Animation Tips & Tricks

Do You Have Any Tips on How to Take Good Video Reference?

2010-08-25T15:02:00.000-07:00

Shooting reference is an important part of my animation workflow. I've found that the following tips have helped me to get the most out of my reference.

Shoot at various times during the production of the shot. I like to shoot reference a few key places. I'll shoot at the very start to document my gut reaction to seeing the shot for the first time. After some planning, I will shoot some more reference to do some exploration. When I have my choices solidified I will act them out again and study the mechanics.

Switch it up between acting and doing. When I am "acting" I will try to feel the line out and see what comes naturally. When I am "doing" I'll have a specific idea in mind that I will try to imitate with my body.

Shoot with a partner- Ideas tend to develop faster when you are getting instant feedback. Bring a buddy into the reference room and take turns acting and directing.

Let the camera roll- Sometimes it takes a while to feel comfortable when acting out a line. Be patient, just let the camera roll and keep running through the material until you forget that the camera is there. That is when the good stuff starts happening.

Act through the line. Load up at least one or two shots before and after the shot you are working on to bring a sense of context to your acting. This will give you time to get into character before your shot starts and help you deliver a solid performance right through the end.

Get into character. Do all that you can to make sure that you are in the characters mindset. Use props such as clothing or a sword. Try shooting the reference in an environment similar to the one featured in the scene. If you have a friend or co-worker that fits the description of that character, ask that person to act the scene out for you.

Analyze your reference. Anyone can get jump around in front of the camera. The true skill comes in analyzing your reference, extracting the truths and tossing the dramatics aside. I like to start the editing process by cutting the reference into takes and comparing the takes to one another. I will eliminate the takes one by one until I feel like I have the best 3-5 takes. Once I have the best takes I will analyze the individual acting beats and pick my favorites.

Create super takes. If you have acting choices that you like in different takes, try cutting your favorite takes together into a super take. Sometimes this will give you the best combination of acting choices but other times you will find that a nice beat in one spot can steal the show from one of your other favorite beats.

Show your reference. A lot of animators tend to keep their reference somewhat private. Showing your reference to your peers and anim sups is a great way to get some quick feedback without investing a ton of time.  

Guest Blogger Mike Stern

Describe Your Workflow When You Start Animating a Shot. Is There a Right or Wrong Way?

2010-08-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

I've definitely learned that there is no "right way" to animate a shot. I've seen people animate in ways that seem insane to me, but somehow they get amazing results. I've also had some co-workers look at my method with puzzled looks in their eyes, but it works for me. So anyone that tells you there is one way to animate hasn't been exposed to enough animators yet.

However, there is a right and a wrong way to plan your shots. It's very simple. ALWAYS PLAN YOUR SHOTS!!! I have been guilty in the past of trying to rush through my planning and start on a shot to save time. Inevitably, I end up wasting more time stumbling through my animation, and my work never looks as good.

My work flow has become pretty consistent since I've started working. If my shot has dialogue, I will listen to it repeatedly until I have a very solid feel for the timing and dynamics. No matter what kind of shot it is, I always shoot video reference. I try to take the time to do many different takes so that I have a lot of options to choose from. It is a lot quicker to explore ideas in front of a camera than it is to animate them. One thing I always try to keep in mind when filming myself is to try to not be too conscious of what I'm going to look like on screen. I've found that if I am thinking about how I am posing myself my reference will end up looking unnatural and will also be filled with generic animation ideas. However, if I simply try to put myself in the mindset of the character, forget the camera, and actually react to the situation in a natural way, my reference will be full of little ticks and behaviors that I probably wouldn't have thought of. It makes for more believable and interesting animation.

Once I have a direction that I am happy with, I thumbnail out my key poses and take notes for myself. I don't worry about whether the drawings are good or whether anyone else can understand my notes. They are a blueprint for me to be able to build my shot, and the process of drawing them forces me to really study what is happening in the reference. I always make sure to pay attention to not only the main poses, but how the different body parts move from pose to pose. I often find it is the spaces between the poses that can make the difference between a character feeling real or animated. Clean arcs are of course one of the fundamentals of animation, but sometimes you need a little messiness in the movement. This is especially true in visual effects animation for live action films.

At this point, I can finally jump onto the computer and start my blocking. My first blocking pass usually sticks very close to the thumbnails and reference. I personally like to have my first set of keys be a performance that I know is already solid before I start deviating. My final animation may end up vastly different than my original reference, but it gives me a great foundation to start with. Once I feel like that is working, I will begin pushing the poses, tweaking the timing, and exploring ideas. Also, this is around the point when I try to get feedback from my leads or co-workers to see what they feel is or isn't working well.

After that, it is hopefully (but not always) a painless process of getting notes and making revisions until you end up with a fantastic final product!

Guest Blogger Travis Tohill

What is your advice to a graduating student as they begin their career as an animator?

2010-08-11T15:01:00.000-07:00

One bit of advice I would give an animator starting out is the same advice that one of my mentors, Gleen McQueen (from Pixar), gave me.

(Paraphrasing) “Get out there and get work… anywhere. Get your foot in the door any way you can – it’s much easier to work your way to where you want to be from within the studio than from the outside. Don’t be overly particular about where you are working when you’re first starting. Any experience is good experience.”

There is pretty much nothing in life that you can’t study and put your observations and experiences to good use in animation. It’s really quite a renaissance art; you need to be constantly observing life in general to create great stories and characters, and you never know when you’ll find an amazing story in any experience. So even if you can’t get work as an animator initially, use whatever you DO end up doing in the meantime to build up your arsenal of skills! If you’re working at a physical job, like landscaping or something like that, just imagine all of the great observations you’ll be able to make about body mechanics, lifting heavy objects, and even just paying attention to what your own body is doing as you are working. If you are working in an office, pay attention to the different personalities and dynamics at play. Watch people interact with each other, pay attention to nuances of body language, the differences in the way individuals stand, walk, gesture. It’s a totally different way of “seeing.” And all of the experiences you have, whether in an animation studio or somewhere else, can be used to make you a better animator.

The other bit of advice I would give is PERSISTENCE. Just because you don’t get accepted to the first batch of studios you apply to does not mean you should give up and find something else to do. It means you keep working on your skills, adding new shots to your reel, getting rid of old work, and send those reels back out again! Studios will keep files on you, and watch your progress. And don’t think that they won’t notice your enthusiasm either.

Guest Blogger Dana Boadway

What's a Typical Day on the Job Like For You?

2010-08-03T12:25:00.001-07:00

I come in to work a little before 9 a.m. in order to check my work email so that I'm up-to-date with the schedule in case dailies are happening at a different time or if there are any meetings. Then depending on the schedule, I might have dailies, where we review shots with the supervisor or we are in a video transmission with the client or any other form of shot review. If none of this is happening, I continue working on my shots until lunch. Depending on the show schedule, it can be a full lunch at the dining commons with fellow animators, or, if it is really busy, I take the food to-go and eat at my desk.

