happy accidents

I was talking to an animator at work, whose work I admire very much. She always manages bring appeal and charm to her shots. We were talking about happy accidents. Basically she told me in very clear terms that she does not accept happy accidents in her work. The animation has to turn out to be exactly what she had visualized, till such point she will continue to work on her shot. This topic came up because there was change up in her shot that I liked and she said she was going to change it because it did not come out the way she wanted it to be. It was an entertaining moment and she could have kept it and gone home but she wanted to get what she originally planned.

There have been times when I have pushed a curve this way or that and have liked the results and kept it. I think an accident should be just that, an accident. One should not go searching for it. :) Experimentation is good and is a part of a lifelong process of learning. But as far as possible an animator should try and plan out as much appeal and charm he or she can before hand and then strive to execute that, rather than throw a bunch a curves together and hope something emerges from the chaos.

site feed

Quite a few people have asked me to create a site feed for syndication, so that they can view it easier. So here it is ---> http://manuittina.com/atom.xml

commitment

Eric Darnell ( co-director of Madagascar) was talking about commitment by an actor to a gesture. If the actor is not completely commited to a gesture it looks like - well just that - uncommited. As animators we have a pick a gesture an go with it. Every single attibute at our disposal - composition, squash, stretch, eyes, line of action, timing etc should go into reinforce that gesture. Commitment to communicate a specific idea and to do it in a specific way.

physics of emotion

In reality a ball takes a certain amount of time to fall from a certain height. This time is the same whether it is a tennis ball or a cannon ball. But do we really want this to be case? This is where emotional physics comes into place. What world do the chracters inhabit ? - the mental and physical world. Is this a character that will need a 4 frame recovery after a jump or a 9 frame recovery? This is a decision that I feel most animators make instinctively. OR they talk about it in terms of believability or acting. No matter what terms are used it is a decision that every animator has to make.

cutting on an action

Some tips I got when I was trying to continue an action between two shots. ( in my case turning)

It is OK to cheat.

Try and have similar silhouettes between the last and the first poses.

It is very important to follow the same arc of motion as the previous shot. Like say if an arm is awooping down in the previous shot have it swoop up continuing the arc on the next shot. ( this is where you'll have to cheat.)

No need to be exact, have some purposeful mistakes. If it is too exact it might look like a pop.


On a side note: Unless a shot absolutly demands it, DO NOT have the character start and stop at the head and tail of shot. It looks very odd if all shots in a sequence are like that. And there is a tendency to do that in CG. Animate through the cut, it feels much better.

2d nature of things

Even tho we use 3d models to animate, the end result is flat. Even though the pose looks good in the regular 3d viewer, the animation is not strong till it looks good in the camera view. I have seen some animators really scale arms and legs many times over to get it to "look right" in the camera view. So tip of the the moment - camera is all that matters.

cutting tip

when u cut in between shots, it looks nice when u cut on an action. In animation there is a tendency to start motion at the first frame and end it at the last frame. So something to keep in mind when u animate a shot - unless it is required to start and stop, on a cut keep the motion alive. it add that extra bit of realism. Tip from rex.

polish - I

After the thinking has been done, after the poses have been laid out, after the acting has been deemd as working - You start polishing. Initially, I saw this as a chore, as somethign that needs to be done AFTER the fun part of blocking is over.

But polishing is much more than that. It is the stage of animation, where the character actually comes to life. This is stage which will aid in suspension of disbelif. It might be a minor ease in, or a minor overshoot but every thing you do will make the character seem more real. The monitor turns into a window and you just happen to be looking at the character doing his thing through it.

So, learn to enjoy polishing. Cause it aint going away.

Cars trailer

Cars Every site abt animation probably has this. My thoughts? I was a little underwhelmed but am will to give them the benifit of the doubt. It is only a trailer after all.

Double blinks

Doubles blinks look better when the first blink is only a half blink. Remember the eyes lids slow in and slow out too.

yahoo article on animators salaries

Yahoo! News - Toonsters wait for big payoff

Bill Tytla Says-

There are only three things in animation -

1. Anticipation
2. Action
3. Reaction

And these imply the rest. Learn to do these things well - and you can animate well.

"Be Simple"
"Be Direct"
"Be Clear"

"Be Very Simple"

Make a statement and FINISH it - simply.

The Animation "Business"

ah Animation! so much fun, so cool and creative and insanely time consuming and therby expensive. So business are built to manage it. Studios, theme parks, TV station empires are built around this. These are managed by..um.. managers? Originally management was there just to smoothen the process, keep track of all the dots and dashes. As the industry grew so did the need for people to keep track of all the dots and dashes. Over time , due to the pressures of the market, they began to decide what sells the best and therefore what must be made., how and when and by whom. This started to be a problem. Dont get me wrong I think management is great! They have a very tough job and have lots of moolah on the line with every decision.

