AnimSchool Student Spotlight: Jilmar Altamirano

Today we are interviewing AnimSchool student Jilmar Altamirano. Jilmar is taking the 3D Animation Program at AnimSchool and is showing some real talent in his animations!


Hi Jilmar! Can you share a bit about yourself, where you’re from, experience with animation prior to AnimSchool, and background?
I’m 20 years old and I currently live in Gainesville, FL. I was born in Ecuador and when I was 12 years old I moved to the US. When I was little, like most kids, I loved watching cartoons and playing video games. In particular, a video game called “Skullmonkeys” which I really enjoyed. At that moment I did not know anything about animation, or that people actually could make a living off of it. A few years ago I remembered about “Skullmonkeys” and decided to get it again. I still loved it. That’s when I started to do some research about animation and began to practice stop motion animation. After months of doing stop motion, I switched to computer animation.

Skullmonkeys in-game animation



The first year of my learning experience I watched tons of tutorials learning as much I can about modeling, rigging, lighting, rendering, etc. I really enjoyed all of those, but animation was still my priority. Learning animation with tutorials or on your own is very limited. So I decided to take my education further. I did not choose a college because of the poor reviews a lot of them got and how expensive they were. I looked into online animation schools. Luckily I found Animschool. I was really impressed with the student showcase, and the characters were very appealing. So I applied and here I am blessed to be doing this interview, and to have a very supportive family, friends and instructors.



Who are your favorite animators and artists?
I really don’t have a favorite animator or artist in particular; but if I had to pick I would say the whole team responsible for creating The Neverhood / Skullmonkeys because without them I probably would have never found my passion for animation. I also look up to my Animschool instructors. They are all great animators who are very supportive which inspires me to keep pushing myself.
We can see a very good foundation on your shot for your Body Acting class assignment. Can you describe how the idea came up and what was your process?





The idea of having a Halloween theme on my animation just popped in my head for some reason. It could have been because Halloween was coming up and also because I wanted to use the awesome “BoneApart” rig.
I won’t take all the credit for the idea, my story was improved by my awesome instructor at the time, Trevor Young, and at a general reviews class with another great instructor, Tony Bonilla.
I did not know I was going to do a cartoony piece until the middle of my first blocking, but I just felt like it needed to be snappy and it would just add to the comedy of the shot.


For the blocking I always try to block on 3’s or 4’s, but since this was a very snappy animation I found myself having to block on 1’s in those transitions.

For splining, I find it easy because of how much time I spend blocking. I just have to go through all my curves, cleaning them up, making sure the mechanics are there and the arcs are clean.


For polishing, I would say I focused 75% of the time I had on the kid and 25% on the skeleton. Since the kid was the focus of the shot I tried to polish him as much as I could, going frame by frame checking that every arc was clean.


You also have a great shot for the Character Performance class. Can you share your process from start to finish?

Picking audio clip: When I picked this audio clip I was telling myself: “what have I done? This is going to be way too hard for me.” I had no experience with dialogue shots, so I knew it was going to be very challenging for me from the beginning.

I listened to the audio like a hundred times. The character sounded very crazy and manipulative. I pictured the character in my head but when I would try to act it out it just wouldn’t be the same.


Reference: My instructor, Marcelo Sakai, recommended me to study Mother Gothel from Tangled, so I did. I watched all her clips from the movie a bunch of times. I shot a lot of reference; I mean a lot, maybe like one hour of footage in total. I also had a lot of help from my wife who acted it out. She helped me see a more girly performance and she made some acting choices I would have never thought of.


Blocking: Finally got my reference and after the fourth or fifth week of class I had my first blocking pass. It had a few story telling poses maybe 4 or 5 with basic facial expressions.


Blocking Plus: I added a lot of breakdowns, blocked on 3’s and 4’s. I refined some facial expressions and blocked all basic mouth shapes.


Spline: I splined the body first, cleaned all my curves. At this point I found myself getting more into the character, and finding facial expressions that fit the dialogue better. After spline on the body was done, I splined everything on the face except the mouth. I cleaned those curves, and then moved into the mouth, pushing the shapes. I had a lot of fun with those mouth shapes.


Polish: At this point I focused mostly on the face and hands, going frame by frame checking every arc, even the arc of the corner of the mouth. Also pushed mouth shapes even more. Added more fleshiness on the face and I worked on the hair.


I am really happy with how it turned out at the end. All my instructors were very helpful and supportive throughout the whole term.