The afternoon is kind of the same as the morning. If the schedule is quiet you work on your shots, and if not, you spend time in transmissions or afternoonlies (the afternoon version of dailies).

If it's crunch time, you may have to work late into the evening. In that case, the production crew of the show you're on makes sure that you get dinner -- which is awesome!

Sometimes the afternoon gets broken up with Ergo Breaks, which is organized by production, and you usually head to the production office and have drinks and yummy snacks with your co-workers and relax for a bit (I love it when they bring in Indian food; so gooood!).

That's the work schedule; I also spend at least half the day laughing. I'm surrounded by so many great people and there are always jokes flying around or funny instant messages popping up on your screen. It's a great mix between hard work and fun.

Guest Blogger Jean-Denis Haas

What role does music play in a scene? Is it important?

2010-07-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

Let me start by saying that I have never had the opportunity to actually animate to a music track. For that reason, I am not going to try and explain the process by which animators will work to a pre-scored track. I highly suggest you read the chapter on “Disney Sounds” in The Illusion of Life if you want to get a more concrete idea of how to animate to music.

There are some films that have such an impact on us that even decades after seeing them we can easily hum the music before recalling specific images in our minds. The amazing music that helped to make some films famous becomes ingrained in our consciousness. To quote The Illusion of Life, music “becomes the soul of our memory, forever coloring our impressions.”

I remember when I was nine years old and living in the Bahamas, on the coast of Nassau. There were only two VCR tapes where we were staying: Rock n' Roll High School, starring the Ramones, and Jaws. While living there, and even up until this very day, I have had a fairly strong fear of the ocean. Actually, just this past year, while living in New Zealand, I got my scuba diving certification specifically to combat my fear of deep water. You see, I blame that fear on the movie Jaws. When I'm in the ocean, I can hear the film's score in my head, and it sends shivers up my spine. I don’t think about the images of the shark killing the woman at the beginning, or the little boy with glasses disappearing in a pool of his own blood in front of all the people on the beach. I hear the music. Anyone who has watched this movie can quickly start humming the music. Go ahead, do it right now. Bom Bom......Bom Bom......Bom Bom Bom Bom....Ban na na! So thank you, Mr. Spielberg. This is what your film did to a nine year old boy living on the coast of a Caribbean island.

Music in a film, when done right, has the power to become its own character. As a tool it serves a number of important roles. Music is given the job of emphasizing critical points in the narrative, such as love between the heroes, for example, when Jake and Neytiri fly for the first time together in Avatar; or the death of a major character like when Angie Dickinson gets sliced up in Dressed to Kill; it could be an amazing accomplishment or pivotal feel-good moment, like when Daniel kicks Johnny in the face and wins the Karate tournament; or a very special kiss like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr on the beach in From Here to Eternity. Music also serves to enforce the overall ambiance or theme of a film, and therefore connects strongly with the film genre. If I play you the music from the movie Suspiria by Goblin, I guarantee you will know Suspiria is a horror film. There are countless films that have successfully used music to elevate the emotional impact of the entire film. The Godfather (Love Theme - Nino Rota), Laurence of Arabia (Maurice Jarre), Rocky (Gonna Fly Now – Bill Conti), Kill Bill Vol. 1 (Battle Without Honor or Humanity – Tonoyasu Hotei). In films such as these, music is used in an almost Pavlovian way. By first associating it with a character or a strong emotional moment, it will later be repeated at critical moments as a way of re-introducing the same emotional arcs to the audience.

Another important device for music is to be associated with a particular character. “1, 2, Freddy's coming for you...” was Freddy Krueger's theme, or Darth Vader's theme (The Imperial march – John Williams). One of my favorite films of all time is Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time In the West. In that film, each character has their own music. Whenever Charles Bronson is in a scene we can hear the soft hissing of a harmonica. When Henry Fonda shows up, the most menacing music is introduced. The heroine Claudia Cardinale has her own music, and Jason Robards has his. Like Fantasia, the score was written and composed before filming began, and Leone would play the music in the background during shooting so the actors could feel the emotional arc of their character.

What are some other examples you can think of where the music, first used as a tool to move the narrative forward, can become so powerful that it takes on a life all its own. How about Hitchcock's Psycho? Anyone who has seen this film had shivers run up their spine when they heard the sharp scream of the violin while “mother” stabs away. In fact, for many of us, the sharp repetition of that violin is the first thing we recall when thinking about Psycho, not the images themselves.

So where does that put music when we think about animation? Well, like any live action film, animation is about narrative and performance. So in the same way, music's role is to enforce the power and emotional impact of either the character, the scene, a story point, or an all-encompassing theme. Music can even be associated with a physical action in the animation, such as Tom the Cat tip-toeing across the kitchen floor as he hunts little Jerry. Each step he makes is accompanied by a musical note, increasing in pitch. “dum dum dum dum dum.”

When I think of music associated with certain animated characters, I think of the Seven Dwarves “Heigh Ho” theme and how beautifully it painted the persona of the dwarves; or the French accordion-style music associated with the romantic Pepe Lepew; or how about Sebastien's pseudo-Jamaican rhythms. Music is so woven into the fabric of Disney films, that the animation performances, while still brilliantly executed and capable of pushing the narrative forward all by itself, are elevated to a much more powerful emotional level because of the music and lyrics. In fact, music is so intricately woven into the characterization and emotional development of the narrative of so many animated films, that one could hardly even imagine watching Beauty and the Beast without Belle or Lumiere singing. Imagine other animated films with music intricately woven into the emotional arc of the narrative, such as Mickey Mouse in Fantasia which was animated entirely to a pre-existing score.

Music is a directorial device that connects us emotionally to a scene; Walt Disney believed its importance was paramount. Historically, it has been a part of film since almost the very beginning. I hope one day I'll have the opportunity to animate to a music score. If anyone has had some experience animating to an existing score, please leave some feedback and let us know what kind of experience you had doing it. I would love to hear from you!

Guest Blogger Aaron Gilman

Do You Have Any Tips on how to Take Good Video Reference?

2010-07-19T20:26:00.000-07:00

Here are a few tips:

1) Try a few takes, but try not to overdo it. In my experience, the first few takes will feel more natural and spontaneous, but if you record the same reference 20- 30 times, it will start to feel repetitive and the acting will not flow.

2) Sometimes I ask friends to do a take or two for me. Sometimes other people can come up with surprising acting ideas for a shot, things I would not think of by myself.

3) The other important thing is to get all the technical stuff out of the way: make sure the camera is well positioned on a solid tripod, the angle is good (similar to the shot), there is enough light, etc. It's hard to get good acting when you have to stop all the time to fix the lights, the camera angle, the tripod, etc. Take enough time to set up well, so later you can forget about it and just focus on the acting.

4) Try to get some acting experience! It can be a lot of fun. Improv is probably a good way to start, but there are many ways to get some acting training, which can help an animator hugely! And it's also fun!

