now I'm working at Method Studios as animator on Night at the Museum 3 animating really cool creatures! It will be fun movie!

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

I did not work on any other shorts since Devils because, thanks to that great experience, I manged to make an animation reel that got some companies interested in hiring me!

Are you working on any personal projects?

I have been busy working alongside my animation day job on a personal project with some of my friends and its a game for the iPhone/iPad and also soon for the Android store, called "Heroes Of Iron Age", its a really fun strategy action game filled with cool stuff. It takes place in the medieval times. I did all the artwork and the animations and also I created a cinematic as well so people can see what the game looks like when they play it!

We are four guys 3 programmers and me, an artist, it took us around one year to finish it off and we are hoping to start our indie game company based on this game and start creating cool games and apps for the community!

Here is the Game Cinematic:

Here is the link for the game-play trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq0qMwUiTRY

Here is the Link for the game on the App store:

https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=791762277&mt=8

Please feel free to checkout our Facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/anixlab

...any comments are always welcome!!

I would like to thank you Mike again for your continuous support since I joined your team and I'm glad to be a friend with you and hope to work with you again in the near future!

Interview with AnnMarie Cernoch

2014-09-19T21:05:27.000Z

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

I didn't have too many concerns for the project when I started on it. I just wanted to do some CGI work and was just excited to help. I think Devils turned out wonderfully! The characters and animation are just lovely. Rock on all.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

It didn't change my approach...more helped me get my feet wet. Working remotely with just email communication is something that I had to do almost everyday when I worked in the studios. Also, learning about file systems and organization for asset hand-offs. That I used everyday I worked!

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Working on Devils actually opened the industry door for me. Shortly after I started creating assets for Michael's project...I got a call from Nickelodeon Studios in Burbank, CA. I was gone out to CA in about a month! Thanks you guys! ;)

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I worked at Nickelodeon for about a year (Penguins of Madagascar, KungFu Panda and ended my time there on Fanboy and Chum Chum)

Then I went to DreamWorks Animation for about one and a half years (Puss in Boots and Croods).

Now, I am running my own business.

Are you working on any personal projects?

I can show you my newest product design...(https://www.etsy.com/listing/201630530/octopuscannabis-glowing-sculpture-glow)

Is there anything you'd like to Promote?

I would love a little plug for my small business! If you are looking for a unique personalized gift this holiday season...then def hit up my shop. So much geeky cool there. ;)

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ElectronicGirl

Interview with Iskander Mellakh

2014-09-18T19:30:00.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I found out about Devils Angels and Dating towards the end of my contract on 'Prince Caspian'. Mike was at MPC the same time I was – although we never met until I started to help on Devils.

I contacted Mike through the website at devilsangelsanddating.com, and slowly, once Mike knew where my strengths lay, he passed more of the technical tasks my way – good fun! I ended up being credited as a Technical Director on the project, a title I am proud of.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

I really didn't have any hopes or concerns, I just really wanted to continue to work in the film and animation industry. My contract at MPC had ended, I didn't have any new jobs coming in and I really didn't want to forget all I had learnt whilst in London.

Devils gave me the opportunity to continue to learn, network, and made sure I did not give up. The animation and VFX industry moves so quickly that you could easily forget things and get left behind if you don’t continue to practice – even if you are not employed to do what you love you need to practice. It is also a highly volatile and competitive industry, so if VFX is what you want to to – never give up!!

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Devils had a positive and big impact on my career. It didn't change the way I approached my career, but it opened more doors, for which I am really grateful!

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

I am sure my work on Devils is still having an effect on the type of work I am getting now. I have recently completed work on Marvel's 'Guardians of the Galaxy' and Disney's 'Maleficent' back at MPC, I also still work closely with one of the artists that worked on Devils – Antonio Milo.

Antonio has hired me to help on multiple projects and has always proved to be a great creative director and compositor. We have worked on projects for Mizuno and are currently finishing up a project for EasyJet.

I also had the pleasure of working at Ragdoll productions working on 'The Adventures of Abney and Teal'. Chuck (who also worked on Devils), posted a job vacancy on linkedIn, in which I applied for, and then I got the job – good fun!

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I am currently freelance and work remotely through my company ICM Studios. I setup ICM Studios in 2008 shortly after my first contract at finished at MPC.

Towards the end of 2013 I was hired again by MPC – Still just as fun second time around!

I have also worked on a music video at Passion Pictures as well as having a 18 month contract as a 3D Generalist at Ragdoll for the full production of 52 episodes of 'The Adventures of Abney and Teal'.

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

Since Devils I haven't had the chance to help out on any more short films – I may do again if I have some spare time, or, I may try to make my own short film mixing live action and vfx where possible!

Are you working on any personal projects?

In my spare time I have been working on a heavy destruction sequence for the past couple of years. Since I am doing everything on it, it seems to be taking ages! I also need a couple more copies of Renderman and a few more render nodes as each frame was taking over an hour with textures assigned etc, or I could cheat it and make the background a matte painting with projections.

I am looking into producing a short, I just need to find the right script for my style, will keep you posted if anything happens!!!

Is there anything you'd like to Promote?

Through ICM Studios I recently helped with the VFX on the comedy drama 'A Touch of Cloth' by Charlie Brooker along side LenscareFX. I did 4 shots on the project producing lightning coming out of New Blood's (Karen Gillan) hands! Floating paper and atmospheric smoke!

ICM Studios were also approached by Black Rock Films to produce VFX for the latest feature film 'Nightmare Hunters'. Between Adam Fenwick and I we completed 16 shots in 4k – it was good fun working on plates shot on a Red camera!

A breakdown video of the VFX work that was carried out for 'A Touch of Cloth' can be found below:

and a full write up of the work can be found here: http://www.icmstudios.co.uk/projects/tv/a-touch-of-cloth-lightning-vfx

"Iskander, really was a pleasure to work with. He stuck around longer than pretty much every other team member, which is quite unusual on a volunteer project. He just kept finding interesting challenges to overcome, including things like the automated dynamic follow through on tails, hair and clothes. He's been a strong supporter ever since and had a great attitude. It's key people like that that really pull a project together." - Michael Cawood

Interview with Andrea Perry

2014-09-16T18:15:15.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

Mike found me somehow and asked if I’d like to get involved. I don’t remember exactly how it came about. I ended up contributing the credits song, “Where Have You Been My Whole Afterlife.”

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

If I remember correctly, the approach at the beginning was that it was going to be more like a musical, with little or no dialog and with songs throughout telling the story. I couldn’t get my head around it and was very intimidated. I couldn’t figure out an elegant way to tell the story with songs. So I was relieved when the scope changed. Still it was challenging writing an afterlife love song, but I like the way it turned out, especially after hearing such positive feedback about the song from so many people. Very gratifying.

Indeed, Andrea's song is very popular on YouTube and fans are constantly inquiring after it in the YouTube comments.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

I suppose not, but it dazzled me by revealing how a community of talented strangers from all over the world could pool their skills and energies to create something that over 2 million people have been compelled to watch.

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

The song I wrote for it is the most listened to song in my entire catalog, and my best seller on iTunes.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I released a solo album, Four in mid-2013 that includes a modified version of “Where Have You Been My Whole Afterlife.” I changed the title to “Where Have You Been my Whole Lonely Life” to make it a bit more relevant to people who are alive (they buy more songs than dead people). Also, I added a string section.