How did your instructors help you achieve the desired quality in your animations?
My instructors are very supportive. When you tell them your goals for the term on your first day of class, they won’t stop pushing you until you reach that goal. They are all very talented artists and that is why my animation has improved so much over the past year. I tried to attend to as many extra classes offered in Animschool as possible.
The General Review classes have been very helpful. The instructors there care about your progress as much as your main instructor.
I can’t thank all of them enough, and I can’t thank Animschool enough for having all these amazing instructors!

Any advice for your fellow students?

Always try to challenge yourself on your assignments, try different things you haven’t tried on your previous work, like different styles (cartoony or realistic), different workflows, if you have only animated guys, then try animating girls, animals, robots, etc. Experiment a lot.

Don’t give up! If your assignment isn’t coming out like how you hoped, don’t get frustrated just keep working on it, it will look great in the end. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback.
If you send your reel to studios and don’t hear back from them, it doesn’t matter: just keep improving your reel, and keep sending it to more studios.
Work hard!


We thank Jilmar for his time, and be sure to check out his site, Vimeo and LinkeIn pages!

AnimSchool Student Spotlight: Nanda Van Dijk

Today we are interviewing animation student Nanda Van Dijk. Nanda is very talented in the digital arts realm and is taking the 3D Animation Program at AnimSchool.

Hi Nanda! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself, like your background and experience before AnimSchool?

Animation
has always been my passion. As a child I was always drawing and
watching animated films. I went to the Utrecht School for the Arts in
Holland and studied computer animation and visual effects and graduated
with a master’s degree. I learned a lot about creating animated films,
from writing the scripts to making the storyboards to the production
itself. There wasn’t really an option to specialize yourself in
animation. The Dutch animation market doesn’t really work with
specializations so the school trained me to be a generalist. Because I
didn’t learn much about animation at the Utrecht School of Arts I taught
myself as much as possible. I was hired in 2010 as a 3D artist at
Mediamonks, a creative digital production agency, right out of school
and worked there for two years. In 2012 I started Animschool in class 4.
I showed my work to Tony Bonilla and he told me that I had enough
experience to skip the first 3 classes. After 3 terms at Animschool I
had to take a couple of term breaks to work on a feature film. I had the
opportunity to work as a 2D key animator at the Anikey Studios for the
Dutch feature animated film “Trippel Trappel”. Currently I am
working as a freelance 2D and 3D artist in my own company Anim.nl and
I’m back at Animschool to resume my classes. 


This term I’m taking the
Advanced rigging class as an in between class to learn how I can
make a high level facial rig and next term I will take class 7 in
Animation.



You seem to be comfortable with digital painting, rigging, modeling and animating. What area do you like the most and why?


 

Animating
is still my favorite area, I always loved acting and character
development. But the most fun for me is is to design, model, rig and
animate an entire character. It’s great to have control over the entire
process. To animate a character and make it come to life is always a
magical thing, but to make your own creation come to life, makes it
extra special. When I started to animate in 3D at school there weren’t
many great free rigs to work with like the amazing Malcolm rig that
Animschool offers for free. I had to work with rigs like the Generi rig, a
very unappealing basic free rig. Some of you will probably remember him
with mixed feelings, haha. This is one of the reasons that I wanted to
make my own models and rigs so that I would have appealing characters to
work with. This is also one of the main reasons why I picked Animschool
over the other schools to go to. Animschool has some of the most
appealing and professional character rigs that I have come across.



Who are the artists that inspire you?


There are so many amazing artists that
inspire me. Everyday I try to look at blogs with artwork. A couple of my
favorites are, David Colman, Peter de Séve, Greg Dykstra, Loralay Bove,
Ryan Lang, Pascal Campion, Barbara Canepa, and lots and lots more. And I
have a lot of very talented Dutch friends who inspire me every day as
well, specially the illustrations by Lois van Baarle and Wouter Tulp,
two amazing artists. And as for animators, I’m a huge fan of Glen Keane. I
love his animation style and the appeal his characters have. When I
went to CTN in 2012 I watched him animate the little Mermaid. That was
very inspiring to watch. And of course the animations by the nine old
men are a huge inspiration for me.




Can you share your process from start to finish on your shot with Mr. Bones for the Body Mechanics class?