Guest Blogger Raquel Rabbit

Can You Discuss the Pros and Cons of Being a Specialist such as a Character Animator, Versus Being a Generalist?

2010-07-15T08:00:00.000-07:00

When I started working at Rainmaker, I was told that they didn't have the luxury of hiring specialists and that everyone was expected to be generalists.

My first task was texturing teeth. I had no idea what I was doing and I nearly lost my job. No kidding. Fortunately for me, as talented as the artists at Rainmaker are, I learned what generalists generally lack are decent animation skills.

Animation is just such a demanding discipline. Movement is something that is either right or wrong, not much room for artists who can “kind of animate.”

That said, there is nothing wrong with building your skills across the board. I don't agree with the idea that artists can't learn how to script, for example.

Guest Blogger Mark Pullyblank

Can You Provide Some Tips on Animating Secondary Characters?

2010-07-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

There is a tendency for animation students to forget the importance of film theory. Animation is of course about movement, so we often look to animations created in the past as our principal way of learning. But the ideas about animation that occupy themselves less with core physical mechanics and the nuances of motion, such as narrative, composition, staging and timing, are first and foremost rooted in the language of film narrative. So if we are to understand the creation of animation not for itself, but for a greater whole anchored in the language of film, then we can look to the entire history of live action film to gain a greater understanding of how to approach various obstacles in CG.

When we refer to secondary characters, we are often just speaking about the characters occupying the background. These are characters that are not directly involved in the performance of the heroes or principal characters in the shot. Background characters fulfill the critical task of making the scene believable. So just to be clear, don't think of a secondary character as someone that is less important to the story than the hero (for example, the hero's ugly twin brother that only shows up once in the film). A secondary character is like an extra or a background character. Their performances are a critical aspect of a shot, and require just as much love from the animator as the principals. In live action film, a great deal of importance is placed on the composition and direction of the extras in the scene. Quite often, when I watch a film for the second time, I will look exclusively at the background characters in a scene as it unfolds, to see how the extras were directed. You can sometimes catch an extra doing something odd or performing in a way that is inconsistent with the scene and the other extras surrounding him. When this happens, if the viewer catches it, the believability of the scene is breached. While this may only be in some small way, depending on the nature of the performer's action and how close to camera they are, the fact of the matter is that background characters must be handled with care, as they can serve to either enforce the story or have a negative impact on it.

There have even been some films where this notion gets turned on its head by the more masterful directors. Take for example a truly brilliant scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, where the insane Bruno Anthony (played by Robert Walker) sits with a large crowd who are watching a tennis match. Every extra turns their heads from left to right, left to right, in perfect unison, watching the off camera tennis ball getting hit back and forth over the net. But as the camera pushes in, we notice Bruno sitting right in the middle of the crowd. He does not turn his head, but instead stares menacingly at his co-star who sits across the court. One person, performing out of character from the rest, can draw a huge amount of attention to the viewer. In this case, the character out of synch wasn't an extra, but a main character. Hitchcock used this to create a feeling of ominousness and insanity, revealing to the viewer that Bruno is not like everyone else.

Let's look at another example. Imagine watching a movie about a high school football game. In the fourth quarter, the score is tied and there's three seconds left on the clock. Now imagine that the stands are filled with........no one. Imagine the stadium is empty. No one is watching the game. This would have a dramatic impact on the believability of the scene. No boos, no cheering, no ambient motion filling every shot, no cut-ins to reactions when a goal is scored, or when a pass is missed. The scene would be flat!

Some directors have completely mastered the use of extras or background characters in their movies. I think of Robert Altman films like Nashville, or Stanley Kubrick's epic masterpiece Barry Lyndon, or Laurence of Arabia. These are examples of films with hundreds of extras performing in a way that enforces the narrative but never dominates or overshadows the principal characters unless otherwise intended (as we saw with Hitchcock).

From an animation standpoint, background characters can often provide the animator with an enormous amount of creative freedom. Most often, background characters won’t be as rigidly directed as the principal characters. This means that the animator can experiment in many different ways. Quite often, early motion tests, either for rig development or as a means to understand the way the character moves and expresses itself, will find their way into the backgrounds of a scene. Because so little direction is often put into background performances, animators may go straight ahead in the creation process, animating as loose and creatively as possible. Background animation opens the animator up to the whole gambit of possible actions that character might perform in the scene. Going back to our crowded stadium example, you could animate a little girl eating a hotdog and the wiener pops out the back of the bun and lands on her dress. Or maybe you'll need to animate 10 different ways characters might clap their hands. Whatever the scene might be, background animation can be super detailed, refined, and creative.

There are, however, some limitations both creatively and technically when creating background performances. Some background behaviors may be required to cycle, or conform to the requirements of a massive pipeline (crowd simulations that plug and play different cycling animations). As with live action, when animating background animation, the performance should never be so big as to draw attention to itself and possibly remove focus from the heroes. Nor should the actions be inconsistent with the tone of the scene, nor should the style of the animation diverge from the general style of the project. Often you may not know where or how your background animation will be used, so you can end up sort of animating in the dark. Inevitably, someone will need to customize the performance to the shot for a number of possible reasons. The animations may need to conform to certain frame ranges, or the performance may need to be altered for uneven terrain or camera angles specific to the shot they are placed in. The eyeline of the character may need to be changed, foot contacts, a character's silhouette or orientation to camera, or a “big” action in the animation may be landing in sync with an important moment in the hero’s performance.

You can have a ton of fun creating animation for secondary characters. Keep things loose and creative, and remember that they are there to enforce the narrative qualities of the scene, so they serve a critical importance in the language of film.

Guest Blogger Aaron Gilman

Do You Have Any Ideas on How to Increase Productivity and Speed up Workflow?

2010-06-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

A lot of the workflow issues will resolve themselves with time and experience. The more you animate, and the more you learn to work with different rigs and software, the more productive you will naturally become. As far as actively working on increasing your productivity goes, it’s very helpful to talk to other animators about how they are approaching different issues in their shots, and if you are working in a studio that has a “dailies” session every day, there’s SO much knowledge to soak up by viewing their progress.

That’s one of the big plusses of Animation Mentor, and having the students be able to work with different mentors as they go through the program - not only do they get the benefit of seeing how different animators approach shots in the lectures, but they also will get lots of great info from their different mentors as well. And as they work their way through the program, they will amass many different combos of skills – a toolbox, if you will - to help them create their own workflow.

Workflow is such a personal thing. There can be many different ways to solve a problem, but each individual has their own sensibilities that will make one method or another a more comfortable way of working. Some things will feel more intuitive than others, depending on who you are. The only way you can figure that out for yourself is to try different things that you learn at school, figure yourself out, or best of all, watch what other animators do.

