Pose to Pose Tutorial: Now in Dutch!

It started out as such a cute litte tutorial. Sweet and innocent, homebound and happy with being just a good ol’ American boy. Then he got ideas in his head. Wanted to see the world, he said. Wanted to expand his horizons, he said. Wanted to visit new lands, learn new languages, he said. Well, the cute little tutorial has grown up now and it just keeps learning new languages.

Thanks go out to Lars Johanson van Schagen for his fine work in translating the Pose to Pose tutorial into Dutch. As far as I can tell he did an excellent job. But then I admit that my dutch is a bit rusty. So all you dutchmen, flying or not, go check out the Pose to Pose toot in your native tongue and sing and dance and drink grog. Or something like that.

Goodbye, Blogger

Well, I finally did it. I’ve made the switch to Wordpress. I just wasn’t ever comfortable with the idea that half the content on my site was on Blogger’s servers and not my own. Plus WP just has some nifty features that I’ve been looking to add to my blog. So you know what this means….

Time to update your RSS feeds for my blog/site.

Yes, I know, it seems I do an RSS switch every 3 months. But this time it’s for good. I think. So point your aggregators and feeders to this new RSS link…

http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?feed=rss2

I hope you guys find the new-ish look suitable to your tastes. I kinda like the brighter, more airy feel of it.

Thanks for playing along. Upward and inward!

It feels good to move again..

Thanks to the urgings of fellow DNA animator and Animation Mentor Scott Lemmer, I've been playing hockey again (I play goalie. Yes, I like to get in front of objects moving at high velocity). Scott has been bugging me to get back out on the ice again For a good while I begged off, being woefully out of shape and probably 20lbs too heavy. Thankfully I eventually gave in and went out for a little shoot around (thanks, Scott!).
So far it's just been a few weeks of pick up games at the rink, but I can feel my game coming back a bit. I played tonight and I didn't utterly stink. I only mostly stunk. Heh. The last time I had played was over 3 years ago back in Chicago. That was 4 studios ago! I stopped playing when I got a deep bone bruise on my elbow from a wicked slapshot that this Czech player unloaded on me. After 3 years off the ice I'm a bit rusty (to say the least!). And at age 37 I know my best years are well behind me. But it's been great to move around again. Animation is a bad career to be in if you're genetically inclined to wear some extra pounds like I am. So the exercise is great and it's good to be playing again. I know there are a lot of hockey playing animators out there. It'd be cool if we could all have a pick up game during Siggraph or something. You know up in Boston (where Siggraph is being held this year) there will be plenty of rinks to choose from.

ps: No, that's not a picture of me. It's just a pic of my hometown team's goalie and I thought it looked good. I don't have any pics of me in my goalie gear. Plus I couldn't stretch out like that without breaking something anyhow.

Hosting Switch

Just a head's up... This site, my RSS feed and my email for keithlango.com might behave a bit flakey over the next couple days. For a variety of reasons I'll be switching my site host to a different service that has better pricing and more storage. Based on my previous experience that means that for some folks the site/email/RSS might come up as not valid until all the name servers around the globe are all updated with the new DNS addresses. The DNS name servers should be all updated in the next 3-4 days, so no worries. Everything should be all groovy by early next week.

I hope. *gulp*

After that's done I'll be working on my conversion to Word Press as my new blog service. Blogger is OK, but WP offers a bit more flexibility and does a better job of remote FTP blog hosting (a consistent problem for me while using Blogger). So hopefully that all goes smoothly as well. My goal is to be done with all the technical mumbo jumbo for my site by March 1st. We'll see how it goes.

"Life After Pose to Pose", Now in French!!

Thanks to Florent Perrin for his graceful translation of my article "Life After Pose to Pose" into French. Yay! So if you are of the French persuasion, or if you are a resident of Quebec, go and read the article in your native language and rejoice!

Pictures for Patrick

Why?
Why not?

Awesome!!

This stuff is too good to pass up! A gallery of 1950's uber-saturated advertising utilizing deranged children. Oh my.


Enjoy!

Confidence in blocking

Lately at work when I've been given a more acting oriented scene (ie: one that isn't a big action sequence with a dozen characters in it) I've been experimenting with really filling out my blocking. And I mean just throwing caution to the wind and packing it with info. It's been a lot of fun to start to see just how much I can put into the scene right from the start. Earlier on in the project I'd only block the major key pose hits, unsure of my process (since I hadn't been a fulltime animator in a number of years). Then after I got comfortable with what the director wanted and I figured out how to accomplish in my work what I wanted to do in my head I started adding in major breakdowns and other info. As time has gone by and I've gotten more comfortable with my process and what they're looking for, and as I know who the characters are more I find my first pass blocking is just packed to the rim. I'm thinking through the way I'm handling the scene and I'm putting what I know is needed in there. Major keys, major breakdowns, sub-breakdowns, ease in, ease out, overshoots, settles, anticipations, end of moving holds, facial expressions, even lipsync- it's all there, all in stepped/held tangents. For a simple 2 second dialog scene I'll put out a blocking pass that has 15-25 held frames for each character (I think of them as 'drawings', even though they're just renders of the puppet on the 'puter). And the best part is that it's been just about the most fun I've ever had animating. And from the standpoint of getting things bought off byu the director it's been working out really well, too.

While it sounds like a huge risk to do so much work in first pass blocking before ever showing it to the director, I have found that if anything it makes for less work in the end. I think it has a lot to do with confidence. The more time I put into that blocking the better my shots are overall. My buy off from the director comes far more frequently, too. I feel like I'm giving him the clearest possible insight into what I want to do with the scene. He doesn't have to guess and I don't have to explain with words what my blocking isn't showing (a fairly common thing that happens. "Yeah, I'm gonna add a head shake right there and he'll be swinging under for that move."). I research the scene, then I animate the shot in my head. I'll do a fair amount of sketching to break it down, to understand how to get through each part of the action. Then in the computer I simply seek to express these found ideas in held 'drawings'. For me it's all about finding something strong inside me that I can put into the scene. I have bannished the old wishy washy "I hope he likes this" kind of thinking when I block. Because I'm doing my homework before I show it to the director I go in believing that what I am showing is the best possible way to do the scene. I have the confidence to put this much work into it up front believing the director will see my vision for the scene and will buy into it. And you know, more often than not he does. Maybe it's just because I'm a cocky son-of-a-gun. I dunno. But to me this whole idea of having confidence in your choices, in believing that you are putting forward the best possible way to do the scene, it has a lot to do with it. If you come to dailies with a half baked blocking and you're kinda having to explain what you want to do with the scene with this sort of apologetic tone, man... it's no wonder why you would get notes like crazy!

Like many folks I've been digging through the history of other great animators. The notes and recordings from guys like Milt Kahl are a real inspiration,. Now if you want to talk about a confident fella you need look no further than Milt. I get the sense that Milt was pretty well convinced that he was the best animator on God's green earth. When it came to a scene Milt was persistent in thinking it through from all angles. And once he knew what he wanted to do, well dangit if he didn't believe down to the core of his soul that when he settled on a way to do a scene that was the best way on earth to do that scene. Period. And you know what? He was usually right. And he wasn't the only one who thought that way about his work. Sure he denegrated his own draughtsmanship, but that just shows he knew what his weaknesses were. Knowing your weaknesses and acknowledging them isn't a lack of confidence. If anything it allows you more confidence because you're dealing from a position of understanding rather than ignorance. Read notes and quotes from other great animators from the past as well. Thomas, Johnson, Jones, Avery, Clmapett... they almost all seem to have this innate confidence that the way they decided to do something was the best way possible at the time. They spend half their time thinking how to do it, then they did it, rarely looking back and wondering pensively "Gee, should I have done this here?"