That
animation was so much fun to make. I had an amazing teacher, Tim Crawfurd. He has over 12 years of experience working at Pixar. I
couldn’t have asked for a better instructor. It was also a coincident
because Tim is also from Holland. That was a lot of fun because we could
sometimes speak in our native tongue with each other and make small
inside jokes. The assignment for this term was to make a short pantomime
story with one of the simpler Animschool rigs. I loved the look of the
Mr. Bones rig so I decided to create my story around him. I knew it had
to be a Pirate story because Pirates are simply awesome! The idea for
the character to lose his arm came really quick to me but it was very
tricky to think of a way to communicate this idea to the audience. First
I had to establish that the character lost his arm and that he still
had to find out himself that his arm was gone. It all depended on the
timing of the animation. If he noticed his arm missing too quickly the
audience wouldn’t have noticed it themselves yet so they would miss the
punchline. I really had to think about a way to direct the eye of the
audience to the missing arm so. the yawn, and the looking for the arm
helped to stage out this scene. It also helped the performance to give
the character some real personality. After figuring out the staging and
the blocking I polished my animation, modeled the stage for the cave,
modeled and rigged the bat and did the lighting and shading. To really
finish the animation I asked Dave van Luttervelt, a very talented
composer, to do the sound design and music for me. I’m very pleased with
the end result. I hope you’ll enjoy it as well!






You
worked on Trippel Trappel, a dutch feature animation film. Can you tell
us more about the film, your role and what challenges did you face in
the production?


Trippel
Trappel is produced by il Luster in co-production with ViviFilm,
animated at Anikey Studios. The story is about a couple of pets who want
to celebrate the Dutch Holiday ‘Sinterklaas’. Sinterklaas is very
similar to Santa Claus, he also brings presents to children through the
chimney. The pets want to get presents too so they’re going to find
Sinterklaas to bring him their wishlists. The film is still in
production and will be released October this year in Dutch and Belgian
theaters. This will be the first fully hand drawn animated feature from
Holland since 1983. When I learned about this production I made an
animation test and the studio asked me to be one of the Key animators
for this film. In the studio they use TV paint and Wacom Cintiqs to
animate. Unlike the old Disney films I didn’t work on just one
character. More like in 3D I got an entire scene and had to animate
everything in it, so I had the chance to animate all the main characters
in the film. It was very fun to do but also very challenging especially
because I normally work in 3D and now had to animate by hand in 2D. I
had about two weeks to learn how I had to draw the characters and after
that I got my first scene. Because the movie is funded mostly by the
government there isn’t a big budget to work with. So I had to work very
quickly and still try to keep the quality as high as possible. It was
very challenging and hard work but I think it payed off.
I’m very impressed by the quality of the animations made by everyone in the
studio and I know that it will be a very beautiful film when it’s done.

Here
is a small teaser of the film. This piece is animated by Marcel
Tigchelaar, our supervising animator. The official trailer will be
released around February.
This is the Facebook page of ‘Trippel Trappel’:

What do you think is the most important thing you learned at AnimSchool so far?

I
think the most important thing is to really think about your scene
before animating. Thinking about what is happening in the scene, what
the character is thinking. If the character says one thing but thinks
something else. How you can use staging and timing to improve the
performance of your character. Thinking about every eye dart and every
small movement why you are animating it like this and if that is the
best way to communicate an emotion or thought. Most of the time I work
on short projects with very tight deadlines and then I just start to
animate and see where I’ll end up. In Animschool I finally have the
chance to really take my time to focus on small details and work on my
acting skills.

We thank Nanda for her time, and be sure to check out her awesome works on her site, LinkedIn profile, Facebook Page, Vimeo Page and Behance!

AnimSchool Classtime: Character Posing with Jean Dominique

Great tips on posing your characters by AnimSchool instructor and Head of Animation at MPC Los Angeles Jean Dominique Fievet.

This is an excerpt from Jean Dominique’s class on Animating Characters Term from the AnimSchool 3D Animation Program. To learn more about our courses, go to our website.

AnimSchool Interview: Animator Carlos Luzzi

Today we are interviewing Carlos Luzzi. Carlos is a professional hand drawn animator, with 10 years of experience. He has done work for TV and film and is also a concept character artist and visual development artist.


Hi Carlos! Could you start talking a bit about yourself, your education background and when did you begin to be interested in drawing and animation?

I have been interested in drawing since I was a kid. The cartoons that I watched on TV drew my attention a lot and I tried to reproduce the ones I liked on paper. I went through my childhood drawing, and had some professional experience with drawing in my teenage years. I studied Graphic Design but I was always so interested in animation, which I studied by myself in parallel to the university studies. There were no courses in my home town, so in the beginning I had to teach myself, through books that I bought by my own. In the last year of college, I got an internship in a big studio in São Paulo and soon after I moved to Los Angeles where I spent several months studying life drawing, guided by masters Glenn Vilppu and Karl Gnass at the American Animation Institute (today Animation Guild). I had a big desire to develop my skills as a traditional artist before fully focusing on animation. After that, I came back to Brazil to pursue my career as a traditional animator.