You can also do other things, like make sure your shot is very well-planned. If you want to avoid time-consuming changes down the road on a shot, it should be very solid in the blocking phase. The timing should be extremely clear, as well as the poses, and you have to have the arcs, especially of the hips, very well articulated and smooth. If you have those ingredients, then you have a solid foundation. You can’t add higher levels of detail to the shot and expect them to work if you don’t have a good foundation. Adding polish to your shot will be much more of a breeze, and you’ll get that shot finaled much faster, and with a lot less agony. When your foundation animation isn’t working, you will constantly be going back to change things in later stages, and that will affect any other details you’ve built up since finishing blocking. You’ll end up having to re-do those details as well to work with the other changes you made to the foundation. It’s a nasty cycle that will not only *drive* you crazy, but will slow you down like crazy.

Guest Blogger Dana Boadway

What Separates the Good Animator from the Bad Animator?

2010-06-23T09:42:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things that separate a good animator and a bad animator. I will skip the obvious things like talent, speed, good mechanics, fundamentals, etc. There are a lot of animators out there that have all of those qualities. I know for me, two things that inspire me are an animator's attention to detail and creativity. Of course, all shots have to tell the story, sell the emotion, have good body mechanics, timing, weight, etc. What is unfortunate is that a lot of times a shot will have all of those elements, and then the animator will consider it done. I've been guilty of it myself.

A good animator will work his shots until they are good enough to be in the film. A great animator will take it that extra 5 percent past what is required and make it amazing. Feet don't land square to the floor most of the time, and fingers don't grab an object and then stop moving. Eye lids are constantly reacting to what is happening in the eyes, and the face has so many ticks and tiny oddities that it is overwhelming. The animators that blow me away always seem to take the time to add the small imperfections that make a shot feel real. Sometimes there are small details that you feel more than you see. However, if they weren't there it wouldn't feel nearly as sweet.

The other thing that really gets me pumped about a shot is an acting choice that I would never have thought of. Some animators are able to come up with ways of expressing an emotion or an idea that are wildly original but seem to not be out of place for the character. It is very obvious in those moments that the animator put in the effort to avoid the cliches and brainstormed until they had something special.

So, I guess I could sum up my view of a good animator as someone who has all of the skills but also takes real pride in their work. They aren't just trying to get their shots approved by the director, and they aren't running with the first idea that will work. They are not just trying to get four seconds of footage into the film. They are trying to create four seconds of inspired animation that will help elevate the film. I've seen animators that have been in the industry for many, many years and still labor over their shots that way. I am hoping that I can end up being one of them even after I've been doing this for a few decades.

Guest Blogger Travis Tohill

What Is Your Favorite Animated Movie, and How Did It Inspire You?

2010-06-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

I think this will be a little disappointing, but I don't have a favorite animated movie. There are some films that made a big impression on me and probably made me begin to love animation, but it's not just one film - it's many.

For instance, short films made a huge impression on me. Not only one - many of them. I think short animated films are an awesome thing. And many years ago, they seemed to be even more special than now! Maybe because 20 or 30 years ago it was not easy to see them. There was no internet. There was no YouTube. You would have to go to a film festival, or sometimes in my school they would be shown in special screenings. And I fell in love with Norman Maclaren films, and many other films from the National Film Board of Canada. European shorts like the works of Jan Svankmajer. Nick Park films such as Creature Comforts and The Wrong Trousers. Balance by Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein made a strong impression on me, as well as Zbigniew Rybczynski's Tango. Well, and I LOVE Chris Wedge's Bunny - not only is it a great animation short, but it also was the first one that I worked on! These short films and many others were so inspiring! They made me see animation as a real art form, not just entertainment. I think of all the animated films I saw, short films were by far my favorite and I will always have a special place for them in my heart and soul.

Other than that, there are a couple of feature films that were really important to me. Jungle Book is one of them. I remember when I was little and my family took me to the theater to see it. I was maybe five or so, and I remember telling my mom how the movement was so much more detailed than in Saturday cartoons. The way things moved in Jungle Book was totally amazing to me. And the characters! The songs!

Toy Story was also a turning point for me – I was at School of Visual Arts in New York trying to decide between multimedia/internet type of stuff or animation, and when Toy Story came out, it was really hard to resist. It was really the best possible beginning for 3D in the big screen: fun story, great characters, very well conceived and done, using this amazing new technique - what a treat! It certainly was an important factor in my decision to become a 3D animator.

Another film that made a huge impression on me was Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki. I love the story and the characters. The type of narrative is so refreshing and it takes you to places you wouldn't expect. It is great when a film doesn't feel like “just another formula to get huge box office money” – it's so much nicer when a film feels original, special, truly coming from the heart. I think that shows respect for the audience and respect for the art form.

And of course, there are remarkable films made in CG and stop motion in the past 6 or 7 years. I love Ratatouille, The Incredibles and Horton Hears a Who. I had a great time watching Kung Fu Panda. I also love some of the more obscure stuff, like Mirror Mask, a live action film with some 3D elements, which I thought was very exciting and refreshing. And of course I absolutely love Coraline which was so wonderful and inspiring. I also liked the The Curse of the Were-Rabbit - so much fun!

As you can see, is really hard to nail it down to just one film!

Guest Blogger Raquel Rabbit

How and When Do You Clean Up Animation?

2010-06-08T08:00:00.000-07:00

In traditional hand-drawn animation, the "clean-up" phase (usually done by someone called a clean-up artist), is when the rough keys, breakdowns, and in-betweens are "cleaned up" into nice, smooth solid lines and forms. In a sense, the clean-up artist is tracing the animator's
often rough drawings, but it's more than just tracing.

Even if you've never done traditional animation yourself, you've probably seen what rough pencil keys/breakdowns look like. Depending on the animator, they can be somewhat precise or thick, bold lines more concerned about movement than perfectly drawn body parts. Glen Keane, unarguably one of the best animators of all time, often has particularly "messy" breakdowns, but they are always very powerful, and clearly illustrate the pose, force, and movement in the body.

This is all a good clean-up artist needs to turn those rough drawings into the finished drawing we will see on the screen, but this is no easy task! The clean-up artist has to make sure the final line they are choosing is keeping the character on-model, is accentuating the proper facial expressions, is keeping things on nice organic arcs, etc. They work closely with the animator to ensure that the final product is what the animator envisioned, but it is truly a team effort, and the art of clean-up work is truly an art all on its own.

The best clean-up artist can take mediocre rough animation and make it look pretty darn nice, while a poor clean-up artist can ruin even the greatest animator's pencil roughs.

So, in traditional animation, the clean-up stage is incredibly important. But what about in CG?

At the vast majority of studios, animation is less compartmentalized for computer animation than it is for traditional animation. Whereas hand-drawn animation often would have an animator doing the keys and breakdowns, an in-betweener doing the in-betweens, and a clean-up artist polishing it all up, we usually wear all of these hats at once as a CG animator.

For us, the "clean-up" phase of the animation is pretty much exactly what the clean-up artist would be looking to accomplish in hand-drawn work. Once our animation is to the point where the timing is solid, the body mechanics are all working, the weight and balance is correct, the emotion is clear, the story points and character intentions are clear, and all of these things are nailed down, it's time to dive into our clean-up phase.

