Animation Notes....

Animation Scout (you rock!!), Eyes/Blinks

2011-09-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

I was cruising around Cyber-Space and came across Animation Scout, there is ton of information on there... I am going to post a few movies here regarding eyes and blinks... Really good stuff to know!! Shawn Kelly always says "blinks have meaning" and I feel it's a great way to give your character life and appeal. I found that out on one of the movies I worked on last year. Some of the rigs were very simple and basic without a lot to control, the eyes were crucial in conveying emotion and acting.... so thank you a million times Animation Scout... I'll will be a regular on your site in the future!! Rock on!

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2011-09-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

This post is from The
Gorilla Animators Blog... there is a ton of resources there if you're looking for anything related to animation... go and check it out. Here is some great stuff on posing, line of action and strong gestures to better help tell your story...

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Posing Characters For Animation

Age of Empires Animations ~Chazamation

2011-09-09T11:16:00.000-07:00

My buddy Sean sent me this link, and personally I think the style is absolutely beautiful! It can be found on Charles Tinney's Blog, Chazamation. Recently, I met with a local game studio here in Denver and he mentioned adding some cycles to my demo reel, especially if I'm trying to get into the gaming industry. If that's your case too, you should definitely read this and watch this awesomeness!! Thanks for sharing Charles!! __________________________________

Age of Empires Online Animations Part 1 Dear John

Age of Empires Online (AoEO) is now in the hands of Gas Powered Games, so my work on it is complete. I was one of two animators on the project. My initial role, once the art style was finalized, was to concept and visualize the animation style that best complimented the game’s art direction. It was great pulling reference from Looney Tunes and old Disney shorts. Through animation reference, exploration, pushing, pulling, trial, error, I eventually hit a style that was wacky and exaggerated in some circumstances, and kind of an overly animated subtlety for most cases; both with an overall defined timing and spacing that melded the extreme and subtle together. Wow, I hope that doesn’t sound like a bunch of babbling bullshit.
For example: during some attacks and deaths I could just go wild and create an animation that was really extreme. Other attacks were “ordinary”, but still shared the timing and spacing that was a staple of the style. Idles and movement animations were pretty subtle. Boreds were a mix of extreme and well… boring, and other animations were a bit of both: extreme timing and holds with a nice subtle overlap on limbs, capes, and other floppy bits on the main action.
Once that phase of the project finished, and the animation style squared away, it was time to move on and actually create animations on characters for game purposes. So I could actually put to good use the knowledge gained from creating the style used, which was somewhat of a first for me: create the style and create nearly all animations for the characters in the game. So, just a bit of explanation, though I was one of two animators, the other is our technical genius Juan Martinez. He creates all of the art tools used on all projects at Robot Entertainment, which was his primary role during the course of AoEO. That took up the majority of his time while my only role is to animate because I suck at the smartzz. That’s how I ended up animating almost the entire game, which is definitely a fun and challenging undertaking.
This is getting wordy; time for purdy moving picatures. I want to share (and will over the course of time) all of my work on the project. Since there is so much, I’ll space out the animations in different posts. This being post numero uno.
I want to start the first post off with the deer because she’s one of the first characters I animated for the game while also coming back and adding in more animations over the course of the project; and I feel it shows the animation style well. I wanted to convey a cheerful, fearful personality. Happy-go-lucky, clueless, but yet… there’s always death around the corner.
Click on the images to view the animations. Animations require quicktime to view.
I typically start off with Idle and Jog animations to get a feel for the character.
Idle  Jog 1
Jog 2  BIGJog
The bored set of animations is where I wanted to present the “fearfulness” of this helpless, juicy, meaty, tasty, animal.
Bored 1  Bored 2
Bored 3
Every one has to die sometime, and in AOEO deer die all the time.
Death 1  Death 2
If one of the buddies kicks the bucket, this is the “johnny just bit it, and I’m getting the F out of here” run.
Run
Munching on some bush.
Graze 1  Graze 2
Relaxin’
LayDownSet
I hope you enjoyed the deer set of animations for Age of Empires Online. There’s more to come… later. So stay tuned.

A Simple Approach to Overlap. ~Cameron Fielding

2011-05-10T09:41:00.000-07:00

I found this Quick Tip on Cameron's Blog FLIP. Some really good stuff talking about overlap, getting a sense of weight, this is huge.
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Once we have good story, good poses and all the basics down nice and strong - some good overlapping action ( or "follow-through" or some people occasionally confuse this with"secondary action" ) can really add that beautiful organic movement to our animation. When its easy to animate, it can be a lot of fun, but sometimes it can cause real headaches when we have complex movement, or varying timing.

There is a quick trick that helps you to think about overlap in a structured way. I'm not saying when or where to use it, I just mean the technicalities of where body parts should be at what time, depending on movement. Its only a quick trick and so doesn't by any means create beautifully complex ( or accurate ) overlap, but it does give you a good starting point to work more detail into.

Ok so here's the tip:

This a simple chain of cubes animated with joints ( only the first joint is animated ). There is translation and rotation movement that we will need to figure out the overlap shapes for. ( note this is just a chain of cubes to show the idea clearly, normally we would be doing this on a spine, a head, an arm, a tentacle, a limp body part... anything! you get the idea ):

The basic idea of this tip, and the foundation that makes it all work, is to set keys on the whole chain when it changes direction. So if you look at the video below, I added a motion trail to show you the path of the boxes, and you can clearly see the places where the direction of movement changes. So at these points, I am not setting any poses or changing anything - just simply keying all the joints in the chain in a relativley straight pose. On the section where the chain is "flapping", I am doing the same thing - keying the whole thing when it starts to flap in the other direction. These are the "marker" keys:

Now to start the overlap, all I have to do is to set "drag" poses between the keys I already set. So I am thinking about how much the chain will bend depending on the force, thats all really, and putting this pose half way between the marker keys I set already. You can see that pretty much straight away the effect is starting to look good ( note that in these poses, the whole chain is keyed too, just like a marker pose ):

For the final part we now go and alter our marker keys. The idea is that really they would not be straight at this point, the last few joints in the chain would still be dragging a little. So all I did in this example was added a bit of lag to the last two boxes in the chain, on the marker keys. This adds the final bit of polish. Note that I am not adding any extra keys, all we are working
with are our original marker keys, and any keys we set halfway between each marker key:

A few extra points:

So the best thing about this is the workflow. I spent no more that 10 minutes on this example, and the overlap is clean, fluid and the keys are simple and organized. I also didn't have to get too confused thinking about force and drag, because the marker keys serve as a "reset" point to stop things getting jumbled. Its good to note that what makes this work well is good "halfway drag poses", and careful reposing of the last few joints on the marker keys for the final pass.

This is meant to be a quick method, and is not really applicable for very soft things like cartoony tails or hair - or things that have a lot of drag. However even for these situations it serves as a great starting point. I tend to use this method on torso overlap, head overlap and generally for showing weight across the board. Of course, the amount of softness or overlap is decided by you, and will depend on how carefully you pose your halfway keys and how you modify those marker poses at the end.

Just to mention quickly - the "marker" poses that were straight in this example do not have to be straight in animation. Your character will often be doing an underlying action, and your marker poses will not be straight. The key thing to remember is to key the objects at the point at which they change direction... thats the basis of this idea.

How to Cheat in Maya 2012 ~Kenny Roy/Eric Luhta

2011-04-21T14:26:00.001-07:00

NEW BOOK ALERT!!!

Product Description

Fully udpated for the new rev of Maya, "How to Cheat in Maya" offers complete, step-by-step walkthroughs of essential techniques that every animator needs to know. The book is purely about character animation in Maya. It's not a Maya book that covers the software and has one little chapter about animation (most Maya books follow that route). This is an animator's workflow in book form, covering everything you can imagine that has to do with character animation in Maya. The current edition has garnered top reviews and accolades. Professional animators are saying "I wish I had this book in school. It contains much of the knowledge I've gained in the workplace; so you can benefit from it NOW and spend your first few working years learning things ahead of the curve." - Spungella.com (Soak up Animation).

There are books on character animation, and books on Maya, but none have put them together in such a well-thought out effective way for animators to jump right in and succeed. New topics are included: camera settings and animation, expanded spline reference material with more examples, new techniques for working with characters and props, time saving scripts, more personality walks, new tricks for lighting and rendering, and addiitonal rigging techniqes like bendy arms and more squash and stretch.

--The most gorgeous models and lighting will fall flat if the animation is lifeless. Take your animations to the next level with How to Cheat in Maya. Packed with classic animation techniques and insider secrets of a professional animator, this book helps you get things done in the most efficient way possible.

--Covers the 12 principles of animation and how they translate into Maya.

--Lets readers see "under the hood" of a professional animator's work. Maya explained from a character animator's perspective, a unique and overlooked focus. Luhta is both a teacher and an established professional animator. He has worked on high profile films, commercials, and AAA games.

--Companion web site including all exercise/example scene files and extras such as video tutorials, animation files.

--Gold-mine coverage, including character animation techniques, working with constraints, foolproof lighting tricks to show off your work, pose to pose blocking, layered animation, constraints, facial animation, fixing gimbal lock, and more.

--What's NEW in this edition: Coverage of latest rev of Maya, camera settings and animation, expanded spline reference material with more examples, new techniques for working with characters and props, time-saving scripts, more personality walks, new tricks for lighting and rendering, and additional rigging techniques like bendy arms and more squash and stretch.

About the Author

Eric Luhta is a professional animator whose recent credits include "Bioshock 2", "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs", "Horton Hears A Who!", and numerous television commercials. Eric has extensive experience with Autodesk's Maya, including teaching it, as an instructor for the Maya Training Program at AnimationMentor.com. He currently lives in Los Angeles, CA with his wife and 3 computers.

Kenny Roy started his career in 1998 and has gone on to animate for TV shows, pilots, commercials, games, web, ride films and feature films, with his most notable credits being Scooby Doo 2, Garfield and King Kong. He is also the founder of Arconyx Animation Studios which has worked for clients ranging from Mattel to MTV, Nike to Nickelodeon, Saban to Sci-Fi Channel, Kenny mentors full-time at AnimationMentor.com.

What Kind of Workflow Do You Use? ~Nelson Brown

2011-04-19T22:06:00.001-07:00

That's right kids.... more posting about workflow. If you've been following this blog, you're probably sick of me talking about it. This will be the last one (I promise)... maybe. One thing that's awesome about Nelson's post is how it's broken down. Real simple to follow and there are some great tips in there. Thank you so much for your notes. On that note, huge congrats to Nelson, who just had his one year anniversary at Dreamworks. Way to go man!

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What Kind of Workflow Do You Use?

You've probably heard it said that being an animator means being a lifelong student. That couldn't be more true. My workflow is constantly changing. With every shot or task I complete, there's almost always something I end up liking or disliking about the way I went about it. Or, sometimes the technical requirements of a shot will dictate what kind of workflow I'll use. Also, observing the workflow other animators use allows me to pick up new things that I want to try with my next shot or task. The point is, finding a good workflow means trying things out until you find what works for you. I, personally, am still trying things out. However, I'll write down the workflow that I tend to use most often.

Step 1 - Research:
- Talking through the shot with the director or supervisor
- Checking out the storyboards
- Checking out the surrounding shots for continuity
- Researching any available information about character personality
- Gathering model sheets or other character resources

Step 2 - Planning:
- Shooting video reference, trying various takes and editing the best together
- Gathering online video or photo reference
- Studying reference
- Sketching rough thumbnail drawings of major poses to find the best silhouette

Step 3 - Blocking (on the computer):
- Blocking major storytelling/acting/action/key poses, most often in
stepped curves mode, and most often keying the entire character
- Blocking in extremes and changes in direction
- Blocking in important facial expressions
- Blocking in important hand poses
- Pushing poses around in time to find the right rhythm for the shot

Step 4 - Breakdowns:
- Putting in breakdown poses between major key poses, often still in stepped
- Defining rough arcs, overlap and spacing
- Repeating for the face and hands
- At this point I'm usually trying to put every major idea into a pose
- At this point if it's a dialogue shot, I will go through a similar
process on the mouth and face that I went through with the body

Step 5 - Spline
- Hitting that dreaded button to convert to spline curves (or clamped,
or linear, or auto-tangent, whatever you prefer to use)
- Usually making some slight adjustments to overall pose timing
- Shaping and cleaning curves to more accurately define spacing

Step 6 - Polishing
- Focusing on details
- Finessing contact points, often frame by frame
- Offsetting keys as necessary to refine overlap
- Layering in minor secondary action, like breathing or eye darts
- Doing anything required to make the shot as clear and refined as
the deadline will allow

Step 7 - Watching the shot get pried from your fingers and forcibly taken away
- It's rare to feel like a shot is as finished as I'd like it to be
Often deadlines come quicker than we obsessive animators would like

One final thought to keep in mind: this workflow is rarely linear.

Getting notes and changes from a director or supervisor can often mean
going back a step or two to blocking or even planning stages. It’s just
another part of the crazy process!

When Deciding on Acting Choices, What Helps you Decide on Poses? ~Josh Riley

2011-04-05T20:52:00.000-07:00

Okay... so I have a new goal that should be obtainable. I'm going to try and complete an animation per month. I decided to kick start my goal by doing the 11 Second Club contest for April. The funny thing was is that I was just about to start thumb nailing some ideas down when I saw this posted on Shawn Kelly's Tips and Tricks Blog. I thought it was a nice quick read and a great method to kicking off your planning process (I really like the idea of writing the emotion you're going for next to the thumb nail).... This one's from a Guest Blogger Josh Riley
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I like to convey the character’s inner thoughts with posing. For instance, the character might be feeling something but not showing it in an obvious way. Maybe the face will say “mad,” but the body pose is a bit frightened, or maybe the reverse. For example, think about a mother who just found her child who had wandered off in a crowded area. Her body language might show relief, but her face might show anger. Choosing the poses carefully will go a long way, helping your character communicate complex inner feelings and depth.

I learned from Mark Behm, one of my mentors at Animation Mentor, to always write the emotions (or thoughts) out in words near your thumbnails while you are deciding on poses and planning your scene. It is a constant reminder of the goal of your posing. I can't say how many times I got into a pose and started working on a cool idea, then looked over at the word written next to my thumbnails and realized that the pose I had drawn was not communicating the original emotion. I had gotten wrapped up in creating an interesting pose and lost focus of the bigger picture. Having the emotions written out helped me to quickly make the necessary adjustments and correct the poses. Mark Behm advised me to go through this process every time, no matter how redundant it seemed. And then he disappeared in a puff of ninja smoke.

Guest Blogger Josh Riley

Tips on Speeding Up Animation Workflow and Animating Faster ~Shawn Kelly

2011-03-15T09:02:00.000-07:00

I found this gem looking through Shawn Kelly's eBook Vol. 2. If you haven't downloaded and perused both books yet.... what are you waiting for!? They're FREE and there's so much great information in them. I chose this particular post because it's very common, I feel. I talk a lot about work flow, mostly developing your own unique style and way you muscle through your animation process. This takes it to the next level... once you've established a work flow that works for you and you're comfortable with this will give you some tips on having the most efficient work flow you can have and allowing for quick turn around time on your animations. Whether you have deadlines are getting shots done for your personal demo reel. Efficiency is key to being a good Animator!

Sorry I've been slacking on this blog. I've been really busy between working a ton and raisingtwo little dudes, it really takes up most of my time.... I'll try and be better and post her once a week. With that said, I'm working on a new few shots for my demo reel and am referring back to this blog often, so it's serving it's purpose for me... and hopefully you. Till next post... keep on animating!!

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QUESTION: I was wondering if you had any tips on how to speed up animation workflow, and animating faster in general? In many situations, the faster you have to animate, the less quality you can afford to achieve. But even in the “big budget” movies, there can be stressful crunch times when you have to animate pretty darn fast -- but you can’t sacrifice quality either. Since you have so much production experience on big projects that require high quality animation, I was wondering if you’ve found any time-saving tips, if you ever felt you took a big leap forward in speed, yet managed to produce great work?

Ten quick tips for speeding up your work:

1. Don’t skip the planning process. Seriously, I know a lot of you feel too busy to plan your scene before you open Maya or Max or whatever you’re using, but even if you can only dedicate 30 minutes to creating and/or studying some video reference and writing down some notes, it will help you finish faster. SOME amount of planning will *ALWAYS* speed up your work, no matter what. The best scenes I’ve ever done, and the quickest that finished, were the shots where I spent the most effort planning before sitting down at the computer.

2. Hot keys are your friend. Any time you find yourself doing anything repetitive in Maya (or whatever animation program you are using), create or find a hotkey for it. I have and use hotkeys for working quickly in the graph editor (hiding/showing tangents, hiding/showing channel curves, etc.), for saving keys, for hiding/showing animation controls on the model, for X-ray mode, to make joints visible or invisible, for scrubbing time in the graph editor, and for instantly creating more workspace when I don’t need to see all the menus and channels. Those are just some of the hotkeys I use every day, and boy have they sped my work up.

3. If you have the ability to create or use a GUI that allows you to select your character’s animation controls, that can be a big help, especially for working with hands, tails, toes, etc.

4. Don’t get too bogged down in changes. If your director wants you to change the middle of your shot, just block it off (construction-zone style, as I wrote about in the newsletter), and create all new keys and breakdowns. You can really get slowed down if you start trying to make any major changes simply by tweaking the curves you already have in the graph editor. Very often, it’s just faster to wall that part of your animation off (so you don’t screw up the surrounding bits the Director *does* like), and redo that section from scratch. Cleaner and easier to edit, too.

5. Don’t be timid! Push your ideas and go for that dynamic pose. It’s much easier/faster to take something too far and then back off on it than it is to slowly push your pose or idea a little bit further, a little bit further, a little bit further, etc. Just go for it and then reign it in if you need to.

6. Use light models if possible. Something that speeds up my work like crazy is the ability to just hit play in Maya and watch my animation play reliably at 24fps without having to do a playblast or render. Use the lowest-res version of your character as possible, at least for your initial blocking.

7. Same Avoid the black hole that is (insert favorite website here). For me, I have to be careful with sites like Digg, YouTube, Gizmodo, etc. -- these web sites that I really love can suck me in if I’m not careful, and suddenly I’ve lost an hour of time that I could have spent animating. Discipline yourself to only check your favorite sites when you have to, when you’re on a break, or when you’re rendering.

8. Same with email. Between ILM, Animation Mentor, my personal email, the blog, and the newsletter, I get hundreds of emails per day. Prioritize and only read the most essential emails until you’re on break or finished with your work for the day. For me, I try to only read email at work that is directly related to the show I’m working on, and then try to catch up on the rest before bed. (By the way, if you’ve emailed me and I haven’t emailed back -- I’m really sorry! I’m kind of behind on my email, but I’m trying to catch up and will hopefully get back to you soon!)

9. CPU, RAM, a decent-sized monitor, and graphics card. Don’t underestimate the boost you’ll get from investing in the core bits of your computer. Beef up that machine for fast interaction with your character! The quicker you can interact with the character, and the quicker your program will update the frame, the quicker you’ll get your animation done. Along those same lines, a larger monitor will give you a lot more screen-space and make it much easier to see your character, saving a lot of “zooming in and out” time...

10. Use the 15-minute rule. If you come up against a technical problem that you can’t solve on your own in 15 minutes, give up, and find help. If you’re in a studio, ask a peer or pick up the phone and ask tech support. If you’re at home, jump online and start searching through Google or post your question on the forum. In the past, I’ve wasted half a day trying to solve some problem on my own and it turned out that I could have solved it in 10 minutes if I had just asked someone for help. Update!

