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AnimSchool Interview: Tim Kallok

First off- big congrats Tim, on winning the March competition of the 11 Second Club! What was your immediate reaction, and what was running through your mind when you heard the news?

Thank you very much for the congratulations! On the day the results were released, I was totally in shock when I went to the 11 Second Club site and saw my animation on the front page. I had participated in the voting process and so I knew I was up against a lot of tough competition. There were many other great entries last month and I was really hoping just to finish in the top 11. Winning the competition and all the resulting positive feedback I have received has definitely been a big morale booster for me.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into animation?

Animation has long been a passion of mine. Like many others, growing up I was glued to the television watching Disney films, Looney Tunes and Saturday morning cartoons. I was introduced to theater and acting at a young age. My dad is an actor whom participates extensively in local community theater and independent film. He used to take me along to his rehearsals and performances on weekends. I loved watching my dad and the other actors transform into different people and assume personalities contrary to who they were in “real life.” I actually didn’t decide that I wanted to be an animator until my senior year of high school. I had some great teachers that got me interested in science and engineering, so I was considering studying to become an engineer. That soon changed when I started taking art classes and my art teacher nurtured my creative side and got me really passionate about creating art. When I started researching colleges and career choices, I found schools that were offering degrees in computer animation. Until then, I had never realized that you could make a career out of doing animation, but it turned out to be a perfect fit for me because it married all the things I was interested in: art, performance, and technology. From that point on, I have devoted myself to animation and constantly push myself to improve my craft. I have had quite a bit more animation education/training that most people have, but animation has not always come naturally to me, and I have had to work really hard to get to the level I’m at now. I’m still pushing my self to improve, but that’s the beauty of animation; you can never stop learning and you can always continue to grow as an animator. My ultimate goal is to work as an animator on a feature film. I haven’t reached that goal yet, but I am determined not to give up. Hopefully, one day, that dream will come true.

My 11 Second Club Entry – March ’12 from Tim Kallok on Vimeo.

What influenced your decision to use AnimSchool’s Malcolm rig for your entry, and did the rig deliver to your expectations?

First of all, I would like to thank AnimSchool for making such an awesome rig available for public use. I really love Malcolm’s design and his overall flexibility. He can be pushed and pulled further than any other rig that I have used. His facial setup is awesome; it’s really easy to get appealing shapes and expressions. Because of the nature of the competition’s dialogue, I didn’t get to utilize the rig to its full potential, but for my shot, the IK elbow pinning and the IK/FK switching came in very handy.

Were there any challenges or difficulties you faced when using the Malcolm rig, and if so, how did you overcome them?

Upon first opening the rig, it can be a bit daunting, because there are so many controls! Once I learned that you could hide controls in the picker by using the basic, most, and all buttons, that made it much easier for me to approach the rig. That feature also helped streamline my workflow by letting me concentrate only on the controls that I need at the time. So, in blocking, I only used the basic controls. Once I moved onto the anim pass and polish, I could turn on the other controls to really refine the poses.

The technical hurdle I faced with Malcolm was in the modification process, trying to figure out the best way to add on his collared shirt and suspenders and have them be tucked in his pants. In order to do that, the first thing I did was use the shirt controls near his waist to “tuck” his shirt in to his pants. I also used the “Narrow Pants Tp” attribute on the “ctlHips1” control to widen the waist of his pants. I then modeled his shirt and suspenders as separate polygon objects and used a wrap deformer to have them follow the rig.

Other than that, the only other challenges I faced were really just standard animation issues like making sure his hands and fingers were not going through the table or cleanly switching his arms from IK to FK. Up until Sam gets up, both arms are IK. Once he stands up they switch over to FK. The IK/FK switcher in the picker, made that process much easier.

You mentioned in the brief description, you couldn’t achieve the level of polish you were hoping for. What were some of the extra things you had to leave out to meet the deadline?

I know I’m not alone in saying that it’s really hard to stop working on an animation and know when to say it’s “finished.” If I would have had more time to work on it before the deadline, I would have spent some more time polishing the face, making sure the corners of the mouth had clean arcs, adding in some more eye movement, and refining the brows. I actually made a big change the day before the deadline. Originally, I had Sam put both arms on the chair as he gets up, then grab the gun as he exits. I showed my progress to one of my friends and he suggested that I have Sam go for the gun as he stood up. I made the change and it really helped, because it made him feel more determined and focused on the task at hand. Because that change came up so late, I didn’t have the time to get the spacing in the hand right or the fingers working well as he grabs the gun.

You were able to gets some really appealing mouth shapes, did you experiment with that before going into lip sync?