For many of us who started off animating in CG we were kinda spoiled a bit. CG animation allows us to kinda 'find things along the way'. Since the whole thing is always right there and you can go anywhere in time and add things we didn't need to develop the disciplines of thinking things through first before we drew them. I knew I didn't and I see this discipline lacking in just about every young animator I've ever known. Traditional animation did not exist until the animator drew a few drawings first and then rolled them. And you can't draw anything useful for animation without first thinking and knowing what it is you want to draw. But the computer always had an endless supply of drawings for us, displayed in all its OpenGL glory. So we got used to working with sloppy ideas, ill defined concepts and we got used to making it up as we went along since we never were required to think about the image before it appeared. A far too common approach is to rough some really weak poses in, let the curves ride as splines, scrub and see how it looks, adjust, react, finesse. That kind of approach can be very comforting. If a scene's not working in blocking, well, no worries, I have 4 more days and I can fix it "in animation". Sometimes the results are inspired, amazing, loose and fresh. And sometimes the results are a half baked mish mash of a dozen different ideas which don't work well together. Often I'll see talented young animators get sucked down a rabbit's hole that just kills them when they come at things like this. With no confidence in the idea from the start, they're open to every shifting of the breeze. A bad night's sleep and they're doubting their approach to a scene. A few minor notes from the director and they think the whole thing needs to be trashed and started over. A co-worker's well intentioned (but not thought through) suggestion can send them off on a tangent for hours. With no solid foundation to build on the door for major changes stays open almost until the deadline for the shot- or beyond. Not having a plan they take perfectly good motion, actions, timing or poses and muddle them up with layered in fluff that waters down the original impact of the moment. Perfectly good choices that have been established early on are thrown out because they're not used to having success with a scene so early in the process. I know at one time or another I've struggled with this. In all of this waffling I see a certain lack of confidence.

Confidence best comes from a solid mixture of past success, open minded inquisitiveness, present effort and diligent forethought/planning. Look at your past success and know that you have the ability to make good stuff. Keep an open mind to see as many potentialities as you can. Put in the effort on your current assignment and don't cut corners when thinking about how to do a thing. And when you have settled on an approach, think it through, work out the details, understand how it can be done and how you will do it right down to the core. Putting all of this together allows you the ability to move forward with confidence. If you can honestly say you put in the effort and seriously thought through as many potential possibilities as you could think of, that you settled on the one approach that you believe to be the single best one and then dug down deep into how that one approach will will work from beginning to end then you are free to go and enjoy your work, walking with confidence. And when you bring that work to someone to get their buy off it's almost like they can sense your confidence and they trust that you're gonna bring it on home with flying colors.

And hey, why not?

The Hoodwinked Effect: Part II

In my last post I ran down some of the deleterious side effects of the arrival and success of the cheap CG feature film. The most noteworthy of these effects is the inevitable downward drag on production budgets for larger feature films. Many folks believe the result of that will likely be job cuts, wage losses, declining space for creativity & craftmanship and heightened work quotas. All things that would basically make this job not as fulfilling as it could be. The current lightning rod for this new breed of cheap CG animated film is the successful (and still rolling along) Hoodwinked from Weinstein Studio.

Some folks think it's a horrible travesty that the film is doing well. Others are pleased. Personally I'm more interested in the ancillary effects than the actual film itself. As a film, a story and as a piece of theatrical artistry Hoodwinked doesn't have much to offer me for my $8 movie ticket. But that's just me and my taste. I have felt the same way about a lot of films that others think are great. I certainly don't begrudge Hoodwink's success. And even though I personally am not interested in it, it's continued success in theaters is evidence that a strong audience exists for the film. And I think that's a good thing. A very good thing.

Let's face it. Aside from the occasional Incredibles or Wallace & Gromit, the big budget animated film business is stuck in a bit of a rut. To a certain degree it has been for 50 years. Due to the astronomical costs of making these films the investors demand a sizeable return on their money (and rightly so). To get a bigger return, you need a bigger audience. Thus you aim right down the middle of the road. The tried and true. The easiest way to get a bigger audience is to do what big audiences have responded to before. This editorial on Slate puts this reality in stark light. The economics of big budget animated films is a double edged sword. On one edge you have the money to pursue a higher level of craftsmanship in the final product. Good for those of us in the trenches making the thing. The other edge is more often than not you can't do anything even remotely capable of being misunderstood by a large audience made up of mainly suburban children and their parents. Dull for those of us in the trenches. Thus sophisticated storytelling, or premises, or themes or artistic styles that aren't as middle of the road & homogenized as a McDonald's Happy Meal rarely stand much of a chance of getting made with any kind of a budget.

So far so gloomy, right? That's where lower budgets can give animated filmmakers some freedom. A major studio backing an animated film that costs them $15-20mil isn't likely to nitpick the thing into downtown Dullsville. About the most they'll push for is which big name voice talent to enlist so they can promote the film in the US. A director can have a larger, freer creative voice. You can touch on themes that would be downright un-doable at higher budgets. You can explore different styles a bit. In other words, lower budgets can mean a degree of freedom that just doesn't exist in the world of films costing $80mil and up. There is such great leveling of the playing field with regard to the technology needed to accomplish a film production now that very good looking films can be made for a fraction of what they used to cost. And anybody who's worked on a big budget film knows that sometimes tens of millions of dollars are wasted on sheer stupidity, fickleness and hubris. Cut the layer of waste and you can shave 10, 20, sometimes 30 million dollars off of some films. The fact that Hoodwinked isn't much of a film to look at artistically (even by the director's own admission) doesn't negate the fact that a handsome looking film can be made on a low budget. I can cite successes. For $15-20mil Big Idea made a respectable looking Jonah. For $28mil DNA made Jimmy Neutron. Neither were earth shattering technical or artistic achievements, but both very solid, decent looking films with a degree of craftsmanship that belied their reduced budgets. More recently for $15-20mil Disney/Blur/Sparx made a nice looking Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. And most of Miyazaki's films cost no more than $30mil to make. Sylvain Chromet reportedly made The Triplettes of Belleville for under $15mil. The Weinstein's are bringing the quite decent looking Magical Roundabout over to the US market as Doogal. While the numbers haven't been released for this film, a typical European co-produced animated film is often made for well under $20mil.

Will you wow the world with spectacular new technological achievements like fluid dynamics, fancy cloth sims, giant crowd battle scenes or new hair shaders that are boffo realistic for that kind of money? No, not likely. But you can make a good looking animated film- one that is designed and executed to fit the budget and the story- for $15-20million. The key is to write and design within the budget constraints. Good character design is not much more expensive than poor character design. You just have to have an eye for what is good and what is junk- steer toward the good, avoid the junk. And be willing to pay a tiny bit extra for a good designer. It's such a small price to pay. And your designer will need to have some experience on how best to create a good 2d design that will play nice with the Cg world, should you go that direction. The same is true of good production design. With lower budgets you can't 'explore' as much 'inspirational' art as you might want to. So if your budget is tight you can't stroke your vanity as much as you'd like. So what? If you have a clear, unique vision (and that's the kicker: the director will need a vision) you can make an animated film look really quite good for your $20million. Al this assumes the story is decent and entertaining. Again, as a director you'll need to pull your weight here and not let an army of scriptwriters do the heavy lifting. But it is do-able. I have been convinced of this for years and I believe it's been proven. The question has always been “When will the studios & distributors realize there can be a sizeable market for these kinds of films?” Well, thanks to the Weinsteins and the success of Hoodwinked, I think they're starting to realize the market exists. And that's the very good side of the success of Hoodwinked.

For those of us who have the desire to take advantage of the open door the burden rests on our shoulders. It'll be incumbent upon the practitioners of the lower budget animated film to tell good stories and to work smartly (in design and execution) to function well within the parameters of these lower budgets. If you can do that, and you have a story that can appeal to enough of an audience (and remember, with the lower production numbers you don't have to pull in the masses like a Disney flick does) you can be in business. So all you directors in waiting out there, guys with unique stories, themes and styles that don't fit the bland brand that big budgets demand, it's time to pull a Shane Acker. Or a Nick Park. Get cracking on your short film, make it artistically solid, make it accessible to an audience, make it entertaining, get it into festivals like Sundance and see what shakes out. You know that producers are going to be scouring the world for projects like this to fill out the lower cost/lower risk niche's in the marketplace. Especially as we see the theater reign crumble under the weight of low cost “long tail” distribution models (Do yourself a favor and read up about the long tail. It is the future of media distribution). Will we animators and artists and storytellers just grouse about bad looking super low budget films like Hoodwinked and their impact on our jobs at big budget studios? Or will we see the opportunities here and make a move to do something more?