I’ve also worked a lot with Kaliyo, my duo with Sarah Sharp. We’ve had song placements in TV shows (and some films) in over 20 countries. We are constantly getting emails from people who hear our songs in stores and restaurants in Poland, China, Singapore, France, Germany, Australia, Mexico, Israel – pretty much everywhere! We got one the other day from a woman who heard one of our songs in a store in Hong Kong.

And I’m always writing music for commercials and doing some production work for other songwriters.

Can you expand on the shows and films you've contributed your music to?

The Kaliyo music has been used extensively in Poland in most of their popular dramas. It was used for a huge Channel campaign online. Also: The Lying Game, Switched at Birth, The Nine Lives of Chloe King, Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, The View and Revenge. The feature film When Harry Tries to Marry. Film trailer for No.

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

I haven’t written anything specifically for a film since then, but my songs (especially the collaborations with Sarah Sharp) have been placed in some films by music supervisors, as elaborated on in the previous question.

Are you working on any personal projects?

I’m working with Sarah Sharp on a proper album for Kaliyo. We have a catalog of about 50 songs, but most of it is owned by Universal Music so we don’t have control over it and we haven’t been able to put out an official CD. People have sought us out after hearing our stuff on TV and have obtained illegal copies of our songs (we don’t really mind – we’re happy that so many people listen to us). But we’d love to have a release that we own and can put on iTunes and promote.

I’m also working on a top secret album with a top secret quartet. We hope to have it out in December.

Is there anything you'd like to Promote?

I’d love to promote Kaliyo: www.kaliyo.com

Also my youtube channel is full of Kaliyo: http://www.youtube.com/user/amishell

And solo stuff: www.andreaperry.com

And later I’d like to promote my top secret project. :-)

Interview with Bryant Tan

2014-09-15T17:00:00.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I was introduced to this online animation collaboration project by my friend Marcus Tee. I was so excited back then when I heard about it as I've never being exposed to work with an independent director before. I volunteered to take part immediately as a 3D animator and my aim back then was to gain more knowledge in terms of acting and to build a much more solid portfolio. Mike was so friendly and kind enough to let us choose the shots we would like to work on and of course I went for a couple of subtle acting shots. Throughout the whole process, I came to learn that online collaboration actually works if you have a proper pipeline to it. I've also learned about ways to choose proper acting for your shot through the reference provided.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

I'm really grateful that Mike gave me that opportunity to work on such a wonderful film and I'm still very proud of it today.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Devils made me want to explore more about animation and film making.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I've worked on a couple of films at Rhythm & Hues Malaysia( Animation TD) such as Snow White & The Huntsman and also the upcoming Seventh Sons in 2015. Remember to catch that movie!

Are you working on any personal projects?

I've been trying to come up with my personal shortfilm but it's taking forever. haha.

Bryant's demoreel: https://vimeo.com/76816644

Interview with Justin S Barrett

2014-09-12T23:30:00.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I can't recall exactly how I discovered the project. I think I was browsing around some animation websites and saw a post about it, or it might've been on Twitter. Anyway, however I found it, I checked out the progress at the time, and it caught my interest, so I reached out to see if there was any need for voice talent for the characters. I was initially told the characters wouldn't be speaking, but then was later approached about doing some nonverbal vocalizations for them. I recorded material for both Cupid and the devil, and then was later asked to voice some narration that would be placed throughout the short, as though the devil were looking back on the situation many years later.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

My biggest concern was about the quality of the project. I had seen some other collaborative shorts that didn't look very good, and was apprehensive about how this one would turn out. When it all came together, though, I was very impressed with the quality of the film. It's especially impressive (at least in my mind) considering how long it took to produce the film.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Not really, though it did put a nice feather in my cap when I could say that I had voiced two of the three characters -- plus the narrator -- in an animated short. To be able to point people to a single project that is a great example of the diverse voices that I can produce is very uncommon.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

In the voice-over realm, I've worked on quite a few things since then, including a couple audio books, a video game, numerous online videos, some radio commercials, and a feature-length documentary.

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

Not of the animated variety, though as an actor, I've had parts in a few live-action short films and an independent feature film. It's called "Left", and is about a young woman with Erb's Palsy who is working to overcome her handicap and learn to play the piano. The Facebook page is here:

https://www.facebook.com/LeftTheMovie

Are you working on any personal projects?

I used to write strange little songs on my computer back in the day, and I've been trying to get back into music creation now I've got a bit more experience with my DAW (Reaper). My initial project in that vein is a remix of a Pentatonix song, and I'll post the finished piece to my Soundcloud channel when it's done (a short sample is up now, posted a few months ago). I'm also slowly working on a significant rework/update of my tweenMachine tool for Maya, and have a fun holiday-themed VO piece that I plan on producing for Christmas. Oh, and I also produced (and partly voiced) a parody commercial based on the original spot for Aflac. That was fun.

Is there anything you'd like to promote?

I was recently invited to direct a stage play, and we're in the early stages of rehearsals. It's a hilarious comedy called "Always a Bridesmaid," and will be presented on the Iris Theatre stage inside Books and Crannies in Terrell, TX. If you're in the Dallas area, I'd love to see you at one of the shows! Opening night is October 31, and it will run for two weekends. For more details and ticket reservations, call Books and Crannies at 972-563-5481.

Justin's Website:

http://www.justinsbarrett.com/

Interview with Gill Frank

2014-09-10T17:00:00.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

Mike and I knew one another from our time in Scotland where we both where animators on a feature film. Mike told me that he had this idea of a small short film with Death, Angels and Love. I thought it was a great idea and said I would like to help when he needed it.

Well, after a year or a bit more, Mike called me up and said that they have started slowly and they could use help with the administration, concepts and animation. As I remember we where around 5 or 6 people in the beginning and the more the project got promoted the more people came along to join the team. I started as a animator on the team but ended up doing the cloud system for the film and a few animated scenes.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

My thoughts was that this could be a great film, done differently than other Projects, since it was all out in the open from the beginning compared to other projects where it's usually behind closed doors. I was also in many discussion with Mike over Skype on how to do it the right way or best way to set up the system.

Well, Mike has his unique ways of doing things and in the end he kept the energy going and used the internet to keep the project interesting and exciting. In the end it was great feeling to see it all come together and meeting so many people. It was fun to be apart of the project.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

I already had a full time job doing games, so I was busy doing that at the time, but it was great to do some high end animation for short films, since doing game animation can be like working in a factory.

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Since Devils and Angels I have been doing all kinds of things from 3D animation to doing series on Ninjago as a 3D Previs artist to 2D animation and now I am doing Comp, Motion Graphics and Rigging in After Effects. Its great to be a animator but to put all the things together you have learned over the years... it's a great privilege to be doing what I do today.

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

At moment I am not working on a personal project, well... if you call designing a webpage for myself then... yes, that is a personal project.

Website: http://Leftover.dk (Under construction at time of writing)

Are you working on any personal projects?

In February or March there will be a new Danish band releasing an Album. Me and a friend of mine have been doing 10 animated music videos for the album. So stay tuned... :)

"Looking forward to seeing that, Gill." - Michael Cawood

Interview with Dapoon Rai Dewan

2014-09-09T23:12:41.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I discovered 'Devils, Angels and Dating' through a post on a blog by my animator friend.

Those days I was on a really long bed rest due to a terrible road accident. Jobless and motionless, I didn't know how to get a hold of my career. I kept myself busy by working on personal animations but it wasn't enough. I really needed a push.