11. I just thought of another great tip someone once told me, so I’m adding it to this post! If you’re given, or give yourself, a list of changes for a shot, don’t do a test render of that shot until you’ve addressed all those changes. In other words, if you’re given 10 things to fix, don’t fix one and then re-render. Wait until you’ve fixed a bunch or all of those 10 things, and THEN do your playblast to see how it’s looking. The goal, of course, being to cut down on the time it takes to playblast and analyze the shot.

Shawn :)

Animation Checklist! ~Mike Stern

2010-12-20T11:15:00.000-08:00

This post is from the Animation Tips and Tricks Blog. Mike Stern is currently animating at DreamWorks and is responsible for the amazing short film Distraxion which is hitting film festivals everywhere! He gives some great insights to the process of going through an entire shot. It's a really good read. Thanks for sharing Mr. Stern.

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Can You Tell Us About Your Animation Checklist?

What is on my animation checklist? I have a series of things that I need to consider at each point during the shot.

I don't always take all of these steps on every shot, but this will work as a nice master list to pull from depending on what is expected.

At the launch, my checklist is a series of questions. Most of the time, these questions are answered as we walk through the sequence with the directors.

If these questions aren't addressed, I ask about them when my shots are reviewed.

Checklist of Questions at the Launch:

1) What is the context? What happened directly before and what is going to happen directly after the shot?

2) What are the main story points that need to come through in the shot?

3) Is there a particular emotion that we should be feeling as audience members watching this shot?

4) How much room is there to work the idea? Some shots need to stick pretty close to the boards, while others leave a lot of space for the animator to work with. It's our responsibility to know what type of situation we are dealing with.

If I know the answer to all of these questions, than I am ready to start planning my shot.

Checklist for Planning my Shot:

I use different methods for planning out an acting shot versus a physical shot. For a physical shot, I will try to find some good reference of the movement and then jump right into thumbnailing.

For acting shots, I like to spend some time analyzing the line. My checklist is as follows:

1) Go for my gut instinct. I like to get my initial instinct out on paper and possibly on the camera. I may come back to this, but I may not. Sometimes it helps to get my idea out there so that I can clear it out of the way to make room for better ideas.

2) Analyze the dialog. There are a few things that I look for in the dialog when I am planning my acting:

Dynamics: Find the places where the line has inflections. These are great places to hang acting ideas.

Phrasing: I try to assign specific verbs to go along with parts of the line. If I can assign a verb to describe what the character is doing or thinking, it is easier for me to create a pose that communicates properly.

Meaning/Subtext: Many times, characters say something that implies something more meaningful. Digging out the true meaning of the line can lead to some really fresh acting choices. 

3) Research:

Character Reference: I always try to think about the character. How would they react to this situation? If this character has been animated already, how did other animators handle this type of acting?

Film reference: See if this type of situation has been handled in other films. Sometimes this will help to inspire acting ideas in a different direction.

4) Video Reference. Now that I have analyzed the scene some more, I shoot some reference. I leave the camera running until I feel comfortable. I switch it up between acting and doing. When I am "acting" I am trying to feel the line out and see what comes naturally. When I am "doing" I have a specific idea in mind that I try to imitate with my body.

Get other animators involved in the reference. I find that if can get direct feedback as I am acting, it can help the ideas develop faster. I take turns acting and directing.

Analyze the reference, find the truths. Sometimes it helps to cut together a super take with what you feel are the best choices for each part of the shot.

Make your choices. At this point I usually pick one or two ideas that I like best for each beat and start to prep those ideas for blocking .

5) Apply the Principles. I look for places to add physicality, reversals, lead and follow. I make sure to exaggerate the ideas in my reference and push the things that the reference is hinting at.

6) Thumbnail. Depending on the shot, I thumbnail instead of shooting reference. On certain shots, I thumbnail after doing the reference to make sure that I am pushing the poses and the physicality.

Blocking

 At this point, I have a pretty good idea of what I am going to work into the shot. It's time to start blocking. For most shots, I work in stepped mode for my blocking. This enables me to do detailed poses that communicate clearly without having to worry about the in-betweens. 

1) Block in my keys.
These will be the main storytelling poses in my shot. I don't have any limit to how many keys I set on my first pass of blocking, but they tend to be pretty sparse. Sometimes I will leave as many as 10-12 frames between poses. I will block in a full pose including rough ideas for the hands and face.

2) Test it and time it.
I playback my pass of keys and move them around on the timeline until the beats feel like they are in the right places.

3) Break it down.
I add my breakdowns as a part of my blocking pass. I tend to break a shot down until I have a key on about every 3-4 frames. When I add my breakdowns, I think about which key that breakdown should favor. At times I even favor different body parts to different keys. I am also thinking about my paths of action. 

Once I have a pass of blocking, I will ask some questions again:

1) Is it clear? Will someone get the idea of what I am going for without any explanation?

2) Did I push the posing and timing enough?

3) Do I like the idea? I try to be the first judge of my work before I get the supervisor and directors involved. Chances are, if I don't feel good about it, then they won't either.

Get Feedback

After I am happy with my blocking, I usually take one or more of these steps before moving into a first pass.

1) Show my peers. I will send out my work to other animators working on the film to get their opinions and check to see if the idea is reading clearly.

2) Show the animation supervisor. I always show my blocking to the animation supervisor to get feedback before showing the directors.

3) Show the director(s). Once I incorporate any blocking notes from the animation supervisor, I put my work up in front of the directors.

I present my idea through my blocking and see if it is in line with their objectives for the shot.

First Pass

If I get a buy-off on my blocking, or even if I receive some minor adjustments, I take my animation into a first pass.

During the first pass my checklist is as follows:

1) Switch my curves over to a version of spline and preview the animation.

2) Push full poses around to work out the timing.

3) Adjust full poses to work in some more overlap and try to solidify the mechanics as much as possible.

4) Tie down the curves. At this point I take a look under the hood and see how the curves are looking. I clean up the flow of the curves and any obvious hitches to ease the process of cleaning up the animation.

5) Keep my keys organized. At this point, I am still trying to keep my keys clean and aligned on full frames. Since the directors have only seen the shot once there is still a chance that I may get some feedback that will require me to rework parts of the animation. If I keep the shot clean, I can easily make those adjustments.

4) Face pass. I take a pass on the face at this point. I add the phonemes for my lip sync and start thinking about how the expressions will translate from one to the next.

 
Get More Feedback

Once again, when I have taken a first pass across my shot, I show it to the animation supervisor. Once I get the go ahead, I move the shot into polishing.
 
Checklist for polishing my shot:

 So now that I have buy-off on the idea, I can feel comfortable taking my shot past the point of no return. I will use a series of different animation techniques, including layering and some straight ahead, to get the physicality working in my shot.  

During the polishing phase I start to work heavily with curves. To make things more focused I crop my animation timeline and focus on 50-100 frames of work.

I use tons of checklists when polishing a shot. The all-encompassing checklist is as follows:

1) Find the driving force in the shot. In most cases, it is the center of gravity at the root of the character. I make sure to get the root movement working well because everything else depends on it.

2) Work from the root up and the head down. Once the root is working properly, I work my way up the torso into the chest, shoulders, neck, and then the head. I make sure that any movement on the root follows through these joints. If there are certain accents and inflections I want to hit with the head, I will animate those directly on the head, and make sure that movements are either led or followed by the rest of the torso.

3) The limbs. When I have the torso of the characters working correctly, I focus on the limbs. Sometimes the adjustments that I make to the torso can disrupt the original animation on the arms and legs. At this point, I feel comfortable blowing that old animation away and approaching the limbs straight ahead.

4) Additional Layering. At this point I should have the majority of the movement working properly. I go back through and do some additional layering to make the movement feel organic. I do this by comparing curves and offsetting. For human characters I like to take a layering pass on the shoulders and hips. For non-human characters this is where I consider overlapping on tails and wings etc.

5) Facial animation. I take a pass and really focus just on the face. I get into the eyes to make sure that the eyelines are correct. I like to get very specific about the eye movements by using linear curves and editing my darts down to the frame. Once the darts are working, I add lid movement to support them. I plus the shapes in the lip sync and make sure that the rest of the face is supporting the lip sync movement. I tend to treat the face as a unit. When the mouth opens and closes with the sync, I make sure that the cheeks, lids and brows are all affected. When I focus on the lip sync and facial movement, I also include the head in this equation. I add more texture to the movement of the head to fully support the beats in the sync.

6) Details. At this point, I should have the majority of my animation working, but I still make sure to take another pass for the things that take a little more love, such as areas of contact or IK switching. Sometimes I frame through my broad movements and see if I can add some scaling to enhance the way things transition. 

That was the big list. Now I start to use some smaller lists.

I play my animation back and list out the things that still need more attention. There are usually a couple of things that are screaming pretty loud, so I hit those first. I continue to watch the animation, make a list of things to fix, fix them, and then repeat the process.

 
Pushing for final

Now that I have taken all of my passes on the animation, it's time to show for final. Once again, I hit a checklist to make sure that I have covered all of the bases:

 1) Is there anything that stands out as unbelievable or possibly distracting from the point of the shot? 

2) Does it still have all of the ideas from the approved blocking?

3) Is the physicality pushed far enough?

4) Is there enough texture in the movement?

5) Am I happy with it?

Now it’s time to show for final. I run it by the animation supervisor and then put it in front of the directors. 

Ship it

Alright, I got the final call in dailies. Nice. There is just one more list I need to run through, and then this shot is headed down the pipeline.

1) Run and check all the simulations. If the character has hair or a tail or if I am using any type of simulation, I want to make sure that it has been run with the latest animation and is looking good.

2) Check the render. I run a full resolution render of my shot on the render farm to make sure that everything looks right. Sometimes environmental elements load differently in the animation software than they do on the render farm.

3) Save and check in all of the files. I check all of the files into the server so that they can move on down the pipeline.

4) Let 'em know. Once everything is in the right place, I let the production staff know that the shot is ready to be sent on so that the next artist can start their work as soon as possible.
 
There you have it. These are some of the lists that I follow when working on a shot. By keeping these things in mind, I am able to keep my workflow organized and make sure that I am delivering my best animation in each shot that I take.

Perfect Imperfection ~Cameron Fielding

2010-11-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

Wow, okay. So, I realize this post is a bit on the looooong side, but what a great post. It's funny too, because the other night I was watching (by watching I mean studying the acting) the movie Up in the Air with George Clooney and I was really studying his facial expressions, as well as the other characters in the movie and starting thinking about all the subtleties and imperfections in their movement. Funky arcs, long/short anticipations, weird eye darts, stuff like that. I was comparing it to animation and thinking about the major difference between the two. With animation you have all the power and total control over your character and everything they think and do. I understand that with the actors they get multiple takes, but with you get the problems of something turning out really good (like a head nod) on one part of the shot, but then there's a random blink in another part that you might not like (as the Director). As Animators, we get multiple iterations to get the shot just right... as Animators we're responsible we're making our shots believable to where the audience should NEVER think about the fact that they're watching animation. So I think that's where the term "Animation Ninja" comes into play. Well this post goes into great detail about bringing your shot to that next level. Think of it as un-polishing your shot, or making your shot 'dirty' to enhance it's believability yet still keeping it 'cartoony' or animated. So without anymore babbling from me.... Thanks for sharing Cameron.

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Perfect Imperfection

I love animation that shows us something we recognize, and we all recognize imperfection.

I wanted to do a post on how it can be really great to add imperfection to your animation, and in this case specifically how sometimes things like a perfect ease-in or overshoot can add an element of falseness to your work when creating animation in a certain style. I say this because I was watching the shots of a particular animator here at DreamWorks who does a wonderful job of this, and wanted to understand this a little more and include it more frequently in my own work.

When I used to animated in Maya, I was never a curve editor animator. I would just look at everything in the shotCamera, and track arcs in 3D using my motionTrail script. Here at work, the software we have for manipulating curves is so good, I quickly started doing a lot of stuff in the curve editor and making a habit of smoothing stuff out cleanly and watching to make sure that everything was easing in and out nicely.

I really love using the curve editor, and probably wouldn't go back to doing it all in the viewport, but I recently noticed that my movements were becoming too smooth, too calculated and my animation was losing some of that naturalistic punch that I used to see in my older stuff.

I usually go back to live action to figure out how things really move and how it relates to animation, and below I've shared a few videos that show examples of where we may be tempted to oversimplify and oversmooth the movement. In reality there is a lot of "imperfection" that we see in the arcs of movement without really realizing it, but its part of constructing our perception concerning whether or not something is real.

You can see immediately that the arc and the spacing on the foot is not what you might expect if you just started animating this from scratch...

The arc above shows how the curve might turn out based on our assumptions, and what were used to implementing. Its pretty "perfect" and quite different to how the real foot travels through the air. This would probably result in a semi-decent looking animation, but with something looking not quite right or as if not enough detail existed in the movement.

Instead of going nice and smoothly over the top of the arc, the foot drops slightly before it rises up again at the peak. This is the natural arc as the lower leg swings forward.

Theres an interesting section here where the foot slows down before it begins to fall. If you click back on the video, we see this as a slight pause in the leg, and it illustrates thought in the characters mind... a moment of calculation as his brain thinks about the best place to land the foot.

Notice how the foot doesn't fall to the final contact pose with that perfectly accelerating downward motion, its spacing is almost linear after it starts to fall, then suddenly accelerated just before the contact. The foot is not an object freefalling through space - the leg above it can alter and "imperfect" the spacing as it falls.

As the woman gestures, she holds out her hand, and for a part of the gesture she appears to hold it relatively still as she moves it screen right...

When we track this "smooth" part, its clear how irregular the arc is. Despite the fact its not obvious when we watch the video above, its all going on under the hood, and adding to our perceptions of whether or not the character is real.

The movements of the head are a particularly ideal place to use this idea. When we start animating, we quickly learn about what can make head moves appealing - such as dipping the nose on a turn, a slight nod or twist in the opposite direction before a change etc. These are by all means valid, and used wisely can really add to head animation. Take a look at some of these videos below where I tracked the nose to see how the head is moving, and you quickly see how "wobbly" and unsmooth the curves are. I find this stuff really interesting to study.

Here's another curve we might normally be tempted to smooth out - reducing its subtle realism. I love the little bump at the top, and the small "glitch" in the deceleration at the bottom of the curve.

The guy in the blue shirt above shows how erratic the arcs on a head can really be. Whether or not your shot would call for this kind of detail depends on many things, but its just really interesting to me to see how crazy it can get, on a move that isn't really that extreme at all.

Without getting into the subject of overlap and inherited motion, you can see clearly how a more complex action like sitting down and adjusting weight and balance can increase the scale of these direction changes.

Even movements that are supposed to appear smooth and elegant may contain these irregularities, they are just smaller and less noticeable.

The arcs are almost "smooth" but not quite. I might be tempted to round out the tops of the curves and even out the spacing, but these subtle effects can increase the believability.

As far as how to implement these irregularities, it is definitely something I would recommend doing right at the last stages of polish. You can do this by just playing with the curves and adding little bumps and notches, but it can be very hard to get it to look right, and not like you just screwed up smoothing your shot...The reason for calling this post "perfect imperfections" is because nature will always do this exactly right! If your software supports it, I would even recommend doing this on another animation layer, that way its easy to experiment and scale things bigger and smaller without changing your main acting underneath.

Its important to mention that in animation we don't strive for "realism", we strive for communication of the idea. If the idea is ultra realism, then yes we animate as realistically as we can, but normally we are extracting the essence of movement and simplifying it to make the statement clear. So then, are all these imperfections necessary? no, I don't think they are absolutely needed, but they do add a layer of information to the idea you are communicating - audiences all know instinctively that natural motion is varied and irregular, and by including this in your animation you help make your characters appear more lifelike - which may make the audience more likely to believe what they have to say.

Self Doubt Causes Stress ~Stephen Silver

2010-10-27T18:55:00.000-07:00

I thought I would post this as a good reminder to all....
Stephen Silver is an amazing illustrator/artist. I get weekly emails from him and thought that this one is pretty important and should be passed on. He talks about self doubt and the stress that it causes. I think that everyone could benefit from reading this (not just you Animators). In my opinion, self doubt creates a low self-worth which leads to feelings and energy and that can lead to a negative spiraling effect that doesn't do anybody any good and your work will ultimately suffer. I think in any artistic field, especially animation, people tend to compare themselves to those that are better than them and think to themselves that they'll never be that good. I found this to be extremely motivating and inspirational.

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SELF DOUBT that causes stress

“Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we often might win by fearing to
attempt."

Shakespeare

I think Self Doubt is one of the greatest causes of stress and non progression. Not believing in our own abilities creates fear in ourselves and causes us not to take the first step in accomplishing what we want. Self doubt is having that lack of confidence to believe in our own ability. Why do we create this pain within our minds? I believe that self doubt is based on the fact that we have simply not tried, it is the fear of the unknown, we are often caught up and focused on somebody else's belief, an experience they may have had, something we have heard about. Ask yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen if I try, if I just do it? I know my journey as an artist has brought a lot of self doubt about my abilities along the way. The fear of what other people may think about my work. It is natural to feel self doubt, if we could just let go of our doubts, change our thoughts into positives, relax and accept what is, then we will succeed. Always remember, do what you can do for yourself, other people don't run your life, you run your life, you are the sole creator of what it is you wish to achieve, you have full control. I love a quote I once read “You can either sit on the sidelines, or join in the dance.” Make the effort to not doubt, release your fear, believe in yourself, avoid the stress and enjoy all this wonderful life has to offer.

Follow your passion, be persistent, and live with enthusiasm.
Make it a great week!

My new book is coming out next month, if you pre-order this week and live in the U.S shipping is FREE
http://www.silvertoons.com/store.html

Acting, Breathing and Al Pacino ~Brendan Body

2010-10-01T08:57:00.000-07:00

Ok wow! My buddy Kool Kamal posted this on his Facebook page and I had to repost it here! Breathing is one of those things when you're polishing your shot will give it that nice final touch and really bring your character to life. Brendan Body (such a cool name) talks about it here and uses Al Pacino as his reference. Brendan is an amazing Animator who's worked on a ton of movies (Harry Potter, Hellboy II, Happy Feet). This is definitely something I'll look back when I'm polishing a shot and wondering what I have left to do. Awesome stuff, Thanks Brendan!

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Breathing is not something we are often conscious of, therefore animating a character breathing during dialogue is easily overlooked. Spending the time studying and adding this to your shot can really create a great sense of believability to your work. In fact, as we'll discover, breathing is something that can be used to drive a performance.

We first should take some time to understand how breathing works and what controls it.

Breathing, as I'm sure you're aware, is the expanding and shrinking of the lungs. This is primarily driven by the diaphragm which contracts, moving down and pulling air into your lungs, then during the exhale the diaphragm relaxes, moving up and expelling the air from our lungs. However, this is not the only force acting on the lungs. There are muscles around the ribs which contract, expanding the rib cage by swinging the ribs up, then on the exhale they expand and the ribs swing down causing the rib cage to get smaller.

I've used a 3d animation package to create a graph which represents how lung volume changes during a typical breath taken when at rest. The air fills quickly at first then slows as it reaches the apex, on the exhale, the air leaves the lungs quickly at first then slows as the lung volume reaches it's lowest point.

However when we speak, our breathing pattern is very different. The air is inhaled as before but is then compressed, the muscles around the ribs and the diaphragm working against each other to condense the air in our lungs to create a positive pressure there. The air is then steadily released as the the dialogue is spoken, then after the line of dialogue is finished, the diaphragm is relaxed. This causes the last of the air to empty quickly from the lungs, then we start to breathe in and the process can begin again.