The Hoodwinked Effect: Part I

As of this writing, in 2006 there are well over a dozen animated CG feature films scheduled to be released in theaters. It is no surprise that the CG animated feature film market in the US is going to get very crowded in the next 2 years. And if you consider that we also have studios like Wild Brain, Blur, Laika and the Orphanage also gearing up to produce their first CG animated films, then things get even tighter. The big names are also working to crank up the animated engines- you have Sony Animation ramping up, Dreamworks hitting 2 per year, Pisnar (or is it Dixey?) with their 2 per year, Fox/Blue Sky with their one per year (plus Fox's outsourced efforts from IDT) and Warner Bros with their one or two per year (done by outsource studios). Now I'm not implying that any of these studios will make such cynically uber-low budget products like Hoodwinked. Most of these larger studios seem fairly committed to doing a decent job with their films. They're not shy about spending some money to make their films better. Now what they think actually makes a film "better" can be misguided and derivative at times, you still gotta give 'em credit for trying. But the fact remains, it's gonna get crowded. It feels like San Francisico in 1849 around here.

And if that wasn't enough, now the bottom end is open for business.

On to our topic: the recently released Hoodwinked. To the chagrin of many folks Hoodwinked didn't die a horrible "Valiant-like"death at the box office (more on Valiant later). In fact, this VERY cheaply made outsourced film has hit a resonant tone with movie going audiences. Like it or not, people are going to see this film and they are enjoying it. To the tune of over $40million in domestic box office so far. Granted those are not Shrek numbers, but for a film that reputedly cost well under $5million to make, them's very, very good numbers. It has what they call in the biz "legs". Say what you will about the artistic or story merit of the thing or the quality of the craftsmanship (or as many insist, the lack thereof), Hoodwinked has made it's mark on the business- a mark that is not going to go away. HW will turn a handsome profit for its masters, the Weinstein Studio. The true "C-cheap-I" (instead of "CGI") movie has been born. We can know this: more are coming. Today we see a report over at Cg-Char that the Weinsteins are ramping up their slate of low budget animated offerings. And why not? There's gold in them thar hills!

Here is the deflating reality facing feature film animation (all animation, not just CG or 2d): Typical American audiences can indeed distinguish the difference between poorly crafted animated fare and highly crafted animated fare. They just don't seem to value that difference.

Many artists and technicians in the business are experiencing a vaguely reminiscent uneasiness. I think we've seen this story before. The cat is indeed out of the bag- producers now know that a ridiculously low budget film made by an undeniably amateur crew in the far East can (if sufficently pop-culture in humor/nature) rake in enough box office success to justify doing more of the same. This will inevitably create a downward drag on higher budget CG animated films. Will the big name studios approve budgets that are above $40 or 50mil for feature films if they know in the back of their minds that audiences really don't value that added artistry? Even if the rumors prove true and we see the shut down of sequel factories like DisneyToon and Circle 7, there will be no shortage of other producers to jump in the water. With the Indian studios improving in capability & capacity and with Singapore getting into the act I don't think it's a stretch to see the number of animated feature films available for the American public approaching 20 films per year by 2008. The obvious question is whether the market can support that kind of saturation. It's hard to know. I don't think there's ever been anything close to that amount of feature film animation on the menu in theaters before. And this in a climate where overall theater attendance is dropping steadily. I think it's fairly safe to assume that more producers will split the same movie audience dollars. To a certain extent movie going is a zero sum game. That means the winners will be those willing to make their films for the least amount of money- given those cheapo films can garner an audience. And even box office failure is not guarantee of financial loss. For weeks now my local suburban Blockbuster has been sold out of copies of Disney's Valiant. Did you even know it was out on DVD? I didn't before I noticed it's space on the shelf. And yet it seems to be doing a fairly brisk business in DVD with next to zero marketing effort. It has the Disney name, that's enough aparently. So in the end, given that it was a fairly inexpensive film to make, it's conceivable that Valiant will be a money maker for Disney, despite its very lackluster box office. All of the various factors taken into consideration, we're not exactly looking at a recipe for prodcuing great, classic animated films. And for those of us who make a living doing this stuff it doesn't sound like a very fun job. How does 20-30 seconds of approved animation per week sound? For a feature? *gulp*

That's the bad side. But there's another side to this coin, one of opportunity. We'll discuss that next.

January 2006 is 1994 continued....

As we roll on toward the close of January 2006, I think it's safe to say that it will be remembered as one of the most pivotal and defining months in modern animated feature film history. But I think it's merely a continuation of events that occured way back in 1994. Let's review...

In the summer of 1994, feature film animation experienced a clear historical event with the release and subsequent monsterous success of The Lion King. The uber successful film set the expectations benchmark for all feature animated fare for the next 7 years. Everything was measured by how it ranked against TLK. The bar was set unreasonably high. Later that same year Jefferey Katzenberg left Disney with his nose permanently out of joint, which led to the eventual founding of Dreamworks SKG. Also in 1994 Disney released it's first DTV sequel adaptation of a recent feature film hit with Alladin2: Return of Jafar. The "Cheapquel" train left the station that year only to gain speed at an alarming rate. It's not a stretch to say that the landscape of feature animation was forever changed in 1994.

Shortly on the tails of 1994, the feature animaton biz experienced another bellweather. November of 1995 we saw the release and subsequent unexpected rave success of Toy Story. Made by some unknown little technology company named Pixar, the CGI animated film was born and a new era was ushered in.

By 2003 the consequences of the events of 1994/95 had reached a point of stasis. CG was king. Traditional feature animation had been bannished to the dungeons. The upheaval was monumental. Who knew in '94 that the perfect storm of coincidence would have born the fruit of misery in traditional feature animation that we have seen? Or that Cg would become the only form of animated feature film in the US? Oddly enough Hollywood still measures animated film success by comparing it's revenues to the wildly off the "bell curve" Lion King. Only now the idea is that only CG can hit those marks. Sooner or later the reality will settle in that you can't plan your entire business around a level of success that happens only once every 10 years. But that's material for another post, I think. :)

Now we sit in January 2006. First Hoodwinked carries forward the Alladin 2: Return of Jafar momentum, only this time in CG. It was only a matter of time before something like Hoodwinked - a very cheaply made film done overseas that does a respectable (and highly profitable) business with the animation buying public- was going to happen. Will Hoodwinked have the same downward pull on the CG feature market that Alladin 2 began in traditional? Time will tell, but the clock is running.

Then came the big news that Disney has bought Pixar. This is obviously a play out of the rest of the watershed events of 1994/95. I see Disney buying Pixar as the culmination of what was set in motion back then. What was that Lion King theme song again? Something about the circle of life? Indeed.

Pictures for Patrick: Snooty

This one's a little rougher around the edges. It started from a random few lines that I scribbled during dailies. Suddenly this character seemed to jump ut at me from the lins, so I filled in the rest. This one would be fun to color up in Photoshop someday. Don't we all know somebody who looks like this?

"End of the Spear" : Go see it!

This wonderful, powerful, moving film debuted at #10 in the US box office this weekend. There's absolutely no mainstream buzz about this movie, but that's to be expected. It's the true story about christian missionaries and their greatest of sacrifices. The central theme is how the power of forgiveness can break timeless cycles of violence.

The opening monologue of the film says this.

It has been said that we cannot ever find true peace because we have never found a way to change the human heart. The events of this story challenge that.

For more about the movie and the real events & people behind it, check out the movie webpage.

Funny thing is I worked on some of the FX animation for this film last year and I didn't even know what it was. I was sitting in the theater thinking "Hey, I worked on that shot!". All I knew at the time was that we were working on some movie with a yellow plane and indians in the jungle. If I'd have known what it was about (or even how good it was going to turn to be) I would have been hyping this thing like crazy! Anyhow, skip Hoodwinked this week (please) and go see End of the Spear. You won't be sorry.

Gopher Broke available online

Noticed this over at Sundance's website...



