AnimSchool Instructor and DreamWorks Animator, JP Sans, demonstrates the role of balance in motion for making a character walk.
Category: 3D animation school Page 6 of 7
We’re here today with modeler Marty Havran. Thank you Marty, for taking time to answer a few questions.
Wow- you’ve had a really long, healthy career, spanning over 17 years of modeling experience! What was your fondest memory on the job?
I remember sitting in a large theater in west LA watching the crew screening of the movie Contact. It was my first film that I worked on in a production at Sony Imageworks. For more than six months I sat in daily reviews watching the effects for the film for different shots, not understanding how it would all come together. As I watched the film, all the pieces came together, and it was exhilarating to see the final product. Then the credits rolled, and for the first time I saw my name appear in the credits. It was at this proud moment that I knew I was an industry professional.
You’ve worked on some of my favorite films: Starship Troopers, Eraser, Space Jam, and Kung Fu Panda. What was your favorite production you worked on?
That’s hard to say. Each project had its highlights and challenges. What I have enjoyed the most through the years are the friends I have made along the way. I do have a few characters that I am fond of, those being Shi Fu in Kung Fu Panda, Micheal Jordan for Space Jam, and the Hollow Man.
Working on so many big named films, was there a production you wish you were apart of?
The Lord of the rings trilogy, the original Star Wars (even though I would have been 8 years old), the Iron Giant, the Incredibles and the first Toy Story.
How do you stay motivated?
The honest answer is my motivation has been fueled by different reasons during my career. At first, I was motivated just to have a job and get some experience regardless of what I worked on. If I was able to work on something good, that was a bonus. There were times where I was excited just to have a job and to be getting a paycheck. Once I got established in the industry, my motivation switched to earning more in my career, and I was able to be a little picky creatively about the projects I worked on. At times I am motivated by crazy deadlines and seemingly insurmountable projects. I continue to be motivated by trying new things and learning from that experience. Working freelance, I am both happy to be working, and with my experience, I often get some really great opportunities. One of the reasons I teach is that it’s motivating to work with people who are new in the industry, and to see their excitement as they learn and progress.
AnimSchool class session, where Marty discusses the importance of anatomy and form, when modeling for film.
Which artists influence or inspire you?
I come from an illustration background, and while I make my living working on the computer, I am inspired a lot by those masters of traditional mediums. Some of the painters that inspire me are John Singer Sargent, Rembrandt, Anders Zorn, Tom Tompson, Ilya Repin, JC Leyendecker, Norman Rockwell, NC and Andrew Wyeth, Odd Nerdrum, Mucha, Lucian Freud and many more. I learn a lot from sculptors like Bernini, Michelangelo, Rodin, Degas and Bertel Thorvaldsen. I love browsing artist’s websites and art books to see what other people are doing, and what they are passionate about.
Can you tell us a little about your workflow?
I guess this would be the hook for my class. When I am given a character to model it’s generally from a concept artist. Ideally I try to get into the artists head, and find out what they were thinking when they created the character. I want to understand what their idea or concept is behind it. Once I know this, then I can better understand and model their pose. In the concept work I want to understand why they are wearing the clothes they are, have their hair styled a certain way, are holding a prop a certain way, and have the expression they have. This isn’t always possible, but generally that’s where I try to start, and refer back to while I’m modeling. Often I work with the artists to figure out their style, the 2D cheats they’ve done, and figure out how these are going to translate into 3D forms. Sometimes this is really challenging, depending on how graphic the design is. I treat the digital model like I would a sculpture that I work in clay, working from large blocky masses to get the proportions, pose, and anatomy correct. If these aren’t correct no matter how cool the details are, the model is going to feel off. Once I have this nailed down, I start working on the head. The expression is the window into the characters personality and story. Once I get this, then I work into the body and then get the rest of the details worked out.
What are some of the most valuable lessons that you’ve learned while modeling over the years? Did you ever have any moments like: “wow, I suddenly realize A, B and C make sense”?
I don’t know if working in this industry ever really makes sense. It can be a hard life bouncing from project to project. That being said, here are some survival tips: Be easy to work with and take direction and criticism well. You need to be thick skinned, because it’s a very subjective and collaborative medium. Always be looking for your next job, even if you have a ‘stable’ job. This doesn’t mean be shmoozy, but networking with people at other companies, going to trade shows, and staying abreast is key to finding a job and working on your next project. Keep up to date on new software, techniques, and production workflow. Know when to let go of your work. Have hobbies outside of work that take your mind off your job. You can work long hard hours, but you need something to divert your attention, to keep your focus fresh. Take time off when you can, and enjoy the moment. I try not to define myself by my work, but by my character and who I am. Inevitably your work will speak for itself, and people will want to work with you because of the person you have become.