Of course this is not a one way process, dialogue also affects the lung volume - if the dialogue has a particularly loud accent in it, that will affect the lung volume by creating a sudden drop. I've represented this above in my lung volume graph by showing a drop in the curve. As well as loud accents, often 'w' sounds use greater amounts of air and will also cause the above to happen.

Now we have looked at this in abstract, let's look at an example. I've selected a clip of Al Pacino from the start of the teaser trailer for Ocean's 13. Al Pacino's breathing is often quite apparent in his performances. I suspect this is because he was originally a stage actor and has learned how to use and exaggerate his breathing to help to project his voice. But in this case, I believe he's using it primarily to drive tension into his voice.

Ocean's 13 teaser trailer can be found here

transcript -
"I know people, highly invested in my survival and they are people who really know how to hurt in ways you can't even imagine."

First, let's talk about the performance in general. Al Pacino's character Willy Banks, is a powerful and ruthless casino owner and he has just learned of Danny Ocean's plans to disrupt his business. In this shot, he warns him that there would be violent consequences if Ocean carries out these plans.

"You're joking?"

Al's character is incensed at the idea that anyone would set out to damage his business, although the conversation is conducted in public, he doesn't want to draw attention to himself. He's also very clever and doesn't want to reveal that he is affected by this. Al Pacino's performance is very restrained, but it's charged with an intensity which leaves us in no doubt that he is deeply enraged. He keeps his face predominately impartial, at only one point does he let the anger he's feeling creep briefly onto his face - just before he says "really know how to hurt". This is known as a 'microexpression', to do this voluntarily, really shows Al Pacino's acting genius, they naturally occur when someone is trying to conceal or repress an emotion. This one flashes across his face, it is literally only there for one frame, hard to spot when the clip is played at full speed but we read it subconsciously.

Microexpression - incandescent rage

There is a wonderfully subtle texture as well as a change in tempo and tone through the piece. During the first line "I know people" his body is ever so slightly loose and there is a hint of a smile that says "you're joking, aren't you?". Then, as he says "highly invested in my survival...", his body tenses, the speed of his delivery increases and we get that glimpse of anger he's feeling, then at "you can't even imagine" his eyes widen and his speech slows down again to intimidate his opponent by suggesting that he could do something crazy.

"I could do something crazy"

Al Pacino's phonemes, like his performance, have been kept small but he's using his breathing to generate as much tension in his voice as possible as well as project what would otherwise be just a whisper. He's forcing as much air as he can through the narrow exit of his voice box. If you watch his throat you can see it tense as he speaks, then relax as he releases the pressure to breathe in.

Analysis of Al Pacino's Breathing from Brendan Body on Vimeo.

Here I've animated a representation of his lung volume on the right hand side of the screen. If you would like to step though this video and/or view it at larger size I have placed a quicktime version here

What's interesting is how almost all his movement is initiated or affected by his breathing. You can see his body tensing as he compresses the air before each line of dialogue, then you see his body relax slightly as he inhales. This causes his body to rock backwards a couple of times during this scene. There is only one small body and head movement during "even" that appears to be separate from his breathing.

Here is the animation curve of the bar in the movie above. We can see how the breathing pattern we cited above appears throughout the performance, note the way it varies too. We can also see how the rhythm of his breathing echos the intensity in the performance - at the start during "I know people" his breath is slower, drawing out the exhale in his 'almost laugh', but as his delivery gets more vehement during "highly invested in my survival ... who really know how to hurt" his breathing gets faster, shorter and we find small half-breaths. Then during that intimidating last line, we can see how he slows down again.

So, how can we use this? Well, if you were trying to create a subtle performance and wanted to keep the character still, but not so much that the character 'dies', and obviously we don't want the character just floating around randomly, we could base the character's movements around the breathing and can be sure it will work and add to the performance. Also, if you wanted to create an intensity in your performance you could exaggerate the breathing and seek to show the the tension in the body as the character compresses and holds the air in their lungs as they speak.

Thanks to James Cunliffe who helped me put this post together.

Spying for Lying.... Huh?

2010-09-28T10:53:00.000-07:00

I found a link to this on the Spline Doctors' blog and found it rather interesting! The Spying for Lying blog goes into great depths of non-verbal communication and facial emotions. It's an interesting site for anyone into Character Animation. Check it out.

The second link is about capturing emotion through their gestures/body language... a great source of reference.

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http://www.spyingforlying.com/

www.picapp.com

What Takes a Demo Reel From Good to Great? ~Nelson Brown

2010-09-28T09:37:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to meet Nelson while attending Animation Mentor since graduating last year he went to Reel FX to work on Open Season 3 and now he is working at Dreamworks on their latest and greatest movie Megamind. He talks about taking your demo reel to the next level and making it awesome! Thanks Nelson for your insights!
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For me, it's the little things.

As animators, our goal is to make the audience believe that the character is alive. For me, a big part of that is a convincing secondary action. Don't get me wrong - clear acting, good body mechanics, strong poses, etc. are all crucial and are all necessary in a good reel. However, once those things are there, it's those subtle human imperfections that take it to the next level.

Something as simple as breathing, blinking at the right moment, fidgeting, darting the eyes, if done right, can be so powerful by adding another layer of human believability to your character. These are just examples, of course, and it's important to remember not to pull the focus from your primary action. I like to think of secondary action as a "spice" that can be used carefully to add some extra interest to your shot or reel.

This is a big reason why I like video reference. If I only plan out in my head every motion that my character will make, I find it often results in an overly "choreographed" look. However, if I act out my shot in front of the camera, I often notice all kinds of little things my body does that I never would have consciously noticed.

In my opinion, the best reels are the ones that make me forget I'm watching cartoon characters and make me truly believe that I'm watching a living being.

-Nelson

Describe Your Workflow When You Start Animating a Shot. Is There a Right or Wrong Way? Travis Tohill

2010-08-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

This was in the latest and greatest Animation Mentor newsletter... as far as work flow goes, trying to explain proper work flow to someone who is learning to animate is nearly impossible. Every Animator animates different (I know that I've mentioned that before in my posts) and it takes a lot of time to hone in your own personal work flow. Here are some great insights from Travis Tohill. He talks about the importance of planning out your shots, I recently posted the free Plastic Animation Paper which is a great tool.... not to be too redundant here, so here it is....
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I've definitely learned that there is no "right way" to animate a shot. I've seen people animate in ways that seem insane to me, but somehow they get amazing results. I've also had some co-workers look at my method with puzzled looks in their eyes, but it works for me. So anyone that tells you there is one way to animate hasn't been exposed to enough animators yet.

However, there is a right and a wrong way to plan your shots. It's very simple. ALWAYS PLAN YOUR SHOTS!!! I have been guilty in the past of trying to rush through my planning and start on a shot to save time. Inevitably, I end up wasting more time stumbling through my animation, and my work never looks as good.

My work flow has become pretty consistent since I've started working. If my shot has dialogue, I will listen to it repeatedly until I have a very solid feel for the timing and dynamics. No matter what kind of shot it is, I always shoot video reference. I try to take the time to do many different takes so that I have a lot of options to choose from. It is a lot quicker to explore ideas in front of a camera than it is to animate them. One thing I always try to keep in mind when filming myself is to try to not be too conscious of what I'm going to look like on screen. I've found that if I am thinking about how I am posing myself my reference will end up looking unnatural and will also be filled with generic animation ideas. However, if I simply try to put myself in the mindset of the character, forget the camera, and actually react to the situation in a natural way, my reference will be full of little ticks and behaviors that I probably wouldn't have thought of. It makes for more believable and interesting animation.

Once I have a direction that I am happy with, I thumbnail out my key poses and take notes for myself. I don't worry about whether the drawings are good or whether anyone else can understand my notes. They are a blueprint for me to be able to build my shot, and the process of drawing them forces me to really study what is happening in the reference. I always make sure to pay attention to not only the main poses, but how the different body parts move from pose to pose. I often find it is the spaces between the poses that can make the difference between a character feeling real or animated. Clean arcs are of course one of the fundamentals of animation, but sometimes you need a little messiness in the movement. This is especially true in visual effects animation for live action films.

At this point, I can finally jump onto the computer and start my blocking. My first blocking pass usually sticks very close to the thumbnails and reference. I personally like to have my first set of keys be a performance that I know is already solid before I start deviating. My final animation may end up vastly different than my original reference, but it gives me a great foundation to start with. Once I feel like that is working, I will begin pushing the poses, tweaking the timing, and exploring ideas. Also, this is around the point when I try to get feedback from my leads or co-workers to see what they feel is or isn't working well.

After that, it is hopefully (but not always) a painless process of getting notes and making revisions until you end up with a fantastic final product!

Plastic Animation Paper 4.0!! For FREE!

2010-08-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

If you're an Animator, this is something you MUST have in your 'Animation Toolbox'. It's a completely FREE software that is ideal for thumb-nailing and planning out your shots (heck, you could even create an entire animation with it!). It's called Plastic Animation Paper v4.0. Fully customizable interface, very intuitive design, take your animation planning to the next level and endless possibilities and what you can do with it!

DOWNLOAD HERE

Go through the tutorials and learn about all this awesome software can do!!

CLICK HERE

One thing that they recommend is that you have a Wacom tablet, but you can still use a mouse if you don't have one (I recommend getting one anyway, another "tool" for you arsenal). This is amazing stuff, it does a lot and it could really help save time when you're in the planning stage of animation!! I recommend it, and I'm definitely going to be using it on my next shot!

Thanks PAP!!

Workflow ~Mike Walling

2010-07-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

Alright, I know that I've posted work flow threads before. But work flow is one thing when you're learning animation is definitely a 'growing pain'. Each animator has their own unique work flow and determining what that is is a 'to each their own' type method is what it's all about. I get asked a lot by students that I've been lucky enough to Peer Buddy at Animation Mentor regarding work flow and what work flow is the right one. There's really no definitive answer, because every ones' work flow is different. This is why I'm posting yet another interpretation of another awesome Animator's work flow. Hopefully it will give you some tips in honing your own work flow. I've been animating for about 2.5 years now and I feel like I've developed my own work flow that works for me. Thanks Mr. Walling for sharing!
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Workflow (shot progression)

By Mike Walling

This is the simple process I use to break down a shot from concept to finished piece. It is based on the step curve method of animation and is in my opinion the closest to 2d you can get in 3d.

The Kickoff – Getting direction and thinking about continuity.- The kickoff is where the director discusses the sequence to all of the animators and covers the content of each shot. This is your chance to see your shot in continuity and ask the director any questions you may have about your shot or the sequence.

Preparation

a. listen to the audio track about a hundred times listening for the beats and inflections in the voice. I like to write out the dialog on paper or a dope sheet and then draw little arrows to get a visual of what the voice is doing.

b. Thumbnail out some story telling poses or shoot reference. I have found that for complex acting or action shots reference is the only way to go. Without it you will never get the dynamics of the action. Thunbnails are also a great way to start thinking about poses you might want to use. I was always taught that animation is 90% preparation and 10% execution; although I have to admit that most times for me it is about 40% prep and 60% execution out of fear of the ever looming deadline.

Time management.

- This is a pretty big one to me. As an animator at a major studio you have two major responsibilities. The first one is to produce quality animation. After all that is what you were hired to do right? The other is to get the work done on time. This is what I call “walking the line” or “pleasing administrative and creative”. Animators that have a hard time with this don’t usually last long in a feature production because they just can’t adjust to the constant changes from the director and getting the work done on time with the quality that is expected from the supervising animators, not to mention that the team you work with is a competitive team and everybody wants the ‘good shots”. This leads me to….

Workflow

- What steps do you take to get your shot done? Well we have covered some of them already. We already talked about listening to the audio track and shooting reference footage and drawing thumbnails. Now what?

- Blocking! When I start blocking my shot I’m only concerned with the story telling poses. We will put all of the details in later. For now we are just interested in making the poses feel right when we run a playblast.

- Put everything you want in the acting. Don’t hold back because you’re not sure how to get from pose to pose. Just go for it!!

- Key the whole character! Why? Because later when you start splining you might miss stray keys and it’s a pain to wrangle them when you could just lock everything down on each pose. It also makes it easy to shift timing around on the fly. One other reason is when it comes time to spline the shot it is easy for me to spline sections of the shot instead of the whole thing at once.

- Your blocking should include finger poses and good facial. Don’t worry about lip sync; this should be done almost last!

Now that you have blocked out some poses it’s time to flip your animation and see what you have. This is the time to adjust your timing since you have all of your poses on one frame each. Now that you are happy hopefully) with your blocking it is time to start thinking about the transitional keys (breakdowns). Don’t let the computer do too much of the work for you and have an idea of what character will look like going from pose to pose. Remember we are still in step curve mode. No splining yet!

- Put breakdowns where needed. I usually put them in to describe a move

between poses or an antic. I learned from my friend Mike Thurmeier to put

a anticipation key and then a stretch key.

- Start thinking about your slo-in’s and slo-out’s. For example if my pose is

on frame 120 and I want my pose change to take place over 8 frames then

I’ll key the whole body at 116 and at 124. Then I’ll back off the pose on

frame 120 which will cause a slow-in from frame 120 to 124.

- Splining! To me this is the hardest part because you have this nice neat

tight package of poses and now you have to tear it all down into fluid

motion. I think the key is to take things in small chunks and work through it.

- I think the best way to go is to spline the gross movement of the

Character first. Usually the torso, neck and head. I like to make layers in

Maya so I can hide the limbs. This way I can see only the parts that I’m

animating. Once I feel like the torso is tight I will turn on the limbs and start

working through them.

- Your animation might look a little strange now, with lots of holds and

simple transitions but that’s ok because now your going to go into more

detail and start breaking things up big time.

- Start to drag spline curves of movers that you want to overlap.

- Insert more breakdown keys on individual movers (not on the whole body)

- Start to get the fluidity in the motion breading away from the pose to pose

feel.

- This is a great time to start to add little moves and gestures that you didn’t

put into the blocking. We are moving past the story telling poses to fluid

movement. You want you acting to feel natural and human so don’t be

afraid to tear down the old keys to make new ones.

- Listen for the littlest of inflections in the voice and add little accents and

moves that will add to the performance. ( I’m still only working on the

torso, neck and head.)

At this point you should step back, watch your playblast (movie file) over and over

and ask your self these questions.

1. Is the timing feeling right?

2. Do I have good slow-in’s and slow-out’s?

3. Are there “dead zones” where I’ve gotten lazy and under-animated my character’s nuances.

4. Is the animation stiff or fluid? If it is stiff, do I have the keys of the body all landing on the same frame too often? Is it floaty, is my timing too spread out?

Now it’s time to do the same thing for the arms and legs.

- Follow the same procedure outlined previously. You will put more overlap

in the arms and legs in general and make sure you beef up the arcs and

transitions to make them look a little more interesting.

Facial animation

- I follow pretty much the same principles for the face and lip sync as I do for

the rest of the body.

- Since you have the face blocked in from earlier and is now simple splines

you can easily go in and tweak the timing for your facial transitions. Of

course the face will be much more subtle so you will have to be sensitive to

the acting and emotion you are trying to convey, after all this is what it is all

about right?

- As far as lip sync is concerned you will have to start at frame one and set a

pose on all of the mouth movers for the shape you want. Work your way

down shape by shape until you are done and then run a playblast. Now you

can look at it a few times looking for problem areas you can tweak. I find

this to be fairly easy but spend them most time tweaking. Over all if my shot

is scheduled for 5 days I will try to spend at least one day or more on the

face and lip sync.

What Seperates a Good Animator From a Bad One? ~Travis Tohill

2010-07-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

As I make my way through this journey called Animation I see awesome animation/animators everywhere I'm look! I get blown away with every feature film that I see now days. Look at Toy Story 3 or How To Train Your Dragon, absolutely beautiful work. Throughout the whole movie I'm asking myself what is separating these animators from one another? Why am I not this good yet? What does it take to animate for one of these awesome movies? I found this on the Animation Tips and Tricks blog and thought it was worth remembering! It's about going the extra mile. When you think your shot is finished go through it one more time and really look at the fine details. There's a fine line between over working a shot, and putting just the right amount of polish in it.
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There are a lot of things that separate a good animator and a bad animator. I will skip the obvious things like talent, speed, good mechanics, fundamentals, etc. There are a lot of animators out there that have all of those qualities. I know for me, two things that inspire me are an animator's attention to detail and creativity. Of course, all shots have to tell the story, sell the emotion, have good body mechanics, timing, weight, etc. What is unfortunate is that a lot of times a shot will have all of those elements, and then the animator will consider it done. I've been guilty of it myself.

A good animator will work his shots until they are good enough to be in the film. A great animator will take it that extra 5 percent past what is required and make it amazing. Feet don't land square to the floor most of the time, and fingers don't grab an object and then stop moving. Eye lids are constantly reacting to what is happening in the eyes, and the face has so many ticks and tiny oddities that it is overwhelming. The animators that blow me away always seem to take the time to add the small imperfections that make a shot feel real. Sometimes there are small details that you feel more than you see. However, if they weren't there it wouldn't feel nearly as sweet.

The other thing that really gets me pumped about a shot is an acting choice that I would never have thought of. Some animators are able to come up with ways of expressing an emotion or an idea that are wildly original but seem to not be out of place for the character. It is very obvious in those moments that the animator put in the effort to avoid the cliches and brainstormed until they had something special.

So, I guess I could sum up my view of a good animator as someone who has all of the skills but also takes real pride in their work. They aren't just trying to get their shots approved by the director, and they aren't running with the first idea that will work. They are not just trying to get four seconds of footage into the film. They are trying to create four seconds of inspired animation that will help elevate the film. I've seen animators that have been in the industry for many, many years and still labor over their shots that way. I am hoping that I can end up being one of them even after I've been doing this for a few decades.

Our Work Habits ~Eric Goldberg

2010-07-21T11:14:00.000-07:00

Something I found cruising around Animation Meat's website. This is circa 1983 from one of my favorite animators Eric Goldberg. He actually compiled all of his notes and combined into one BOOK. If you haven't bought it yet and you're an Animator you should definitely make the investment! It's one of my favorites next to Animator's Survival Kit.

Great stuff, a bit lengthy, but well worth it. Thanks Mr. Goldberg.
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We are all creatures of habit, aren't we? We go through daily routines without concern. Usually things just fall into place in methodical order from the time we get up until we arrive at the Studio. The time lapse and routines from getting out of bed until we arrive at work will probably be quite the same day in and day out, barring the unexpected. With the preliminaries out of the way and the dressing completed, our dog takes us for a walk over the usual course, making the usual stops. We then sit down to breakfast at the given moment and are on our way to work at that given time. Arriving, "work habits" take over, they being the ones with which we are concerned.

It would be quite presumptuous to say that "work habits" should or could be the same for all of us. We're individuals with varied personalities, with different views, with different goals perhaps. Yet, some very basic demands made on each of us by a profession that is a team effort, dedicated to getting good entertainment on the screen, should be adhered to, though with an individual approach.

Our "work habits" should be geared to produce the best results we are capable of. Sometimes we reach goals with a minimum of effort. Other times the desired results are difficult to come by. The degree and quality of our success is often in keeping with our own "work habits", and sometimes our assignment. To consider again the demands made on each of us as animators will be repetitive but not redundant.

First we begin with the "pick-up" of the scene or scenes in the Director's room. At this time all thoughts and questions should be considered and a mutual understanding regarding the scene's content and execution should be reached between Director and Animator. We should discuss the story points in the scene and the most direct, simple and entertaining way to stage the action and phrase the dialogue. We consider the personality traits of the character. What is his situation and mood? How does he act? How does he re-act? Now we find ourselves at the drawing board and our search for a full understanding and knowledge of our character really begins.