I didn’t really experiment with any mouth shapes prior to animating the lip sync. During the planning phase, I broke down the dialogue in to phonemes, so I knew, more or less, what shapes I needed to hit. I have a mirror on my desk, which I use quite extensively while animating. For the first pass of lip sync, I start with the opening and closing of the jaw. Once I have that in, I move on to the corners of the mouth and how they move in and out. From there, I concentrate on the secondary mouth controls, to fine tune the shapes, add in pucker and compression, and break up the symmetry as much as possible.

In the beginning of your animation you pulled off your character, Sam, having limited movement. What did you do to keep the pose alive during this time, and what were some of the extra things you did to sell your idea?

The beginning section was definitely a big challenge. This was my first attempt at doing subtle animation and I found that there’s a real fine line between the character feeling dead and moving too much. One of the things that I work out during planning, is figuring out the least number of poses I need in order to tell the story. While Sam is talking, I felt that I only needed one pose and that I could act within the pose to hit the accents in the dialogue. Even though the accents are not too big, I incorporated the whole upper body into each one. I offset a lot of the movements so the parts of the action settled at different times. Moving holds were also very important throughout in order to keep him alive. I spent quite a bit of time tweaking splines in the graph editor, trying to find just the right amount of movement needed.

I could be really off base on this, but the present Sam, holding the photograph, looks a little bit more aged and withered then the character we see in the photograph. Apart from the body, did you modify the facial features to help sell that idea?

That’s a good catch. I did a few subtle things with the face to make him feel a bit more unkempt and distressed. One was to keep the mid brows pushed together so you could the crease/wrinkle between them. I also increased the “Naso Crease” slightly, so the wrinkle between the nose and corner of the mouth was a bit more prominent. The last thing I did was add a custom texture map to his face so he has a 5 o’clock shadow.

Lastly, what’s going to be next for you? What’s in the pipeline?

At the moment, I’m finishing up my reel. I have some older unfinished projects that I have been revisiting and trying to get up to par with my newer work. I also have a few ideas for a new personal piece that is in the works.

To see more of Tim’s work visit his website: http://timkallok.com/

Interview by: Andrew Tran

To download the Malcolm Rig, just visit our website: www.Animschool.com

AnimSchool Webcast: Jeff Gabor, Part 5

In part 5 of AnimSchool’s webcast with Jeff Gabor, Jeff goes over what he would fix in his shot from AnimSchool’s “Animation Principles” Lecture, if he had more time. Jeff also answers a few questions including- what type of shots keep him up at night.

In part 6, Jeff gives some final advice for students studying to get into the animation industry.

AnimSchool Classtime: Modeling with the help of Lattices

In AnimSchools’ Intermediate Modeling class, students choose a character to model into a pose, focusing on appeal. In this clip, Instructor Marty Havran, shows a convenient way to use Lattices while modeling, as he critiques Francisco Tejo’s model.

AnimSchool Classtime: Artistic Style

Any student enrolled at AnimSchool is welcome to join Mike Mattesi for a lecture in drawing, followed by a critique for anyone who wants to submit a drawing or animation. In his class earlier this week, Mike shared some advice he got from his mentor, Klaus Janson, about personal artistic style.

AnimSchool Classtime: Acting Essentials

In AnimSchool’s Character Performance class, Instructor Garrett Shikuma, lists 10 Acting Essentials to think of, when planning your animation test.

Garrett continued his lesson by showing different film clips, illustrating points made in his lecture.

AnimSchool Classtime: Balance and Weight

AnimSchool Instructor and Blue Sky Animator, Thom Roberts, begins to discuss balance and weight for his Introduction to 3D Animation students for their last assignment: turning 90 or 180 degrees.

AnimSchool Interview: Animator Daniel Zettl

Daniel Zettl Reel 2012 from Daniel Zettl on Vimeo.

We would like to welcome Weta Animator, Daniel Zettl. Thank you Daniel for taking part in this interview. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and when you decided you wanted to be an animator? Did you have any traditional 2D animation background when you started?

I’ve drawn and painted since I was little. When I was around 16, I started to do graphic design and graffiti professionally. At the age of 20, when I finished my secondary school, I had an interesting portfolio to apply for an internship at a 2D animation studio in Munich. For me it was the closest to illustrating comic books I could imagine back then. Waiting for a spot to study communication design, I worked my way up within 6 month from a storyboard assistant, to a prop-location and character designer for an animated TV series called Lilly the Witch. My hand drawn animation skills were very basic; I hadn’t worked in a production as 2D animator yet. I must say 2D animation was somehow inaccessible and very abstract for me to get interested at first. But, once I understood that drawing for animation is the complete opposite of illustration, and I learned about acting and how to bring a character to life over a series of drawings, animation had my heart and soul!