Tell us a bit more about your professional experience. What was your first job in the field? For how long have you been an animator now and what are the works you are the most proud of?
My first job in animation that I consider professional was at the Daniel Messias Studio, where I started as an animator back in 2003. This studio was one of the biggest studios for animation ads in Brazil for decades, a market that kept the animation industry moving in Brazil and formed several generations of traditional animators here because of that. I was part of the last generation; today that industry is taken by CG and certainly much less traditional animators are being formed here, which I think is a shame. In the last years I became a freelancer, and diversified my works doing storyboards and visual development. One of the works I enjoyed doing the most was animating Mickey and Minnie Mouse in a short for Disney that was exhibited at the NY Fashion Week. We had little time, but having the chance of working with those characters doesn’t happen every day, and that was very special to me.
You are also an excellent character artist – what came first, the love for creating characters or love for animating them?
I think drawing is a part of me, so the process of drawing storyboards and character designs always ended up mixing with the process of animation in the short productions. Having said that, my main focus was animation for many years. I have full knowledge of the complexity of the animation process, and I’m still studying to refine my work. Since I love drawing, my interest for character design always existed, but most of the time I worked with pre-established characters, so I didn’t have the chance of designing them often – one thing I’m trying to compensate now. Recently I had the opportunity to do a little visual development for a movie from Reel FX that is still going to be released and I really liked the experience. My interest for story is also growing by the day. I have been reading and studying about it since I started as an animator, but in the later years I’ve become more dedicated to the subject; recently I worked on the storyboards for a movie in Brazil and the process of story building is fascinating.
In your opinion, what does a character must have to grab the audience?
Tough question; I’m still looking for that answer, but at the moment I think it’s honesty. I watch live action movies and what attracts me the most in terms of acting are those moments when the characters have “honest moments”, where they are being themselves, doing day to day tasks, like there isn’t a camera pointing at them. That action makes it so that only the character being at the scene is enough, because the action is powerful and honest. Every subtlety becomes perfectly natural (even so they have been thought before by the actor), for they belong to that specific character and you believe in it. That is very hard to simulate, specially in animation, for we draw the character frame by frame, and the actor does in in real time. We always try to overdo the movement of the characters, where I think we should try to under-do it, finding the right moment and do what is right for the scene.
As a freelancer, you have the chance of working for several clients. How is the experience of being a freelancer in the animation industry?
Sometimes is intense. There are projects that happen all at the same time, and I’m always busy even on a regular day, either looking for possible projects or making quotes for future ones. The good think is that I have positive surprises, like having the chance of working on things outside animation, like concept art or storyboarding – that has sparked new interests for me and it has been fun.

What are your perspectives for the 2D animation industry, in Brazil and worldwide?
The industry right now is very small for hand drawn animation in features, that have been crushed by CG animation. That is nothing new, but there is always a movie coming up. I’ve heard about features in development, and there are always smaller projects coming up like ads and short films. I think the interest for good animation comes from the public for the most part, regardless of the final form, be it hand drawn, CG or stop motion. I’ve always been available to migrate to CG but the funny thing is that hand drawn, storyboards or visual development projects are always coming up and don’t let me leave the drawing board.

What do you think animation students must focus to improve the quality of their works and get noticed and possibly be hired by a studio?
Animation have many ways and it’s possible to reach excellency in several ways. There are CG animators that don’t know how to draw and are excellent in what they do using video references. In my particular case, I have drawn for many years by observation, capturing how people naturally act. People from my family, pets, people in the street. I’ve carried sketchbooks with me my whole life, and tried to capture life, the real stuff. That’s still a long way to go, and I’m constantly learning. Today I use other references, like video, for analyzing actions and the actors, as well animations that I consider to be excellent. But I always advise beginning students to draw the world around them.


We thank Carlos for his time. Be sure to check out some of Carlo’s work on concept character below, his site and Vimeo profile.


AnimSchool Classtime: Painting textures & fur with Ty Carter

Check out the tips from Tyler Carter on the Digital Painting class about painting textures and fur!

AnimSchool provides extra classes for our students who wants to expand their skills besides animation and modeling. This term we’re teaching Digital Painting with Tyler Carter, Visual Development Artist working at Blue Sky Studios. Check out Ty’s blog to check out some of his inspiring work.

AnimSchool Interview: Kevin Lan

We are very excited to present you Kevin Lan, animator currently working at ILM, who animated Richard Parker (the amazing tiger from “Life of Pi”) and several other awesome creatures and characters like The Hulk and Yogi Bear!