Who is he?
What is he to do?
Why is he doing it?
How is he best going to do it?

We jot down pertinent facts about our character and pin them on our board.
What is his age?
What are his mannerisms?
What are his physical traits?
What about his emotions?
Is he interesting and alive?
Will he reach out to the audience?
Will the planned action help delineate him?
As the animator, are we emotionally involved with him?
In thumbnail, with all thought on entertainment:
We plan the action, noting story and personality points.
We phrase the dialogue.
We stage the action - plan trucks - pans and fielding.
We check the background. Will the character work clearly in it? Are props positioned for definition and use?

It might be well to discuss the thumbnail sketches and action with the director or other animators. Now if the scene can be fully visualized draw it! - Not before! And stay on course!
There's nothing wrong with sitting down with others and discussing our personal goals and work habits. But whether or not we are inclined to do this, a very desirable practice for each of us would be to turn the "spotlight" on ourselves and make a very personal evaluation of our own goals and habits. Often we go merrily on our way without thinking about them or how they can shape what we are and do. It would be difficult to note the hopes and habits each of us might build and develop as we go about making animated pictures, but a driving force in shaping those hopes and habits is a positive constructive attitude.

Grim Natwick, creator of "Betty Boop" and one of the greats in our business and a member of the Disney Staff in the SNOW WHITE days, recently reflected on his feelings about animation in these words: "Animation to me is like sitting down to a big turkey dinner." Grim is in his nineties, still keeps an active hand in animation and tells his stories with great gusto.

A positive attitude? We had just better believe it because, as with Grim, it has been one of the qualities in every person who has found his place in Disney animation . Its a force for each of us to develop and having it, the goals we reach will be rewarding and the work habits we form can't be anything but productive. When we consider the charm and story-telling possibilities that animation offers we can't ignore the fact that the top priority in our goals might well be entertainment. Walt often commented that "It'll be up there on the screen for a hundred years." FANTASIA, released in 1940, plays daily to an audience in cities around the world. SNOW WHITE, released in 1937 remains a favorite of young and old. And so goes the Disney animated film story - PINOCCHIO, BAMBI, CINDERELLA, SLEEPING BEAUTY and all the rest - welcomed year in and year out by people of all ages, everywhere.

Contrary to the feelings of some, Walt Disney and the entertainment plateaus he established and the tradition he built have left a worldwide following today. The tradition is not yet spent. Walt never felt that he had to "get on the bandwagon" to succeed. He always led; others followed. He was not, nor should we now be, pulled down by the mediocrity of entertainment dictated by some television and movie producers.

In the Disney spirit, our imagination and our ability to graphically put down on paper and "bring to life" that which we imagine will determine our success. If we make a good picture the viewers will take it to their hearts and never let go! We must search and re-search our story material, do and re-do the content and continuity until it becomes a positive story, unfolding properly and running the gamut of emotional and physical feelings and actions. We want and must have characters brimming with personality so that our audience can readily relate to them and think of them as people they know and can care for or hate. We must know reality and how to caricature it with taste and showmanship. We want to entertain our audience - draw it into our world of fantasy. That's goal number one!

The student of animation, like the student of the theater, finds his "study" to be an on-going activity, not confined to an eight hour day. Everything he sees in his waking hours, and often in his dreams might, at one time or another, be an inspiration for a character's action or attitude in a scene he's animating. An animator, like an actor, "must learn to think on any theme. He must observe people (and animals) and their behavior - try to understand their mentality."

Goals are realized through good "work habits." To know reality should be a goal for each of us, and to know it we must be observant - even a bit curious. And to keep our curiosity alive and our observation whet up we form a habit of becoming dedicated observers. We're aware of things going on around us, wherever we may be. We're analytical of how and why things work and happen. We read. We study good pictures. We listen. We discuss freely. We dream a little - all in an effort to know reality.

Another goal we may well strive for is to be more imaginative in our ideas - in our drawings - in our analysis, planning and execution of our animation. The goal again my be achieved through habit. Doesn't a total involvement in the demands our art makes on us come through a willingness and desire to discipline ourselves - to seek a constant improvement in the way we think and in the way we work?

Let's get into the habit of knowing. We wouldn't begin to build a room in a house without knowing the plan of the house - how the room must fit into the overall structure and of what use the room might be. In the same thought, why should we animate a scene or scenes, without knowing why, where and how the scene, or scenes, fit into a sequence. And how, why and where that sequence fits into the picture? So why not make a habit of fully understanding our scenes before we begin to animate - to know the reason for the scene, or scenes, being in a sequence - to check every possibility for entertainment - to be sure we're "getting in with both feet, not just getting our toes wet."

Dave Hand, our Supervising Director on SNOW WHITE and BAMBI, constantly admonished, yes, pleaded with us, to spend half our time studying and getting to know our scene's content and purpose and the other half animating it. He wanted us to develop the habit of knowing. In this vein someone once said: "When the scene is finished, if you have placed too much stress on unimportant things or not enough on important things, you have not planned the scene properly."

We constantly feel the need for such an approach and the quality of our work will be commensurate with the careful thought we give the scenes. Remember, "if we can't see it, we can't draw it." It's been said that all tedious research is worth one inspired moment. We all want that inspired moment, our inspired moment, to find it's place upon that screen in a Walt Disney animated picture!

Some animators like to have everything worked out for them - to be told what to do and how to do it - to have every "frame" on the exposure sheet "identified" with a part of an action. That may well minimize the effort to be put forth in their animation, but it will limit their learning processes. It will not strengthen their sense of responsibility. It will contribute little to the building of their creative abilities. It will not inspire a feeling of accomplishment. It will limit their total involvement, expression and contribution.

Why not sit back for a moment and review our "goals" and "work habits." Each day presents hours available for constructive thinking and doing. We might look at ourselves as much for the Studio's gain as for our own and check on how we are doing. Are our "habits" constructive? Are we approaching our responsibilities and opportunities with purpose? Is our animation as creative and entertaining as it could be?

We have discussed some basic "work habits" we should develop to get our best results on the screen. Our aim is entertainment and putting those "habits" into practice is vital to our success.
Two important thoughts haven't been mentioned though one, our interest, was suggested as we talked about attitude. Considering this further, we could each ask ourselves just how interested we are in the art of animation. Is it the best and most rewarding expression for our creative desires and ambitions? If we find it unexciting, lacking in challenge and only a means to a weekly pay check, then it, animation, will be only a day to day, unexpressive journey through a maze of mediocrity. As we go about our animation we cannot have our minds on many other subjects and expect success.

Last, but not least, is a concern about our footage output. Good planning and understanding of our scene's business and the most effective way to do it, knowing what the scene must say before we try to say it, will expedite our work, assuring more spontaneity and very probably an improved footage output.

Being artists we may find a little un-easiness in the words "attitude" and "footage count." We may consider them an encroachment upon "creativity", but they are not. They play a critical role in the act of getting our entertainment on the screen with an eye to the success of the picture. Our concern about "footage" shouldn't shackle our creative efforts to meet the demands of our scenes because when interest and spirit dominate the planning and performance in our work, things move more smoothly and our "footage" out-put can't do anything but improve. That fact has been proven again and again by many animators through the years.

When we know (and there's that word again) all about our scene - when we have planned well and are really excited about the action and the characters in it - when we are really a part of it and look to its entertainment possibilities - our footage out-put can't be anything but good. Try it, you'll like it!

We need to be flexible - not indecisive - but able to adjust - to be willing to view things in their true relationship to other things - to give and take as necessary - to respect the thoughts and contributions of others. As we do we gain more and more knowledge and understanding of our art. Too, we probably will discover an added enthusiasm within ourselves for the values and uses of the animated film.

Eric Larson

You Graduated... Now What? Kenny Roy.

2010-07-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

I read this on the latest Animation Mentor July 2010 Newsletter and thought that it was worth posting and referring back to. I've graduated almost a year ago now from Animation Mentor and have applied at numerous Animation Studios all over the country (and even over seas). A couple of months ago I became obsessed with finding a full time animation job (I'm still obsessed, but it's more harnessed now) it started to consume me and my animation suffered. Also when you hear about a lot of my peers landing jobs in the BIG-TIME studios, it's hard not getting discouraged or frustrated. Overall, I've done a good job, staying positive and using that as inspiration to keep on moving forward! I recently finished another animation for my demo reel and have already began work on my next one. Finding an animation job in this industry (especially in Denver) is a full time and complicated process.

For me, the keys to success are: 1. Stay positive 2. Stay inspired 3. Stay focused 4. Keep doing that in which you love 5. Don't compare yourself to anyone else. Getting ready for our second baby boy who's arriving later this year, a two year old, a pregnant wife, a house, and three jobs. Trying to balance life and animation now is harder then it's ever been for me, on top of that, trying to get a new version of my demo reel finished isn't making my load any lighter! I'm hoping to have my new demo reel done by the end of summer.

Anyway, enough about me. This is a great post and something to help keep things in perspective for all you animators fresh out of school, freaking out about not finding work in the industry that you've come to love. Thanks Mr. Roy and Animation Mentor.
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For those about to graduate, the strain of balancing work, home, and school is about to end. If you are a recent graduate, you know what I mean when I say there is a huge come-down from the pace and energy you've been putting out. Before either your idle hands drive you nuts or you work yourself into a frenzy, take these few tips for staying on track during this transition.

The first thing on every graduate's mind is the demo reel and getting a job. Most of you immediately begin working on your demo reels, polishing old and new work in order to get it up to production standards. There is a little bit of a tricky question here though: which animations should you polish and which ones should you leave out? If you worked hard in school, you will have created a workflow that produces final, polished animation. However, this workflow is completely different from the approach you had when you first started your courses. Meaning that if you are going to try to bring your very early work up to the polish of your latest piece, it is almost as if you are working on animation created by a totally different animator! They say that children born more than six years apart essentially grow up in different families. It is almost the same for your animation workflow. So before you consider taking out your first body mechanics shots (which might be quite dodgy), consider if your new workflow would allow you to create a better one from scratch in less time. Remember a few newsletters ago when I asked all students to work “smarter, not harder”? This goes along very strongly in that same train of thought. If you can whip out an amazing 100 frame body mechanics test in a few weeks, or spend all that time polishing a dodgy 250 frame test in the same time, then I would whole-heartedly suggest the former. Some animation just doesn't want to “accept” the polish you now apply with your well-rounded workflow, and trying to force it can revive old bad habits. Triage your animation before you start anything, and you may actually end up with a better reel and less work.

What if you've sent your reels out already and you're waiting for word? It's simple, stay animating but don't do TOO much! Just like students shouldn't always use every single frame of the limits stated in the assignment guidelines, graduates should choose animation tests that reflect the amount of time you will be able to put into them. It is better to accomplish a perfect 3-second dialogue shot in two weeks working nights than a 15-second dialogue shot in 10 weeks. Why? Because variety is the spice of life, and it motivates us, keeps us fresh, and keeps us interested. In 10 weeks if you have five new (albeit short) animations to show for your time, you'll have learned so much more about your workflow than if you struggled slowly on a monster of a piece. When selecting pieces to work on, I always recommend doing dialogue shots that allow for a lot of physicality. Give yourself ample opportunities to practice your full body mechanics as well as your performance in one go. Subtlety is important too, but don't do more than 1 out of 5 shots of characters sitting at a bar or behind a table. Stretch your imagination for ideas for interesting physical scenarios that will be interesting to watch and give you the best practice. Put your characters on skis, on a skateboard, hanging from a cliff, doing push-ups, jumping rope, washing their hands, tying their shoes, and other secondary actions that will shine from the detail you will put into them.

Lastly, reconnect! You've probably lost contact with some friends, and have neglected some family duties. It's OK – they probably understand because animation is so awesome, or they just love you that much. Also important is spending time to regain the hobbies that you've probably lost. It was these hobbies that had a meaningful role in your decision to pursue animation in the first place! Be it drawing, painting, theatre, photography, writing, collecting, crafts, playing or listening to music, improvisation, hiking, sports, or anything else that quickly disappeared when you first opened Maya, take it back up again. Having a hobby during this time will keep your mind off the unimportant things, like how many days it's been since you mailed your reel. And if you can keep up these hobbies, chances are you will continue to return to animation with fresh interest and perspective. No studio wants to hire people to whom animation is the only thing in life; those people burn out quickly. So if you had few hobbies before starting animation, find a few. The ones I listed above are a good start, but I would not count video games.

This can be an exciting time! Doing lots of personal work, sending out reels, reconnecting with friends, taking up old or new hobbies! Avoid letting the pressure get to you or thinking there should be no other focus than getting a job, if you can. Rather than looking at graduating as the beginning or the end of a journey, think of it as just another step in your career. And don't worry; if you preferred the fervent pace of school, long hours and some sleepless nights, you'll have plenty of that later, believe me!

Rock on,
Kenny

Organized Keyframing and How It Works ~Keith Lango

2010-05-26T14:13:00.000-07:00

Probably the best (or at least one of the best) posts out there on work flow for dialogue shots. This one is from Keith Lango. I can't believe that I haven't posted this one yet.... so, without further ado... Thank you so much for sharing all your great animation wisdom Mr. Lango!

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Intro:

December 2002 Update: Since first posting this material, I have adapted and grown in my own animation workflow and quality expectations. I wanted to reflect some of these lessons learned in this online article. Since it was first posted this article has been used in schools, universities and animation programs around the world. Additionally it has been noted as a resource for animators in animation studios and game companies and translated into a few foreign languages. In light of the responsibility of portraying information accurately, I have endeavored to update this article with the things I've learned since first writing it. You can see the updates in blue, as I've written here.

Over the past year or two folks have often asked me how I go about my animation. In recent months much
interest has arisen in various internet circles regarding a method of animation that is called "pose testing" or "pose to pose".
I recall first trying my hand at this method of animating about 2 years ago at the suggestion of Rick May, and have found it to
be a huge help in forcing me to approach animation in a more structured way. This has allowed me to produce more animation
that is consequently stronger and more defined than anything I had done previously. As the years have passed I've come across
others who have tried this way of working and adapted some of their ideas and techniques.
In my circle of influence we have our own little way of approaching animation, and we call it "pop-thru" animation.
Sometimes I'll refer to it as organized keyframing. In an effort to try and share some insights into this method of computer animation,
I write this article/tutorial.

Overview:

Intro

Disclaimer

A Little History & Basic Definition

The Project & My Motivation

First Things First

Second Things Second

What is Organized Keyframing?

The First Pass

The Second Pass

The Third Pass: Linear is as Linear Does

Fourth Round: Hey This Looks Sorta Like Animation!

Offsetting Keys

Kill Mr. Roboto!

F-Curves, Away!

The Final Result (well, final enough anyway)

Comparison Shopping

Special Thanks

About the Author

Return to Keithlango.Com

Disclaimer:

This is not "my idea".
Many other folks have had a hand in the maturation of this method. The techniques I describe here are merely my adaptation of this approach.
And this technique is always evolving. I am absolutely positive that something I say here will not sit well with some animators.
Which is fine. This is NOT an effort to say that this is the ONLY way to animate in 3d, but it is certainly a USEFUL way to animate in 3d.
If I suggest something that you think is wrong or in error, or is a 'cheat' or sloppy, then please feel free to send me an e-mail outlining
your thoughts. I'm still learning this craft we call animation, and I'm more than happy to hear other's thoughts on the subject.

Update: (2002) If you want to take your animation to an even higher level, you're going to have to do more than just the straight forward steps outlined in this article. The techniques employed here will yield OK results for TV or video quality work. For something along the lines of feature film level of work, your deadlines will allow you to spend more time in the final massaging of your motion, as well as exploring different possibilities with offsetting the motion of certain parts of your character. Not every body part moves the same speed, so the simplistic offsets and breakdowns employed in this article are going to leave you short of the goal in something as highly defined as feature film quality animation. So while this article does include some useful techniques, it is by no means the end of the conversation when it comes to producing high quality animation.

A Little History & A Basic Definition:

There has long been two general schools of approaching animation. Straight ahead and pose to pose. Straight ahead is
what it sounds like: the animator just charges in and starts animating in a very stream of consciousness sort of way.
This results in some genuinely inspired animation that flows extremely well. It also ends up in alot of dead ends and wasted effort when
the animator realizes he's painted himself into a corner. Pose to pose animation is also much as it sounds,
The animator picks some seminal poses that, when timed correctly, capture the energy and direction of the shot.
The animator then will go and create these poses and hit the timings, working to deliver the shot with structure.
This often times ends up with some of the most powerful animation with very strong poses and tight timing, distilling
the animation down to the very core of it's being. It also often ends up looking stiff and mechanical and very stilted
when the animator isn't careful to think about keeping things alive.

Update: (2002) It needs to be said that the single greatest challenge to employing a pose-to-pose method as tightly as it is outlined in this article is that of keeping things from being too stiff. One of the greatest techniques for combating this stiffness is to break down your character's motion on an object by object basis. Starting from the hips out (the age old "layers" method) you need to look at your motion for arcs, consistency, hitches, glitches, force etc. By focusing on a single body part at a time, you force yourself to scrutinize every moving part of the body in order to work out all the kinks that a simplistic use of the pose-to-pose method can introduce. The second biggest challenge introduced by a simplistic use of the pose-to-pose methodology is a sense of everything hitting at the same time, or evenness. Simply offsetting the left arm a frame from the right does not significantly address the evenness issue. Instead you need to think more about what emphasis you want to place on which particular body part. It may serve the animation best to have a particular arm hit 12 frames before the rest of the body settles into a pose. Or it may serve it best to have the arm trail the rest by 18 frames. Or perhaps you want the head to lead the transition into a new pose and will start the head turning a good 10 frames before the torso follows. Or whatever. You have to think about the motion in a broader context than simply hitting a pose. Often the most powerful idea in animation is to choose a point of emphasis. Whatever doesn't ride along with the rest of the body is going to call attention to itself, and that is a very powerful technique that wasn't discussed in the original format of this article. Which is why I feel the need to address it here in an update.

In CGI animation, often times folks fall into two camps: realistic or "creature" animation and cartoony animation. Pose to pose, by it's
strong nature, lends itself very well to cartoony animation, and straight ahead, due to it's fluidity lends itself very well to creature
animation. But it would be a crime to say that there the boundaries lie and never shall they be violated. There's room for using a
pose to pose approach in realistic animation, as long as the animator is careful to loosen things up enough in the end.
And straight ahead animation works wonderfully for cartoons. Just watch some older Disney work to see this.

The term pop-thru is a stop-motion term that some of us have borrowed in CG. In stop-mo, there's not much of an "undo" feature,
so the animator would often do a quick 'pop-thru' of their shot to get a sense for pose and timing. They may do this a few times,
gradually revising their work until they felt they had the performance down fairly well. Then they'd go ahead and animate their
shot with the puppet. In CG we're looking at doing things in a similar way. But the beauty of doing popThru in CG is that we don't
need to treat these poses as disposable. Rather, we can use them as building blocks for our whole work, adding to them as we go
until we at last have our animation.

The Project and My Motivation:

Here is the final version of the animation that we'll be studying after about 20 hours of work, including lipSync.