So when I stumbled upon this amazing film Mike was working on, it was like a blessing sent from above. To get to work on an international project with an amazing team & an accomplished animator as a director, without having to leave home, was EXACTLY what I was looking for! I jumped at the opportunity and emailed Mike my 2009 student reel. But I was in for a slight surprise.

Unfortunately he didn't feel it was strong enough for the film. I was a little disappointed of course, but then Mike gave me the best advice ever. He asked me to enter the 11 Second Cub contests to improve on my skills. I entered not once, but thrice. It was perhaps one of the best learning experiences ever. I quickly compiled a new reel and sent it to Mike. And guess what! I got in!

I got to work on ONE shot of 9 secs but it was amazing. I learned tremendously from Mike. He knew how to push me, and I could quickly see how much more it added to the shot. It was a treasure of knowledge I still hold very dear. Thanks Mike! :)

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

To be honest, when I first saw glimpses of the film, I was amazed! The quality of production for a zero budget film was tremendous! And that too, working completely online. I've seen studios who can't come up with half the brilliance with the entire team working together under one roof! I seriously have to applaud Mike and the team for pulling off such a Herculean task!

However since I was also a member of the team, I was also slightly concerned about the story. It was a great out of the box story, but perhaps slightly lacking in clarity. I couldn't help getting confused a couple of times while watching the early animatics. Mike was sporting enough to give us a platform to critique the story and suggest ways to make it better. All of us brainstormed our ideas and voila! The story evolved to the masterpiece it has become today.

I'm really happy the way it was turned out now and I'm thankful that Mike considered all of our suggestions and implemented them.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Oh yes absolutely! I learned to push myself much more. I remember when I got my shot, I 'animated' it in a couple of days and declared it finished. I was expecting Mike to say something like "Wow!! You're an animation bullet train!" So imagine my dismay when he instead said "Looks good! You can start animating it now!" :D

But seriously, it was then when I truly realized how much more I had to push myself before I could call it 'finished'. Now when I look at my 'bullet train speed' animation and compare it to the actually finished one, I see how much of a difference it makes when you get some great guidance. So thanks for the push Mike! :)

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Absolutely! It simply made my reel much stronger. In fact after Devils, I entered the AnimationRigs contest and won the Honorary Mention I spot. My confidence grew and I immediately landed a job that I'm still doing!

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

While working for Devils, I was also working at Fat Balloon Studios, Chennai as a freelance animator. I continued for a while there after wrapping up my work at Devils, before landing a full time job at Vaibhav Studios, Mumbai. It's been 3 years since then and today I've been promoted to the Senior Animator position. It feels great! Haha!

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

Not a short, but I'm currently working on a feature length in-house production of Vaibhav Studios named 'Return of the Jungle'. It's about this bunch of school kids who are told jungle stories by their old buddy they call Thatha (grandpa), and how those stories inspire the kids to face their problems at school.

Are you working on any personal projects?

Unfortunately none! I've been planning on a few of my own short films for quite sometime but work takes up almost all of my time. Hopefully soon enough!

However I could share some of the work I've done personally, for Devils and at Vaibhav Studios.

Is there anything you'd like to Promote?

I'd like to promote my blog: dapoonrai.blogspot.com

and the the film I'm working on now:

"It's great to see another enthusiastic Devils team member doing great work and making their lark on the industry." - Michael Cawood

Interview with Michael Newton

2014-09-05T16:34:17.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I was introduced to the project by Jay Taylor who was working on the sound and I ended up working on sound design and final mix.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

I was impressed with the scale and quality of an independent animation created by a collection of people who hadn't ever met in the flesh. It looked like an ambitious project but when I joined around 50% of the animation was finished so it was easy to see the project was actually going to work. I'm proud and impressed by what the animators managed to create.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

In the way that approaching and collaborating in independent films can be a great learning experience, yes. There really is a big international community out there looking to do big things. As long as you have a bread and butter job to support you financially, its great to do some projects with no budget, it takes the pressure off and everyone's in it for the love of it.

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Not directly, but I just finished the sound design and mix for a very similar project, called True Tail. It too was created by an on-line group of animators from all parts of the world. We've created a pilot and the producers are now unleashing it upon the world.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I have been working on a few interesting projects, including helping out with the SFX tracklay on the drama series Top of the Lake. I did a documentary series for Discovery called 'Walking with the Great Apes'. I finished the sound design and mix for a not-so-serious car chase movie 'Drive Hard'. I've done some reality work on the last Masterchef series in Australia. I'm also just about to wrap on the mix of a true-blue Aussie slasher film called 'Charlie's Farm', about a 7 foot man who's hell bent on killing Tara Reid!

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

I'm always involved in short films and independent features through friends. Its always interesting and exciting to see them picked up by international festivals in all parts of the world and knowing people are watching.

Are you working on any personal projects?

I'm starting to build my own sound effects libraries and also learning the sound design language of an application called 'Kyma'. It always makes me wonder why audio hasn't progressed as far as something like 3D animation, with its powerful modelling and scripting. Audio has progressed obviously, but I feel sound design could borrow a lot from animation tools, where you can create and manipulate objects

Is there anything you'd like to Promote?

Anyone who would like to collaborate, hit me up on skype: michael.newton1

"It's great to see the breadth of projects Michael has been working on. He's got a really good attitude to the projects he takes on. He even came back to the project eight months later to help out with a revised Director's Cut of the film." - Michael Cawood

Interview with Phil Rey

2014-09-05T16:33:47.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I discovered the project by chance on the net, at its early stage, and immediately fell in love with the few drawings and animations already done. Unfortunately at this time another composer was already working on the trailer and nothing was really decided about the soundtrack for the film itself. My memory is that some time later, Michael asked me for a short excerpt of music that can fit for the movie, and liked it. Then we started to work together, to exchange our views etc.. on what the score could be. It was really challenging technically because you have a lot of action, and there's also a narrative voice during the movie. So the music should be underlining the action, without leading over the narrative voice. The second challenge has been to place the credit song theme here in there in the score. But finally we did it!

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

My thoughts were that the characters and animations are truly awesome and very attractive, even if the story itself can be a little bit confusing for some people. Visually I really enjoy this movie.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Not at all. But I'd like to work for this kind of project again. The only thing, maybe, is that I would ask to be paid next time. It takes a lot of time and energy to achieve this kind of project.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I'm still composing music for video games, trailers, libraries etc... And I'd like to be working with a cool team, like this, again for other brilliant projects like Devils, Angels & Dating. Money can be an issue, as I'm a professional composer and need to earn a living, but who knows? I'm open to any opportunities.

I'm also proud that my music opened the show to celebrate the New Year at Sydney Harbor – Australia (giant fireworks). This is one of the most important television broadcasts in the world (ABC1 - Australian national TV, BBC, NBC, TF1, Euro News, etc…)

Are you working on any personal projects?

I'm still producing my own albums, you can pre-order my next album to be released in October 2014 here :

http://phreymusic.bandcamp.com/album/kingdom-of-illusions

I also built my own company "Melodeicon" (music production for medias):

http://melodeicon.com/

"I just want to say that Phil's work before Devils was stunning, but he's gone from strength to strength and I've been caught listening to his playlists on his site on numerous occasions. Really good stuff. He was great to work with and... fingers crossed... we'll get an opportunity to work together again. Although I will follow up on his note on being paid for future project. It's great for many artists to expand their portfolio with strategic volunteer projects to move on up to the next phase in their careers, but no-one should do that for long and it's smart get paid. Composers in particular have to take on such a huge amount of work with any project like this." - Michael Cawood

Interview with Rafael San Gregorio

2014-09-05T16:33:15.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating', then what you ended up working on during the project.