What’s your advice for someone who feels inadequate when it comes to being able to model? How did you go about training up your perception?
You can’t compare yourselves to those who have been modeling a lot longer than you, because you can’t replace experience. What you can do is observe them, learn from them, and ask them to critique your work. Also, ask questions when you don’t understand, challenge yourself, and try new things. Most of all work your butt off. You learn and grow by getting out of your comfort zone, and putting yourself out there.
Where do you see the direction of CG currently heading, and what would you like to see evolve in CG?
I have seen the industry evolve where it was tough to do one character in CG, and now we worry about hundreds and thousands of characters. To me CG should function as an aid in telling good stories. This should be regardless of the effects being characters that need to be CG or creating the digital environments of worlds that don’t exist. Now that we are able to do virtually anything, it’s up to the writers to join their imaginations with the possibilities. The one thing I haven’t seen is a virtual human that I buy as the real thing. Not that I want that, and not that it can be done, but I think people will continue to try because its eluded us thus far. The last thing I will say is that when I browse sites with galleries of CG artwork, I hope to see that concept, idea and story telling, make their way into people’s digital artwork. This stems back to my illustration training in composition and story telling. There are a lot of talented people out there, but I have very little fascination with their work because they are copying an existing character or person or make something as real as possible. While this is a good training exercise its like drawing from plaster casts. I would hope that their artwork would evolve to tell us a story or something about themselves that only they can say based on their experiences and personality.
Brien Hindman, an AnimSchool Instructor for Introduction to 3D Characters, explains how he begins to set up a 3D model and the importance of checking your work to minimize future problems.
Today’s interview is with animator Will Sharkey, the winner of the 11 Second Club September 2011 entry.
First of all, congratulations and welcome!
Hello, thanks for having me. I’m delighted to get the opportunity to chat with you guys.
So firstly how long have you been animating and how did you get into it?
I honestly don’t know how I got into animation specifically; it just kind of happened. I actually studied “Model-making and Effects for Film” for 3 years at college in Ireland, which was not specifically focused on animation or animation principles. At end of the second year, I realised that there were few physical model-making opportunities in Ireland Itself. The course had the flexibility to achieve projects in a digital medium, so that’s when I first got working with 3D software.
After college, I got a job as a 3D generalist in Piranha Bar, a post-production company in Ireland. Working with XSI on a few projects, I slowly started learning animation fundamentals. I worked on a particular job involving two characters interacting for thirty seconds, all shot under one camera move. The job turned out fine but, on reflection afterwards, I realised that I was lacking a lot of knowledge about character animation. So I bought a few books and started doing animation exercises, with a goal of achieving a standard of animation that would be fitting for the 11 Second Club and other competitions.
Have you done any work professionally? Anything the public might have seen?
I’ve worked on a good few projects and a short film with Piranha Bar. We recently finished a great project where I got to animate two squirrels. It was a four week deadline, which is madness when asked to model, rig and light two squirrels, animate them and render! My colleague Simon Burke directed and addressed all 3D aspects, while I took care of the rigging and animation. (Bank of Ireland Squirrels Ad done in four weeks). I also took part in a short film directed by Gavin Kelly titled ‘Avatar Days‘. It was created for the Darklight Festival’s ‘4 Day Movie’ project. With only four days to shoot, edit, animate and composite, we used motion capture for most shots, bar one shot at 1m30sec, which I keyframed.
Another project under time constraint was more of a technical challenge involving a lot of hairy bees and a gigantic stadium/sunflower. Others I’ve enjoyed working on were a spot for an Irish Newspaper, Robotic Sky Pirates and some character animation for a health-care advert.
I believe you’re the first animator to use AnimSchool’s Malcolm rig in the 11 Second Club competition. You’ve got to be happy with that, right? Overall how did it go, animating with it?