For me, the clean-up phase can actually be the most fun part, because it really can become a big puzzle to try to wrap your brain around. The biggest thing for me during this phase is to work on my arcs. In theory, my arcs should all be pretty close to working already (if I've done my planning and blocked my scene in correctly), but I almost always have some little arcs to fix or add, or find ways to make various arcs work better together (such as the arc the tip of a sword follows, and making sure that feels driven by AND interconnected to the arc the wrist is traveling along, which in turn should be related to the arc the elbow follows).

So, clean-up can be anything you do during the polishing phase. It's making sure the tip of the nose is on a subtle arc, or making sure all your face shapes are working together in a way to feel like one cohesive face rather than a ton of disconnected shapes. It's finding and fixing problems in your graph editor, or offsetting the weight just a tiny bit more to help your character feel that much heavier. It's fingers and toes and getting that nice whip action to look perfect on the character's tail.

Basically, in CG, people tend to refer to the "clean-up" phase as the time when you polish up all the little rough edges of your animation into a gem that truly shines. I can't stress enough that in my opinion, it's this attention to detail where you add that last 10-20% into your work that will really set it apart and help it stand out to recruiters and audiences.

Planning is a blast, because you get to brainstorm dozens of ideas and really work out the performance. Blocking is fun because you get to see those ideas finally come to life. But sometimes it's the clean-up or "polish" phase that can be the most rewarding, because all those little, tiny things you add can come together to take the animation to a whole new level, and even though an audience might not notice many of these little tweaks and overlaps and perfected arcs, they will FEEL them, and enjoy your work all that much more.

Hope that answers your question - Thanks for coming by the blog!

Shawn :)

Guest Blogger Shawn Kelly

Where’s the Best Place to Get Your Reference Footage From?

2010-06-01T14:30:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time watching people. It's free and relatively safe if you're good at it. Once, I was sitting on a bus trying to read a book. Directly in front of me sat a couple who couldn't keep their lips off each other. I was getting a little annoyed when my eyes suddenly caught a man standing in the aisle giving the loving couple a huge dose of “stink eye.” It was gold. For the remainder of the trip, I watched this sour old man and played with different back stories and scenarios that led him to be this put-off by a couple of young lovers.

Local theatre is also good reference. Watching live actors is incredibly inspiring. You see what works and what doesn't, and you also see why. Movies are good, but there is so much care put into them that it's not always as rewarding as live theatre. Movies lack a certain energy and transparency that makes live theatre such a valuable reference.

Guest Blogger Mark Pullyblank

Interview at a Studio: What Was the Interview Like?

2010-05-25T12:48:00.000-07:00

My interview with ILM was a bit strange because I wasn't actually there to do it in person. I was in Tennessee at the time, which is a bit far from San Francisco. So, they decided to have a phone interview with me.

The interview started with everyone introducing themselves to me, at which point I realized I was in a conference call with anywhere from four to seven people. It's kind of a blur now, but from what I remember the group consisted of a couple of the recruiters, the associate animation supervisor for Transformers 2, the animation supervisor, possibly a producer for the film (can't remember for sure), and Shawn Kelly who was nice enough to be there for moral support. Fortunately, they couldn't see my hands shaking or how I was pacing around the room.

Once the formalities were over, the real interview began. They started by asking about my workflow and how I approach shots. They were especially interested in whether I used video reference and how I plan my animation. Letting them know that I use video reference when starting nearly every shot I do definitely put me on their good side... just a little tip.

The next batch of questions focused on what types of animation I was comfortable with, where I felt I could use improvement, and what types of animation I hoped to do in my career. I was honest with them about areas that I felt I was less confident in without making myself seem inept. I also stressed to them how excited I was about animation, and that I had a huge drive to want to tackle those areas of inexperience. I told them that, at the time, I was more versed in body mechanics than I was with facial performances. They asked me which I would choose if I was given the opportunity to animate either a body mechanics focused shot or a mostly facial performance acting shot. I told them that on a movie like Transformers I was of course hoping to animate some crazy action scenes, but at this point in my career, I would choose the acting shot because it had the most potential to improve my skill set as an animator. I think that was the right answer.

I made it very clear that I wanted to learn as much as I could about all areas of animation and had no desire to be typecast into only the things I was already comfortable with. They asked me if I was interested in "hard surface" animation, to which I replied "umm.... what?" So, after laughing at me and being reminded of just how green I really was, they explained that it meant things like cars, planes, boats, etc. Fortunately, most companies that hire recent graduates are aware that you don't have years of experience under your belt, and a lot of what they are looking for is potential and drive. I definitely wanted to sell myself to them in the interview, but I was also very careful to be honest and not make any claims I couldn't back up. Besides, if I tried to misrepresent my skill set and was hired, it could only end in failure if my work didn't live up to the hype. Basically what I'm saying is, don't try it. I've heard stories of guys that have, and it usually doesn't end well.

Next, they asked if I was excited about Transformers 2. I proceeded to go mega-geek on them and explain the toy collection of my youth and my enjoyment of Leonard Nimoy's voice performance as Galvatron in the 80's Transformers movie. Shawn Kelly was actually the person who told me to not be afraid of being enthusiastic. He said that dorking out over a project was actually preferred, and that nothing was worse than an interviewee who seems uninterested. So I let loose with some enthusiasm, and fortunately he had given me good advice. So listen up when the man writes a blog post... it may get you a job.

After that they let me ask any questions I had. I was too afraid of asking something stupid, so I declined. They uttered the greatest string of syllables that I had ever heard in my 26 years of living: "Can you start on Monday?"

Alumnus Guest Blogger Travis Tohill

How Do You Deal With Curves in Character Animation? Should I Be Cleaning Up Curves and Deleting Unnecessary Keys?

2010-05-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

That's a good question and one I've been asking myself lately. I used to tweak most of my animation in the graph editor, which is the way I learned it at school. Keeping the curves clean and organized was the way to go, and a workflow I'm still following. All of your animation is represented through curves, and even though you have multiple options of how to edit your animation, your curve editor will give you the most detailed information about your animation.

And yes, I would keep curves clean. It makes it a lot easier to edit and reorganize sections of your animation. It's like your work area. If it's messy, you will have a hard time finding specific items. You know roughly where it is, but if the area is clean and organized, you will have a much easier time. Same goes for curves.

It will also be a lot easier for other animators to deal with your shots if you keep curves clean. There are moments when another animator has to work on your shot, either because you are too busy with other shots or because you are no longer on that show, and if you are one of those animators working on someone else's shot, you will appreciate it when the curves are clean. Part of being a professional animator is not just being able to animate well, but to be conscious of the show pipeline and company structure. You have to be aware that other people will deal with your files, so keep them organized, including your curves.