I was looking to keep learning and practicing animation. But wanted to work on a solid project. Not just a typical demoreel shot where you choose an audio piece and animate it. I wanted to have production experience, where you have to learn as a team and with a global vision. So I went looking on the web, and found 'Devils Angels & Dating'. Liked the atmosphere of the project and the team, and it was perfect for my objectives.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

I first wanted to find a solid project, that I knew would be finished. I didn't want to spend a lot of time on a project that could have ended in the trash because of the lack of commitment of the team. In that respect, my concerns were directly solved, because the community was really active and Michael was doing a great job keeping the team together. So my main objectives to work on a collaborative, serious project were achieved, and I'm really happy about the Devil's success.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Not really, but it sure helped me to grow as a team player.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

After Devils I have had several positions. I worked as a character animator on Minuscule Season 2, and also did a few shots on the feature film Minuscule for the company Nozon.

Then I was hired in Brussels at the same company (Nozon) to work on commercials, as a character setup and character animator.

Can you expand on the work you did for the film?

Well, on the movie I just did the last shot that was 500 hundred frames with a lot of ants building their home. I worked at the same company but in Brussels. The movie was animated in Liège and France.
But as I worked on the all of Season 2 of the TV show and because there was a rush to end the movie, I had the opportunity to work on it. The animation style is very unique and funny. It was completely different from all the animation work I did before.

Are you working on any personal projects?

When I work during my free time, it mainly consist on learning python coding to automate setup, and also learn new setup techniques.

Is there anything you'd like to promote?

My blog: http://rafaelsangregorio.blogspot.be/

"Rafael did some great shots for us, and it's wonderful to see the projects he's been involved in since then. Nice work Raf!" - Michael Cawood

Interview with Alok Joshi

2014-09-05T16:28:51.000Z

Tell us about your discovery of 'Devils, Angels & Dating’; then what you ended up working on during the project.

Mike had messaged me on my YouTube channel about a short film named Devils, Angels & Dating. I followed the link and what I saw was one of the most innovative ways of animated filmmaking, everything was online. I had not worked on anything like this before so I thought this would be a great experience and it was. At first Mike gave me a small shot of Cupid, since I am born and brought up in India, this was the first time I was working with someone overseas and as talented as Mike. Initially it was hard for me to understand what quality and style was needed so I was sending so many updates but Mike explained me how important it is to understand the shot description and spend some quality time before sending updates… and it worked for me. I didn't think any of my shots would get approved at first but I ended up finishing more than 10 seconds.

What were your thoughts, hopes and concerns about the project at the time, and how do you feel about it now?

I really didn't know how someone can handle an entire 3D production from a forum based website and supervise so many artists from different parts of globe. But it was a success and I feel very proud that I was given opportunity to be part of it.

Did Devils change the way you approach your career at all?

Definitely, besides improving my animation & organizational skills, it boosted my confidence a lot.

Do you know whether anything you did for Devils lead directly to any other opportunities you've had since?

Yes, my animation reel became a lot better since I added shots from Devils. I got a chance to work on ‘Dream Works: Dragons TV series’ which has aired on Cartoon Network. Animation quality required for it was pretty high since it followed the feature film by DW but my recent experience on Devils helped me a lot to give better quality output.

What have you been up to professionally since your involvement in Devils?

I worked at Crest animation studios after Devils where I got to work on DreamWorks, Dragons TV series. Working on dragons was a great experience. It was a first TV project for DW so the quality they were expecting was almost as good as feature film so it helped us animators to improve our skills a lot.

Since the TV series followed the original How to train your dragon movie, there was a lot of study material ready for us. I did lot of acting/editing before proceeding with blocking because generic gestures were just not looking right on those awesome characters. I worked on 2nd episode of the series. Here is my character animation showreel that includes some shots from this show:

After that I worked on some TV series and DVD movies such as Glo-e and Care Bears. I also worked on Disney’s Planes 2 at Prana studios.

Have you worked on any other short films since Devils?

Unfortunately I do not get enough time to work on similar projects but since I am doing freelancing now, but I would love to get my hands on projects like this.

Are you working on any personal projects?

I am currently working as a freelance motion graphics artist under a name ‘Tesseract Graphics’ since I also love creating abstract animation using various software and plugins. Mainly my focus is Logo animation slates. Here is my logo animation Showreel:

Is there anything you’d like to Promote?

Well, do visit my website:

www.tesseractgraphics.in

...and my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/alokasimov

"It was great working with Alok, and I'm really pleased to see how far he's come with his career since we last worked together." - Michael Cawood

Festivals

2014-07-19T00:03:39.000Z

Believe it or not Devils is still active on the festival circuit. There are new festivals popping up all the time, and new ways to submit to them. I can't keep an eye on all of it as it's a full time job in itself, but from time to time I check in and fire off a few more submissions. Thankfully more and more festivals are going online and digital, which significantly simplifies the process. Most limit submissions to recently completed films, but oddly seem to be quite loose about it. 1st January 2012 seems to be about the oldest most will accept and we just slip in at Jan the 4th 2012 (August 2012 if you want to get technical since it's the Directors Cut of the film I'm submitting).

I fired off another 20 or so applications today. There has been a little bit of earnings from YouTube, and I put some of that to festival submissions. Don't get too excited... the earnings are pretty small.

Book - Finish Your Film

2014-07-02T18:09:11.000Z

Kenny Roy’s book ‘Finish Your Film! Tips and Tricks for Making an Animated Short in Maya‘ features ‘Devils Angels & Dating‘ several times. It discusses the making of an animated short film. It’s available at all the usual book retailers.

Devils on Frederator

2014-02-20T02:10:23.000Z

My YouTube channel has been part of the Frederator Network for a few months now, but they have just relaunched a new website to showcase it's members. Scroll down the creators page to find "Michael Cawood" and an image of Devil.

http://www.channelfrederatornetwork.com/creators.html

Obviously our short film Devils Angels and Dating is driving most of the traffic.

2 Years on YouTube - the Stats

2014-01-10T18:45:17.000Z

It's been just over two years since Devils Angels and Dating premiered online on YouTube. In the full spirit of disclosure, that we've run this project, I wanted to share the statistics behind the people viewing it. As you can see we've passed 1.4 million views, most of which came in the first summer.

I discuss other aspects of animated film-making at my blog, AnimatedFilmmaker.com

Partnering with Frederator

2013-12-16T19:05:34.000Z

The animation channel, Frederator, on YouTube has asked me if it can include my channel as part of their network. Obviously this includes Devils, and that's their primary interest in the channel. The deal is that they put adverts on the content and take a 30% cut, while also promoting the channel. I sat on the idea for a while as I wasn't under the impression there was much to gain from putting adverts on the channel at all. But it looks like it might be able to make a little bit, maybe enough to cover the running costs of our development site, hosting and domain. But I think the part of the arrangement that's most interesting is the relationship with Frederator. It could lead to other things in the future. I'm tempted to try it out for a year and see if it's worthwhile.