When I approached character animation in Softimage, I really wanted a reliable rig to work with and considering I was aiming to enter animation competitions; it had to have some facial controls. After searching around the internet and bombarding forums with questions, I got the opportunity to beta test an early build of the Malcolm rig. The beta rig was a really solid build and, having used the vast majority of free rigs available for Softimage users, I was delighted to hear that Malcolm was being released as I have grown really comfortable with the rig and character.
You seem like you had quite a bit of control over the rig. When you first opened up the rig, were you overwhelmed by the amount of controls this character had? And how did you handle it?
On first opening up the rig, I realised that a whole lot of work went into it; it was easily the most complicated rig I had opened on my computer. I sieved through the facial shapes just looking at the sheer amount of detail and range that was achievable. It didn’t take long to find out where everything was. The keying groups in the synoptic really help: selecting the ‘basic’ key-group, you could quickly identify the fundamental controls to move your character.
Approaching any rig though, it takes a few hours the get comfortable with it. Once you mess around with the rig synoptic, find where everything is pointing to and check main controllers for animated sliders (eg IK/FK switching), you can begin to set random poses to see how everything moves.
The thing about the Malcolm rig is there are also lots of additional controllers for specific situations (e.g. elbow pins, hyper extend), things that aren’t essential, but really help when animating. It took a few poses to work through the controllers but Malcolm Rig is very light weight, so all that extra control isn’t slowing the rig down. All these details really speed up animation and makes things a lot more fun.
So let’s talk about your winning entry. From concept right through to process. How did you come up with this idea originally?
I listened to the audio a good few times and sourced it, trying to figure out under what circumstances were the lines spoken. My first idea was a wartime scenario, a sniper in a bell-tower reaching for a bullet, finding he’s out of ammunition and realizing that his role in war was worthless. Thinking about the scene though, I felt that story probably needed more than 11 seconds to tell it; plus, I wanted to work mainly on facial animation and let a performer’s face tell the story. So I came up the idea of a priest struggling to come to terms to what he has devoted his life to. This scene gave the same sense of futility as the wartime idea, but I could keep the character in close-up for most of the shots.
I thought a confession booth would be the perfect place as I liked the idea of a priest reversing roles and actually being the one confessing. So I set about loosely posing the character in a confession booth, not worrying about the audio clip for now; I just wanted to get some key poses and tell the story. Once I had ten or so key poses, I slipped those poses along the timeline in sync to the audio. Next, I mapped out the camera move. I looked up reference of films with confession booth in them – I wanted to see what angles other directors had come up with. With the camera locked, I just kept refining, throwing out poses, adding some in until I had a finished piece. Lastly I lit the scene, broke my scene file into shots and rendered.
There were a lot great moments and solid acting. Did you end up shooting and studying video reference?
Animation reference is a must. After listening to the audio, I positioned my phone mimicking a camera angle I had in mind and started filming myself acting out the scene. Once you act out the line a few times, you realise what you want to put into your animation, little gestures pop up that you wouldn’t normally think of. At the end of the animation, the Priest grabs his collar–that was something that just happened in my video reference.
The other thing I added was a prop, in terms of a cross. Props are great as they act as another little character and allow a character to be a little more expressive through the prop. In the video reference, I toyed with a lighter from hand to hand… as I had no crosses lying around! Animating anything passing from hand to hand is difficult to figure out but with your video reference, you can see what happens exactly when.
The other thing I added was a prop, in terms of a cross. Props are great as they act as another little character and allow a character to be a little more expressive through the prop. In the video reference, I toyed with a lighter from hand to hand… as I had no crosses lying around! Animating anything passing from hand to hand is difficult to figure out but with your video reference, you can see what happens exactly when.
Lastly, what are you currently working on? And what can we expect from you Will?
At the moment I’m busy in work on a few projects, the most recent of which is an illustrated world of cardboard cutouts, lit and animated in 3D. Outside work, I’m looking forward to entering Malcolm into another 11 Second Club competition as well as scanning the horizon for character animation jobs in sunny climates!
Awesome Will. Thanks for doing this interview and congratulations on your entry once again. We hope to see more of your animation in future!
Cheers mate.
Will’s reels:
http://vimeo.com/willsharkey
In the Los Angeles area? Come talk to us in person at CTN Expo, at the Burbank Marriot Hotel, 2500 Hollywood Way, Burbank California, November 18-20th.
Come see what we’re all about. Maybe you’d like to show us your reel and get feedback on it.
Creative Talent Network (CTN) is a vibrant new exhibition in its 3rd year, bursting with animation and character design pros, showing their talents. Come join us in booth T-12 and T-13.