Blur's Academy Award nominated animated short film Gopher Broke is available for online viewing as a part of the Sundance festival.
I had the priviledge of helping Jeff Fowler get his story from idea to screen during the initial development of this film. After I left Blur for Texas Jeff took over as director and did a wonderful job making a really funny film. Go enjoy it!
-k

Before Pictures for Patrick, there was....

I've always loved Post-It-Note drawings. This is a snapshot of the wall over my desk when I worked at Big Idea. The arrayed collection of doodles was the product of three things.

1. Me & my partner in crime, Bryan Ballinger sitting together.
2. The ingenius creation of the 3M Corporation
3. Lots and lots of dull meetings.

Bryan and I would sometimes tear through a pad per meeting, often trying to get the other one to break out laughing in the middle of the meeting. That was the ultimate sign of success, to get people to look over the two of us wondering what the heck was so goshdarned funny. Good times. The doodles in this pic represent probably less than 25% of what we pumped out. This was the shrine to the boring meeting doodle. Bryan had a shrine to odd food called the Museum of Regretable Edibles. It had some real doozies. Tuna Jerky for you- and your pet! Cross species food items are always a winner in our book. I'm sure he has pics of it. Anyhow, to give a sense of scale, if I were sitting at my desk working (instead of taking this picture) my head would have barely broken the bottom of the frame. The pad doodle ran about 10 feet up the wall. It was a tall ceiling.
Anyhow, I thought some folks might get a kick out of this bit of nostalgia. And for more zany doodles of deceiving quality, check out Bryan's site. It's a treasure trove of ink that will move your inner chipmunk in ways you'd never imagined.

Quicktime 7 for older OS's

I got this cool tip from a VTS subscriber today. Check it out....

I'm still using Windows 98 but I've found that VLC media player can open
Quicktime 7 files on my operating system.
So if anyone has trouble opening the files due to an old OS just send
them over to http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ and hopefully that should sort
things out.

Thanks to Abe for that one. So all you old school OS users, you can use QT 7 files. And Quicktime 7 is really, really cool. H.264 codec. Mmmmmm. Tasty.

Cool animated commercial

Brecht Debaene sent me a link to a commercial that he recently completed at his job. Brecht works as an animator/TD at commercial shop Hoaxland in Belgium. Take a moment to check it out- it's very fun and well done. It has a great cartoon energy to it.

The cool part is that Brecht's only 19 years old! This is his first job as an animator. If he's this solid at his first job... dang! Brecht has been a subscriber to my VTS ever since it started last March. Seeing him do well makes me smile. It's neat to see folks get their break.

Anyhow, congrats, Brecht! Here's to many years of happy animating in your future.

VTS Special Offer

I hope you have had a great holiday season and that you are all rested up!
I haven't talked too much about my Video Tutorial Service here on my blog lately. I didn't want to bog things down with overt commercial stuff. But this month it took me by surprise- we're all the way up to VTS11 in our ongoing series of animation training videos. Can you believe it? We're almost a full year into the VTS already!

So to celebrate the New Year, I decided to have special offer for the month of January for the VTS.

All new subscribers who sign up for the VTS before the end of January 31st, 2006- will receive two FREE back issue videos!
So if you subscribe to the VTS in January, I'll toss in the VTS01 and VTS02 videos for free!

What's in VTS01 and VTS02? Well, I'm glad you asked...

VTS01 Topics Covered: Intro to poses, poses as 2d imagery, line of action, pose variety/focus, line of action reverses

VTS02 Topics Covered: Flow lines, head posing, watch me turn a slop pose into a decent pose!

Normally new subscribers would need to go and purchase these videos from the back issue store, but just cuz I'm in a festive mood, I'll spare ya the bother for these two. That's a $29.90 value for nuthin'!
To subscribe to the VTS, my monthly animation training video service, just click that fancy button to the left, the one below my happy character.

Wow, I sound like I should be selling K-Tel records on late night TV. Heh. OK, shameless commercial break is over. Thanks to all who have subscribed and to all who have expressed interest. May 2006 yield new treasures for all of us.

Pictures for Patrick: Stoic

HD Ant Bully Trailer on Apple.com

This is a bit of old news, but for those who want to see a high res HD version of The Ant Bully teaser/trailer, you can check it out on Apple's Quicktime website. Apparently Warner Bros recently had a test screening of the work in progress film and it scored very high with the test audiences.

And for what it's worth I took my shot from the trailer (the rapping ants scene depicted above) and put it up in the Animation section of my site. That's right, Chubby White Boy animated hip hop rapping ants. I've got street cred now, yo.

note: edited post

Today in the town of David....

A Savior has been born unto you...

Fun Essay on 2d vs 3d animation

My good buddy Tim Hodge has posted an essay of his on his blog looking at the challenges and changes in animation from a 2d/3d lense. Go check it out. It's well written, thoughtful and a very fun read if not a tad crumudgeonly. Kinda like Tim. Only not as ugly. He's also got a fun sort story on the blog and some sketches, too. A real rennaissance man. Check it out.

Saccadic Eye Movement

Here's an interesting link I've had around for a while. It details the nature of how our eyes move. Follow some of the other research links from that page if you're really interested in geeking out about this stuff.
Most of us know that one of the best ways to keep a character alive and thinking is subtle eye shifts. As with anything try not to over do it or else things can look a bit spastic and fake. But when done well and well placed there's a lot of power in using well timed shifting of the eyes. The shift could be motivated by the internal thoughts or feelings of the character while they are presented with a moment of quietness or thought. There the relative pace of the shfts gives indication to the speed of the unfolding of thoughts in the head or the emotional energy of the moment. If the darts are fast paced and come quickly one after the other it can indicate a great flurry of thought or a rapid firing of emotional energy. Slower pace indicates a more methodical, more pondering state of mind. This kind of eye darting is pretty common in animation these days.
Another motivator for eye darts (which I don't see as much of) could be the character's examining the face of another character they're talking to. We do this ALL the time. That's where the saccades come from, the constant exploration of our world around us to take the information in. It's a but harder to do because managing eyelines in animation is such a difficult thing to get right in the first place. Eyelines are so very fragile. If you're off just a little bit suddenly your character doesn't seem to be connected to their moment. So once you get a solid eyeline working sometimes we're a bit afraid to mess with it. But we don't just lock eyes with any one thing for very long. We'll examine, we'll move around, scanning, processing. When listening to another person we'll be drawn to their eyes first -individually- then to the mouth. We'll roll over this heirarchy for a bit as we piece together the other person's demeanor. That's how we read the intentions of those around us. Then our attention will turn to areas of high contrast. First in motion, second in brightness value, third in color. It's definitely hard to pull off well without ruining the eyeline of your character, but when you can get it working it adds so much life to the character as they listen or speak to another character.
I like to keep eye shifts quick. Usually 2 frames with a favor on the inbetween toward the end. A motion curve for a typical eye shift for me would have this kind of a pattern...
And always remember that when the eyeball moves it affects the fleshy bits around the eyes. The lids mostly, but also beyond the immediate lids in a very limited and subtle way. if your rig doesn't move that sutf automatically it'll be up to you to get it working.
Anyhow... hope that is useful to some folks out there.

Pictures for Patrick: Scary

Could this be me in 15 yrs? I certainly hope not.

Pictures for Patrick: Puhsty

This was a little experiment with shapes that turned out better than I expected. It's rough, but I kinda like it for some reason. My little boy thought Puhsty would be a good name for him. I guess that's as good as any other name. Except Sherman. That's a better name than Puhsty, I think.

The Setup Machine

Ahhh, bliss.

