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.