Certainly in the early days after the films release I didn't want to put advertising on it as the team were using it as part of their portfolio. But now there's the Director's cut available on Vimeo, so I think we're in the clear to try and take advantage of the 1000 views per day we get on YouTube.

Any thoughts from the team?

Virtual Studios and Remote Collaboration

2013-09-01T18:15:13.000Z

For Siggraph 2013 my friends and I put on a presentation along with a question and answer session to talk about remote collaboration.

http://animatedfilmmaker.blogspot.com/2013/09/virtual-studios-and-remote-collaboration.html

The Devils Team - Where did they go from here?

2013-04-12T06:52:47.000Z

Since they worked on 'Devils, Angels and Dating', where have the team moved onto?

I was recently asked what I'd say to a University aged version of me if I could, and one of the top tips I'd give is to keep working on personal projects in your free time to compliment your day job. This ensures that your portfolio grows (even when the work you get paid for is canned, or kept from the public for years). One fantastic way to do that is to work on short films, and it's something I wish I'd gotten into much earlier. While directing your own film can be a bit of overkill, contributing to other projects is a much more manageable way to get motivated to do something new for your portfolio. I'm really fortunate to have had some great talents pass through my little project over the years but I thought it was important to show where those talents moved onto afterwards. We can't assume that their work on Devils was entirely to credit for these opportunities, but no-doubt it formed part of a broader body of strong work from each artist. Here's a condensed list of some of the companies the team members went on to work for.

Walt Disney Animation Studios
DreamWorks Animation
Blue Sky
Reel FX
MPC
Rhythm & Hues
Sony Pictures Imageworks
Digital Domain
Third Floor
Nickelodeon Animation Studios
Passion Pictures
Bardel
Luma Pictures
Insomniac Games
Panda Panther
Meinbender
Duncan Studio
Disney Interactive
Fox TV Animation
Crest Animation Studios
Logan
The Mill
Gravity
Hydraulx
Sony Computer Entertainment America
Technicolor
Liquid Development
Blue-Zoo Productions
Eight Bit Strange
Toys For Bob
Blitz Games
House of Moves
Ragdoll
Animation Mentor
iAnimate

May there be many more creative challenges ahead for our intrepid team mates!

Animated Filmmaker Blog.

Dropbox permissions cleaned up

2013-03-12T01:10:47.000Z

A quick note to the Devils team. I've cleaned up all the Dropbox permissions and unshared most of the folders. So don't worry if you spot a notification from Dropbox saying that you've been removed. It's nothing personal, it's just been over a year since most of the team were involved so it was time to clean up the permissions to remove any chance of mistakes damaging the files. If anyone didn't get around to taking a copy of their work and they want something specific please feel free to get in touch with me, I still have everything. But as time goes by most of the assets are simply in backups rather than live online or on our main desktop machines.

Devils, Angels and Dating - One Year Online

2013-01-08T01:01:10.000Z

So it's been a year since 'Devils, Angels and Dating' was first released onto YouTube where it recently passed a million views, which was a very nice Christmas present!
http://youtu.be/rkddkbu-EMA

Our film's composer, Phil Rey, has a great new album out that I'm listening to now... and wow! .... it's good. Check it out, well worth a listen:
http://phreymusic.bandcamp.com/album/age-of-the-fallen

The singer, song writer for our credits, Andrea Perry, ran a very successful KickStarter campaign to fund her new Album which passed it's goal by a significant margin:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andreaperry/andrea-perrys-4th-album-2013

I've been encountering a lot of Devils team members over the years. Several popped up at my leaving event in Austin which was a surprise and I worked with a good number of remote animators from the team while I was in New York. Most notably I worked alongside Jamil Lahham for six months or so, which was a real treat and we've become good friends. He's also making his own short film.
http://jblogger-animart.blogspot.com/

It really is nice for me to meet all these team members but what's even cooler is hearing about them bonding over Devils when they cross paths on their own. It's going to be a go-to conversation piece for a long time, I can tell, and it's amazing to have made something that has become a big part of the history of animator's careers.

I started a blog to start retelling the most interesting stories around this film, so please subscribe and add it to your RSS feeds:

http://animatedfilmmaker.blogspot.com

Since the online development site for Devils started in 2009 it has spawned numerous other projects using similar methods to get their films made, way too many to list. It's opened up a lot of doors for people that would otherwise have struggled to get a film off the ground on their own.
It's been an honor to have run this project and met so many great talents. To some degree I have to hand it over to other talents now as they venture forward with their films. I've already been involved in one which is yet to announce anything significant yet but subscribe to the blog for future news.
http://www.cloudcatchersfilm.com

If anyone else working on something similar would like to swap notes please feel to get in touch.

Production Tips - Recruiting Database

2012-11-26T18:00:00.000Z

Continuing on from the last Production Tip blog about Tracking Production...

The Recruiting Database

This might seem creepy but I kept a spreadsheet with some basic information on everyone on the team... or anyone interested in joining the team. The key thing I used this for was to remember their strengths, up to years after I last had any contact with them. We had over 400 volunteers sign up and many more that I spoke to outside of our development site. It could get very difficult for me to remember every encounter, especially since most were only over email. I tended to remember shots in reels better than the specifics about my conversations with each artist. Some would be people that left the project and rejoined a year later, and it was key to remember their strengths and weaknesses.

I would score them in a few very important areas:

Talent (0 to 4) - The quality of their reel, this would be updated with each encounter and if their work on the film differed from the work in their reel.

Communication (0 to 3) - Their communication skills including written English and responsiveness. A world wide project can have some severe problems with basic languages. I don't speak anything other than English, so it was key that everyone on the team could both read and write really clearly in English in order to avoid hitting any brick walls. Equally the best written English in the world does no-one any favors if they don't answer their messages. Not replying is the same as not turning up to work in the virtual studio model!

Signed Up? (0 to 1) - Were they signed up on the development site? It was a sign of commitment and an openness to working in the pipeline we'd built. If they weren't willing to sign up then it was always a good sign that they were going to require extra effort on the part of the team to integrate them, and it usually wasn't worth it.

Score - This was a simple formula that multiplied up the scores above to give an overall rating. Then by ordering the spreadsheet by this number you could quickly see the best team members and candidates rising to the top.

Assigned - This simply kept tabs on whether they were currently assigned to something. It could take some people quite a while to complete a task and it was useful to have a quick look-up in the spreadsheet to see where things were getting stuck, or people were being left waiting for assignments.

The recruiting database is one of the few documents I didn't share with anyone. It's a very personal interpretation and could easily offend. But it was incredibly useful for me to head off any poor assignment choices, since I didn't really know most of the people working on the film (as I'd never met them in person). It was mostly animators as that was by far the largest area we got volunteers and required the most filtering (over 340 candidates). I imagine that similar databases exist in all the major studios, and the recruiters no doubt rely on them for every interaction. With any luck they're more sophisticated than my spreadsheet. The scary part is that recruiters move around between studios all the time so the data going into such a database isn't going to be consistent... food for though!

Other related blog entries of interest - Workload Distribution

View more Blog entries like this at http://animatedfilmmaker.blogspot.com/

Production Tips - Tracking Production

2012-11-23T18:00:00.000Z

Kenny Roy asked me to contribute some anecdotes for a presentation he's putting on, and I thought it would be a good idea to share them here.

Tracking Production

I'm a keen addict of a good Excel spreadsheet that tracks the progress of each project. My short film was no different and over time I was able to show the progress of each department across the duration of the film.