Hey Kevin! First of all, could you talk a bit about yourself and what led you to be a character animator?

I am an animator currently working at ILM, before that I was a lead animator at Rhythm & Hues for the past 6 years.
I was not the typical kid that grew up with Disney animation or super hero comics. I was born and raised in Taiwan, where Japanese anime and manga are the dominant culture influence. However I wasn’t interested in them until college. During my college years I was totally hooked by all the 80’s and 90’s anime and manga, through these I also got in touch with experimental animation from Europe and Canada. Anime director Otomo Katsuhiro and film maker Norman McLaren were the major influences for me to want to create animation. Eventually I knew I was going to pursue animation as my career of choice. After I finished my college degree (with struggles of course), I came to the US to study animation in SCAD. It was a time people were talking about 2D being dead and 3D animation is the future. I was very stubborn and decided to focus on 2D animation because of my anime/indie animation root. During my time at SCAD, I was exposed to more Pixar/ Disney style of animation. I think that was the first time I became more aware of “character animation” and started thinking about being an animator in the future.
What was your first job in the animation industry? How did you land the position?
I consider my job at Rhythm & Hues was my first real job in the industry. It was back at early 2007, I had just finished my MFA degree and brought my wife and kid to SF to attend a Pixar class at AAU. So I was learning 3D animation at the same time I was trying to find a job. Time was not on my side because as international students we only had one year to work legally in US. Luckily Rhythm & Hues liked my reel, even though I didn’t have much 3D animation in there, they somehow saw my potential from my 2D thesis film and brought me in for Golden Compass. 
Your animation on Richard Parker (the Tiger from “Life of Pi”) is pretty jaw dropping. Can you share how much time you spent researching reference and what was your overall process from start to finish of the animated shots?


We wanted to stay absolutely true to the tiger from Life of Pi, which means there should be no anthropomorphization or any guessing from animators. I spent the first 3-4 months studying reference and animating on test shots only. That was the time we figured out how the tiger would behave in different situations, the general physicality and posing, and how the muscle and skin works. Although I was matching reference in these tests, I didn’t do it blindly frame by frame. I still tried to find the key frames, analyzing where the force was generated, which control to use, how the force would impact other parts of the body and how the residual energy would be resolved. I also tried to emphasis the realistic motion quality on Richard Parker, tried to limit the usual CG smoothness and put in the imperfections we see in real life. Through these exercise I got a hold of the feeling for the tiger, and eventually I could deviate from reference in my shots and still make Richard Parker believable.  

Our general process started with animation director kicking off a sequence and shots.  Then we would compile a playlist of references suitable for each shots and gave those to the animators. If you were lucky enough, you could find a perfect reference and just try to match it. But that was not generally the case. We always needed to piece together segments from different clips and finding creative solutions for the best possible performance for each shots. 
I got some of the most challenging shots in the film. Without much similar references I could use, I tried to study all the tiger footages and real tigers in other movies for inspiration, then just imagining how Richard Parker would behave under these unlikely situations. I would block out my shots straight in spline mode, creating my key poses and also putting the correct physicality along the way. I think it’s the only way I could know for sure if my idea would work. After the blocking was approved  (usually this took the longest time), I would start adding all the juicy nuances and details on the tiger. While we were working on the shots, the model and rig itself was improving too. So it was a very organic process, and we were constantly improving and changing our shots until the very end.
You also animated a lot of scenes in movies going from Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 to The Incredible Hulk. Do you enjoy taking on projects with different styles from one another?


I definitely enjoy doing different styles of animation. I suppose being an animator means I’m suppose to animate “everything”, not being limited to a certain style or characters. Although, I can see myself enjoying more on creature/VFX films recently. Partly because I got recognition from what I did in Life of Pi, also mainly I feel like there are a lot of unknown territory waiting for us to explore. If you think about how many scripts are still hidden inside James Cameron’s drawer, and those impossible-to-make-movies may one day become possible, it’s a very exciting time for animation and VFX.
Do you have any advice for students wanting to land a job in the animation industry? What would they want to really master before applying to any job in big studios?
I can only talk about VFX industry as I’ve never worked in feature animation. The situation in today’s industry is very complex and much more difficult than before. Being a team player and work hard are the must. I would also suggest animators should master their sense of physicality and try to be original. A good sense of weight and presence of character would benefit you whether you are working in feature animation or VFX. It’s the most fundamental thing you will need for the rest of your career. Being original is extremely important in today’s animation. I think it goes back to observing real life and experience it yourself. Learning from existing animation is great, but it should just be a stepping stone for you to create your own character, even your own style. 