(moses08_final.avi; indeo3.2; cinepak avi; 2mb)

The clip is about 8.4 seconds long. That projects out to nearly 17 seconds of halfway decent quality animation per week.
And that's one of my main areas of focus. The adage is true, The best animation you do is the one you finish.
At work we have a production quota of 18.5 seconds of approved animation each week. For comparison our good friends
working on feature films often have quotas ranging from 4-9 seconds per week. In short, we needed to develop a way
for myself and our team of animators to create alot of good footage quickly. Additionally we wanted to allow the director
the opportunity to see the thrust of the animation as soon as possible so as to reduce the number of fixes
needed after the animation has been submitted for approval. Thus the main goals of this pop-thru method are to

animate quality footage as quickly as possible (it is a business afterall)
provide the director a look at the animation as early as possible.
A side benefit is the highly organized structure of the keyframe data, which I will detail later. Trust me, it's a huge help.

First Things First:

It stands to reason that if you're going to use the "pose to pose" method, you need some poses.
Click the thumbnail for a full size look at some thumbnail sketches I did before starting the animation.

jpeg

There's some thought that your thumbs need to be locked down tight. That may or may not be true. I find it's good to not get too
attached to my thumbs, but to use thumb sketching as a stage of exploration. I'm not looking to define my animation exactly just yet.
What I am looking to do is explore different poses and different pose combinations. It's alot quicker to explore things in pencil
than on the box. But I came up as a CGI animator. I have no notions about the computer being an inferior animation tool.
So while I'll explore on paper, I also allow myself freedom to not settle on things until I get to the computer.
I think the computer can be a valid place for structured, focused exploration. It is, afterall, only a very expensive pencil.
Animators who don't feel comfy on the box may disagree. That's OK. God still loves you and I'm trying my best to. :o)

An interesting practice in some 2d animation circles is to work through your thumbs, and then put the thumbs away
in a drawer and never refer to them again. The main thinking behind this is to keep yourself from becoming a slave of your thumbs,
cutting off those serendipitous gems that arise when the juices are flowing while you're hip deep in the performance.
It's this kind of thinking that I tend to follow when doing my thumbs. Thumbs are great servants, but hard masters.

Anyhow, you can see how I broke down the dialog trying to find the energy of the delivery, marking out breaks. Then I just tried a
bunch of different things seeing what I liked and didn't like. Then I kinda set that page aside and got on the box to see what
worked best in the situation I was in.

Second Things Second:

Here's a quick look at my animation set up using A/W Maya. I like to be able to have a window to toodle around in,
as well as a locked down "look through the camera" view so I can check my arcs,
lines of action and silhouettes. And I'm also a big fan of the dope sheet.

(workflow.jpg)

A few words about the dopesheet....

While I came up as a CGI animator, my training has had a pretty strong traditional bent. I like the clarity of one frame=one drawing
with key drawings defining what the inbetweens will do. The dopesheet is a great way to see just keyframes for objects.
No fCurves or channel curves to deal with. I'm looking at just keys and time.
This is a key component (pun intended) of what I like to call organized keyframing.

What is Organized Keyframing?

Just what it sounds like. The goal is to arrange all your keys in an easy to edit, easy to read fashion.
The one draw back of straight ahead animation is that keys tend to end up all over the place. As time goes by and the work progresses,
the keyframes get messier and messier to deal with. Need to shuffle a pose at the director's request? Fine. But which keys define that pose?
What if you did fCurve bias editing to get that particular ease in that he liked? Now the difficulty lies in finding the keys
and editing the fcurves again. With popThru pose to pose, much of this is difficulty is bypassed.

The First Pass:

Have a look at this first pass popThru animation.

(moses01_pop.avi; indeo3.2, cinepak, 900k)

This is where I settled on the basic poses that I wanted for this animation. I had my fCurves with zero inbetweening.
In Maya it's called a stepped key. In Hash it's a held key. Most programs have this feature. It will hold the keyframe
all the way until the next keyframe, where it 'pops" to the new pose in one frame. Thus the name "pop-thru animation".
There's no messy or ugly inbetweening to deal with just yet. Right here, in this simple popping pose test I know the basic
components of my animation right up front. Pose and timing. I can show this to my director and get immediate feedback about
my pose choices and my timing. He can tell me if he likes where things are headed or not. He can tell me if the acting
choices are what he wants or not. Right here, in this very first look on the computer, are the building blocks of my entire animation,
all achieved within a few hours of work.

Look at this screen grab of the dopeSheet....

(dopeSheet.jpg)

Notice that all the control objects for my character are keyed ALL ON THE SAME FRAME. See how organized it is? I'm treating each
keyframe as a piece of paper. In traditional animation for each keyframe you draw the whole character, so I pose the whole character here.
Nice and easy to edit the keys around if I or the director feel an action is happening a little too slow or fast. Or if a particular pose
needs revision, I can do it all at once and key everything. By keeping everything very organized I can quickly make changes without having
to re-interpret my previous work. Again, we're looking at two main things here: Pose and timing. Pose and timing are KING.
Every other aspect of animation is secondary to pose and timing. No amount of follow through or overlap or anti-twinning or secondary action
or fancy flesh simulation and dynamic fat jiggling is going to overcome bad poses and poor timing. With pose and timing you convey emotion,
weight, energy, power- the very core of animation is locked up in pose and timing.
So until we're happy with these two things, we don't do anything else.

(pop02_Dope.jpg)

The Second Pass:

Update: (2002) It's at this point that I wish to offer an alternative methodology than what was originally discussed in this article from this point forward. Originally I discussed how you would go from the initial pose timing to adding things like breakdowns and anticipations and moving holds and the like. While that is still a viable method, it has it's difficulties which I will address later. An alternative way to proceed from this point is to mix metaphors. Start pose-to-pose, then switch to straight ahead. Choose your poses strongly at the outset, block them in for timing purposes to hit whatever accents you deem as worthy of the emphasis. Then rather than blocking in your anticipations, breakdowns overlaps and moving holds in an "all or nothing" fashion as originally outlined in the article below, you switch to a straight ahead mindset. Now your poses and their timing can still be used as an early sign off for your director and for yourself, but you then work from the beginning of your shot in a straight ahead fashion to reach those pose milestones. How you get there is open to the fluidity and freedom of interpretation that straight ahead allows for, but your animation still has definition, direction and an overarching sense of design to it. This combination of work flows is a powerful technique that can serve your work in immensely. I offer it here as a possible alternative workflow that may better suit the way some people prefer to work.

Now, the first crack at my pop-thru was pretty rough. There's a few things lacking. Like breakdowns on transitions, and defining
the inbetween arcs. Since again I've got a pretty well established "traditional" brain, I can think of my breakdowns and arcs
without having to see the tweens yet. Here's the second preview animation with some of these things added.

(moses02_popedited.avi, indeo3.2; cinepak; 1000k)

Notice there's a little more definition to the action. The arm sweeps have some arc, the end part where he says "Ten! Ten commandments!"
has some anticipation and transfer breakdown keys added. Also, I've blocked out my moving holds. I do this by generally estimating
how long I want a movement to take. Again, I add these new keys with just held frames with zero inbetweening by the computer.
Already we're starting to see how things are fleshing out very quickly.

Sidebar on How To PopThru Your Moving Holds:

Let's say the a character hits a pose on frame 10 and from my first pop thru I find that I like that he hits his next pose on frame 24.
There's 14 frames in there between these 2 poses. Now I know I want that action where he hits pose 24 to be fairly quick- let's say 5 frames.
So I count back 5 frames from 24 and know that the END of my hold for the pose on frame 10 will occur on frame 19.
(read that again slowly if you didn't get it.)
I could just dupe the frame 10 key at 19 to get the boundary of my hold established, and in my first pass I usually will.
But in this second pass I went a little further. I slightly adjusted the pose, settling into it. This is called a moving hold.
Most computer animators are familiar with the concept of a moving hold. When a CG character stops dead and doesn't move,
it just dies for some reason. So we have the pose move slightly as it's held for the duration.
So as a matter of course I add that in my second popThru pass, so I can get a better feel for how fast or slow my transition moves are.

The Third Pass: Linear is as Linear Does

Now that I've defined my poses and timing even more in my second popThru pass, adding arc and transition breakdowns as well as defining
my moving holds, I'm ready to see what the computer thinks about it. So in my fcurve editor (graph editor in Maya-speak) I change all
my keyframes to have a linear interpolation. This means there's no ease in or ease out from keys, it's just going from one to the next
in a straight fashion. Computers loves this phase. It feels so...CG!

Here's a look at the above animation switched to linear....

(moses03_linear.avi; indeo3.2, cinepak, 2mb)

Not bad, but certainly not good either. Here I can see a few things that I didn't see in my pop-thrus. One being the transition on
"has given unto you" is way too slow. The second being the hand rotations are pretty ugly and the arcs need more definition in places.
There's also a few little things about the pose timings that I'd like to adjust, especially in the part where he looks down at the
dropped tablet. That moving hold moves a bit too much. So I make a note of every thing I want to fix and I fix it.
This is a good habit to get into: find everything wrong that you can, note it and fix it. THEN do another preview.
The temptation is to twiddle each thing in detail and preview every fix as you're making it. But that can just eat your day
away waiting for preview animations trying to fix one little thing instead of fixing them all at once,
then previewing and working in more detail afterwards.

So anyhow, here's a look at some of the things I did to tighten stuff up after seeing my first linear pass...

jpeg

Fourth Round: Hey, this looks sorta like animation!

Here's my next pass after cleaning up some of the junk my first linear pass revealed to my eyes...

(moses04_LinearCleanUp.avi; cinepak, 2mb)

At this point I've pretty well nailed the core of my animation. I like the poses, I like the speed of the transitions, I like the arcs, the breakdowns.
Generally I'm ready to start loosening things up.

Remember I mentioned earlier on that pose to pose animation can tend to look stiff and robotic? Well, this fourth pass is just that:
good timing, good poses, but a little dead, a little stiff. Here's where the rest of the '12 rules" comes into play (or not).
We need to loosen things up a bit, to let it breathe and live some more.

Now lots of folks have different ways to loosen up their work. I'll share what seems to work for me.
It helps me put out good animation at a pretty decent clip (which my employer appreciates, and my kids benefit from.
After all, I gotta make a living, and being good AND fast is a nice combo in a tough animation market). I have some shortcuts and
tricks that I use that may make some animators gasp in horror. That's cool. Whatever works for you.
Having said that, here's some things I like to do...

Offsetting Keys:

Update (September 2006):
I no longer employ the method outlined below for achieving good, clean overlapping motion in my animation. I leave it here to preserve the historical context of the original article, but a far superior method of achieving offsets and overlapping motion in your animation is fully described in another free web tutorial entitled Breakdowns Can Be Such a Drag. Go read it for a better solution.

Update (2002): As I noted above, the simplistic means of keyframe offsets as explained originally in this article are insufficient to handle the area of emphasizing a particular aspect of your animation. While this step does loosen up some movements, to really get a greater sense of fluidity to your motion you're gonna have to dig a little deeper and harder to find the right combination of offsets and eventually keyframe deletions. With that in mind, the original technique outlined below is good for that "gotta get it done" quality of animation that a lot of us are paid to produce.

One nice and easy way to get some loosening up is to not have everything hit on the same frame, which is contrary to everything I have said so far.
But that organization served it's purpose and now it's time to back off from that rigidity. Up to this point, we have hit our poses solid.
Every part of the body comes to hit the pose at the same time. That's not natural. So we need to shuffle things a bit. Here's a look at some dopeSheet
screen grabs that show how I like to do this...

jpeg

I'll grant you that my approach is a bit formulaic, but again, we're working outwards toward our goal, from organized structure at
first into disorganized life in the end. So for offsets I'll shuffle my head from my spine and my spine from my hips to have the
torso of the body sorta flow into a pose. Depending if I want the motion to lead with the hips or the head will determine which
way I'll offset my keys. Sometimes I'll shuffle some keys and things will look awkward for a certain pose or transition.
That's OK, I can shuffle them back for that spot. It's a cheap way to get rid of that robotic feel of pose to pose.
I'll offset the hand's rotation to occur a frame after the hand hits in place. Now this is assuming an IK arm set up (as I used here).
Since the hand controls where the arm will swing as well as the hand rotation, it's a good idea to break this up so it looks
less like a marionette being pulled by the wrists. Alot of folks don't like using IK arms. I used to hate 'em, but got used to
making them look OK after some work. I know Rick May is a fan of the IK arm, for those keeping score at home. As far as I can
tell the key to having IK arms look decent seems to be in good breakdowns, careful observation of arcs and offsetting hand rotations
from IK handle translation. If I were using an FK arm, I'd offset the lower arm a frame from the upper arm and the hand a
frame from the lower arm, allowing the arm to have a sort of unfolding overlap, the "successive breaking of joints" kind of feel.
Again, with IK I'll do it with breakdowns and offsets. In general, anyways. Again, where it looked funky
I'd step back and not do it there. These are just cheats, not rules. The only rule is the animation: does it look good?
If yes, then the cheat is good. If not, then the cheat is evil.

Oh, one more thing, I offset both arm animations to get rid of twinning in my pose hits. Just in case anybody cares.

Here's what it looks like after all that offsetting and shuffling....

(moses05_offset.avi; cinepak, 2mb)

Smoother, but not quite loose enough for what I'd like this to be. By the way, this is about as loose as it gets for us at work.
After this I'd be ready to run a smoothed fcurve spline filter on the curves and be on to lipsync and grabbing my next assignment.
The style of our show is pretty tight, which fits the deadlines. For my own stuff at home I sometimes like to explore loosening
things up a bit more.

Kill Mr. Roboto!

Here's where things get a little less formulaic for me and I start to rely on experience and a good eye for animation. The deleting of keys.

Many a young animator struggles with having too many keys. Especially if they're just going straight ahead. After awhile they
don't know what they're looking at anymore (at least I didn't back then). The solution for me was to key smartly. But in the pose to pose
world, the problem is it can be TOO organized, things can be too structured. What's needed is some good old fashioned editing.

I try and look at the spine mostly. I found that alot of the rigidness in my work comes from the spine being too tight.
So I'll go in there and shuffle things around, deleting keys and some breakdowns here and there. I'll also try having
a lower spine control not settle into the pose until almost near the end of the hold. Sometimes I'll have the head take
longer, or somesuch. This is the massaging part of animation that is very difficult to define as a step or a process.
So here's a look at a close up of the dope sheet and the corresponding animation change that goes with the edit.

jpeg

moses06_deleteSmooth.avi, cinepak, 400k

It's a very subtle effect, but when you do this for the whole shot, it really starts to loosen things up and defeating that robotic feel.
And remember, this is still all with linear keyframes. There's no ease in or ease out from key to key.
The plus side of this is that when the time comes to start adding ease in and out by switching the fCurves over to spline
interpolation and then filtering the tangencies, you're not in for any surprises. Oh, one last thing here: I took the time to
really tweak the whole hip/weight transfer flow in the part where he kicks the fallen tablet out of the way. This again is
something that you just need to use your animator's eye to spot and fix. This is the place where I try to address anything
that really needs fixing, before going into spline curves.

F-Curves, away!

Now I'm ready to switch the fCurves from straight linear interpolation to a spline interpolation with edited/filtered curve tangencies at the keyframes.
Here's a quickie peek at the curves for one control object...

jpeg

What this is going to do is really smooth out alot of the remaining jerkiness of the animation. Pose hits have ease to them,
transition breakdowns have some flavor besides straight through. There's no surprises here, I'm not really adding anything
new, but I'm taking what I already have and applying this neat smoothing to it all. It's like icing on an already pretty
tasty cake. The trick is to not violate the extremes as they have been defined already. Spline interpolation by default
tends to overshoot the holds, really making things sloppy. So I try and keep the holds pretty tight with a minimum of overshoot,
while the keys in the middle transition areas are pretty smooth. Now if I wanted, I could go through each control object and
delete select keys in the middle of curve transitions to make things smoother, and I may yet do that for this piece. Generally
if I want to loosen things up even more I'll do it in the fCurve editor by deleting some frames along the curve that are
hitching the motion a little bit.
Still, if you want the absolute best animation you can get, then that's a step worth taking in my opinion. Like I said,
I didn't do that for this piece as it is seen here.

Update: (2002) The statement directly above is especially true when you want to get even finer, more natural motion. In taking your work from serviceable to excellent in quality, you're going to spend at least half your time in the finessing of the keys and curves. Yes you can produce OK animation by doing everything up to this point, but you'll be leaving the work short of all it can be by not going the final mile. You can expect to spend 50% of your time on the last 15% of the animation to bring it to a level of excellence. Now if your producer/employer states that the budget doesn't support that level of quality, then you'll have to leave that undone and live with what the preceding efforts give you as far as results. But for your own work at home or for your portfolio and personal growth I highly recommend spending the time it takes to generate the absolute best animation you're capable of. Employing that level of discipline will best serve you in the end.

Here's the motion with the spline ease curve interpolation...

moses07_spline.avi, cinepak, 2mb

The animation of the body is pretty much done here. Like I said, I could go in and tweak it more. Since this is a personal
clip and not for work, I may. That's the nice thing about personal pieces, no deadlines and no quotas. Well, sometimes no
deadlines. I did 3.25 minutes of animation in 7 weeks for my short film "Lunch".
As you can see, THAT had a deadline and this method helped me meet it. :o)

The Final Result (well, final enough anyway)

And one last look at the final with lipsync and eye/facial animation....

moses08_finalLipSynced.avi

I'd go into the eye and lipsync animation, but that's another subject in and of itself. Suffice it to say, there's some little
cheats I use there as well, but nothing earth shattering.

Comparison Shopping

For the ultra curious, I have made a side by side comparison of the preview animations as they progressed. The way it works is this:

pop1 vs. pop2

pop2 vs. Linear

Linear vs. Cleaned Up Linear

Cleaned Up Linear vs. Linear Offset

Linear Offset vs. Splined Curves

Splined Curves vs. Final Animation

mosesProgress.avi (DivX required)

So there you have it, one guy's way of working through animation. As stated earlier, I'd welcome any feedback or discussion.
Sharing techniques and methods can only help us all. I don't pretend to be the world's greatest animator, nor to impose that
my way is the right way. But folks have expressed interest and I figured it couldn't hurt to open up my brain and share some
of how I work to get my job done and still try and make halfway decent looking stuff.

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to go through all of this.

Update: (2002) I've since taken some time to bring this clip more in line with some of the improvements I have mentioned in my updates. To view this animation with even more time spent in finessing it, click here. It's better, but still not probably what I would call great or excellent.

Special Thanks:

To those who's feedback has made my stuff better through the years:
Mike Comet, Mark Behm, Rob Dollase, Ron Smith, Tim Lannon, Rick May, Chris Bailey, Victor Navone, Doug Dooley,
Ethan Hurd, Angie Jones, Steve Talkowski, John Goodman, Julian Love, Bear Weiter, Wes Houghton and a host of
others I'm probably forgetting. Thanks also to my wife Kim, bless her heart she puts up with me and this silly
idea of being an animator for a living. Poor girl could have married a dentist....

About the author:
Keith Lango is an assistant director/animation director for the "3-2-1 Penguins!" children's video series
produced by Big Idea Productions in Chicago, IL. Keith has also produced/directed a number of award winning short films
and has been an avid student of the art, craft and profession of animation since 1993.
He also hopes to age well like a fine cheese.

Go back to keithlango.com

8 Basic Mouth Positions ~George Maestri

2010-05-12T13:27:00.001-07:00

Hey everybody! Well, it's been a while since I last posted something and thought I would add this little nugget about lip syncing. I know, you're probably saying "man, is all he posts is stuff to do with lip sync"... true, but I think it's very important, not every shot you do is going to be totally crazy with super cartoony animation or action packed with all sorts of dynamic poses. Some acting shots are very subtle and serious... You have to rely on the lip sync and facial animation to make it work, or else you're just a dead duck sitting in the water on a cold and lonely fall day (not sure what that means, but you get the idea).