I let Excel save out an image of two charts that were then synced to a public folder on Dropbox. The first just showed the progress level in the main categories It was published to our development website and quickly allowed anyone to see how far we were. It was also embedded into the beginning of the animatic edit. The image simply overwrote each time I saved so it was always up to date and showed up in each export of the animatic that I published about once every two weeks.

The second graph showed the progress over time. This was very useful as we could aim for a date and see roughly when departments were getting behind. It allowed me to respond by changing assignments, recruiting more or less in each skill set or simply redirect my own time to compensate.

Both charts helped to show a steady active progress so that the team never felt like they were alone, and that no-one else was pulling their weight. Including the publishing date in the images also showed they were up to date, and fortunately I was always very good about updating the spreadsheet. It becomes a bit of an addition watching those bars move closer to 100%. Since these films can take years they also tend to become a common conversation ice breaker between friends and it was handy to have a solid "42% Animated" or "67% Complete!" to show confidence in our progress. Constantly saying "nearly there" or "we're still animating" tends to feel like a downer and even though it's the same thing it casts doubts the more you repeat yourself without change. So take joy in the micro progress, and the sub-tasks you complete!

In the next production tip blog.... the Recruiting Database.

Other related blog entries of interest - At what point is the film most at risk?

More Blog Entries can be found at http://animatedfilmmaker.blogspot.com/

Guiding vs Micromanaging

2012-09-12T01:01:37.000Z

This is a tough balance for any Director. You want to communicate your vision and give your team firm direction as they go along, but if you tell them how to do their job down to the finest detail there’s nothing for them to get any satisfaction from. They’ll quickly realize there’s no point in using their creativity, and problem solving skills, and they’ll lose their personal investment in the task. Then all you have is a clock punching drone, waiting to go home. But that’s in the work place. On a volunteer based film production it can mean you lose their interest entirely, and you lose a team member.

Since ‘Devils, Angels and Dating’ was produced entirely online I can’t even be sure when that happened to my team mates. I’m positive it must have occurred on some level for some people, as we had plenty of turnover with team members, like any volunteer based project. But without dealing with them in person it’s hard to figure out where that line is with each team member. Usually in person you can tell. Body language, mood and tone of voice are going to tell you a lot about how someone is taking your notes, but online it can often be too late before you realise its happening. That’s one major flaw with a virtual studio. It can be reduced by doing two things: 1) use people you know, as you’re much more likely to know their limits; 2) shoot video critiques occasionally so that they can tell which notes are important based on your body language; and 3) be very, very, cautious. Since the vast majority of people that volunteered on Devil’s weren’t people I knew, I was as cautious as I could be most of the time. The down side to this is that you constantly set a tone where you’re perhaps not the authority figure you should be to really follow through with a strong vision. Then things can get watered down and that definitely happened with Devils.

A great example of a shot injected with the animators own unique ideas, from Ryan Hagen.

I made up for it to some degree by plugging the gaps myself when things fell short; polishing shots, adjusting lighting, comps, rigging, effects, etc... But that brings us back to my earlier point; you’re taking ownership of the final product away from the artist, which in the long term means they don’t feel they can trust me (the Director) to deliver their small piece of the creative pie to the screen. Since that’s the primary reason most artists join a volunteer project that’s a problem.

I can comment on how these issues played out on a zero budget short film because there is no client, or studio to offend... essentially I was the client and the team was the studio. But this stuff is universal and applies to the everyday working world in almost every industry. A programmer is creatively solving problems all day, so they don’t want to lose much of their creative slice of the pie. A teacher may have problems with a student but it’s up to them to figure out how to best help the student... take that away and you’re taking their job satisfaction away. Some professions are more tolerant of this and it comes with the industry culture, but animation is inherently creative and a huge percentage of positions in the industry are expected to require some level of creativity. So Directors, Supervisors, Producers, etc... all have to be very careful to keep an eye on how they walk the line between guiding and micromanaging. The ones that succeed give just enough encouragement and direction to allow their team members to shine, which leads to personal investment in the product, enthusiasm and... yes... (the golden goose to employers) faster work and potentially longer hours put in to get it done!

I have also faced a different spin on this issue on several occasions. I’ll use my experiences on Devils as an example. As we had so many less experienced artists and animators working with us, I found that many of them hadn’t really worked in such isolation without a supervisor or teacher telling them every single step they needed to make. They could have amazing reels, but you realise that they did it with a lot of guidance (or effectively micromanaging). In this case it’s a heavy hand they actually wanted, perhaps it was school where every creative choice they made was monitored very closely and guided to the final product. At this point they’re not necessarily ready to do it alone yet, but that’s when I’ve found them volunteering on Devils for the experience (and the shots). It’s not new to me, mentoring lesser experienced animators, but it is considerably more time consuming and when you’re typing most of the feedback it can be very slow. We had up to 30 or 40 people coming to me for feedback at the project’s peek. Mix in too many people that need that level of feedback and suddenly I don’t have enough time to get to other tasks, and I might as well be doing it myself. So I’d often find myself in a position where I was recognising that I was micromanaging them too much to be efficient. At this point I occasionally experimented with holding back my notes enough to let them either succeed or fail on their own terms. Better, from my perspective, to let them fail and start the shot again with someone else, than to spend too much time on the first animator letting the rest of the film suffer (then the results still aren’t as strong as they could be). It’s a tough decision but as the Director, sometimes you have to make it. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and they’ll realise they have more scope to inject their own ideas and it’ll come out great, but usually if I’ve gotten to this point with someone, it would just become a waiting game until it was clear the shot needed to be approached again by someone else. This is one of the darkest moments you’ll have directing a team of volunteers. You don’t like to waste their time or yours, considering no-one is getting paid for it. Of course in a normal day job, when money is being spent, you don’t often have the luxury of letting someone fail, so it can be that much harder on the decision makers to decide when to cut your loses.

The other problem is that if you’re micromanaging they aren’t putting something of their own ideas and creativity into it, again watering down the potential strength of the film. I’m going to admit it... some of the very best animated shots in Devils were done by really good animators I could leave largely to their own devices and they would do things that I would never have considered. That’s exactly what you want. As long as they have a very clear idea what’s needed for the overall story, and that’s all a Director should need to convey (that includes style, character, continuity, pacing, etc...).

A great shot created with minimal supervision by talented animator, Marcus Tee Jin Liang

The best Directors surround themselves with talent that can bring something creative to the table, often even better than the Director’s own ideas. They give them everything they need to know and a touch of encouragement and guidance, but not so much as to take away from the talent’s own piece of the creative pie.

This is an important lesson I’ve been learning throughout my career, particularly as I found myself in a lead role so early on. I’d love to hear anyone else’s experiences on walking the line between guiding and micromanaging (if you’re able to talk about it without offending anyone).

Comments on the Animated Filmmaker Blog

The Layout Sandwich

2012-08-06T16:38:18.000Z

I started my first full time job in animation and, along with another person starting the same day (later to become a close friend of mine), we found ourselves being taken into a large room with a cinema screen high up on one wall. We were sat down and told we’re about to see what we’re going to be making for the next six months. What we saw was (for its time) a very impressive action adventure role playing game filled with characters and cut-scenes (FMVs or cinematics as many prefer to refer to them).