However, I've noticed recently that I rarely go into the graph editor. The only time I manipulate curves is for moving holds and technical fixes. The rest of the time I work out my animation through my viewports and set keys to edit my animation. I build overlap and other details into my poses during blocking, so I have less and less need to edit the animation in the graph editor. By keeping my curves clean and by organizing my keys, I can work out the timing by shifting around keys in the Maya timeliner, which also lets me convert my curves from linear to spline.

In a few years, I will probably have another way of animating, but this is my current approach to curves.

Guest Blogger Jean-Denis Haas

How did you get your first job at a studio? Do you have any tips on what to do?

2010-05-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

The process of landing my first job had a profound effect on my life. I call it the “Build Your Own Crowbar Approach.”

A bit of back-story: I entered animation school at the ripe old age of 33. At that time I had a wife, a one-year-old child and another on the way. People were telling me how difficult the industry was to break into and that I'd probably never be able to feed my family.

I graduated in February 2003, and immediately hit the streets. I began by mailing out 50 demo reels and waited. Nothing. Not a single response. My first thought was, I needed a better cover letter and a flashier DVD jacket. Oh, and color labels! I opened Photoshop and worked through the night, and in the morning I mailed out 25 more reels with new and improved packaging. Problem was, the content was the same, and (no surprise) so were the results.

Two months passed, and I had two hungry children and no job. Around that time a friend showed me some animation from another student who had just landed an internship at Pixar. I couldn't believe what I saw. I initially felt completely dismayed by the high standard of his work, but after I calmed down, Cameron Miyasaki's animation became my personal yardstick. I closed Photoshop and got back to animating. I would bump into people who knew someone who worked in the industry, and I would hunt them down and beg for their feedback.

I called an animator at Radical Games in Vancouver who looked at my work and told me the quality was such that it would be a waste of time to show his supervisor. I fortified my ego and asked him for specifics. He gave me a list of notes and brushed me off. I hung up the phone and worked through the night. The next morning I dropped off a new reel with his revisions. He called me that afternoon and said he'd try to get me in for an interview. It never happened, but I knew I was on the right track. A few days later a friend introduced me (via email) to a character designer at Pixar named Jason Deamer. Through Jason I was put in touch with Victor Navone who graciously agreed to look at my work and provide me with feedback. I was already a big fan and completely blown away to be receiving his input. Over the next few weeks, I slaved over my computer, determined not to waste Victor's time. He was extraordinarily generous with his critiques and my skills began to rapidly improve. During that time, I would occasionally mail out a reel or two, but I was so fixated on the work, I kind of forgot about the job search. Eventually I received a phone call from Brian Moylen, head of the VFX department at Rainmaker Animation. They were gearing up for the first Garfield movie and he invited me in for an interview. It was not only my first interview, but my first response of any kind from the industry.

When I sat down in Brian’s office, he reached into his desk and produced my demo reel. I was struck by what I had submitted... a clear DVD jewel case with a blank CD on which I had scribbled my name and phone number with a sharpie. No inserts, no labels - nothing. When he played my demo reel, I was struck a second time by the absence of my school work. It had been five months since I had graduated, and in that time, I had replaced two years of student work. I landed the job, fed my family and eventually worked my way up to the position of animation supervisor. At one point, shortly after I started working at Rainmaker, a fellow artist approached me and told me the tale of his friend at Radical who talked about a guy who asked him for a critique of his reel and then resubmitted a new reel the following day. Small industry.

Guest Blogger Mark Pullyblank

How many types of blocking are there? How many frames should I leave for blocking of a normal character?

2010-05-04T12:03:00.000-07:00

Hi there! Thanks for swinging by the blog!

The term "blocking," simply means the process of "roughing in" the animation. Of course, because every shot is different, there is no "set number of frames" for the blocking of a shot. The frame count of a shot is usually predetermined by the Director and Editor of the project, or else the length of a piece of dialogue you might be working with.

However, the goal of your blocking should be two-fold:

1) Completeness (which, by the way, IS a word. I checked two dictionaries to be sure!)

Your blocking should be "complete," for lack of a better word. By this, I don't mean that the blocking should be complex or finished animation - not at all. Rather, I mean it should contain everything about your animation that you want to pitch to the director. Ideally, you should be showing all of your main poses, all of your main ideas, the full body language of your character, and all of the major timing decisions with as few poses as possible.

This likely includes all of your key poses and most, if not all, of your breakdowns, so that you are properly describing the weight and movements of the character, all of the acting decisions, and all of the ideas of the shot.

2) Usability

The other goal of blocking is to have something usable that you can continue to improve on. While it's important to show all of your ideas and actions in the blocking, it's equally as important to work "cleanly" and in a way that will let you easily edit your blocking once it's approved. You want to end up with a foundation that is strong and ready to be built upon.

As such, my recommendation is to avoid over-complicating your blocking whenever possible. Hopefully you have a supervisor or client who can understand what blocking is (and what it isn't) and you can show your rough blocking to them for buy-off before really fleshing out all the bells and whistles.

If you are working freelance with a client who just doesn't understand blocking, then my advice is to put together a little presentation for them to show the various stages of animation. It's good to have something around (from a previous gig or an animation test you've done) that you can use to show what previz (pre-visualization) is, what blocking is, what it looks like while it's being refined, and then what it looks like once it's polished. If you can get them used to this process early in the project, life will be a lot easier for you!

Best of luck! I hope this was helpful for someone...

shawn :)

Guest Blogger Shawn Kelly

Do You Have Any Special Techniques Using Inverse Kinematics (IK) in "Freehand Animation" When the Hands are Free From Other Objects?

2010-04-26T16:56:00.001-07:00

First, it is important to understand some of the differences between IK and FK. When you are animating an arm in FK, you first move the shoulder, then the elbow, and then the wrists. That's more or less what we do when we move our own arms. So, all and all, FK seems a bit more similar to the way we move, with the movement starting on the shoulder. The process of animating an IK arm is very different; instead of starting the movement from the shoulder, you will work in the inverse direction. You position the wrist wherever you want it to go, and the rest of the arm kind of goes with it. Both ways of animating are perfectly fine, and, for example, when animating a character dancing, walking, or running, you can certainly achieve good results with both IK and FK.

The important thing here is to keep in mind that a realistic movement of the arms will mostly start on the shoulder. This is somewhat easier to achieve with FK, because you will will work from the shoulder down. However, it can be a little tricky with IK – the very method of animating with IK, positioning the wrist first and having the rest of the arm following it, will make it look like the hands are always leading the movement. Your job as an animator is to make it feel like the shoulder is leading, even though you are positioning the wrist first.

Another important point is that when you are animating a human body, all the body parts need to feel interconnected. When you move the spine, the arms will also move. When you raise a hand up in the air, the spine will move as well. Again, this is somewhat easier to achieve with FK. If you have the arms in FK and you move the body node the whole arm – including the wrist - will go with it, so we perceive the arms as being connected to the rest of the body. With IK arms, the movement of the spine will not automatically affect the position of the wrist. You will move the body node and the wrist will be stuck in place. Because of that, sometimes we can have the feeling that the arms (wrists) are independent from the body.