We’ll be showing cool student works and our amazing instructor animation and characters.
AnimSchool presents: Mark Harris, an animator working at Pixar, reviews an animation by Seth Kendall!
Animator Garrett Shikuma (AnimSchool instructor) sits down with AnimSchool’s Andrew Tran for an interview!
For those unfamiliar with Garrett’s shots, there’s just a massive stamp of appeal that’s evident on your showreel. For junior animators stuck with unappealing character designs at work: how do you make something appealing?
Well, thanks for the compliment. I’m always striving to make my work as appealing as possible.
The best way I’ve found to find appeal in your characters and animation is as simple as finding something you like visually, study it and ask yourself lots of questions: Why do I think this looks good? What makes it attractive/nice to look at? I not only ask myself these questions for animation, but for other things as well. Character designs, paintings, drawings, a piece of well-made furniture, the feather pattern of a bird. You can find appeal in anything.
I’ve had several 2D design courses in college where we learned art principles such as straights vs curves, line of action, and variation of size. All of these principles can be found in the Walt Stanchfield’s books, which are a constant by my animation desk. I’m always acknowledging things that I like visually and then asking myself WHY I like it. Once I have a list of what makes something appealing, I’ll look at my own work and read off the list I had just created.
For example, a clip I like has a nice variety of timing. Does my animation have a variety of timing? The clip has the character’s eyes easily visible with the lids making a rounded shape. Does my animation have the character’s eyes like this?
There are also a number of “Art of..” books at my desk with some of my favorite designers/animators, Glen Keane, Nico Marlet, Shane Prigmore, Milt Kahl, David Colman, Peter De Seve, Justin Ridge, etc. A healthy library of inspiration is always great to have by your side when you work. Every show is going to have their own style and sense of what is appealing for those particular characters, so it’s best to work with your supervisors to find out what works for them and find ways to be your most creative within those guidelines.
We recently spoke to Tony Bonilla he took us through his transition of going from animating on features to gaming, for you it was the opposite going from a game studio to feature films can you tell us a little about your experiences and your transitional phase?
When I started at EA Los Angeles I was fresh out of college and got to work on the cinematics for Goldeneye: Rogue Agent. It was a great learning experience. Tony was right when he said that game animation requires getting as much done in the least amount of time. The sheer amount of animation needed for a game is vast.
A big aspect to being a video game animator is learning to think about the overall “gameplay” experience and how your animations will fit into it. Lots of game animations are a series of small movements, a punch, a kick, a jump, etc. Those “actions” are then placed into the game engine and it’s up to us to refine/retime the movements to fit what the gameplay calls for.
For example, I worked on several Medal of Honor games and the pace of that first-person-shooter is extremely frantic (like most fps’ are). When I first started on that game, most of the animation I did looked correct when played on its own in Maya, but once they’re placed in the engine and played in-game it felt sluggish compared to the overall pace of the gameplay. The characters were moving way too slow for what the game needed to feel like. I had to really learn our game engine (at the time it was the Unreal engine) in order to readjust my timing. This was a big turning point for me. In games you have to not only know your body mechanics well for animation, but you need to have the technical understanding of how your animation is going to work for the game engine in order to achieve the emotion/game-play that you want for the player.
Transitioning to film animation from video games was not as difficult as I thought it would be. I went from a team of six animators at EA to a team of nearly fifty at Blue Sky. At most game studios you need to be a jack-of-all-trades, doing a little bit of rigging, coding as well as animation since the teams are usually smaller. At Blue Sky I could concentrate solely on animation. Once I finished animating a shot and it’s approved, I send it down the pipeline and usually never have to touch it again. Since that’s my only responsibility, I’m given the time to really flesh out a performance.
I had to learn how to fully “polish” a shot. You had to be extra particular on the way the little details felt, such as eye-blinks and hand gestures and we were given the extra time to work on those for our animation. In video games your animation needed to look good from every angle since the player has control over where they are in 3D space when viewing your work. In feature film you only have the one camera to worry about, which means you can really focus on the graphic quality of a character’s shape and silhouette quite easily. Plus you can “cheat” things to camera, over-manipulating the character’s rig to get it to look good for the camera even though it will be completely broken from any other angle, a really nice luxury to have if I needed to do it. I wasn’t responsible for a large number of animations like I was in video games, but instead got to focus on the details and performance aspects of the character while still maintaining the same principles of creating believable weight and physicality.