AnimSchool Student Spotlight: Laura Loossens

We’d like to present you Laura Loossens, student of the 3D Animation Program at AnimSchool. Hi Laura! Can you start by telling us a bit about yourself, like your background and experience before AnimSchool?

Before I even thought of being an animator, I studied economics and languages in high school. After that I started psychology at the University of Ghent but I didn’t felt passionate about it. I did however love to draw but I never thought to be doing something creative in the future. Until the moment one of my friends suggested a brand new educational program, Digital Arts and Entertainment (DAE), that only recently emerged in Belgium which was specialized in all the things I admired: 3D, 2D, animation and video games.
During my 3 years at Digital Arts and Entertainment I learned a bit of everything, even programming which I failed for in my first year. I had some trouble in the beginning with all the courses, simply because everything was new to me.
Nevertheless I never worked this hard for something, just because I loved to do it! All the hard work paid off and at the end of my studies I won the prize of best 3D artist and together with my awesome teammates, we won the prize of best game!
After my studies I started working in a small visual effects studio where I did various jobs but my main function was modeler and shader. I learned a lot and got better each day but there was no growing possibility as an animator in the studio, so I made a crucial decision to start the animation course at AnimSchool!

What made you want to be a character animator?


My first source of inspiration came from the many Disney movies I saw when I was a kid and later on movies like ‘Ratatouille’,’ Cloudy with a chance of meatballs’ and ‘Horton hears a who’ were a big inspirations for leading me in the direction of becoming a character animator.
My second source of inspiration came during my last year at DAE when we got the chance to create our own short and were completely free doing so. I came up with a little story named ‘Little Rico’ and made the clip in a short amount of time. During the development, I probably looked like a zombie but I also had the most fun bringing my story and characters to life. This was a decisive moment, I knew I was going to become an animator.

Laura’s student short animation “Little Rico”

Do you have any favorite artists that inspire you?


There are many different people that inspire me since the internet provides us a variety of animation clips, and I get inspired by many of them. I’ve seen some of them over and over, just to get a better understanding on their appeal.
Also, I will always have a passion for 2D animation. It is a medium that appealed to me ever since I was young. When I look at the work made by the artists at Bird Box Studio I get really inspired by the perfect timing and simplicity of their clips.

Your Facial Performance shot is a great piece. Can you tell a bit more about your process from start to finish?


Laura’s facial performance assignment

The sound I chose was one that had been stuck in my mind for quite some time. The audio had so much personality of a sassy woman demanding a new drink in her own way. With that image in mind I started shooting different kinds of reference videos and I seemed to like acting like a sassy lady.


Laura’s video reference for her facial
performance assignment

I imagined her sitting at her desk or at a bar, or not sitting down at all, just to get different angles that could look appealing. I learned this by watching a reference shot of Garrett Shikuma that showed us his variety of reference takes, just to come up with appealing poses and ideas.
After setting up my reference I start to block out my shot. I only look for the key poses that could really sell the shot. My reference served as a solid base and helped to find the key poses and timing for my animation.

After that very first pass of blocking I go over the same poses and look if the timing is working and if I can push some poses even further.
Spline is the next step where I spend time adjusting my curves. Normally I would take a long time for blocking however my mentor at the time, Melvin Tan, had a different approach. He would block out the scene fast and start with spline, but the method I used was the opposite.

I decided to follow Melvin’s suggestion, since it is always interesting to try out different ways of working and understand what the benefits are. In the beginning I struggled a bit but soon I discovered the benefits of working this way. I could spend more time on the details and characteristics traits of the character.

Laura’s Character Performance assignment

What was the most challenging assignment you had to deal with so far? How did you manage to overcome it’s obstacles?


I think each assignment has its challenges. Every time I overcome one challenge there is another waiting in line. But these challenges are what makes me move forward.

In my case there was the assignment for the Body Acting class. We had the possibility to create our own story without sound. I came up with a funny story of a scientist that was inventing an invisibility potion and was searching for the last clue. When he finally found it and tested it, he bumped over his potion on the chalkboard with his formula written on it.

While making this clip, I had difficulties getting the timing and poses correct. My instructor at the time, Tony Bonilla, was hard and honest. He kept pushing me in the good direction and I never gave up, even when I had to redo all my poses to really push them.

Even the latest version is not completely finished, but I had overcome so many challenges with that assignment that the following terms became a bit easier to complete, since I was better prepared for what was coming.

Laura’s Body Acting assingment

What do you think is the most important thing you learned at AnimSchool so far?