I'll tell ya what. Over the years I've learned a lot about rigging. I've rigged a ton of characters. I fancy myself a half way decent rigger when I need to be. It's been a necessary evil in my professional path. It's a knowledge that has served me well and I think it's good for animators to know how to do it. But to be honest, I only did it to get better animation controls for my own characters. I don't really like rigging. There's a certain tinkering aspect of finding a new solution in rigging that can be fun- like solving a tricky puzzle. But the actual work of rigging a whole character, including painting weights and all that rubbish- ugh! I find myself having less and less patience for the black art as the years roll by. So imagine my joy when I saw what Raf Anzovin was cooking up with his new The Setup Machine for Maya. I've had a chance to play with the beta version a bit and let me tell you, this is the thing to get if you have rigging to do. So many folks write me and ask about how to rig, or where they can get little known free rigs to animate with. Well now you can model your own character design (or better yet, get a modeler buddy to do it for you!) and The Setup Machine makes body rigging slickity splickity. AND- get this- it does a really spiffy job of auto weighting the skin to the joints. It's fully customizable, got great controls for animation, has a lot of mesh sculpting flexibility to shape the characters- Oh yeah. It's all good. And now it's been officially released. So head on over to Raf's site for all the details and to pick up your copy of TSM. It's the bee's knees. I'll never rig another character from scratch again. Joy!

Give Thanks...

I want to wish a great Thanksgiving Day to all of you folks in the U.S. Today is a day for us to stop and give simple thanks to the good Lord for all we've been blessed with. And then we get to enjoy some food! Yay! It has been said that the fastest way to become wealthy is to simply count your blessings. I challenge all of us to take it one step further- be a blessing to someone else today who's list of blessings might be a bit shorter than yours.

Pictures for Patrick: Bucky

Bucky likes to talk. I don't know who Bucky is. But this is a picture of him. Please don't feed Bucky. You will just get your monitor all messy.

Pictures for Patrick: Patrick

l
This is my picture OF Patrick. He's normally not wall-eyed. He does grin like that, though. He liked this picture. His wife Amila also liked at it. They sit together with me at work. Amila has sharp elbows. We are afraid of her elbows. She's also a really good animator. I hope you enjoy this Picture of Patrick.

Pictures for Patrick: Old Dude

This is perhaps my avorite way to draw. I don't know where I got the idea from, probably just from messing around in some boring meeting one day. I try to use a single line and let the pen wander over the paper, trying not to lift the pen and worry about stuff like line quality and all that. I think I do my best work when I use this kind of doodling method. It's also relaxing and very fun. Quite freeing indeed.

Bill Tytla nugget of gold

I was studying through my old Richard Wiliams Master Class notes (this was back when Richard was travelling the world offering a 3 day master course on animation. Pre- Animator's Survival Kit days. $900 for 3 days of animation training. Ahh, the good old days.)
Anyhow I came across a quote that Richard relayed from Bill Tytla, one of the early masters of animation. Bill said...

There's only 3 things to animation.

1. Anticipation
2. Action
3. Reaction

Learn to do these well and you can animate anything well.

And another Bill Tytla nugget:

Be Simple
Be Direct
Be Clear
Be Very Simple
Make a statement and finish it clearly

Good stuff to be reminded of in an age where we can get all distracted by the possibilities of subtle micro movement in CG animation. It's true that Cg opens doors for adding those micro expressions and little flashes, but they alone cannot sustain a scene. This micro subtelty stuff is like a good spice. Just the right kind in just the right amount can elevate a meal from good to amazing. But put the wrong spice in a dish, or too much of the right spice and you can ruin a perfectly good meal. Same with animation. You can so overpack your animation with bits of micro movement in the name of subtlety that you lose the primary storytelling drive of the shot to start with. It's a pretty easy thing to make the face all muddy if we're not careful. The foundation must be clear, simple, strong and entertaining- then add a little spice. Let your posing, drawing, timing and acting choices be the power behind the scene, not the little flashes of motion or noise.

Pictures for Patrick: Perplexed

Acting & Animation

What if you stink as an actor? What if you've tried acting out your scenes on video and have ended up with absolute junk?

The craft of acting is about using your own body as the puppet for the camera. So acting classes and exercises are mostly about how to manipulate your mind/emotion/body into a reflexive response that is sincere so that what shows up on the camera is a genuine human reaction. You are the puppet, therefore you must manipulate yourself. The more that you can conjure up a non thinking reflexive response to a pretend moment, the better you are as an actor. The acting classes I've taken all orbit around this idea.

Animation is acting by proxy. We don't even say the lines of audio. We are greatly limited in our ability to define a role and the moments of a story are already defined for us in many ways. We are not the puppet, so acting exercises have a somewhat limited application to an animator. The one place where these tools come in handy is if we head off to an acting room and act out a scene in front of a video camera in order to help us see how we'd play the scene if we were the actor. Lots of folks are big proponents of this in helping you get better acting in your animation. It's certainly very helpful. That is, if it's at all helpful. By that I mean this: what if you're not a good actor and you know it?

Live action reference is an old tool. In years past at Disney less popular (and presumably less talented) actors were brought in to act out a scene for the animators to study. And the animators used that reference to one degree or another. Interestingly Milt Kahl decried the "lazy bastards" who just copied the performance off the photostats. He said you get "third rate acting from a third rate actor". Apparently Milt felt there was something more needed. Even so, third rate actors are still better actors than I am. With the advent of digital video many animators have taken great advantage of acting a scene out. There's been a push to get animators to become more like actors, in the real sense of having the animator act out their scenes in order to better tap into the emotion of the moment. Then they go back to their desk and study the tape for the golden nuggets that lie within. This is helpful, I'm sure. That is if you can get anything off the tape that's real and worth using.

There's a reason I'm an animator and not an actor. An honest man must know his limits and I know that as an actor I'm not all that good. I go to the acting room, run the video and what I have after 30 minutes is pretty much crap. I guess what I'm trying to say is: me acting it out in front of a video camera in a room alone is clearly not enough for me to succeed with a scene. And even if the 9 old men were inclined to act out a scene, there was no way to record it so they could study it later, so obviously they must have done something else. Does anybody who's ever worked with the modern greats like Glen Keane, James Baxter, Nick Park or Andres Dejas know if they go into an acting room to act out their scene in front of a camera? I've never read anything that indicates that is what these guys do. So how do they get such consistently amazing performances? There must be more than video tape at work there.

I turned to the Acting and Emotion chapter in The Illusion of Life for help. Here's something that really surprised me...

Usually this feeling of warmth cannot be structured in the Story Dept. and must depend entirely upon the animator for its portrayal, but it remains a very mercurial sensation. A note cannot be pinned to the storyboard saying "Get warmth through here", nor can it be written as an action on the exposure sheet, "Animate 3 feet of warmth". It cannot be analyzed, or acted out or represented in the same way as an expression or a passing thought, since it is more of a sentiment that grows within the viewer from the special way the business has been animated; actually it grows from the sensitivity of the animator who makes the drawings."

pg 491

Isn't it something to read that Frank Thomas (or Ollie, whoever wrote those words) said that developing that warmth in a character couldn't be acted out? Instead they indicate that there's something else going on- sensitivity of the animator. In another place they talk about the feelings the animator has for their drawings. You must have feelings for your character, your 'drawings'. The implication was that the very act of drawing was a cathartic moment for an animator. It's that word: sensitivity- that's what intrigues me.

How sensitive are you? Do you notice things? Are you a keen observer of people and how they behave? Are you moved when another person hurts? Do you rejoice when others succeed? Do emotional moments effect you deeply? Can you easily understand and tap into why another person would feel a certain way? Can you come alongside another person in their life and connect on a deep level with what's going on inside of them? Even if you do nothing with it, does it touch something inside of you? I know some really good animators and the best ones always seem to have this attribute, sensitivity. They're expert observers of people and their emotional states. They connect easily to others and their moments in life. Sad movies devastate them. Violent movies effect them. Real life tragedies touch them. They're sensitive people. I think in a significant sense that animation is about coming alongside of our characters in their moments and being sensitive enough to connect with them there, to be faithful in moving them in a way that is consistent with their emotions in the moment, not by shoehorning my own emotions and gestures onto them.

I realize that there are some very prominent advocates of the "acting it out in video" approach. I certainly can't argue with their success. Definitely if you're a halfway decent actor then you should by all means utilize that talent in such a way. Far be it from me to say that acting it out isn't good or helpful. I'm not saying that at all, so don't even go there. What I am saying is that for those of us who can't act (and have tried and know it) I think sensitivity is the key to getting to that point in our animation where we can be honest to our characters.