You’ve animated a couple of Scrat shots, where the audience are familiar with this super flexible, cartoony, insanely-whacky character, which doesn’t seem like a normal task for any animator to work on. How did you prepare yourself for a shot like this, and what exactly was your personal learning process for this?
The best thing I did to learn how to animate Scrat is watching tons and tons of Scrat animation. I would not only watch all the Scrat shots I could, but frame-by-frame through them and write down notes. I’m a big note-taker, I guess; I’ve always been since high school, college, etc.
Then I asked these questions: How does he get from this pose to that pose? What shape does his body make on that breakdown? My animation supervisor, Nick Bruno, is a huge advocate of studying before beginning a shot and it will definitely make a difference in your work. Cartoony animation didn’t come naturally for me; I really had to watch and learn from a lot of the animations of my co-workers. How can Scrat get all the way across the screen in three frames and yet still seem believable?! Cartoony animation is all about simplicity. Thinking in terms of the simple shapes the character takes in their posing and how to transition between those poses in the most clear yet entertaining way. Think in terms of what needs to move, versus what needs to be still at any given moment. It’s amazing how much you can learn by going frame-by-frame through a shot.
The recent trailer of Ice Age 4 showed a few scenes where the limitations of the rig were broken, and certain body parts were duplicated just to help sell the poses in the scene. I see a lot of junior animators trying to incorporate your cartoony Tex Avery style into their scene/showreel, so they can stand out from their counterparts. What would be your advice to them?
Super cartoony is stuff is fun and cool in its own right, but it has to be based on a firm understanding of real-world physics. If I see someone’s reel that has a Tex Avery-like test, that’s great. More than likely though it’s going to be a copy of a gag/pose/take they’ve seen, which also means loads of professionals have seen it too. Having ONE test like that on your reel is fine, but if your ENTIRE reel is like that, then I start to think this animator either really loves cartoony stuff OR more likely they’re hiding the fact that they don’t understand real-world physics. Don’t be a one trick pony. Study from real life as well as the cartoony stuff and show people you can do both; that’s much more impressive. You can’t “cartoon” reality if you don’t know/understand what reality looks like.
How important is video reference? And how would a self-conscious person in front of a camera become a Jeff Gabor?
The need for video reference is different for every animator. Some animators never use video reference and only draw thumbnails for their shots.
For me, I’m a big proponent of video reference. I like to “see” my shot before I even go into Maya. What I mean by that is I like having a firm plan ahead of time, being able to view the acting choices and poses as much ahead of time as possible. This lets me see the future difficulties, or lack thereof, and can anticipate where I’m going to need to spend most of my time.
For example, I animated a shot in Rio of Linda during the Carnival sequence with her being held in the air by parade dancers, jumping down and dancing her way across a float. I did video reference of myself jumping down off of a table and starting to dance. What I didn’t anticipate is the awkward way in which my body needed to readjust balancing from such a jump in order to start doing some kind of dance move, not to mention the awkward twisting of my hips and shoulders. That was all seen in my reference.
From that point on I could plan accordingly, knowing I needed to be careful about my spline curves around that area and make sure I didn’t get any gimbal lock because of the extra twisting that would happen. Also knowing physically what my body had to do in order to achieve that movement, regaining balance in an awkward way, it made the overall performance more believable. That wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t get up and physically act it out. In order to help convey something believable for the viewer, you need to “feel it” yourself as best you can.
Years ago, I was self-conscious about doing things in front of the camera for reference, but the more I did it, the more comfortable I got. Especially seeing my fellow animators doing the same; it’s just something that takes a little getting used to. Jeff is just an awesome natural actor, hands down, and he always makes time to help out a co-worker who needs to do reference for their shot.
We’re a big family here at Blue Sky with no egos; we share everything. I was having trouble achieving the right dance moves for that shot of Linda, so I asked fellow animator Rachel Hanson to help me out and record some dance moves for me. I needed Linda’s moves to be not only feminine, but slightly unique and silly. Rachel was an excellent help and gave a performance I wouldn’t have been able to do myself. If you’re not a “video-reference” person you should ask a friend, co-worker, even a family member to do some for you. There are going to be little performance bits/gestures the camera will pick up that you never could have come up with in your head sitting at your desk.