After various design pitches I had done for the studio, I taught myself 3D as a generalist and I had the fortune to get boosted by several animation veterans there. By then, I wanted to learn everything about 3D and get my hands on modeling, rigging and animation. I was offered my first animation position for the German feature film Hui Buh when I was 21 years old. I was part of the character design for the two CG characters, and I even designed and modeled the second character for the movie, a cartoony ghost designed like a pillow. This was also the first time I learned about FACS based facial blendshape systems and implemented this system for the cartoon character. I had the great luck to get under the wings of Tahsin Özgür, a 50-year-old animation director who brought tremendous knowledge from years of experience at Disney. His sense for appeal and cartoon acting resonated immensely with me.

I think your shots from CA Scanline, which can be seen on your latest showreel, are amazing with solid acting, great poses and timing. What were some references or materials you drew upon that influenced you on this shot?  What were some of the questions/thoughts going through your head while working on this shot?

Lissi, this female character is well known from comedy sketches in German TV. The director of this movie is one of the biggest German comedians. He established the character of this princess over many episodes in his TV show, so I kind of knew already a bit of her story. I’m a huge fan of appeal, and that was my main priority for her. I wanted to portray her as the cutest and most girly character I could imagine. But interestingly enough my only reference was the director acting her out for some shots. I absorbed his gestures and timings, his personality and charm. Because in the TV sketches he plays the princess himself, and everybody knows that it’s him in the dress.

In your past blog posts you really hammer in timing, while staying really rough in your first pass, have you always had this mentality as an animator or did you work differently when you were starting out?

I definitely started out less flexible. In the beginning I was heavily influenced by my 2D upbringing. I animated some of my shots in 2D before I stepped to the computer. I would thumbnail and film myself or I dug through film reference so much that when I did my first blocking in 3D, I knew each pose and timing already and I went mostly with my first idea. I drew lots of reference from Disney and Dreamworks movies back then. But, this was for productions that had extremely short schedules and didn’t leave room for lots of iterations. I still do a ton of reference shoots and drawings today and would pitch these, but now it’s more important to react quickly to new ideas about a performance until we found the perfect one. Good timing is the baseline for any concept though, so this still accompanies me.

You spoke very highly of Shamus Culhane’s book “From Script to Screen”, what were some of the things you extracted from his book and how did it affect your creative process?

By no means am I a Shamus Culhane expert, I’m just an insanely big fan of his work. I my eyes Culhane found, through several specific exercises, a way to tap into your unconscious. One of these exercises teaches how to switch your creative or logical brain half on and off at will and go wild with ideas, or be as analytic as possible. He provides 3 characters of different designs, brothers I think. You pic one emotion or a specific action, say joy, or anger or shopping- whatever. And once a day you sit down for one hour with a timer and do 1 drawing per minute. That is at least 60 drawings per hour, soon you’ll be doing heaps more and in a quality you thought you could only do with a model. After a few weeks or a month, you’re a completely different craftsman. It’s indescribable. You literally can span pages full of poses of one specific topic within a set amount of time in a crazy quality. Along these lines I want to recommend Kimon Nicolaides “The Natural Way To Draw” and Constantin Stanislavki’s books about method acting. The first one teaches you to put your thinking aside and draw only what you see by not looking at your paper while drawing. And Stanislavski teaches how to immerse yourself fully into a character by creating the emotions inside of you and basing them on real experience memory.

In your personal blog, you encourage animators to be comfortable with deleting their work if it’s not working out. Can you share with us any personal experiences where you put in a lot of effort on a shot, then scratched it, and had a better outcome?

This can happen on every second shot I work on. I pitch a good solid idea, interesting and nice texture but once I hit the polishing phase or once the prior/next shot falls into place and I notice there’s one beat to much or the distance the character covers is too long and the shot is too long or too short and the cut doesn’t flow as good, I need to make big changes or delete maybe already polished beats. The cut and flow of the story is really what dictates a change of the performance. In general, when I work really intensely on a shot and want to get it perfect, the best thing is a couple of fresh eyes, who are entirely detached from the shot. Since I started out, and every day again, I try to acquire this “always objective eye” towards my work. I try and preserve this first impression of a shot. This usually leads to the right intuitive decisions, but it can often mean to do big changes.

Well thanks for being apart of this latest AnimSchool interview.

To view more of Daniel’s work and current reel check out his website:

http://danielzettl.com/