Character Supervisors revisited

I've talked about this a bit in the past but I've not been sure which way I go on the issue. If we have 25 animators then by nature we have 25 interpretations of the character. The goal is to have a single character on screen with a measure of consistency of performance so that we get to feel for them in their world. We really don't want 25 versions of a character, that doesn't serve the story very well. So what extra energies are required to keep all the interpretations in line? Would these energies be better spent elsewhere? Is there a better way than the way we've done things for the last little bit?

Chicken Little was run in the standard Disney shop style where animators were put into teams that were dedicated to a specific character with character supervisors over those teams. Many other shops work where the animator does every character in a scene. But Disney stuck with their old way of having dedicated teams of animators working on a single character with a character supervisor who is the expert and master of that character. From what I saw on the screen with Chicken Little I thought they were very successful in getting consistent performances from their characters, especially Buck Cluck. Runt as well, very solid, very consistent from an emotional and mannerisms standpoint. And I felt that this consistency actually opened doors for depth of performance. It appeared to me that the energies that would otherwise be spent to keep the character performances consistent were now free to be spent in digging deeper. Those emotional scenes with Buck were flat out awe inspiring. I am willing to go out on a limb here and say that those are perhaps some of the best animated scenes (from an acting standpoint) as we have seen in the last 30 years.

I think my preference is definitely starting to tip toward the Character Team approach. We've seen it work for decades in the old Disney studio. Now I'm seeing how much it brings to the table in CG. I think that all things considered that this is a good system. It understands one of the more troubling challenges in animation and mitigates it some by reducing the number of "interpretations" of a character by limiting the number of animators responsible for portaying that character.

Sony Picture Animation is apparently following the same cue with their film Open Season. I'm curious to see how well they do with this. But the success with the animation in Chicken Little has certainly done its part in making me lean toward the character team approach.
Let the disagreeing comments begin. :)

Pictures for Patrick: Sluggo

My favorite medium is ballpoint pen on Post-It Notes. Why? Because they're unassuming materials. You're not "supposed" to draw with a ballpoint pen and Post-It's aren't "real" drawing paper. Which is cool because then I'm free to screw up. Make a crap drawing? No problem, just peel it off the pad and chuck it. No biggie. But put a Col-Erase in my hand and give me sheets of drawing paper with great tooth and I start to freeze up. Performance anxiety. Patrick liked this picture. I think it's fun, too.

Pictures for Patrick: Grumpy

This is another picture I drew for Patrick. It is not a picture of Patrick. I do have a picture of Patrick. I will share that with you some day. Today is not that day. Today is just a picture for Patrick, not a picture of Patrick.

Pictures for Patrick: Puzzled

I work with a fellow named Patrick Puhala. (pronounced "poo-hall-ahh") He has a funny name. He has an even funnier face. Patrick is an animator. Patrick is a good animator. Patrick likes it when I draw pictures for him. Here is a picture I drew for Patrick in dailies. I like to show you my Pictures for Patrick.

EDIT: You guys! It's a picture for Patrick. Not a picture of Patrick. Secondly, here's a color version of the sketch. Seems the original black and white impressed folks as being a drawing of a lady's torso instead of a noseless sad brocolli haired fella. Hopefully this edit clears things up. :)

Tastes Like Chicken...

It's really funny to see Hollywood implode on itself. They play so many games trying to guess their way around what people will or won't like it's a wonder they're able to decide what to eat for breakfast each morning. To read some internet sites you'd get the impression that every Disney executive was having a hyperventilation fit earlier this week. Add in some bad reviews from snarky Hollywood movie critics about their latest film Chicken Little and there's apparently a mad scramble to duck for cover.

Well, seems a lot of their worries were about nothing. Chicken Little is doing a healthy opening weekend business. Families are responding well to the little movie. I have to say I'm one of them. It's a fun flick. Not overly deep, but it has some heart, it's entertaining, it's funny. It's got some very fun characters and memorable moments. Is it a perfect film? There is no such beast if you ask me. It's a solid film that earns your smiles and attention. All that Pixar/Disney/2d/3d political crap aside, I'm glad the film is doing well so far. Good job to you folks at WDFA.

And on an animation front I have to say that I'm really jealous of those animators. Cartoons! Yay! I love cartoon animation. It's such a fun and freeing way to make things come alive. Seeing all those older 2d techniques brought to bear in Cg makes me very happy for the future of the medium. And the acting on Buck Cluck! Wow. The dad in CL had some of the absolute best acting I've ever seen in animation, 2d, 3d or 99758D. If for nothing else go watch CL and study how they handled the dad character in those quieter moments. His best performances came when he wasn't saying anything. Kudos to the director for letting the character and those moments breathe. Sometimes you can cut a movie too tight and not give the characters room to breathe. It's these moments of silence that let the animator really dig deep to find some great acting performances.

It begins

Back in my earlier post about the idea that the video iPod has the potential to start altering the way we think about video distribution, I mentioned that soon enterprsing folks were going to start finding a way to get content to this portable devices.
Intro Channel Frederator.
Jerry Beck at Cartoon Brew has a brief post on how Frederator Cartoons is going to set up a weekly vid-cast of animated short films. They're taking submissions and their first month's vid-cast looks to have some fun toons on them. I expect that others will hop on seeing as this is such an easy thing to set up and get going (and it's low cost as well). The content is out there. I think there is a definite market and interest for short animated films (that are well done!) just like there is a market for a wide variety of music. Savvy media consumers are looking for new and fresh ideas in their video media. The steady decline in ticket sales for cinematic releases from Hollywood is about more than just the proliferation of home theater systems and DVD's. It's certainly not about pirating. It's about content, new, flavorful, relevant, meaningful content. Smart people aren't willing to settle for the silly pap that's being pushed anymore. The independent filmmakers are the ones who will define the curve. Channel Frederator is among those who have fired the opening salvo in this little war of independence.

Not to say I told you so, but... I told you so.

:)

Well, this sounds intriguing..

Cartoon Brew reports that there's some rumblings that Steve Jobs may be willing to sell Pixar to an appropriate bidder. This article explains the details and points to Disney as a possible suitor for the Pixar holdings. Sounds like it could be a number of things to me.
To me it sounds like Steve is bored with the little studio that could. Pixar has settled into the maturity of its form. It's now the leader of the pack in what it does. No more giants remain to be slain there. There's always been something about Jobs that needs his Goliath so he can be the heroic David. But Pixar is now Goliath. At least in the sense of what Pixar is and is likely to be. Disney's trying to hang on and they sure hope Chicken Little firms up their ground as a movie making company. But ask anybody their honest opinion and they'll tell you that Pixar's currently top of the game in animated movie making. Dreamworks makes a bunch of money with their films, but those films often lack the ability to find a warm place in the cockles of children's hearts. Kids generally aren't asking mom and dad for a Shrek, Donkey, Alex the lion or Oscar the Fish costume this halloween. But I can guarantee there'll be bajillions of Buzz Lightyears a full decade after his introduction as a character. No, when it comes to making films that find an iconic place in the hearts of kids, Pixar is currently the giant. Disney is still far bigger overall as a company, but not in the core business of animated films. They have giant distribution systems, live action divisions, broadcast and network holdings, merchandising empires. But they're all ancilliary to the animate film biz. And I don't think Pixar has ever wanted to become the next Disney Company. Just the next Walt Disney Studio. Which they've pretty much done.
So the battle is kinda won. Perhaps for Jobs the game has gotten old. Steve has some fun things happening back at Apple again. He has his eyes on revolutionizing the content delivery and consumption markets of the world.

Or this could all be a ploy to drive up share prices. I can't see how selling to Disney gives him any leverage in striking a new deal with Disney. But if rumblings of a sale are coming out I think it's fair to say that could perk some interest in the Pixar stock. One thing is that if I were a Pixar employee this morning I'd have a little sick feeling in my gut if I'd heard The Steve was thinking of selling out to The Mouse. And maybe that's Steve's intention- inject a little hunger and fear back into the Pixar crew to keep them sharp.

But that's just my guess. It could all be hooey.

Oops!