It was my first day at Rare, a 200 strong, growing company with a very strong pedigree working under Nintendo’s wing. My friend and I were given an outline of what we’d be expected to start working on. He was a software engineer so we weren’t going to be doing the same things but we were going to be working together a lot. I was fully prepared to be doing in-game cycles, when the Director turned to me and casually told me I’d be making the cutscenes. I forget now if it was verbal, but I know that in my mind I went “Wahoooooo!”. It was more than most people could expect for their first job. I felt then, and now, that it was an incredible opportunity and I was very lucky. I guess all that hard work on my student short film must have paid off!

The game was about as story and character heavy as you could get at the time for the games industry, so I off to a great start. What’s more this wasn’t a company filled with story writers or filmmakers, even character development was in it’s infancy. We were aiming to make this game for the Nintendo 64 at the time so expectations weren’t high in those areas. So I found myself becoming incredibly valuable to the team, almost instantly taking over all the cinematics for the game. I wasn’t writing the scripts but I was creating sequences from script (and dialog performance) to screen, which gave me a lot of scope with which to play filmmaker.

That six month project grew and grew until it consumed three and a half years of my life! It turned out there were problems with this dream job, but that’s another story. What came out of it was an opportunity for me to create hours and hours worth of sequences with a wide variety of subject matter, characters and moods. I was working with dinosaurs, creatures, bipeds, quadrupeds, huge vista’s, tight caves, flight, stampedes, battles, puzzles, life, death, loss, jubilation, conflict and family. It was an epic start for a young animated filmmaker and presented me with so many opportunities to try things out.

That game completed with over two hours of cutscenes, all of which I’d been involved with (although a significant number where largely made by a friend of mine that joined the team for a couple of years). But I knew that there was more to it than that. Because of the troubles we faced over the years developing the game, I’d actually created in excess of, what I’m estimating, over ten hours of sequences! These were scenes that only my co-workers will ever have seen, and there are some firm favourites in there that I can still remember that will probably never be seen. I learned then just how much you have to iterate to get things to the screen. I learned to become less precious about the early stages of creating a sequence of shots and more open to change.

One thing I will say is that I wasn’t directed heavily at all during those years. Never since then have I had that much freedom, and you generally shouldn’t expect it... actually you don’t want it, as what you really want is a Director that knows what they want and teaches you as you go. In hindsight it was a valuable period of exploration, but I was self teaching which takes longer than being taught by a mentor. I didn’t have access to a library of films or books to look learn from, there was no internet or email to pass teaching around. It was all about trying things. I developed my own unique bag of filmmaking tricks to deal with things as I went along learning the slow way. I’d later find out these where known filmmaking rules. Of course I’d already read a good number of film making and cinematography books during my studies before i got the job, but there’s no substitute for practicing it yourself, and there’s no faster, cheaper and more immediate way to experiment than real-time game cinematics. What I was doing was effectively the precursor to today’s Machinema, and to top it off I had programmers bent on developing the tools for me to do an even better job and they were taking requests almost exclusively from me!

So what? I got off to a good start? Well yes but it was a small bubble too, and there was a lot I wasn’t learning about.

I moved onto another game and this time focused most of my time on 25 minutes of pre-rendered cinematics, while supervising other animators to make the in-game animation and other real-time cutscenes. That was to be the next three years. Those 25 minutes were filled with a similar range of opportunities, but his time I had the luxury of using ‘off the shelf’ tools, and working outside of the code base, which was even more freeing as I wasn’t dependant on programmers to get my work to the screen.

It gave me some the portfolio pieces to move onto other places, and so began the rest of my career in animation. But no matter how much I tried one thing stayed consistent. Although I may have been officially hired as an animator, I would almost never spend most of my time animating. So I was forced to learn other areas around animation. Over time I figured out that although I could be good at a lot of things it was the creation of story, a sequence of shots, the cinematography, layout, staging, timing and editing that really made me stand out. I was an animated filmmaker.

It was then that I started to make my short film, ‘Devils, Angels and Dating’, largely as a way to showcase all of my new skills into something I could call my own. I already had dozens of student films from before my days as a professional animator but they were very dated, created with very old software and styles (I was originally trained as a 2D animator). So with hours and hours of screen time under my belt I set about creating my own all new film, ideally a one minute master piece.... Ha! Yeah right! I could never do just a minute, I’m way to ambitious for that and at the time I just had too much pent up creative energy. I knew then and now that a minute was enough and would have been a smarter choice but it was like trying to contain a raging bull. I had a lot to say and too many skills to show off.

So after a couple of years of story and character design development, I had to get started. I started with thumbnail storyboards. I scanned them in and edited them together. This went back and forth for a while as the rest of the production took shape over at the development website with our growing team of volunteers. I actually published most of these edits to the web so that; 1) the team could see how it was shaping up, 2) I could get feedback, 3) attract talent and, 4) an audience. In all there were around a hundred or so versions of the animatic on YouTube that you can still to this day review to see how the film developed. This is one of the earliest animatics.

I was given filmmaking notes as I went along, but for the most part I was leaning on my own layout and staging experience leading up to this point. Acting as the principle artist, generalist and director of a film while also having a day job and having a life is an enormous strain. So I tried to find other people to help with Layout to get things into going faster (I had more animation volunteers than I could keep fed with shots). It was clear that I couldn’t get the animators to just create shots from storyboards, the results would have been extremely varied and the project would have been a nightmare. I did get some help from my good friend Kurt Lawson, with whom I spent some long work sessions side by side churning out shots in 3D. But in the end I had to do most of it, as for most people in this industry it’s not a task many people want spend their free time doing. So it became an ongoing task to keep a good number of shots prepared ahead of the wave of animators wanting to work on the film. It was also beneficial for me to handle most of the shots because I could keep a tight handle on the way the shots cut together and the way the camera movement flowed across the cut. Taking this task back myself had another unanticipated but very important benefit.

Any production is filled with people from different backgrounds, and wildly different levels of quality. Wrangling all those differences is challenging enough, but when you’re making something with nothing but volunteers (from all over the world) with no budget the variation goes off the chart. This is where most volunteer animated short film productions crumble and disappear.

So Layout and Final Layout came to the rescue and formed what I like to call the ‘sandwich of the production’. If animation is the content of the sandwich, the part you came for, then Layout and Final Layout are the slices of bread either side of it that holds it all together and makes it solid consumable product.

Layout is often referred to as a number of other names like Camera Staging, Previs, Setup and Workbook Layout. They are all variations around the same central 3D filmmaking problems to be solved. But in my case it essentially involved referencing in all the assets needed for a shot, staging their positions and broad movements through the scene while figuring out how the camera will frame them. The whole thing is playblasted out (animator talk for making a video) and saved as version one of the shot. The playblasts are put into the animatic replacing the storyboard panels. There will usually be a lot of back and forth re-iterations of each shot as the edit takes shape.

A long time ago I started keeping the edit open in the background as I work out the shots in 3D, and I’d just keep replacing the playblast videos and updating the timeline to get a fast turnaround. I still, to this day, don’t see enough of that being done on most productions and the lag between seeing a shot in 3D and seeing it in the edit can be excruciating to me. Anyway, for me it was a very efficient workflow and in time I filled up folders with scene files ready for animators to take over. This left little to chance, they couldn’t use the wrong assets, import it instead of referencing it or use the wrong part of the set, etc... Ultimately, along with the shot briefing and the animatic the animators had the vast majority of their questions answered for them and they could focus on the performances.