So, if you are animating with the arms in IK, you have to try your best to convey the feeling that the movement is rooted on the shoulder, and it is not the hand that is leading the movement. Basically, you have to fight the IK, and animate the wrist and the elbow just like a real arm moves. You will need to position the hands making sure you move the elbow in a way that will sell the idea that the root of the movement is in the shoulders. It is really, really important to pay special attention to the elbow and also the clavicle and chest when you are working in IK. My advice is that you study the movement in question, in your own body and also looking at reference, making sure you understand what is the relationship of shoulder/elbow/wrist for the particular scene you are animating. Then try to get the same relationship going on your shot, even though you are positioning the hands first.

The other important point is to not leave the hands stuck in space while the rest of the body is in movement – a very common error for beginners. That's what we call an “IK-ish look” – for example, let's imagine that a character steps to his right side and reaches out for a glass of water. You will have the shift of weight, the spine/torso moving towards the right, the step, and then the right wrist moves towards the glass of water... but if you forget about the left wrist... the left wrist will be stuck in space as if it is glued to the air. If this happens even for a couple of frames, it will look unnatural; people never have an experience where their whole body moves but their hand gets stuck in mid-air! So, if you have the arms in IK, you have to fight the “IK-ish look” by selling the idea that the movement of the hands is rooted on the shoulders; by making sure the the wrist feels connected to the rest of the body; and by not having the wrists stuck in place while the rest of the body moves around.

Guest Blogger Raquel Rabbit

What Keeps You Motivated When working on a Long, Tedious Animation Project?

2010-04-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of things that help me to stay motivated, but first and foremost - it's the people around you. I don't think I ever went through a day at ILM and didn't laugh. It doesn't matter how tedious a shot or project can be, the atmosphere is always fun and everybody around you is there for support. You know that you're not alone.

I also listen to a lot of music and movies while I work. Usually I pick movies that I'm very familiar with so it's not distracting me from the actual work, but it provides a comfortable and pleasant background noise. Usually they are movies from my childhood, like the classic Star Wars trilogy, or Back to the Future, The Goonies, Big Trouble in Little China, etc.

Since our projects usually only last a few months and not years, a long project is never really that long. It might feel like it, but there's always a next project lined up that you can look forward to.
And if all of that fails, you just have to remind yourself that no matter what, it is your job to do the best you can, so suck it up and be professional. :)

Guest Blogger Jean-Denis Haas

What Did You Do Differently in Your Animation Studies That Made You Stand Out?

2010-04-13T11:33:00.000-07:00

After I got the fundamentals down, I turned my focus to acting. I mean, acting is what we do, so why wouldn't I study it seriously like any other professional actor?

I started by studying Stanislavski. I have a book of his that has a bunch of assignments in it. Like...go to your bedroom and pack a suitcase. Now, pack the suitcase like you're going off to war. Now pack it like you're trying to leave your lover who just stepped out for a moment and you want to be gone before he/she gets home. Now pack it like you're being evicted. Stuff like that.

I also spent some time at the Lyric School of Acting in Vancouver, BC. It's interesting how similar my first animations were to my first live acting assignments. For starters, my hands were way too busy, and I would just stand there waiting for my line. But eventually we started working on subtext, backstory, and ways to really own your character. I recently read a quote by a screenwriter that went something like, "I wanted the audience to get to know my character quickly, so I had him pull a used paper filter out of the coffee maker, rinse it, and reuse it."

Guest Blogger Mark Pullyblank

I'm at the Student Level. How Many Hours Should I Practice? How Many Hours Do I Need to Work at a Professional Level in the US?

2010-04-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

This is another difficult question, because the answer is different for everyone.

Malcolm Gladwell writes that it takes, on average, 10,000 hours of practice and study for anyone to become truly proficient at something.

For myself, I just added up on a calculator all the time I spent studying/practicing animation in school (including stuff like figure drawing), time with my mentors, and animating on my own. I added all of that up, and it turns out that my animation education time before landing my dream job at ILM was 18,400 hours.

That might sound daunting, and it clearly took me more than the requisite 10,000 hours, but really we're just talking about 5 years of focused studying in order to have a reel that got me into ILM. I have no idea if that's average, fast, or slow, but we're all going to have different speeds as we study and absorb this animation stuff.

I would guess that the number of hours "necessary" to excel in animation would be radically different from one person to the next. I think the actual number of hours is irrelevant -- what matters is how much you can focus on animation.

For me, especially during the 4 years where I was focusing the most on learning this stuff, animation was my life. If I was awake, I was animating. That literally isn't really much of an exaggeration. I wasn't going out much with friends, I didn't have a girlfriend, I was missing movies I had been excited to see, I didn't get to play the video games I wanted to play, etc. Animation was my life.

Maybe that isn't always the healthiest way to approach something, but it's probably the fastest, and certainly works.

I know not everyone has the option of focusing their whole day on animation - you have families or non-animation jobs and other responsibilities. Well, my advice then is to just focus as much time as you can. If all you can do is 5 hours every night after your kids go to bed, then start spending those 5 hours animating or studying animation.

5 hours a night is 1,780 hours per year. If you manage to squeeze in an extra 10 hours each weekend, then you're talking about 2,300 hours per year, and suddenly that 10,000 hours doesn't seem so far off!

I wish animation was something you could learn in a few months, but it just isn't. It's an endlessly complex art that takes a lifetime to master, and that first 10,000 hours will only get you to the tip of the iceberg. Luckily for us, the rest of that iceberg is a ton of fun to spend that next 100,000 hours exploring!

Hope that helps!
Shawn :)

Guest Blogger Shawn Kelly

How Important Is It To Get An Internship As A Beginning Animator?

2010-03-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

Of course it will depend on the type of internship. Sometimes animation students get internships doing PA type of stuff in companies that are not so great... I mean, if what you really want is to animate you probably won't be happy making xerox copies or going pick up dinner for the boss. This type of internship will probably not turn you into a better animator. It's true though that getting an internship in any of the big studios, even if it's not exactly in production, can be a nice way to get a feeling for how it all works, and also to get good connections and some professional experience. So it all depends on what is the internship like, and in what company.

The best situation is to get an internship where you can develop your skills as an animator and artist, and in a good studio. This type of internship is a wonderful way to start a professional career. Well, at least it worked for me! I was an intern first at Briquet Studios in Sao Paulo (2D), and then at Rhythm & Hues Studios in LA and these two experiences were crucial to my background. At Briquet Studios I was lucky to be an intern under the supervision of Renato dos Anjos – he later ended up moving to the US and worked as supervising animator on Bolt, Surf's Up and Open Season. I knew nothing about animation at that time, so it was really my very first experience, a way to get a feeling for how it all worked on a professional environment. The studio was really small but their work was great, Renato was really good and I learned so much from him. It was not enough time to get good at it, but I felt the experience planted the seed of animation on a fertile soil.