The AnimSchool Class 2 Animation students were recently given our last scene which seemed quite challenging and nail- biting. I think a lot of us now agree that the live demonstration you held broke down the assignment into manageable tasks. Can you tell us a little about your workflow and your approaches?
Sure thing! Whenever I’m given a shot to do, I start off just brainstorming ideas. I’ll try and find something that exists on dvd or the internet for inspiration and a point of reference. If it’s a cartoony shot, I’ll watch some cartoony animation; if it’s a dramatic dialogue I’ll find a movie with a similar tone and character that I’m animating and study that. I like to to know what already exists so that I am not copying a performance someone else may have already seen.
Sometimes I’ll doodle some thumbnails and make lots of notes to myself. How should the audience feel at this point? Where do I want them to be looking?
From there I’ll shoot video reference. I’ll shoot something for five minutes, watch those takes, if I find something I like I’ll add onto that or try something completely different, then shoot for another five minutes.
Once I am happy with the reference, I’ll open up Maya and start setting up my scene. I’m a big advocate of breaking things down and preparing my scene into easily manageable steps. For example, I like to lock off certain channels in my Channel Box that I know I won’t be keyframing. For example, if its a simple dialogue shot, I’ll lock off all the Scale attributes of my controls knowing I’m not going to be Scaling anything in this scene. There are so many controls on your characters sometimes that I try to eliminate needless keyframes from the beginning so that I don’t have more to clean up once I go from blocking to spline.
When my blocking is complete I would assign each body part (arms, legs, torso, head, etc) to a layer so that I can turn on/off the visibility of that part of the body. Before, when I was first learning how to animate, I would just hit “spline” on my animation curves, see this weightless/even-timed mess of an animation, get frustrated and not know where to start.
Now what I do is concentrate on one body part at a time to spline in small chunks of time of usually 20-30 frames. So… I would set my frame range from 101 to 131, hit the spline button for that section and then only show the visibility of the Hips (all movement usually starts with the hips) and concentrate on making the hips look good. I’d be on the lookout for any unusual pops or bad tracking arcs and fix those. Then I would add in the legs, working on the hips+legs, then add the torso, then head, then arms and fingers. I’ll work from the center of the body outward. Once that looks good for he whole body, I’ll move onto the next 30 frames. This way I am concentrating on ONE thing at a time in ONE section of my scene and not getting overwhelmed by too much movement at once.
Secondly would your workflow constantly change for a scene? Would you always be trying to customize your workflow and willing to learn things from a different perspective?
Sure, things can change depending on the shot I’m given. If I have a Scrat shot, I usually don’t do video reference since there’s no way for me to move as fast as Scrat nor get as expressive of a pose, so I tend to rely on thumbnails more.
Or if I have an energetic chasing sequence in which one or more characters are running through the scene with a moving camera: those I tend to have in splined animation curves from the beginning. Working on a high energy scene with a moving camera, it’s much faster and clearer to having the characters moving in space with the camera from the beginning of the process.
Step-keyed animation doesn’t look good with a moving camera. Even though the beginning phase of the process may change depending on the shot, the one thing that doesn’t change is my plan on tackling things one step at a time. I would still hide certain body parts and concentrate on those one at a time as I’m splining and polishing. At the same time, I love hearing about other animators workflows. Even though another animator may have a completely different workflow and approach, there is always something you can learn from another animator and adapt for your own process to become better/faster.
What’s been your biggest, most ridiculously geekiest moment you’ve had at work, and are you able to share the names of your associates with us?
One of the geekiest moments we had at the studio was when they invited Saul Bass of Rankin/Bass animations to come out and give a lecture. Fellow animator Pete Paquette was the moderator. All of us in the studio have grown up with his “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman” animation specials. He got to share stories with us about how they got started in the business, made those animations, both stop-motion and hand drawn. Something I didn’t know was Saul Bass was also a co-creator/developer for the original Thundercats TV show. WHAT?! Now my nostalgic-geek-out level was at its max that day. He showed us a bunch of clips from other animation projects and development work that he’s currently working on. A wonderful experience meeting one of the creators of a childhood animation classic!
Finally, you have something on your monitor at Bluesky which keeps you motivated and I’d like you to share with us. What does it say?