When the animators were done with the scene and it came back it was almost never ready to light and render. Each animator had a different level and style of polish, so animation did need some tweaks to keep it consistent and up to the same standards. But a 3D scene is so complex there’s also a huge number of things an animator can do that’s different from the next guy and it was necessary to check each scene over and make sure they all worked in the same way for the lighting and rendering pipeline.

The best perk of taking the shots back in for a final check-up was the ability to refine the camera based on the performance and any new shots that were completing either side of it. I could take a higher level look at each shot in the context of the edit and paint in broad strokes the style of the camera. I almost never changed the point of view of the camera, since that affects the performance too much and that was always locked down before the animator started. But I could push in a little, pull back a little, reframe the composition a bit or add camera shake and wobble. I actually designed a gradual flowing change of style of the camera work throughout the film to match the mood of the film. This is something that dozens of individuals focused exclusively on one shot each just can’t really co-ordinate. So it acted as a unifying process both artistically and technically. If anything I wish I could have been more ambitious with the camera work but at the time I was fighting a balancing act of making sure everyone could understand the production so that I could attract good talent, so I kept things simple.

I’d recommend the ‘Layout Sandwich’ practice to any animated film production, but I’ve seen firsthand how often it doesn’t work like this. Storyboards are rushed or skipped entirely. Projects are under too much pressure to finish yesterday, with too few people putting enough time into each step, or simply a lack of people with the Layout skillset being stretched too far. Work gets done, and then sent back to be re-done when it doesn’t work... but that’s another story.

So what’s the take away from all this? Layout is so much more than the poor animator’s fall back job. It’s pivotal to a production. I find myself more often than animating, creating and re-working sequences of shots because that’s where I’m needed the most. I tip my hats to the unsung heroes toiling away in studios around the world generating many iterations of shots most people will never see, so that both the audiences, and the animators, can understand a sequence. It’s a high art into itself, and solves so many problems. It takes a really specific skillset, while still understanding a broad number of factors to get it right. It’s one of the main balancing acts that holds animated productions together.

What are your Layout/Camera/Staging/Previs stories? I’m curious to learn more from the unsung heroes of the animated filmmaking world.

Mike's Layout Portfolio and Work History.

Short Film Development Site.

Animated Filmmaker Blog.

THE RIGHT TIME TO GET STORY FEEDBACK

2012-07-29T19:00:00.000Z

There’s mixed stories about when you should get feedback on your ideas. In animation it’s common for people to say that you should get feedback early and often but I’d argue that’s not always true. If you do that you risk ‘too many cooks’ and you can water down the elements that would make the film what it needs to be to make it resonate with a targeted audience. Better instead to protect the idea, and explore it fully for as long as you can, taking breaks so that you come back to it fresh and with other perspectives filtered through you. Only when you’re returning to it repeatedly from a fresh perspective and you feel it’s gone as far as it can, is it time to get feedback.

At this point it’s time to ask yourself if you have surrounded yourself with the kind of people that can give you valuable, constructive feedback. Whether you recognise it or not, your idea is still fragile and undeveloped and other people will see it. You need to be sure that the next person that sees it understands the fragile nature of an early idea and that they can both approach your request for feedback with the appropriate level of care, while still seeing the big picture and guiding you to a better place.

When I started making Devil’s Angels & Dating I wanted nothing more than to share my idea with other creative’s around me to get notes. But looking back now I realise I was seeking a partner that could fill the gaps in my knowledge, bringing the project up to a higher level without necessarily putting in the work myself. It wasn’t that I was lazy. I was trying to do so many different things to get the film made on top of having a life and a full time job. I accepted that I didn’t know everything and I wanted to find a partner that would compliment my skills and bring the project up to the standards I held myself to in all other areas of the project. That sort of person is very hard to come by, and even when I recognised the same spirit in other filmmakers, writers and artists there was frequently a friction of egos. Anyone that talented doesn’t easily commit themselves to an idea that’s not their own. So my pursuit of a partner turned more into an opportunity to share filmmaking lessons that informed the way I handled the making of my own film.

But still I didn’t have the fresh eyes that were going to help me refine a masterful script. From an early stage I gave it to other writers, writer’s muses, artists, family members, friends, etc... and in the process of putting the making of the film online even opened it up to strangers to comment on my story. Some of the people I would have expected the best notes from gave me off target notes like screenwriting formatting tips which was a bit disappointing. Some of the best notes came from non writers, some notes came not from what they said but by identifying what it was they saw in it that I couldn’t have expected. Usually the best notes are what you interpret from their reaction, not the specifics of what they think the solutions should be.

I did manage to use some of the notes I got to steer the film towards a better version but I also had too many notes from the wrong people too early and (combined with my own insecurities at the time) it watered down the story and the themes I was passionate about. This is a question of being strong as a creator, making good choices and hand picking that best notes without losing sight of what’s important to the project for you. Isolated from much of a support system it was easy for me to find myself catering to peer pressure from strangers who’s opinions I shouldn’t perhaps have put so much stock in. After all they didn’t really see, understand or have faith in what I was really trying to do. So I look back now and I know it’s not a pure as I wanted it to be. An easy indictor of this is that the film is laden with props designed to serve one purpose or another and I’ve always hated films that put so much emphasis on the importance of magic borbals! The Indiana Jones films are the only ones I let get away with it, primarily because those items tie directly into stories I grew up with... but generally I prefer characters and situations to drive the narrative over props.

Over time I did find some good people to give me notes, and they gave great stuff. Usually not at length, but just enough to steer me in a new direction that would enhance the film, and usually that’s all you really want. A total re-write or re-conceiving the idea can be completely destructive to the creative flow of a project, but a firm guidance in a positive new directions can be very helpful.

The irony is that most of the best notes came well after I’d already gone too far to turn things around. Mostly after assets were made, animation had started, and the team was well under way. Since this was a project with no budget and only the services of volunteers bringing it to life, I had to be respectful about just how much I changed. It was only when the project had a following, some recognition and more than enough material to show that the people with the notes that could have made a difference took the time to make themselves heard. I knew that would happen to some degree and that’s why I persevered towards getting it made even without strong feedback, as you can’t attract talent until you’ve proved you’re not wasting their time. Now I would argue that I’ve made my mark as a filmmaker to some degree and I do know people that would give me gold if I needed feedback. But it’s taken a herculean effort to get here including moving and changing jobs numerous times, being open to new experiences and points of view.

So what tips can I share with you?

1) Surround yourself with good people... and if you can’t find them, seek them out. It may require picking up your life and going elsewhere, certainly in the early stages. You’re going to have to earn the respect of those people too.

2) Choose the right time to get feedback... too early and you water down the story’s voice, too late and it’s damaging to your creative flow to change it.

3) One last tip; recognise what you want to get out of the feedback. Ask specific questions to guide them to give you the level of feedback you’re looking for and get them started. Don’t present them with a blank page and a “What do you think?” That’s the same as asking someone for hours of their time and they have to believe that they can help you in a meaningful way in a matter of minutes (unless they are a really good friend).

Animated Filmmaker - Blog

2012-07-05T13:03:35.000Z

I've started an external blog to give me a platform to go back and talk about the making of this film. It'll probably stray into other personal stuff too. But I'm hoping to cover some of the topics I wanted to get into in the 'Making of' book. It'll give me a push to get these stories out and perhaps I'll collect all the best stuff and update it for an actual book later on.

http://AnimatedFilmmaker.blogspot.com
http://AnimatedFilmmaker.com