It's a bit lengthy, but the stuff he mentions is invaluable, some of it may be something you already, but there may be something new... thanks for the insights Mr. Maestri

___________________________________________________________

During normal speech, dozens of different mouth shapes are made. Animators usually boil these down to a handful of standard shapes. George Maestri covers the eight basic mouth positions necessary for effective dialogue animation. George Maestri is the author of several animation books from New Riders Publishing, including [Digital] Character Animation 2, Volume I and [Digital] Character Animation 2, Volume II. He is also the series editor for New Riders' [Digital] series of books, including [Digital] Lighting and Rendering and [Digital] Texturing and Painting.

Animating lip sync can really frighten the beginning animator, and rightly so because it is one of the most difficult techniques for an animator to master. Live-action people have it easy; they just point the cameras at the actors and ask them to speak.

Facial animation is a lot more than just moving the mouth. When a character speaks dialogue, the shape and position of the mouth is perhaps 10–20% of the total effect. Much more important to the audience is the movement of the body and head, as well as the expression in the face and eyes. For the purposes of this article, however, we will start the process with the mouth.

The Eight Basic Mouth Positions

You must first understand how the mouth moves when it speaks. Dozens of different mouth shapes are made during the course of normal speech. Animators usually boil these down to a handful of standard shapes that are used repeatedly. Depending on the style of animation, some animators get away with as few as three or four shapes, and some may use dozens. For most situations, you can get away with approximately eight basic mouth positions. These eight positions usually provide adequate coverage and give you the ability to animate most dialogue effectively.

As Figure 1 shows, Position A is the closed mouth used for consonants made by the lips, specifically the M, B, and P sounds. Typically this can be made by pushing the open jaw pose into negative territory to close the mouth. In this position, the lips are usually their normal width. For added realism, you could mix in an additional shape, to get the lips slightly pursed, for sounds following an "ooo" sound, as in the word room.

Figure 1 Position A is the closed mouth used for consonants made by the lips, specifically the M, B, and P sounds.

Position B, shown in Figure 2, has the mouth open with the teeth closed. This position is a common shape and is used for consonants made within the mouth, specifically sounds made by C, D, G, K, N, R, S, TH, Y, and Z. All these sounds can also be made with the teeth slightly open, particularly in fast speech.

Figure 2 Position B has the mouth open with the teeth closed.

Position C, shown in Figure 3, is used for the wide-open vowels, such as A and I. It is essentially the same as the fundamental shape for an open jaw.

Figure 3 Position C is used for the wide-open vowels, such as A and I.

As Figure 4 shows, Position D is used primarily for the vowel E, but it can also be used on occasion for C, K, or N during fast speech.

Figure 4 Position D is used primarily for the vowel E, but it can also be used for C, K, or N during fast speech.

Position E has the mouth wide open in an elliptical shape, as shown in Figure 5. This is the position used for the vowel O, as in the word flow. It is created by mixing together an open jaw and the "oooh" sound. Sometimes, particularly when the sound is at the end of a word, you can overlap this shape with the one in Position F to close the mouth.

Figure 5 Position E has the mouth wide open in an elliptical shape

Position E is the position used for the vowel O, as in the word flow. Position F, shown in Figure 6, has the mouth smaller but more pursed. Position F is used for the "oooo" sound, as in food, and for the vowel U. It is one of the fundamental mouth shapes.

Figure 6 Position F is used for the "oooo" sound, as in food

Figure 7 shows Position G, which has the mouth wide open with the tongue against the teeth. This position is reserved for the letter L. It can also be used for D or TH sounds, particularly when preceded by A or I. It is essentially an open jaw with the tongue moved up against the top teeth. If the speech is particularly rapid, this shape may not be necessary, and you can substitute Position B.

Figure 7 Position G has the mouth wide open with the tongue against the teeth

Position G is reserved for the letter L. It can also be used for D or TH sounds Position H, shown in Figure 8, has the bottom lip tucked under the teeth to make the sound of the letters F or V. In highly pronounced speech, this shape is necessary, but the shape could also be replaced with Position B for more casual or rapid speech. This shape is one of the extra shapes modeled previously.

Figure 8 Position H has the bottom lip tucked under the teeth to make the sound of the letters F or V.

(apparently some of page 2 went missing, sorry)

Reading the Track

Now that you understand the basic mouth positions, it's time to break down the track. If you have animator's exposure sheet paper, use it. Otherwise, get a pad of lined paper on which to write your track, using one line per frame. (If you prefer, you can create a spreadsheet for this purpose and do it all digitally.) Load the dialogue into a sound-editing program.

Match your sound-editing program's timebase to the timebase that you're animating—30, 25, or 24 frames per second, for example. After your timebase is set, selecting a snippet of dialogue should enable you to listen to the snippet and read its exact length on the editor's data window. The visual readout of the dialogue gives you clues as to where the words start and stop. Work your way through the track and write down each phoneme as it occurs on your exposure sheet, frame by frame.

Some packages give you the capability to play back audio in sync with the animation. This feature is particularly helpful because you may be able to skip the step of reading the track and simply eyeball the sync. However, this will not be as accurate as a frame-by-frame read.

Animating Dialogue

Once the track is read, you're ready to begin animating the dialogue. Dialogue is slightly different from lip sync because lip sync simply involves the lips. Dialogue, however, involves the whole character. When animating characters, be sure to get the character's entire body into the acting.

With the body so important to dialogue, one of the questions that you might have is whether to animate the mouth or the body first. Some animators simply do the mouth first, just to get the tedious task out of the way. It also is easier to get the mouth animated first on a still head rather than one that is moving. Other animators like to concentrate on the body first and then get the mouth. Both approaches work equally as well, and because you can always go back and tweak the body and the lips independently, the line between the two methods is pretty much a gray area.

Animating the Mouth

If the track was read properly, the phonemes and their location are pretty much known. In the track we just read, for example, we might know that there is a gasp at Frame 22 and the word Oh at Frame 42. One important trick that will work to your benefit is to always try to open the mouth quickly and close it slowly.

Vowels

Vowels are those points in speech where the mouth opens. When animating a vowel, you need two positions. The first position is the accent pose, when the vowel is first uttered. The second position is the cushion pose, which happens toward the middle to the end of the vowel sound. The accent usually has the mouth open wider than the cushion. One good way to do this is to animate the jaw so that it closes slightly as the vowel progresses. For fast vowels of only two frames, this may not be much of an issue, but this rule applies to anything above four frames.

Consonants

Consonants are those points where the mouth closes. With the possible exception of a long M, F, or V sound, most consonants are only a few frames in length; some can be less than one frame long. With this in mind, make sure that you leave each position on the screen long enough for the audience to read them. Consonants must be on the screen for at least two frames to be read. If the consonant is too short, steal time from a vowel or combine two consonants into one.

Eyes and Dialogue

Once the basic lip sync is accomplished, the eyes are next on the list. When animating eyes with dialogue, be sure you understand where the character needs to be looking. Ask yourself the question, "Who is the character talking to?" Try to keep the eyes focused on the subject at hand.

Head Motion and Dialogue

The head moves quite a bit when people talk. The head will bob, nod, and shake to emphasize certain words in a line of dialogue. When speaking loud sounds, the head usually raises to help open the throat. This is helpful when animating the loud sounds or accents in speech.

When animating an accent where the head raises up, it is always a good idea to anticipate the motion by lowering the head three or four frames before the accent and then popping up the head on the accented syllable. This is also known as a head bob and is usually accompanied by a blink. To get more action into the head bob, you can also get the body into the action. As the head moves down in anticipation of the accent, raise the shoulders a bit. As the head pops up, lower the shoulders.

Body Language and Dialogue

When talking, many people use their hands to clarify and emphasize the major points of their speech. Getting this part of the animation correct is a lesson in acting. If you want to see how not to animate, watch some really nervous or first-time actors. They usually are very self-conscious, stuff their hands in their pockets, wring them nervously, or hang their hands loose at their sides.

In real life, body language precedes the dialogue by anywhere from a few frames to as many as 20. Generally, a slow, dimwitted character has more time between his gestures and his dialogue than a sharp, quick character. Speedy Gonzales has considerably less of a lead time on his gestures than Forrest Gump. Someone giving a long, boring speech will be much slower than a fire-and-brimstone evangelist.

You should also make an effort to ensure that your gestures fit the dialogue smoothly. The first gesture every animator learns is the ubiquitous finger point for emphasis, followed soon after by the fist pounding into the palm. These gestures certainly have their place, but within a much larger palette. Simply watching people in their natural habitat is always your best reference.

"FINAL" toughts on refining and polishing a shot ~Malcon Pierce

2010-04-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

This is a post I'll be referring to often. I feel with learning animation, there's sooooo much to absorb and it takes time. Some longer than others, but if you have the passion and drive you'll eventually become a great animator! One thing that will make your work shine is how much time you invest polishing. Not only that, but know what to polish and what to look for when you're polishing. One of the alumnus from Animation Mentor is excelling in the animation industry. He currently is working at Disney, prior to Disney he worked at Blue Sky on Ice Age 3. The one thing about his work that has always stood out to me is the level of detail in his polish. He produces gorgeous animation and I really enjoy the work he creates. Malcon Pierce has some great incites on refining and polishing your work... thanks for sharing your awesome knowledge on polishing Mr. Pierce.
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My thought process when I’m refining and polishing animation.

With 3D animation today, we as animators are able to reach an entirely new level of performance because of the ability to control the most subtle of details, tiniest performance quirks, and it is all visible at 24 animated frames a second. Now with films being released in IMAX, and then on Blue Ray high def DVD, the level of polish in an animated shot should be pushed to the highest mark possible. I can’t stress how important it is for an animator to take charge of his or her shot, and make sure that it is held to the highest level of the animators abilities.

Polishing an animation is my favorite part of the process. This usually means that your nearly finished with the animation. Now its time to relax because the performance is at the right place, and now it only needs refining. This is the time to really dig deep and make sure you can be proud of every frame of animation. Taking this extra care with your shot will make your shots exceptional, and really show a deeper skill set.

These are some things I think about when I’m going about refining and polishing my shot.

I make sure I have a solid foundation to work with.

-Am I hitting all the right beats clearly.

-Is my phrasing helping my shot move forward.

-If there is dialogue, is it leading to a point, is it stagnant or boring?

-Are the physics in the shot working and believable.

I make sure the actions are smooth (if they need to be) and there are no hitches in the shot.

-I’ll track the nose through the shot to make sure the arcs are smooth.

-Depending on the action and what Is moving I’ll track all the arcs of the movement. starting with the base of the movement and working my way out from that. So the elbow, then wrist, and fingers, so on and so on.

-Along with tracking the arcs I’ll check my spacing to make sure there are no hitches in the spacing aswell. Sometimes you can have a clean arc, but if the spacing is messed up it will still read as a hitch.

-I’ll plus all my ease ins and outs to make sure there are no hits or floatyness.

Then I’ll do a facial pass.

-I’ll make sure my facial poses are appealing. I’ll usually start with the eyes, and brows since they are somewhat connected to each other. I’ll make sure all the lid shapes are appealing, and work with the brows.

-Make sure I have asymmetry in the face. I treat the brows and mouth like the shoulders, and hips. I offset them to each other when I can to keep the expressions more dynamic.

-I’ll make sure all my mouth shapes are clear but interesting. I usually off-center the mouth shapes to give a little more asymmetry and organic-ness to the expression.

-Animation wise, I track the corners of the mouth to make sure they’re traveling in arcs, and not hitting walls etc. This makes a huge difference in the readability in the lip sync.

Final Polish

-I’ll usually start to offset things in the face. With the brows, in most cases I’ll have them lead when the eyes are opening, and drag when they are closing. Sort of like they are pulling the eyes open, or the eyes are pulling the brows down when they close. Offsetting them slightly helps get a more organic feeling to the face. I’ll also lead with the inside of the brow when bringing them down, and the outside when raising them. This will also break things up. Be careful though so that you down get wavy brows. Sometimes its only a matter of sliding the curves over half a frame to get the feeling you need.

-I’ll go through all my blinks and make sure I don’t lose the pupil. I’ll also add a compression frame on the closed position so that you read that upper lid pushing down on the lower lid. Sometimes I’ll also lead or drag one side of the lid or the other to help get a more fleshy feeling.

-eye darts! Usually this is the last thing I’ll do. I’ll add eye darts when I feel they should be. I usually do eye darts on two frames. The first frame favoring the end position about 60-80% or so. This keeps them from feeling to clicky. I’ll also add the lower and upper lids following the eye dart. I usually do this in three frames. I really make sure the lids follow the eye dart so the eye ball feels connected with the lids.

-Sometimes I’ll copy the jaw animation curve to the nose and cheeks. This helps me get the tip of the nose, and the cheeks following the jaw animation. After I get that working I can go in and refine the animation but it gets me most of the way there quickly.

-The last thing I do usually is start offsetting the keys in the face. I’ll offset the brows and lids depending on how I want to lead the eye of the viewer etc. I’ll usually only offset things by half a frame, and usually only on the breakdowns. I still want the lids to open and close at the same time, but everything in between I like to keep offset from each other.

So These are some of the things I think about when I’m polishing and refining a shot. It’s so important that you start off with a strong animation or all the polish and detail you put into the shot will be wasted. If you have a hitch in the arm, nobody will notice the detail you put on the fingers etc. Another thing I think is very important is that you don’t polish just to polish. Everything needs to feel supported. You don’t want to just noodle the curves to death. This can cause a shot to lose all its punch and energy. So it’s a fine balance between polishing a shot, and sanding it down to nothing.

I hope this is interesting for some people! Its my favorite part of animation so I really wanted to share my thoughts on it. This is only the tip of the iceberg on whats possible! So thanks for reading and let me know what you think!

-Malcon Pierce

Some great examples of animation with wonderful polish

-Ratatouille

human animation at its finest!

-Horton hears a who

Excellent cartoony animation!

-Runaway Brain

(hand drawn, but still by favorite animation to date)

-How to Train your Dragon.

Very nice subtle creature animation

-Ice Age 3

anything with scrat!

and many many more.

Gameplay Animation ~Jeff Cooperman

2010-03-29T15:01:00.000-07:00

So recently I sent of one of many demo reels to id Software in TX. I wasn't offered the position, but was given some feedback on my reel. He said that there is good material in the reel, however it's not really geared towards games. After hearing that, I realized that he's totally right. My reel is geared towards character animation, but not a lot to do with video games. I decided that the next few shots that I work on for my reel are going to do with game-type animations. I found this post on Jeff Cooperman's BLOG. I'm hoping it will help shed some light on the subject of game type animation. He wrote it as a 5 part post, I'm just going to lay them all out below. Enjoy, and thanks a lot Mr. Cooperman.
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Part one: Where did my anticipation go?

Back when I was at Stormfront, in trying to explain the mechanics of gamplay animation to non-animators, we started talking about how the anticipation needs to be removed to make the experience more interactive. What does that mean really, and why is it ok to get rid if it…surely that’s one of those animation principles.

The answer is better shown than told…when you play a game and interact with a character, the act of pressing the button is the anticipation. Adding more frames to the beginning of your animation causes it to lag, making effectively a double anticipation.

Still. What does this mean. Let’s take a jump, for demonstration purposes. If you click on the image above, the large ball represents your thumb. When you press on the button (represented by the ball hitting the seesaw) the character (small ball) instantly reacts upwards. Adding more frames to the small ball would violate the basic physics of the thing, which leads us to the main idea…game animation is primarily about forces at work. Quick timing often means a great force acting upon an object, be it a sword swing, a jump or what have you. Because the force is usually great, the animations need to react appropriately to the force at work. I’ll post some more specific examples of how this plays into posing and timing, and how we can hack our animation principles back into this simple bit of physics at play to gain back control of our keyframes and give the illusion of anticipation.

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Part two: Starting with the principles.

So let’s start with a standard game style jump. It’s essentially cartoony physics in that this character could never jump that high, but, hey, we just have to sell the motion so that it’s convincing. I’m not holding this up as an outstanding animation…more of a sketch of the idea of a jump. We have a little anticipation, popping up to the apex, a bit of overlap in the spine and arms, the hard landing as the character accellerates to the ground, and the settle and recovery.

Based on our seesaw below, this will have to be adapted. The anticipation removed to match the seesaw effect. The problem is, if you’re at a game company and submit this animation, the designers just hack off the first part of it and either blend into it or just pop into it.

Onto the next section.

(The spheres in each of these test cases to illustrate the basic physics behind each move.)

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Part three: Who took my keyframes, or functioned over them?

Here we have our animation stripped of its anticipation. It’s functional. It works. You can blend into it quickly and have it read, but we’ve also lost something in the process and the overall motion feels a bit lackluster. The forward curve of the body into the the straightening of the spine is gone. Now we go from straight to straight. So, timing works, but we’ve lost some of the charm and feel of our motion.

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Part four: Take back the keyframes.

So take the power back animators. Here’s one simple solution. Add a bit of overlap and offsetting to give back the illusion of anticipation. The pelvis is going upwards like shot out of a cannon, but if that much force is applied to the body, then other parts may struggle to catch up. This is the first of many solutions, but by going back and taking ownership of the in betweens, we’re closer to the feel of our first animation, despite the rapid timing.

I’ve added in a physical representation of the button press, and timed it to be the same as the first jump, the one with anticipation. This makes experience of pressing the button act as anticipation, so the reaction doesn’t feel as fast as it is. By adding offsetting and overlap, it loosens the animation up even more.

More on creative in betweening to come…

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Part five: Own every frame.

So the crucial part of getting into fast action is to really make those in betweens count. I reworked the initial seesaw animation with the same timing, but added some smear frame through a single frame stretch of the sphere. It doesn’t change the timing of the animation at all, but adds a much different feel to it.

Blinks Have Meaning ~Shawn Kelly

2010-03-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

This is in the eBook Tips and Tricks. It's a bit lengthy, but really informative! Go and grab some coffee and take a little break, you'll be glad that you did! I also posted the scene from Forrest Gump that Shawn references in the article.

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BLINKS HAVE MEANING

Tip 1: Blinks Have Meaning!

I feel like writing about blinks today. Why? I just saw a commercial on TV (name of product withheld to protect the innocent) starring a character who had a severe blinking problem. Now, I don’t mean the character blinked too much. I don’t mean he blinked too fast. I don’t mean the character’s blinks were too far offset, too slow, or too few. No, this character was plagued by a disease that has been running rampant through animation (particularly student work, though not Animation Mentor students, of course. Everything they do is perfect and wonderful in every conceivable way... Well, okay, that’s not exactly true, but I haven’t actually seen it as a problem in the school. Probably because we harp on stuff like this ad nauseum).

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the disease...

Let’s call it “Randomblinkitis.”

Many animated characters currently living out their lives on demo reels around the world suffer from this terrible disease, causing their blinks to feel random and meaningless. While some characters use their blinks to convey thought process and emotion, these poor Randomblinkitis victims are forced to slog through their daily existence unable to properly communicate their emotions and thoughts to each other, let alone to recruiters around the globe. It’s a tough life for them, folks, so let’s do something about it! See, the medicine for this heartbreaking disease is Observation. It’s easy to do, and it’ll mean so much to your animated characters (and to the recruiters forced to have to try to communicate with your characters!) if you can just take a little time to observe the blinks of your friends, your family, your co-workers, your favorite movie star, and yourself before you start plowing ahead into acting scenes. Listen, I know about the whole “I just discovered animation a month ago and must do an acting scene IMMEDIATELY!” thing. I know you all want to do acting scenes. I know you think they’re the most fun. I know you think they’re your ticket into Pixar. And I also know that for some of you, all the “honestly, spending 6 months practicing basic body mechanics and force will give you far stronger acting scenes than you’ll ever be able to do without that foundation” advice in the world isn’t going to keep you away from playing with some acting shots...