Currently I have two post-it notes by my monitor: “SAVE” which is always a good thing to do for your Maya scene. You never know when the power could go out or something crashes and you could lose your work. The second one says, “What does it FEEL like?” I try to be as emotionally specific as I can. What do I want the audience to feel at this moment? Excitement? Sadness? Serene calm? How can the exact movement of this character reflect that? It keeps me on course for my shots. When you’re working on a shot, sometimes it can take days, weeks, even months to complete, but in the end for the audience you have to make it feel like that character is moving and thinking in real-time right before our eyes. Anything that can keep me focused as to how exactly that character is feeling at that particular moment in the story will help make the shot as clear and therefore as entertaining as possible.
Well great Garrett you’ve been fantastic this term so far, it’s been a pleasure!
Thank you!
Garrett’s IceAge3 Demo Reel:
http://www.garrettshikuma.com/Video/Garrett_Shikuma_IA3_Demo_Reel.mov
Garrett’s Rio Demo Reel:
http://vimeo.com/28590540
Garrett’s Web Page:
http://www.garrettshikuma.com/
Last night, we had a fantastic webcast meeting with Jeff Gabor, animator at Blue Sky Studios and animator on the popular AnimSchool “Animation Principles” video!
He animated that VERY expertly done shot of Sir Isaac Newton jumping up and getting ready to fight.
Jeff was the main Character Lead Animator for the film Rio’s Linda character, and has animated on many Blue Sky Studios films. Some of the most beloved shots in Horton Hears A Who, for example, were animated by Jeff!
Jeff talked about the process he uses when animating. He has become well known for his fine acting skills and exceptional use of video reference to take the animation acting to a higher level. Jeff has taken video reference to the next level, and popularized its use throughout the 3D animation field.
There were many in attendance (and some who regrettably received the wrong information about the start time!) as well as hundreds who registered to watch the recording of the event. Both AnimSchool students and onlookers can watch the event for the next 7 days, after which only AnimSchool students will be able to watch it.
To see the recording, register here: http://www.animschool.com/WebcastSignUp.aspx
Before there was such a thing as AnimSchool, I had a personal dream: I wanted to make very flexible, appealing, and expressive characters that people all over the world could use for free.
AnimSchool gave me the perfect excuse to fulfill that dream. I can make cool characters that many people can use, either to animate or to learn modeling and rigging–and that effort can help promote AnimSchool.
Malcolm is pretty nice. There are certainly better body rigs out there, but the face is where I put most of my love and attention. The Disney style from the 1960’s is my greatest inspiration. I strived to make the face capable of a wide range of expression – and do it with appeal.
I’m absolutely captivated by appealing characters–mostly from the classic 2D films, Warner shorts, then from character designers. I’m driven to bring characters like that to life in the medium of 3D Animation.
You can see some of the capabilities of a variant of Malcolm here:
I also put a lot of effort into keeping the rig very light, because I wanted it fast fast fast! It runs real-time on my i7 processor. So there are corners cut in lots of places, compared to a typical film rig. But if I did my job right, you won’t notice them, because the rig was carefully developed with the aesthetic result in mind. I know the kinds of poses an animator will want–because I’m an animator too.
Malcolm was made with the amazing capabilities of Softimage. The Softimage version of Malcolm was released today–and already it’s going like hotcakes (free things often do that!)
The updates to the Maya version will be completed in about a week; possibly longer. Then students and interested onlookers can check out the Maya version. (There are some restrictions on using Malcolm)
We will continue with fixes, wardrobe changes–and new characters. If you like what you see, wait ’til you see what’s coming from AnimSchool!
So enjoy this result of lots of work, and the fulfillment of a dream. And honor my dream by spreading the word about AnimSchool and our characters!
Dave Gallagher
Nice work on this stop-motion Chipotle advertisement (by Johnny Kelly about the dangers of mechanized farming). We at AnimSchool are enamored with hyper-expressive characters. But sometimes the story is the main attraction. The super-simple shapes offer clarity, the adorable set pieces pull you in, and the gorgeous lighting helps tell the story.
Notice how the farmer’s moustache (he grows halfway through) is the only facial feature that changes to show expression. It angles up or down.
This animation helps you realize just how much of a story can be told in the timing and basics of storytelling. Notice the how the farmer slows down and pauses, making his big decision to change, then charges off with determination to carry out his new plan.
The first time I watched it, I didn’t catch that the farmer and wife start as newlyweds and have gotten old at the end and their little pill-shaped baby is now a teenager.
What kid wouldn’t want to play with a little toy set like that!