Laura’s Run and Jump assignment on Animating Characters class

Make the best of all the time you get with your instructors! Anthea Kerou taught me how to create a good base for animation, Tony Bonilla and Garrett Shikuma the importance of each stage of animation and Melvin Tan how to give your character more personality.

Listen to the feedback you get not only from your instructors but also from you fellow students. Always be critical of your work. Keep trying to get better and never think you are doing bad, since each step you take will bring you closer to your goal!

Thanks AnimSchool!

We thank Laura for her time and be sure to check out her Blog and her LinkedIn profile!

AnimSchool Classtime: Gesture Drawing for Animation

In AnimSchool’s 3D Animation Program, instructor Mark Behm shows how to do simplified gesture drawings for planning your animation.

AnimSchool Student Spotlight: Brian Rashcko

We would like to present Brian Rashcko, student of the Character Animation Program at AnimSchool. Hello Brian! Can you start telling us a bit about yourself and what animation and 3D experience you had before AnimSchool?

I sure can, haha!

After High School, my goal at the time was to enroll into roughly eight more years to become a Biochemist. 
I can already see some of the baffled expressions from readers wondering why, since animation is such a neat field to be in.
Bio chem sounded cool… At the time… But after talking to some people in that line of work, it didn’t feel like my cup O’ Tea. 
Like dealing with flesh eating viruses and other nasty bits, any one hungry?! 

The next best thing for me was software engineering. It was simple enough, write this, publish that, stumble upon infinite loops by accident that require a hard computer reset… Good times. 
It was that very job which led me into the world of animation, on a lunch break perusing the internet.

I’ve always had a fascination with visual effects and stop motion, and would periodically read “How they did it” articles around the inter-tubes.
A blurb comparison between 3D software’s caught my eye, as it mentioned a completely free authoring environment for animators. 
It wasn’t long before I could fiddle with joints, tangent handles, and key frames with zero knowledge of what I was doing, but I loved it!
Rendering out something bobbing about randomly across the screen was a rewarding experience!
“The Illusion of Life“, and a few other animation books promptly replaced all my office programming literature. 

Soon after, I stumbled upon a nice fellow by the name of Keith Lango, who at the time, was selling animation training videos for around $18.00 a pop… I bought most of them, hahaha!
(AnimSchool did not exist at this time).
Producing two tests, my first ever animations! 
What inspired you to get started in animation?
Animation is a great medium to inspire the imagination! With a few sheets of paper we can transport an audience into a world of talking animals, super heroes, suspense, magic, drama… You get the picture.
I could have a hand in creating those worlds, and to me that was the clincher; knowing whatever I worked on could entertain people of all ages.
My nephew (5 years) was a big helper in that too, a simple bouncing ball threw him into fits of laughter, which kept me going, and keeps me going to this day. 

Old works he liked were:



What are your favorite animators? What do you love about their work?
Glen Keane from Disney, and whomever animated Wallace and Gromit back in the day. They did so much with so little, and made it look easy!
If you look up Glen Keane you can find video clips of his working process, and it’s fascinating!
There is one particular clip in which you can watch him animate straight ahead a swimming sequence of Ariel from the Little Mermaid.
His drawings are nice and rough, he stresses the importance of “give” and “power”, and while he flips through the drawings, your mind is blown by how each pose ties in to the next one. 

For those who are curious:


And Wallace and Gromit is just a work of art, “Cheese Gromit, Cheese!”
Which of the assignments you completed at AnimSchool you found to be the most challenging? Why?

It has taken me almost three years to mold my process into something that can be used to produce decent work. Before that, all my assignments felt like lessons in trial and error, but full of moments of growth and understanding.

The optional rigging course posed it’s own series of challenges, but was well worth all of the effort involved. I can tell you that knowing what constraints would work for different situations and how to apply them is a real benefit! Especially if you are a one person operation on a small scene; It doesn’t hurt to be a little multifaceted in this industry either.

The running jump was difficult due to it being my first ever attempt at moving a character forward through a scene. I also had issues with turning a character around, which was done twice in my particular shot.
Being said, I might of bitten off more than I could handle at that particular stage, but if I hadn’t, I would of not learned as much.

It is easy in animation to take the simple path, especially when learning, but if you don’t push yourself, how else are you expected to develop your skills? 

End result:



Can you describe the process of your Class 6 Facial Performance piece and share some of the feedback you had with your instructor?