So, if you absolutely must do some acting shots (or, better yet, are advanced enough to do acting shots properly), then please, give some attention to the eyes of your character. We’ve probably all heard people say “90% of acting is in the eyes” or something to that effect. Shoot, some of us have said that ourselves. And I actually think that’s true, and is great advice (aside from the fact that if you don’t sell the acting with the body first, all the facial stuff in the world isn’t going to save your scene), but when you hear that “90% of the acting is in the eyes,” I know most people immediately jump to “eye darts” and “eye direction,” etc., completely skipping over one of the most essential acting tools you have - the blink.

When I was in school, I was told that “animated characters should always blink every two seconds.”

Well, that’s just about the worst advice I ever got, other than some advice I recently was given during a trip to Singapore, which was “giant fish eyeballs taste really GREAT,” but animation-wise, I think the “blink every two seconds” is probably the worst. Actually, both of those pieces of advice are equally true (or rather, equally completely-and-utterly-untrue!).

Look around. Do you see anyone who is blinking every 2 seconds?! (If you do, please report them to your government, because chances are they are some kind of android spy from Mars or something.) People don’t blink on any kind of set time schedule anymore than giant fish eyeballs taste “great” (and for all of you out there who maybe think fish eyeballs DO taste great, probably because you have some kind of steel-reinforced taste buds like the Singaporeans I was with at that restaurant -- which I do admire and am completely jealous of, by the way-- then that’s fine to like your giant eyeballs, but just trust me on the blink thing anyway, okay?)

Look - if you do a scene where your character doesn’t blink at all, and don’t have a reason behind it, you have a fair chance of that character feeling a little dead. However, there are plenty of times when you’d WANT the character to not blink -- maybe he’s scared out of his mind, or she’s looking longingly into her husband’s eyes, or you’re doing some homage to A Clockwork Orange...

We’ll get into that stuff in a minute - for now, I just want to point out the reasoning behind the “blink every 2 seconds” rule. Ostensibly, it’s so your character feels alive. That’s the idea they’re shooting for, anyway. Sadly, this is a very outdated concept. If you choose to animate according to this rule, and have every character blink every 2 seconds, two things will happen:

1) First off - congratulations: no one will wonder if your character is dead, or if his eyes are getting enough moisture. Mission (sort of) Accomplished.

2) Instead, they’ll be wondering if your characters are meant to be robots. (D’oh!)

Blinks are so much more than the merely physical act of moistening our eyeballs! We blink for a variety of reasons, and the absolute least important of these reasons to you, as an animator, is the “I’m just getting my eyeballs wet” blink. Forget about that blink. File it away in your head for future use, I guess, but file it in the back of the bottom drawer, right next to “My Aunt Martha’s right eyebrow shoots upwards every time she says ‘pretzel’.” It’ll come up about as often in your work, and be about as useful as well.

People blink for a reason.

Blinks are so much more than any kind of physical dry-eye response.

Blinks are the key to selling many emotions. Fire up some of your favorite films and study the eyes of good actors.

When do they blink?

Why?

What does it feel like?

How does it make you feel?

Right off the bat, the number of blinks can affect emotion in dramatic ways. Rapid blinks can make a character feel shy, nervous, uncomfortable, relieved, or like they are about to cry. Not blinking at all can feel angry, stoned, dead, or super intense.

Check out Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump when he’s meeting his son for the first time. As soon as he realizes it’s his son, he stops blinking completely. He’s transfixed. Tom Hanks holds back his blinks to communicate the idea that his character is THAT intense about what he’s realizing. Then a blink, and boom - he’s on to his next emotion, which is guilt. He feels guilty. Shouldn’t he have been there to raise his son? Did he do something wrong? The blinks are coming fast and furious now, to indicate his discomfort, his worry.

Then a thought occurs to him: “is he slow, like me?” He doesn’t say it right away, but you can feel the exact moment that crosses his mind, because suddenly his blinks stop again, and he’s back to that intensity, and finally he works up the courage to ask Jenny his big question: “is he smart, or is he...?” Huge eyes, locked on, almost afraid to hear the answer. “He’s the smartest in his class.” And the blinks are fired back up again, which communicates his relief.

That whole scene is amazing for eye stuff. He even asks “can I go see him?” using only his eyes!

Sure, his head moves barely as well, but it’s 90% just his eyes, and you totally know exactly what he’s saying. He delivers a line without ever opening his mouth. And it feels so real. To me, that’s a great scene, and something we should all aspire to in our work. So your first set of big blink questions is this: “what’s my character’s emotional state right now? What are they reacting to? How is that making them feel?” And your second set of questions, just as important (if not more so) is this: “well, how do I blink when I feel that way? How do my friends blink when they’re in that situation? How did my favorite actor blink in that amazing scene I saw the other day?”

Figure out the emotional state of your character, go observe that emotional state in as true a form as you possible can, and then study the heck out of those eyelids. Better yet, act the scene out over and over and over until you aren’t thinking at all about what the actual dialogue lines are anymore, and all you’re thinking about is the emotion you are truly making yourself feel, and the context/subtext of the scene, and videotape it, and study it! That’s it. It’s pretty simple really. Just like with every single conceivable aspect of your animation, you don’t do ANYTHING without a reason. You don’t move a single finger without knowing why your character is moving it, and the eyes (and sometimes even more importantly, the blinks) are no exceptions. Never move ANYTHING on a character unless you know exactly why you’re moving it. So if anyone ever tells you to animate something randomly, unless it’s the tiniest subtle “add a little ‘dirt’ to this movement so it feels a little less smooth” type of thing, then you should probably say, “No way!” Unless he’s your animation director. Then you probably shouldn’t say, “No way.” That might be a really bad idea. You should instead say “Right away, no problem!” while you silently think “man, I wish my animation director would take some AnimationMentor classes...”

Where was I? Oh yeah - nothing is random. Well, neither are blinks.

The most important use of a blink is to show thought process. We do blink sometimes just to wet our eyes, and we blink on a rapid head turn, we blink on a major change in eye direction, and all those other “blink rules,” but in my opinion the most important time is when we have a change in our thought process. When we’re having an idea, or when we’re switching from one emotion to another, or when we’re realizing something. Those are the gold-mines in terms of blinks - that’s when a perfectly placed blink will take a scene from being merely “good” and make it “great.”

There’s a great book called “In the Blink of An Eye,” by Walter Murch, who is an amazing film editor. Murch is an incredibly accomplished film and sound editor, with a bunch of Oscars on his mantle, and great work in such films as Apocalypse Now, The Godfather Part II, The English Patient, and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Part of that book is about his theory that we blink to edit the film of our lives. We blink throughout the day to cut from one scene to the next to the next to the next. And he uses that theory in his film editing. He looks for when the main character blinks, and often uses that as his cutting point, figuring that it’s probably the most natural-feeling place to cut for the audience.

As animators, we can hijack his theory and apply it to our own work and our acting. We can study the same phenomenon that he noticed, and we will all find the same exact result - people blink when their brain shifts from one thing to another, whether it’s an emotion or a thought.

We blink for a bunch of reasons, but the most important to me are these:

1. We blink when we shift our thought process

2. We blink to show or hide emotion

3. We blink in the middle of a fast head turn

For me, those three things dictate 99.9999% of the blinks I’ve ever animated, and I’ll tell you what - not one of them has anything to do with any “2 Second” rule.

Ok, so let’s start with number 3, since that’s the most basic. This is one that most of you have heard about, and use often. Personally, I think it’s a great rule, and seems to work really well. If your character’s head does a really fast head-turn, drop a blink in there near the middle or near the end of the head turn, and it’ll give it a nice natural feel. This is something I’ve definitely observed in people, and it’s a great rule of thumb to generally keep in mind. I’m not sure why we blink mid-turn, but I think it might have something to do with having too much visual information zooming past our eyes, and our brain says, “Holy moly! Too much information! Gotta shut those things for a moment!” I have no idea if that’s true, but it sounds like it might be right, and that’s good enough for me...

Let’s jump back up to good old numero uno - blinking to show a shift in our thought process.

This is an absolutely essential and endlessly useful tool in animation - something you can truly use over and over again, in shot after shot. Like the idea of advanced “anticipation,” this really can be one of those few “lifelines” of communication you can have with your audience. A way to reach out to them, and whisper, “Hey, check it out! He’s thinking right now! Oooh! And now he’s made up his mind!”

Anyway - back to shifting our though processes...

The eyes are the windows to the soul, right? We’ve talked about that cliche, and how right it is, and how important it is to communicate with your character’s eyes. (I think we have, anyway. Haven’t we? This is month 19, so it’s getting a little fuzzy in my memory! I could look it up, but we both know I’m too lazy to do that...)

Personally, I feel like 70-80% of the emotion of your character is going to be sold in the face, and 90% of THAT emotion will be sold in the eyes. The timing and direction of your eye darts will communicate more than almost any other thing in your scene.

But a HUGE part of that communication is with eye blinks. We can talk more about eyes later, if you guys want, but as far as blinks go, all the great eye animation in the world will not work without carefully planned blinks.

Your character is in a basement. Scared. Backing into a dark corner, unsure of where the villain is hiding. His eyes are wide, darting all over the place, searching frantically. For help. For a way out.

For a weapon. For a hiding place.

So far, so good. No reason to blink, right? He’s scared for his life, searching DESPERATELY for help. His eyes want to suck in as much information as humanly possible, because if they don’t figure something out quick, his eyes might stop seeing anything at all pretty soon.

If you’re animating this scene, you’re going to be taking the “no blinks at all” approach so far in this scene, unless it’s gone on for a REALLY long time. If the eyes are desperate enough, I think you could get away with not blinking for even 10 seconds or more. There are countless scenes of some of our best actors showing their intensity and emotion by not blinking for much longer than 10 seconds, but at some point, a sustained shot of “scared guy” is going to get stale and boring, so I’d say a shot like this will get boring long before you’d HAVE to throw a blink in there...

So, he’s scared and desperate. No blinks yet. His back bumps against concrete, and he realizes he is cornered. His eyes are even wider. Searching. Hoping. Suddenly, they lock on! He spies a shovel! A weapon! He’s found hope!

Guess what he does?

He grabs the shovel, right? Well, yeah, he does, but what does he do first?

He blinks.

Why? Well, it’s sort of the Walter Murch thing. He’s “cutting” his film. His “scared and hopeless” scene has ended, and it’s time for the “try to be a hero” scene, starring him and his shovel. In other words, his thought-process has shifted. He’s gone from one idea to another idea, in his head. He was scared out of his mind, and now his fright has morphed a little bit. It’s evolved. He’s probably still scared, but I bet his eyes are a little narrower, now that he has his shovel in hand. His eyes are darting a lot less. He’s still frightened, but now he’s a little hopeful, and maybe even a little mad. Who is this lunatic hunting him down in his basement?! Who does he think he is!? He’s going to get a face full of shovel if he doesn’t get out right now!

Right?

When you first get handed a scene like this, you’re going to study the amount of time you have to work with, you’re going to plan out your motions and timing, figure out your dynamic poses, etc. Just as with any other bit of planning, it’s essential to search through your scene and try to find a moment of change – when an emotion changes, or an idea shifts. These are ALWAYS the meatiest moments for you as an actor and animator, and these are generally the moments when you will carefully choose when to blink. A shift from scared to hopeful? Blink. Happy to nervous? Blink. How about something really subtle, like sad to sadder. Blink!

Those blinks will SELL the changes in thought process more than anything else other than possibly overall posture changes. Ok, and then lastly, we have the idea of using blinks to sell emotions.

Well, let’s go back to our previous example, with the scared basement guy. How do we know he’s scared? Well, hopefully you’re using as many small things as possible to show his fear. Hopefully his movements feel afraid, his head and eyes are darting around, his overall actions and broad movements can even show fear.

But having those wide, unblinking freaked out eyes - THOSE are going to sell the fear as much as anything else. Maybe even more than anything else, right? So right off the bat, we have an emotion being sold through blinks, or rather, through the lack of blinks. What would it look like if he was blinking a lot in the basement? He’d look flustered, maybe he’d look like he’s thinking rapidly about a lot of different ideas, or trying to remember something. He might look shy, or maybe even nervous. But he probably wouldn’t look scared, no matter WHAT you did with the rest of him.

Once Mr. Scared finds his shovel, he blinks to show that realization (and the timing and number of blinks at this point, by the way, will totally define the mood of the performance. A long pause, with two wide-eyed blinks would be funny and played for comedy, whereas a quick blink and dash for the shovel will keep it in the “scary” realm), but now that he has his shovel, we’re going to use our blinks in a whole new way.

He’s still scared, but not so desperate that he can’t blink now and then. Now we’ll have quick “scared” blinks (slower blinks would feel too laid back) now and then, maybe when he’s shifting his gaze from one place to another, or if he hears a sound in the other corner of the basement, etc.

The timing and number of your blinks are an invaluable way of letting your audience know what’s going on in your character’s head. Not only how he’s feeling, but when those feelings are changing.

To me, this concept is one of the most fundamental foundations of any good acting performance, and I think it’s something worthwhile for us all to continue to study and deconstruct.

If you’ve been reading this column since the beginning, you’ve read my tips about scene planning and know how essential it is to plan your performances. Part of that planning should often be video reference, of either yourself or friends or actors. If you truly get into your character’s head, and truly begin to feel the REAL emotions of the scene when you are acting out your video reference, you WILL see the properly placed blinks, showing these shifts in emotion and thought process. If you aren’t sure where to blink, be sure to go through this process, it can be really helpful.

Another great idea is to just study the blinks of your favorite actors. Think of your favorite film, and choose a scene that stood out to you as being especially believable acting. Pull it up on DVD and study the actor’s blinks. Check out Forrest Gump meeting his son for the first time - it’s amazing.

Also, Robin Williams’ blinks and eye-darts in One Hour Photo are great to analyze. Any of your favorite actors will have valuable reference for you to study. Check that stuff out! How does the timing and frequency of the blinks communicate the emotion at just the right precise moment to make it feel true... How does it make you feel? Why?

It’s a great idea to sit down and really study that stuff. Make notes for yourself, and really dig into it. You don’t have to be an acting expert to find value in that reference, it can really be helpful.

Let’s see, to recap:

1. Blinks Have Meaning!

2. Skipping a strong foundation in the basics in order to get to acting scenes quicker shoots yourself in the foot.

3. Never animate anything without a reason.

4. Don’t say “No way!” to an Animation Director.

5. We blink to cut the “film of our life.”

If you have an opinion about what kinds of “tips” or more “tricks” you’d like to see in the future, email me at: tipsandtricks@

animationmentor.com and let me know!

That’s 5 tips for the price of one. I better start being stingier or this’ll be a short-lived column!

Hope you found it helpful. See you next time!

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Quick Tips ~Carlos Baena and Shawn Kelly

2010-03-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

A couple quick tips I found from two of the founders of Animation Mentor.
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Shawn Kelly:

Animating two characters (Reference: CGChar)
"I think my biggest tips would be:

1) film reference with a friend(s). Don't try to do reference of 2 characters acting with each other by yourself by filming one and then the other. You'll miss out on many opportunites to subtly interact that you would discover by filming reference with another person physically in the scene with you. Even if the characters never actually touch, this is a really important step.

2) Be very careful about leading the eye of the audience. It's better to have one character bordering on "dead" than having the audience not knowing where to look. Most importantly, make sure it's very clear which character is talking when. Overacting can wreck a scene, but it can doubly wreck a multiple character scene because you can't tell who is talking or who the animator wants you to be looking at.... Anticipation can help you direct the eye of the audience, as can staging/composition, etc.

Anticipation is one of the big ways though. It's like your secret line of communication with the audience. "hey - look over here because something funny is about to happen!" or maybe subtly moving a character's left hand just before he waves with his right gets the audience to switch over to look at that character and not miss the wave... "

Carlos Baena:

Leading with the eyes of head (Reference: CGChar)
"I usually think of this this way. Of course, like everyone pointed out, there are no rules...so don't animate a certain way just because someone said so.

I think about eyes in different ways, but the main drive to animating the eyes is where the interest/force comes from. Not so sure if that makes much sense. If you are talking to someone, and a third person calls you, the eyes can behave different ways:

1) If you are really really interested in this third person that's calling you (maybe the girl of your dreams, who knows...), then for sure I'll have that character lead with the eyes.
2) If you are really really interested in the conversation/subject you are having (more than who is the third person calling)...then I'll start twisting the body, then the chest, then the head, and I'll have the eyes be the last thing that turns. Mostly because his head is still in that conversation with the guy.
3)If the third person pushes you from behind, same case as number 2. I may have the eyes move the last (after the head).

It's all a matter of exploring. But I agree with Shawn, for the most part, I'll lead with the eyes...but always thinking about the force driving the action."

Timing in Animation ~Kenny Roy

2010-03-16T09:08:00.000-07:00

I read this in the current Animation Mentor's monthly newsletter.  It talks about adding narration to help along the timing for your pantomime shots... interesting.  Plus there's a Seinfeld reference, you gotta love Seinfeld.  It's my favorite to study for acting. 

Thanks Mr. Roy for sharing...
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Timing is everything, isn't it? When starting out, beginning animators have so many workflow obstacles to overcome that a shorthand for timing choices would be very helpful. When you finally get to dialogue, timing sense comes naturally. But for physical and pantomime actions, it can be very difficult in the beginning to develop a sense of timing that naturally fits with your performance choices. Luckily, I have a little trick. What I like to do is use the character's "inner monologue" as a stand-in dialogue track to give me hints at good timings for a shot.

Here's how it works: Dialogue naturally follows certain rhythms, cadence and patterns. Listen to some dialogue for practice and see if you can pick it up – it shouldn't be hard. However, if you are not doing a dialogue shot, then where can you get that intonation and find those easy beats to hit? My advice is to invent it!

As animators, we are supposed to always have the character's inner thoughts in mind as we make our pose choices, deep into the progress of a shot. Take those inner thoughts out of your mind and speak them. Sound it out. Use an energetic performance out loud to let the natural phrasing that dialogue affords you come out of the scene.

Let's use an example. You are animating Kramer bursting through the door into Jerry Seinfeld's apartment, looking around, seeing what he is looking for, and walking to the counter to grab some cereal. Go ahead and be literal with the monologue. A potential inner monologue might read: "BOOM! Let's see here! Where is that thing? Is it over here? Over there? Aha! There it is! I'm walking to the counter. Aaaaaaand got it!"

Obviously, nobody would narrate what they are doing like this, and certainly not out loud. But as you read through the above inner monologue a few times and get comfortable with it, feel the timing come out of the words. Immediately the "Ah" of "Aha!" starts to feel like anticipation of the reaction of seeing what Kramer wants. Also, the long "Aaaaaand" feels like a nice stretch on the body when he reaches for the cereal. "...over here? Over there?" probably jumps out at you as evenly timed, but try reading it one more time, REALLY emphasizing the "OVER" and saying "here" and "there" quickly, and sharply. You might feel that the timing choice for Kramer looking around the room just changed dramatically.

Finally, if you get a reading of it that feels nice and energetic, natural, and has lots of variety (most important), it's not cheating to record it and put it into the timeline as you are animating. Time the animation to the beats and phrases of the inner monologue and watch your timing sense grow. Hopefully what will happen is with practice, you can use simple, on-the-fly re-enactments in your head while you work, further reducing this trick to shorthand.