While editing my blogger template this weekend (I was trying to add a new link on the sidebar) it seems I had a slip of the keyboard and totally hosed the template. The result was a page full of gobbeldy gook text. I've since restored the template from a back up, but the blogger bar is back at the top. I'll be fixing that later tonite to get rid of it. Til then, you'll have to endure looking at it. :)

-k

Cane Toad Diaries

Cane Toad is a funny short film that's been out a few years now. Normally in this world of fast paced love 'em and leave 'em animation that means it's old hat, boring, yesterday's news. But I like to bring these things back out of the storage bin now and again because a fun animated film is still fun to watch years beyond it's original release. That and being a short film maker myself, I like to promote folks who get a short done and done fairly well.
The impetus for this Cane Toad redux on my part is that recently on the Cg-Char forums Andrew Silke has done all of you first time animated short film makers out there a HUGE favor. He's posted the various storyboard animatic, layout and edit locked pre-final versions of his and Dave's award winning short film Cane Toad. Many of you may have already seen this little humorous gem of a film, but if you haven't then take some moments in your day to head on over and have a look. It's a pretty valuable look at how they went about making their film and it's a mighty generous thing to do. It's nice to see how organized they were in making it, recording a production diary and all. Me, it's all I can do to find a few hours a week just to tinker with my short, much less document it. If I had to document it as well I'd never get anything done. Not that I'm getting much done without taking the time to document it. But anyhow, go enjoy Cane Toad, enjoy the behind the scenes in progress stuff and enjoy Andrew's production log. Good stuff worthy of a mention here to bring the film back into the light for a little bit.

-k

ps: you'll need DivX to see the movies linked.

Fun little test

Here's a quickie little animation test I recently did for one of my VTS video classes.
(right click to save movie. Quicktime 7 required)


This is an older version of this character's rig. I'm doing some tests animating in CG on 2's. I'm (slowly) working on my next short film idea and I want to see about doing the whole thing on 2's. Why? Well, why not? I'm not trying to emulate the stop-mo look, but am rather more interested in getting some of the flavor of handdrawn animation back into CG. It requires a lot from the rig and this early version lacked some pretty vital stuff. I've since completely gutted this rig and I am making a new one (with some professional help) that's even more flexible. Anyhow, I thought I'd throw this up here and share with folks. It's been a while since I posted any new animation. Enjoy the fun on 2's!

Eric Goldberg Timing Notes

Thanks to our good friend Tim Hodge for sharing this page of timing notes from animation master, Eric Goldberg (he was the supervisor for the Genie in Alladin).



Here's what Tim had to write when he sent me this...

I found that page of Goldberg Notes. I remembered them as being a
little more in depth than they are. Probably because they accompanied
a lecture.
The idea behind the timing chart is that instead of spending two
frames of the same drawing in the middle of a fast action, spread it
out into three drawings on ones, thus making the action snappier.
Then go back to 2's because the drawings are so close together,
drawing on 1's becomes overkill.
You should go through his genie animation frame by frame sometime.
It's really amazing. He'll have a character hit a pose very quickly,
then spend 6 to 8 frames for the rest of the body to catch up and
another 6 frames to totally settle in. Very snappy and natural looking.
(In Disney animation, drawings are numbered to the frame, not just
1,2,3... then shot on ones or twos. If drawing 112 is held for 18
frames, the next drawing is number 130. Oh, and the numbers for keys
are circled, breakdowns are underlined, inbetweens are left alone.)

Eric always analyzed action and timing like this. He wanted to make
sure each drawing had maximum impact, not so you'd notice the drawing
itself, but so the action would be clear and entertaining. You may
ask, "can one frame make that much difference?" And I will ask you,
"Do you know the difference between a gold and silver medal?" Split
seconds, that extra umph, mean everything!

Great stuff and three cheers to Tim for sharing with te rest of the class. Be sure to go check out Tim's site. He's got lots of goodies there. I really love his John Henry drawings. Lots of talent that Mr. Hodge.

ps: Oh, and if anybody finds my posting of these notes to be bothersome to you, just drop me a line. My email link is on the side. If it's a big problem I can take these down. Hopefully that's not going to be the case, though.

Hotmail email problems

It seems Hotmail is having some email problems. If you have a hotmail account and have written me in the last two days, I have tried to write you back but I can't seem to get the email to go through. Honest! I'm not a rude jerk. I'm just drawn that way. :)

All you hotmail users probably need to yell at hotmail/msn about this.

-k

UPDATE: looks like all's well in Denmark now. Gon on home folks. Nothing to see here....

Thoughts on Timing

In the intro to my first VTS video about timing I made the statement that timing is one of those things that is so hard to put down into rules. In fact there's precious little recorded info on how to time things compared to the large collection of writings about drawings/pose, etc. So many of the principles of animation are about the actual drawings/poses themselves. We have the huge collection of Walt Stanchfield notes about drawing for animation. But unfortunately there's no real equivalent Walt Stanchfield of timing. When it comes to timing almost all the old masters just usually said "Well, it takes time to learn that. You just eventually figure it out." Milt Kahl just blurted out "Well, you just know!" Not much to go on for students who want the answers to making better animation today. Heh.


Well by way of backing up my statements here's an exerpt from an interview between Dick Williams and Ken Harris about timing. You should know who both of these gentlemen are, but if you don't, read the links for more info.

Anyhow, here you go...

DICK: How do you learn to time the actions? If you're acting it out in your
mind, how do you time it?

KEN: That takes experience. You just time it by timing it. You get to know how long it takes to do a thing the way you want to do it.

DICK: When you started, did you have stop-watches?

KEN: We had metronomes; You could set a metronome on 6's or 8’s or 10's if you wanted a walk or anything like that. We had Carl Stallings, the musician Disney first brought to Hollywood. Carl used to give us a lot of pointers on music timing. We would ask Carl about what music phrase or number of bars that he wanted to do a thing in. Also, the Director would time it out himself - the way he wanted to do it, and we would also confer with Carl in getting the music timing. Oh, learning timing comes so gradually; It's like Benny Washam's 12-frame yawn.
When you first start out animating something, it takes so long to make those drawings that you think, "Gee, whizz, this will take up a lot of screen time. It's taken me half a day to make 12 drawings, and that must make a long, slow yawn." Well, half a second for a yawn isn't very long, is it? It just takes experience in timing, and doing things, and tapping it out with a pencil - beating it out per foot, 'till you get to know.

DICK : So you get to know the length of time of a second. It’s completely set in your mind; You know exactly what you're going to do?

KEN: Yes, I know pretty much. And I know how many frames I need to
accent something, and I know how many frames I need to slow out of it; A guy says something like, "Get going!", well, "get" would be this picture here, and here, and an in-between, and that's the accent, and when the head is up here you slow out of it. You don't just bang it back down again - you use maybe 6 to 8 drawings to get back to where you started it. But that's all timing that you've gotten by experience which you've had. You know how fast the film goes through. A stop-watch is good to time the length of scenes and such, but the stop-watch doesn't cut it down to a point where you can get a quick accent.
It’s like that guy where you made him shoot himself. You took some frames out of where his head went back when the bullet hits his head. You even could take all the frames out. If his head was here and he pulled the trigger, and his head went clear over to here without any in-between, it would work. It works well the way it is - but if you want it to bang harder, and if it was a bigger bore gun, and you wanted a real blast you could just leave out the in-betweens.
Lots of times, we will take a little fish, or a humming bird going from one rose to another…this humming bird will flutter here and then, bang! - he's over there with maybe just one elongated blur on ones, and then a 'cushion'. You can do almost anything by just starting something here and cushioning it way over here. You don't need any in-betweens.

So there you have it. You learn it by doing it.

Video i-Pod and indy distribution...

Apple has finally released their new video capable i-Pod. While I'm not an i-Pod owner/user (I'm tragically unhip, sorry to say. I always seem to be 3 years behind the curve on stuff like this) and I don't use i-Tunes, this little number intrigues me. Not from a consumer standpoint. I doubt I'd use it much. See when I watch a TV show or a movie I tend to get very immersed in it. If it's a particularly good show or movie I easily get sucked in and get lost in time- I'll emotionally buy in for all it's worth. Which is fine if you're in your home by yourself. Not so good if you're watching the mini-tele while waiting for the elevator to open.