When the facial performance class started I was still developing my working methods. Some of what I did in prior classes didn’t help me in this particular assignment.
Speaking alone, brought together more technical issues than I was anticipating.
My process thus far is:
PREP WORK:
Listen to audio, if any, over and over and over until I can recite it exactly. Even to the point of mimicking the cadence, tone and overall feeling of the performance.

Thumbnail out ideas, or emotive poses that help me delve into how a particular character will act on screen. And how I want the audience to feel towards that character.

I will also record myself acting any ideas out that I have drawn on paper to see if they would be even feasible. But not copying it, just to preview how things might look.
I mostly use reference as a memory dump, the same goes for thumbnails, they are both tools, but nothing that should be taken literally. Otherwise we would be asked to rotoscope, and that’s not fun.
When I am able to solidify an idea, I’ll draw poses out in sequence, save each image as a PNG, then import them into Maya as image planes.
To animate them, I will turn on and off their visibility throughout the time line, so I can playblast a video to watch in Quicktime (I’m working on a script to automate this process).

BLOCKING:
In passes, starting at almost no detail, I will straight ahead my scene. Usually only two or three poses in the beginning.
Then with each pass, adding more poses straight ahead, refining earlier ones until things are on 4’s, or have enough detail so splining isn’t a headache.
It is crucial to flip through your animations forwards and reverse to get a good feel for movement hitches.

LINEAR FACIAL:
I will then switch my splines and working method to linear and begin working out my facial poses for speaking, if the animation calls for it.
I also look for errors in movement like wobbles, pops, and gimbal lock.. which will get worse when in full spline.
Errors are easy to spot given Maya is not adding in eases, or overshoots into my work.

SPLINE:
Switch everything to spline and playblast. Take notes for the overall scene; open Maya again but shrink the timeline to only render in portions, as I only want to focus on little bits at a time to avoid fatigue.

I will push things even further as spline curves put motion on 1’s, which tend to make shots appear not as punchy as their stepped counterparts.

I try to put enough detail into my blocking so splining is a quick process; offsetting keys causes nothing but problems, so I usually avoid doing so.

DONE:
Nothing else to do but move on to another shot.




My feedback for this piece was on appropriate acting choices and on how to give moments of pause, so the audience can understand what is going on.
We also focused very strongly on appeal, which can include head angle, brows, pucker, gestures, camera distance, scene composition… Etc etc.

I had difficulty with my acting choices, as my reference was a bit over the top… I have yet to get over being on front of a camera, even if it is my own dinky Kodak, hahaha!
It took a lot of feedback to arrive at the above animation, and my instructor was not lacking one bit in ideas, suggestions or wisdom.

If it wasn’t for that, who knows what this would of turned out to be.

AnimSchool also provides students an opportunity to speak with other instructors outside of class in what are called “General Reviews.” If you get the opportunity to have multiple eyes on a project, go for it, I certainly did!

Heck, post your work in outside school forums like Creative Crash or 11second Club, for an extra punch!


How is your experience at AnimSchool being so far?

I am thankful for the existence of AnimSchool and for its founders goal of providing this fine resource to those that want it. If it wasn’t for their pricing programs I would of not been able to afford schooling.

AnimSchool cares quite a bit, and will work with you to find a payment option that fits, which by no means is a tag line… They really do! Every student here is considerate and kind as well!

I remember during my first few classes, a few of us would meet afterwords in Google+ to discuss our work and give each other feedback. Not without network connections drops and software bugs, but it was fun!

I am sad to leave here after class seven, but it’s been quite a ride, and I won’t forget it.
A bittersweet ending, but an exciting beginning.


Do you have any advices for students just starting out?

Push yourself with each assignment, and avoid the easy route.
Create the best work you can, and If you receive a low score, try again, don’t give up.
Take suggestions outside of class with a grain of salt, but focus on ones that seem to be consistent.

If you are afraid to act in front of a camera, get a friend to do it!

I can’t stress enough the importance of “rig testing”. With every new rig you are handed, set aside some time to pose, break, morph and comprehend the limitations and strengths of that rig. If you don’t, you can have the best idea imaginable, begin working in 3D, only to find your rig is not capable of that “cool move” you wanted.

Learn to script, or at least have a basic understanding of both melscript and Python; whatever language your current platform can understand.
Just look at the popularity of autoTangent or Tween Machine, I can’t believe they aren’t a part of Maya yet… Well Maya 2013+ has auto curves, but it’s just not the same.

New AnimSchool Animation Student Showcase

AnimSchool presents the latest animation student work! Congratulations to all the talented students at AnimSchool.
Look for a separate modeling/rigging Showcase later!
To apply to be a student, visit www.animschool.com.

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