A couple of years after that, I went to School of Visual Arts in New York for my master's degree. During my first summer vacation I got an internship position at Rhythm & Hues. It was amazing. I felt I learned more in this time than in all my time at school! Rhythm & Hues had classes set up for new employers and interns, it was very organized and that's when I really started to understand what 3D was all about. I learned so much. I came back to school after the summer full of energy and started working on my short film. I also met a lot of really nice people, made important professional connections and went to a couple of cool camping trips. Fun times!

So, based on my personal experience, I think a good internship can help turn a student into a good professional. I was lucky in that my internships were really about the animation work. They were also at good companies with a solid reputation. It was a real learning experience on many levels.

Some of my students get internships and I see how positively the experience affects them. In many cases, a company offering an internship program has hopes that that student will be a possible hire in the near future. In a way, you are being “tested” by them, while at the same time you will be learning tons of useful things. Some companies have a very structured internship program – they put a lot of thought into it, and these are the internships you should definitely apply for! Here in California I know that Dreamworks, Pixar, Disney and Rhythm & Hues all offer this type of opportunity. And I bet there are other companies with great internship programs that I just don't know about.

Of course it is not exactly easy to get an internship at one of the best companies in the world - they are very competitive programs, but these would be the first ones I would try if I was a student now. I know it sounds hyperbolic, but it can be life changing to spend a summer working at a studio like any of these. You will meet amazing artists and professionals. You will get to know how the pipeline works, how is the day to day of a CG artist, how the films are done, what the work ethics are like. You will learn about work flow, techniques and art, and you will learn it from real artists. It can make a real difference in your career.

Guest blogger Raquel Rabbit

What Do You Enjoy Most About Being An Animator?

2010-03-10T11:09:00.000-08:00

There are so many things that I love about being an animator. I'm surrounded by so many talented artists - it's intimidating and inspiring at the same time, but it allows me to be a student, continuing to learn and push myself. I love that I am around people who share the same love for cinema and cartoons.

One of the best things about being an animator is that I get to be an actor and breathe life into a character. What's really great is that I'll go to the movies and sit next to a complete stranger that will laugh or cry at my performance, and they won't know that was done by the person sitting right beside them.

The things that I love most, though, is that, if I'm fortunate enough, I will be part of something timeless - a film that children and adults will continue to watch and love after I'm long gone. Something that my children's children will show their children, and say "Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandpa Hartline did that!"

Guest blogger Aaron Hartline

How Do You Balance Life With Animation?

2010-03-08T11:18:00.000-08:00

Well, when I was working full time in the industry I actually had a lot of fun, made many good friends and really enjoyed what I was doing. So animation and work in general were a big part of my life. Overall it didn't feel unbalanced, even though I always felt that a 10 hour work journey is a bit much for someone who has the desire to also pursue other interests in life outside of animation. But overall, working in the industry felt like it was the right thing for me at the time. Still, I found time to sing in a couple of bands, make puppets, write a couple of children's books, go out, enjoy my friends, go camping, etc.

What I found harder was to balance studio animation with personal animation. Let me explain: After school, I thought I was going to be able to work full time in an animation studio and also do my short films on the side. Unfortunately, somehow this was never possible. That also happened to a bunch of my friends. I know a lot of people who had dreams of making many short films; they actually had stories, character designs, etc., all waiting to come to life. The reality is that it is really hard to work on your short film after 10 hours (at least) of animating in a studio. So, I could never really balance animating in a studio with animating my own shorts!

In any case, after many years working in the industry I felt that the 10 hours a day was not really working for me, because I really wanted to spend more time on my personal projects. I also missed having a different type of interaction with people. I love teaching, and little by little I got more involved with teaching. So I got a tenure track position in a university, where I teach animation and help students with their own short film projects. In addition, I am a mentor at Animation Mentor, and I love the work I do with them. Parallel to my work in the university, I do some freelance work doing animation – in 2005 I worked on Henry Sellick's Moongirl and on Charlotte's Web, the next year I worked on Happy Feet and on a couple of cool coke spots (with Psyop), in 2007 I worked on SpiderWick Chronicles, and last year I did some freelance for Wildbrain.

Also, I now have time to dedicate to my own artistic projects, which feels great!

So, I think I found my own way to balance life and animation. I interact with people, I discuss, study and practice animation all the time, and I have time to work on my own personal projects as well.

Guest blogger Raquel Rabbit

I'm About to Tackle Lots of Realistic Animal Animation. Do You Have Any Tips?

2010-03-02T15:37:00.000-08:00

I sure do! I have three tips for ya:

1) REFERENCE!

If you're doing some realistic animal work, then reference is an absolute must. And I don't mean just finding a video clip of a similar animal and copying some of what you see. I mean watching as much footage of the animal as you can, making notes of their behaviors, studying what it is that makes that animal unique. What makes that tiger a tiger, or what makes a wolf a wolf?

Make a list for yourself of the behaviors, timings, and body mechanics you see (which moves first, the head or the ears? Which paw lifts first as it goes into a run? How does the tail behave?), and keep that around to read through now and then and remind yourself of all the great nuances you studied.

2) Exaggeration

Just because it's going to be "realistic" animation doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't exaggerate certain things. Don't forget to look for ways to help bring your animal to life, and to subtly caricature the behaviors, timing, and poses that you've studied from the reference. The key here is SUBTLY, as the more you exaggerate those three things, the cartoonier the animation will get.

There's an interesting progression of exaggeration you can apply to a creature. No exaggeration might look mostly "correct," or even "real," but it won't have the tiny bit of added punch that will give it character and life, particularly on the big screen. A tiny bit of exaggeration in just the right places (maybe making sure the animal going into a jump moves along a singular line of action, including the tail, even if the reference didn't, or dropping the chest to make a pose more dynamic, or exaggerating the ear movement so it's more visible to the audience) can take that animation from "real" into a "hyperreal" state, that still feels real, but is suddenly much more alive. (incidentally, this is the same exaggeration necessary to take motion capture -- yes, even Avatar -- from looking kind of stiff and dead into becoming something more special).

Once you push the exaggeration beyond that hyperreal point, though, you start pushing it more and more into the "cartoony" realm, so be really careful how far you push this sort of thing.

3) Reference AGAIN!

Once you have your animation pretty much blocked in and are starting to get into the polishing stage where you are ironing out your in-betweens, getting the arcs nice, getting that tail on a nice path of action, etc. Once you're there, it's time to bust that reference out again and watch a bunch of it.

If you have time, give yourself a good 10 or 20 minutes to just watch these animals in the real world again. Look again for behaviors you might have missed, or movements that you didn't notice before you had worked more heavily with the character.

Then, watch your animation again. Does it hold up? Does it look like it could be hanging out with those animals you were just watching? If not, what is it missing?

Often, this process can reveal a behavior or body-mechanics nuance that you simply missed the first time, and once you add it into your animation, it'll suddenly feel right!

Good luck!

Shawn :)