No, my interest in the v-Pod is the new video content distribution system Apple has started. Their deal with ABC/Disney to sell popular shows and such for $1.99 a pop is the video version of i-Tunes. Suddenly the barrier between filmmaker and buying public is much thinner. In response to a content creator driven trend Apple hooked their i-Tunes to handle podcasts natively. Is it a stretch to think that given sufficient creator movement in the independent video vidcasting that their video side of i-Tunes wouldn't hook into vidcasts eventually? Combine a vidcast enabled i-Tunes in conjunction with clever animator type dudes who put out the content and let the world know via a blog and RSS... welcome to self syndication. Podcasts have turned the stoic broadcasting world on its ear. Not that the content available on podcasts is overwhelmingly superior to commercial radio. Like all content that has a low cost of entry (ie: alot of rank amateurs are making a lot of stuff) most of it is trash. (except for The Animation Podcast. That rocks!) No, what kicked commercial radio in the groin in podcating was the freedom of choice for the consumer. Suddenly the power has shifted and commercial radio is still scrambling to catch up. It's the world of the longtail.

Will the v-Pod and vidcasts (anim-casts?) do the same for TV? Sure, making small Quicktimes and putting them on the web is not a new idea. Shoot, I released my first short film on my website over 8 years ago. But there's something about having a consumer product designed specifically for this content that lends a certain amount of critical mass to the movement. MP3's were not invented by Apple. Apple just made a clever gadget that made MP3's stylish, easy and popular. The hope here is that the same can happen for online video.

Have any of you started crafting your master plan to be a self supporting animator who sells their episodes to a faithful fanbase via i-Tunes? You know somebody is gonna be able to do it. Why not you? Heck.. why not me?!

Comment Spam: A Blight on Humanity

Spammers are leeches. It's not enough that they fill our inboxes with ads for Viagara, they now auto-comment on blogs. Blegh!! A pox on them I say!

In an effort to combat this evil I have turned on word verification for the comments in my blog now. It's a minor inconvenience for real human beings who wish to comment here (and I'm always glad to have folks comment here, even if I don't reply to the comments often enough). Hopefully this small measure will keep the spammers at bay. The vermin.

In other news... I gotta get back to editing this month's VTS video (it's due out Monday the 17th). We're still on our timing section, but we're getting close to wrapping that up. Probably one or two more months and then it's on to scene planning, blocking, acting choices, etc. The good stuff. :)

W&G Whee!

If you haven't seen Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit yet, then stop what you're doing- I mean it, stop right now- go and see it. Best animated film of the year if you ask me. You weren't asking me? Oh, OK, well I'm tellin' ya then. Solid storytelling, great characters (Victor Quartermain is ingenious), cute bunnies and cheese! I won't ruin the story for you, though. Oh, and the Madagascar Penguins short was a fun ride, as well. Very tight and clever short story telling. Nice work there as well. That one might be on a track to an Oscar nomination.

Only two disappointments, but neither of them is with the film. First yesterday morning the Aardman warehouse burned to the ground destroying much of their history and collections of sets, puppets, etc. The actual production facilities were untouched, so that's a good thing. But it's kinda sad to think that the original set for Wallace's kitchen is gone :o( But Nick Park had the right response. He said in light of other recent tragedies around the world where thousands have lost their lives and their entire worldy possessions, losing some old sets and puppets wasn't the biggest thing in the world. Bully for you, Mr. Park for having your head on straight!

Second, the film topped the US theatrical weekend charts, but at only $16.1 mil scored a bit less than the Corpse Bride's opening take. I still like CB a lot, but W&G is a substantially stronger film overall. Hopefully strong word of mouth turns W&G into a bit of a long run hit. Even so I'm sure Aardman and Dreamworks aren't going to fret over it. W&G have such a huge international following that it's very likely that the international till for W&G will be bigger than the US domestic pull.
Some killer animation in W&G that really got me excited were the first few scenes of Laddy Tottington. The animators did a great job of carrying that kinda rich ditzy dame character into the poses and animation. The way she held her hands, the way she kind walked a little tilted and sideways after Victor at times- good stuff! Also look for the scene when Victor wants to box with Wallace. His animation there is hysterical! It's further reinforcement of my belief that it's not the technical execution of details in a scene that makes it great but the very foundational ideas that hit the pose or the gesture in such a clear and recognizable way that shows the true power of animation. Nailing the technical details sure helps, but it cannot hold a candle to great imaginative ideas in pose and timing. Long live great ideas shown out in fantastic poses and sharp timing!

"Look at my wife's brassicas... ravaged in the night." Classic. Go see it. Why are you still reading this blog? Go!!!

Over the Hedge trailer

Here.

My initial reaction? Ehh. Mixed. I'll see it when it comes out. I like the comic. :) Animation wise, the stuff seems pretty nice overall. Hard to tell from the trailer shots because they're cut together a bit slapdash (why do American movie trailers for animated films almost universally STINK!? Why can't we make good trailers that tell us about the story the characters, the relationships a bit? Maybe a bit more like Japanese trailers, but without all the plot giveaways.)

The heads in OTH seemed a weeeeeee bit squishy in spots. A little distracting. Shading looked nice. Voice work seemed pretty blah. Not much energy in those voices. Bruce Willis? Unmemorable. Gary Shandling? His voice bores me in human form. Shatner as a 'possum should be fun, though. Bill's usually good for a chuckle here and there. Character design lost something along the way from the original comic strip. Here's a comparison...


Would have been nice to see them keep RJ's (racoon) big nose and frumpy proportions. The fur feels a bit too clean as well. Of course I know that you have to do things with original inspirational designs to make them hold up for animation, but it seems that aside from a few exceptions most CG interpretations of character designs end up feeling a bit blah. Like all the interesting edges have been sanded down to a smooth, dull form. Clean, pretty. This is an annoyance I have with CG lately. A bit oversmooth, a bit too clean. We need to find ways to tussle up the designs a bit, and I don't mean just with texture maps. I guess that's why a film like Wallace & Grommit will always seem so charming. You can feel the artist's touch in every frame. And yeah, there's artistry in this Cg, lots of it. But it feels a bit cold, distant. I think maybe we're stuck in a bit of a rut in CG. I thought Madagascar did a great job of adapting some cool designs and maintaining their shape and form integrity into the CG medium. Would be neat to see us CG filmmakers get a bit more adventuresome with this stuff. And I include myself in this. No knock on the great talents over at DW working on this. It's good stuff, but it's not quite grabbing me by the shirt collar and getting my attention as much as I wanted it to. We'll see how it goes when the movie comes out. I'll be there to watch. :)

Autodesk buys Alias

The word is out and it looks like the landscape of the digital animation world is about to shift dramatically, at least from a tools perspective. I wonder if this one will get past the anti-trust watchdogs? Both Max and Maya have gotten along a bit in years and they're both in serious need of a complete re-design from the inside out. They each have strong points, but they also each have glaring weaknesses that drive their user bases absolutely ape. Wouldn't it be just amusing to see Autodesk combine the worst of both programs to create a witches brew of a CG program? Like only having Character Studio, Maya's poly tools, the default Maya renderer all running in Max's slow as poo OpenGL interface? And they mix MEL script and Maxscript syntax to create the new language MEXscript? I can hear the screams of tens of thousands of Cg artists and technicians now. Heh. There's enough slop in both programs as is to create the world's worst CG software. I think it'd be fun to see them do it just for giggles. Of course my upgrade dollars would appreciate it if they took the best of both and made a killer app, but something tells me that's far too much to wish for.

On a side note, this has to be the best news the folks over at XSi have heard in years.

I for one don't like the idea of this merger. Less competition NEVER benefits the customer. And as a digital animator/filmmaker, I am that customer.

W&G

Soon!
I've been hearing reports that the Wallace and Grommit film is top shelf stuff. I can't wait to see it. My little guy turns 4 this weekend and when i asked him what he wanted for his birthday he said "I want to go see Wallace and Grommit!"
*sniff*
I'm so proud of him. :o)
I'll be sure to chime in with my thoughts after seeing it.