Sometimes these desisions are spelt L A Y O F F. As somebody who has many friends in the animation industry who were laid off and as somebody who came this >< close to being laid off, I know how hard this can be. The entire cycle of emotions - anger, sadness, bitterness etc. It is a major blow to the ego. The only way to deal with this is to accept this as a fact of the industry. The "business" is extremely big and big decisons are a part of its fabric. It is also extremely prone to change. I mean look at the last 10 years! There is no such thing as a stable job. Animation is change! At times like this I always go back to the first things that made me want to be an animator. Tom and Jerry cartoons, Bugs bunny, Jungle Book and I always go back to watching that dinky little moniter in SVA's animation test room. It was bright and hot and there was line of impatient students with stacks of drawings outside and I was seeing my drawings move for the first time.

And while we are at this... management need to find a better way to do business.

Frank Thomas says -

- Nothing ever happens between the drawings! If you want something to happen - you've got to draw it in there.

If you haven't drawn it - its not going to be there.

Updated resources section

Managed a get a tip of the iceberg of notes I have in to the Resources section. Most of it came from Adrian D'Alimonte who used to run the awesome site animatic.cjb.net ( no longer active) Speal thanks to Animation meat for letiing me use some of ther resources.

Watch out the Don Graham Lecture on Forces and a Milt Kahl interview to be posted up this weekend.

Madagascar international trailer... German

The German version of the Madagascar trailer here. I like this more than the domestic trailer released in front of Sharktale. But then I also saw it before it was dubbed into german.

animation tip

Always remember how much flesh each joint is moving. The root of the body moves a lot of flesh. The finger joints not as much. It is important to pay a lot of attention to curves of the major flesh moving joints. A small pop or click there will affect the whole body.

its the basics stupid

It is amazing how many times i have said to myself - " this is just like the bouncing ball." Such a simple exercise and so easy to forget.

Anytime something doesn't look right. I try to see if there is any basic principles like bouncing ball that i can apply to it. 9 times out of 10 this makes it work. Its always the basics.

Gallerie Abominate

THE GA HOSTS MOST ABHORRENT COMPUTER GENERATED IMAGERY AND ANIMATION EVER PRODUCED ON THIS PLANET EARTH. So it claims.

Sharktale doing real well

The weekend saw Sharktale put up some very good numbers. I spoke to some friends who dont know that there are 24 frames per second in feature animation and the reviews were really positive. What do you know inspite of all the geek hate and critic disdain for the film, the audience seems to eat it up with a 120 million dollar spoon. And lets remember that 120 million dollars is very big number in these post Finding Nemo Shrek2 days.

Incredibles

Cant stop thinking about it. Brad bird hovers over my imagination like a giant thundering through a landscape. Cant wait to see it. Till then look at these. Got to say I wasnt very exicted when I saw the still images but the trailers most of all the japanese trailer got me exicted.

fear and animation

Why is that we are so afraid to push stuff to their extreme in animation? It is so easy to forget that the thing that is seen in animation is CHANGE. Change from one to another. A friend who works at pixar agrees, in 3D it is so easy to focus on transitions and making them look smooth that sometimes the pose is forgotten. If Milt Kahl was a CG animator, I bet if you opened up his shot and looked at his curves they would have some serious peaks and dips for overshoots and quick antic's. The things that these guys do for one frame! ( without losing the whole ) Worth thinking about. It is always easier to go too far and then comeback than it is to try and push it after not having gone not far enough. The comments I hear from directors at diales are Bigger, Push it further.

I dont think they mean make eveything move all over the place. They mean take the idea and push that. For example if a charecter is still for any reason. Take the idea of stillness and push it as far as you can, and then push it further. ( somebody else said that, I cant remember who) I need to do a whole post on keeping it simple.

lip sync tip

Rex gave me this cool lip sync tip. Errors can be very easily seen if you play your animation at 12 fps. Awesome.

Madagascar website

The new Madagascar website is up. Go check it out at http://www.madagascar-themovie.com/ Keep checking it to drive up the traffic and to see new trailers as and when they come out.

slowly propping the shaky walls of my website

Bit by bit my website is getting built. get it Bit by bit? Oh well. Just scored a huge huge collection of notes. These include Don Graham lectures, Ken harris interviews, Milt Kahl notes. Just need to get over the shock of having these all at once! Right now I am just admiring the pile of amassed knowledge just waiting to be read and assimilated. Its going to take me a while to scan it all and put it out in the resources section. But should have something up by this weekend.