So with pantomime and physical shots, there's no need to flounder with timing choices when the key to timing the shot might be talking about the shot!

Good luck with your work.

21 Principles of Facial Animation ~Shawn Kelly

2010-03-08T10:26:00.000-08:00

Brilliant, just brilliant. Great to look over before you work on your next dialogue shot. Thanks a lot Mr. Kelly, really invaluable stuff!
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1. Planning comes first, thumbnail.

2. Spell your breakdowns phonetically. Write down the sound that is made, not the letter itself. Its the sound the mouth makes that matter.

3.Find the dominant sounds.

4. Consonants mimic the preceding vowels.
ex. Bite and Boot, the "T" shape is totally different for the 2 words, it follows the preceding vowel. The "T" in BITE is going to look more like an "I" in BITE, and the "T" in BOOT will mimic the OO sound.

5. The Muppet theory.
The jaw opens only on the main syllables. First block out the jaw. Put your hand under your jaw to figure out when the jaw opens and closes.

6. Hold the last shape. Don't go back to a neutral shape right after you finish the line.

7. Keep closed shapes shut, usually for at least 2 frames.
ex. b m p

8. Flow through the holds.

9. Slow in... POP out
slow in... If you are saying "E" for 3 frames start with an "E" shape but don't dial in 100% of E. POP out... The P in POW would slow in but when the P sound is made it pops out quickly.

10. Slip dialogue earlier if needed.

11. Transition at midpoint. When shapes overlap and is more than 50% or 60% then it is a clue that you are trying to do too many shapes.

12. Study mouth in mirror.

13. Don't over annunciate.

14. Most accents fall on vowels (even most body and head accents fall on vowels).

15. FACE SYNC not LIP SYNC .
The mouth is not independent of the face. Think of the whole face. Ex. "GET OUT" (often) on "OUT" the brows go up, the eyes get wider, the mouth opens... the whole face!!!

16. Rhythm of the body is more important than technically accurate Lipsnyc. It's like watching a performance rather than a talking head. The audience first looks at the eyes, then the body, then the mouth.

17. Study your dialogue again & again... again... again.... again... again....
Don't listen to your line, study it. Act it out while listening to the line.

18. Chart the voice path.
Where does the voice get louder and softer, higher pitch or lower pitch. The ups and downs, the inflections.

19. Emotions affect shapes.
When someone is crying and talking the mouth shapes are a little different.

20. Facial expressions is the logical center of interest in a scene. The body establishes the idea and the face clarifies it.

21. LIP SYNC COMES LAST!!!

Acting Ideas... ~ The Spline Doctors

2010-03-08T10:07:00.000-08:00

I found this on the Spline Doctors blog site. Regarding acting choices and coming up with original ideas when you're planning a new animation is a really fun stage, but it too can be frustrating if you're running in circles or not coming up with original ideas. During my Introduction to Acting class at Animation Mentor, my Mentor was talking about what kind of movies are the best to watch for studying acting choices... my first inclination was to watch animated movies (this only made logical sense), but he said that watching live action movies are the best, especially older movies where they're not so dependent on special effects to tell their story, this allows you to really focus on the characters and their acting choices. So from then on I started putting classic movies in our Blockbuster queue and really got a lot out of them. I'm really considering taking an improvisation class in the near future to gain some acting knowledge and hopefully that will make me a stronger animator.

This post talks about acting ideas. Hope it helps shed some new, fresh light into your animation brain! Thanks Spline Doctors.

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Throughout my animation career, good ideas will always win me over as opposed to fancy animation. For me, seeing animation that is fresh and new always reinvigorates me. When I would come out of a lecture, or a dailies review or anything where I saw or heard about an exciting idea, it would make me say: Why didn’t I think of that? It almost makes you frustrated and keeps you trying to think about a different way of doing something. Yes, there are scenes that don’t always require some sort of brilliant idea, but they call for something fresh. How do you infuse your work with good ideas? Here are a few suggestions:

1) People Watching: You get so much gold just by watching people. Putting yourself in places that you have not been can be really helpful. Travel, if you have the means is always great. If you go to a place where the way people do things is different, you can really come up with some interesting ideas for gestures, acting, body posture and so forth. If you are not able to travel far, just riding the subway or bus can be enough.

2) Watching Films. Who doesn’t like to watch movies? If you didn’t have the chance to go to film school, you should educate yourself on the key films that many film students watch. A place to start is the AFI list of top 100 films, but you can go much deeper. Look at films with a different eye. See the difference between the canned Warner Bros. gangster films, then look at someone like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront or The Wild One to see a new style of acting. Brad Bird was speaking about how Brando really was lightning in a bottle and how nobody knew what they had at that moment in time.

3) Do something out of your comfort zone: An example might be taking an improv class… Improvisation teaches you how to come up with ideas very quickly. I am not saying that I am currently in an improv class, but I have in the past. If you have the time, its a fun way of experimenting with acting and comedy. When I was teaching at Academy of Art, we brought in improv actors to basically create scenes for us to animate too. It was so fun watching them come up with scenes… Some sucked and other worked, mostly because of timing.

4) Look in your backyard. Often times, you need not go farther then your relative or immediate family for a way someone or something is done. One of the guys here likes to touch his nose a lot, another always seems to have his hands in his arm pits, another never makes eye contact. The point being that interesting characters are all around us, we just need to find a way of getting that into our work. I know this all sounds obvious, but I need to constantly remind myself of this. Its so easy to rest on your laurels, but extracting a good ideas out of your work should feel somewhat painful. If it doesn’t, then something is wrong… Or you are truly gifted… For me, animation is a mountain of pain. When I start out I am fresh and by the time I get half way I am winded. The last part of the climb can be treacherous, but reaching the peak makes it worth while.

-Andrew

Stepped To Smooth ~Doron Meir

2010-03-01T10:04:00.000-08:00

I found this on YouTube. Doron Meir explains the dreaded move from going from stepped to splining! If you're an animator and your work flow consists of blocking your poses out, getting your breakdowns, and everything is working good, then you convert your tangents from blocking to spline and it screws everything up, this post will help clarify things! You can find a lot more resources on his BLOG as well!

Really helpful stuff! Thanks a lot Mr. Meir.

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Walk Cycles ~the Angry Animator

2010-02-23T10:33:00.000-08:00

I've been watching the Animator's Survival DVDs and he has a few chapters on walks. If you talk to anyone in animation they will all tell you the same thing about walk cycles... they're really hard to perfect, but if you can pull off a good, convincing walk cycle, it speaks leaps and bounds about you, the Animator. They seem so basic and simple, but that's hardly the case. I found this on The Angry Animator's BLOG. It's probably the longest post yet, but it has some really good stuff in it. He also has a lot of really cool stuff on the blog, so go and check it out!!

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animation tutorial-2 : walk cycle

Posted by dermot on November 1, 2008 at 12:07 am

Most sane people have a fear of animating walk cycles. Many events are happening at the same time, and it can seem overwhelming. A single mistake on your first drawing can wreck the rest of the scene. However, the process can be broken down into a series of steps which can go some distance in simplifying the process.

A walk cycle can be described by four distinct poses:

CONTACT, RECOIL, PASSING and HIGH-POINT.

These four poses and a handful of inbetween drawings constitute a walk cycle. The single most important frame of the four is the contact pose. Once you draw it you have already determined 80% of the rest of your walk. If you make a mistake on your contact pose, it can be very difficult to correct later on. Therefore: pay close attention now and save yourself a world of pain.

Here is the contact pose in front and side view.

Look at the pose carefully. You will notice some very important details: The feet are at their furthest extension in the walk. That is their most extreme position in the cycle. That alone makes this the most critical pose in the sequence. You can plan an entire walk sequence just by laying out all the contact poses as they work into one another.

Some animators think that the recoil and high points are the most important poses because the head is at its highest and lowest positions. This is wrong. The contact pose is the fundamental building block of a walk cycle. If you do not start your cycle with this pose, then you are doomed. It’s as simple as that.

When the right foot is forward, the right arm is back, and vice versa. This is called “counterpose”. This is how nature keeps everything in balance when you move: one side of the body “opposes” the other. Good animation has these “opposing actions” all the time. If animation seems weak or unnatural to you, it is frequently because it lack opposing action. You can think of a walk as a series of “falls”. The character propels himself forward by leaning into the walk as he moves forward. His trailing foot constantly swings forward to catch himself before he moves on to the next “fall” in the sequence. It shares many attributes with the bouncing ball in tutorial 1. Look at the front on view.

I have drawn in imaginary cylinders to illustrate the orientation of the shoulders and hips. Again, as one is thrust forward, the other is thrust back. As one tilts up, the other tilts down.
Another name for this is “Torque”. It is a fundamental principle of good posing. It should be an element of almost every figure drawing that you do. Michelangelo always used torque in his sculptures, creating dynamic poses, even in ones that were standing still. One hip takes the weight, while the other passively provides the balance.
The body is very rarely symmetrical: indeed, symmetry can be your enemy.

Now look at the recoil pose, the second main pose in the cycle.

This is the frame where the character impacts the ground. It is also the lowest point in the cycle. The characters arms are furthest from the body as a result of the force of hitting the ground. The front foot is fully in contact with the ground; the rear foot has just lifted up from it.
Note that the leading foot is directly beneath the body, supporting the weight above it. Too many beginners produce recoil poses where the foot is not beneath the body, but several inches ahead of it. Try to avoid this.

To keep things simple, let’s skip the passing pose…it’s closer to being an inbetween. Let’s look at the high point.

This is the highest point in the cycle. The character’s body is stretched to the maximum as he lifts his leading leg forward to reach the next contact position. The heel of the trailing foot is just beginning to leave the ground.

Those are the three most important poses to remember when creating a walk animation. If you can wrap your head around them, you will have a much better chance of completing a satisfactory walk cycle.

There are two basic ways to animate a walk cycle. You can animate the cycle “in place” or across the screen. Here is the same scene shown in each style.

Why animate in place? There is one main advantage:

You only have to draw a single stepping cycle, then you can reposition it across the screen, saving time and paper.

The main disadvantages of animating in place:
1.It can be confusing.
2.The “arcs” on the character can look weird when the character is moved across the screen.
3.It can be difficult to match the character properly to the background, if he has to register to something on it.

I am going to show you how to animate a character walking across the page. Once you feel comfortable with that, an in-place walk cycle should be slightly less intimidating.

Let’s begin.

Look at this image:

This shows the keyframes of a walk cycle moving across the screen. The most important pose is the contact pose. Use this image as an overall guide to your scene.

1.Guideline.
On a clean sheet of paper, draw two parallel horizontal lines moving across the bottom of the page.

These are the lines that the feet will follow as they walk across the page. Without these lines to guide you, your character can drift either too high or too low on the page.

2.Draw the first contact pose.
Put a clean sheet of paper down over the guideline drawing. You are going to draw the first contact drawing.

Position the heel of the right foot on the lower line; position the toes of the left foot on the upper line. Name this drawing #1, and since it is a contact pose I usually write the letter “c” in the top right of the page, above and away from the frame number. (This is a habit of mine, I don’t know if anyone else does it….you will find that it helps to reduce confusion when you have 12 drawings flying all over your drawing board.) Don’t forget to circle the drawing number, since it is a key.

3. Draw the second contact pose, drawing 7.
If you have a backlight then switch it on. Put down a clean sheet. Number it #7. Circle the number, as this is a key frame. Write the letter “C” above the frame number, to remind you that it’s a contact pose.

Note that the second contact pose occurs about half a second after the first. Here’s how you position the second contact relative to the first: The leading foot on #1 will be the trailing foot on #7. In this case the right foot is about to contact the ground on #1. In frames #1 through #7 it is going to hit the ground and more or less stay there. By frame #7 it will have begun to lift off the ground. Look at the picture below to see how #1 works into #7:

The right foot (the leading one) has touched the ground and the entire body has moved forward. The left foot (the far one) has now swung forward and is now about to contact the ground.
Lightly sketch it in, keeping the overall attitude as similar to #1 as possible. The only differences will be the arms, legs and orientation of the hips, all of which will be reversals of #1.
After you have roughly sketched in the second contact pose, you’ll have to check it against the first. Lift #7 off the pegs, and position it over #1. Flip #1 against #7 to see that both drawings have the same volume and attitude. You don’t want either to look bigger or smaller than the other. Also, both should be leaning forward into the walk at the same angle. If not, your walk will look more like a limp.

Now that you have drawn these two poses, you can begin to block in the main keys between them. First, an overview of what is going to happen.

Here are the main keys. The contact, recoil and high point drawings. Remember these positions when you begin to draw them in on their own sheets of paper. If you were to positon #2 too high for example, it would make #5 very difficult to draw properly: the overall action would be too “tight”…not enough bounce in the walk.

This would feel like a very stiff cycle, unnatural for a cartoony character. See what I mean below:

The opposite is also dangerous: moving the recoil too far down can result in a wildly exagerrated action, too unbelievable for all but the weirdest characters:

Just bear in mind that after the first contact, the character works down into the recoil, then up into the high point, then back into the next contact where the pattern is repeated:

4. Draw the recoil pose
(Bear in mind my rant in the previous paragraph). Put down a clean sheet, number it #2 in the top right of the page, write the letter “R” beside that, and draw the character as his foot hits the ground. The character will be at his lowest point in the cycle. Don’t move the head and body too far forward or you can inadvertently cause any number of arcing problems later on.

I find as a general rule of thumb that the body should fall by half a head to one head in height to keep the walk “bouncy” enough. (It’s a common beginner’s mistake to keep the figure at the same height throughout the entire walk.)

Remember…the recoil position will be almost identical later in the walk, on the subsequent step:

This is what will determine the overall arc pattern, and the positions of all the poses inbetween the recoil and the following contact pose. On the recoil pose the character impacts the ground. The rear foot lifts off, and the arms are extended to their maximum from the body because of the force of hitting the ground.

Now a brief note on the overall timing of a walk.

The most general type of walk cycle is completed over the course of one second. This means that the character makes a single step every half second. This is known as hitting beats, and luckily two beats a second is a typical musical pattern, or so I’m told. We’re animating this scene on the typical 12 frames per second, therefore the overall sequence of drawings so far will look like this:

#01:contact
#02:recoil
#03:
#04:
#05:
#06:
#07:contact (much like #1, but for the reversal of the legs and arms).
#08:recoil
#09:
#10:
#11:
#12:
#13:contact ( a duplicate of #1, only further to the right).

As you can see, a complete cycle works from #01 to #12, beginning its repeat on#13. I put the recoil immediately following the contact without an inbetween between them because an inbetween frame would make it look “mushy”. The contact should usually snap into the recoil immediately, without an intervening drawing.

I have not named the frame that the high point will go on. I could assign it as #4 #05 or #06. A different frame number will make quite a difference to the properties of the character. Here is why:

If #04 is the high point the walk will look like this:

As you can see above, this makes the character “bounce off the ground very quickly, making him light footed.

If #06 is the high point the walk will look like this:

This timing above slows down the character as he rises from the recoil pose, making him seem a lot heavier.

I will take the middle path and name the high point #05, resulting in this:

This is a more even timing: it should make the character seem like an average weight, without any extreme attributes. These are the kinds of decisions that you should make before you begin animating. Now we can look at our overall exposure sequence again:

#01:contact
#02:recoil
#03:
#04:
#05:high point.
#06:
#07:contact (much like #1, but for the reversal of the legs and arms).
#08:recoil (like #02, arms and legs reversed).
#09:
#10:
#11:high point. (like #05, arms and legs reversed).
#12:
#13:contact ( a duplicate of #1, only further to the right).

Now we have our 3 main key frames, #1 #2 and #5, and their near twins #7 #8 and #11. The empty spaces in the sequence above will all be inbetweens. Don’t worry about them yet.
For now we will focus on #1 thru # 07, finishing a single step.

5. Draw the high point.
Put down a clean sheet. As explained above, this will be drawing number #5. Write the number in the top right of the page. Circle it. Write a small letter “H” above the number. Now begin the drawing:

You have a little more freedom when drawing the limbs on the high point than on the recoil, as the leading foot is up in the air, and the arms are swinging over a pretty wide space. That gives you a number of different possibilities. The example frame that I have included is fairly typical.

The most important thing to get right with this drawing is the arc path of the head and body. A mistake on this one frame will effect all the inbetween frames around it.

Once that is finished, you are ready to move on.

6.Add the timing charts.

Before you do anything else, you should add the timing charts to describe the correct positions of the inbetweens. Here are the drawings we have finished so far:

#01:contact
#02:recoil
#03:
#04:
#05:high point.
#07:contact (much like #1, but for the reversal of the legs and arms).

Timing charts need to be added to #2 and #5. The timing chart on #2 will describe the positions of #3 and #4 as they work into #5. The chart on #5 will describe the position of #6.

Put #2 on the drawing board. Underneath the frame number in the top right corner of the page, you will add the chart. Here’s what it should look like:

As you can see, #4 is the main inbetween halfway between the two keyframes. #3 is a smaller inbetween which will completely smooth out the motion.

The next timing chart to be added is on #5. Put #5 on the drawing board and write a timing chart beneath the drawing number in the top right corner of the page. It should look like this:

This shows that #6 will be a single inbetween halfway between #5 and #7. Now it’s time to draw the inbetweens.

7.Draw #4: the main inbetween.

Be sure that you have the guideline drawing on the drawing board.Put #2 on the pegs. Now put #5 above that. Put a clean sheet on top of all three. Switch on the backlight. Now you must draw #4, also known as the “passing position”. Some treat it as a key also, but to simplify things, I’m treating it as an inbetween. I’ve never really found it to be as critical as contact, recoil or high point poses.

You have to flip between #4 and the two key frames beneath it. You should remember that from the bouncing ball tutorial:

Again, be sure that your character follows the arc path as he walks. When you’re finished the drawing, remove the drawings from the pegs and place #2, #4 and #5 back on the pegs in that sequence. Now you can roll them to see if they move properly. You’ll also remember that from the bouncing ball tutorial.

If you see any errors in your inbetween, then you must lift the drawings off the pegs again, then place #2 on the bottom, #5 above it, and #4 on the top. Then you can flip again, correcting any errors that may have crept in. It’s tedious, but it’s the only way to do it.

8.Draw the remaining inbetweens.

Repeat step 7 with #3 and #6. If you do them right then you should be finished with the first half of the walk cycle. I hope you had fun, but I doubt it.

You should be looking at a stack of paper, numbered #1 through #7. If you put all those drawings on the pegs, you should be able to roll them and have a rough idea of what your scene will look like when it’s shot. If anything catches your eye, chances are it’s wrong. Go back in, repeating the process described in step 7, until you’re happy with it.

9.Finish the rest of the cycle (or else).

Repeat the steps above to complete the rest of the walk cycle. You’ll have to draw #13 (the third contact pose) to work into. Simply trace off the pose on #1 onto #13 in its new position, further to the right. If it took 2 inches to make a single step from #1 to#7, then slide #13 over 4 inches to the left and start tracing…

I hope that makes sense.

The second half of the walk is identical to the first, except that the arms and legs will be on the opposite sides of the body.

Indeed, you can refer to the first half of your scene to help you with the second. The recoil pose on #8 should be as similar to the recoil pose on #2 as possible, otherwise the walk may seem uneven, or even more like a limp.

10. A general note about arcs.

Every joint of the body has its own arc path. It’s a good idea to check them all. Here’s how.

Place all your drawings on the board. If you have a backlight switch it on. Pick a body part, e.g. the right wrist. Place a clean sheet over the drawings and draw a small dot on it at the position of the right wrist on frame 1. On the same sheet draw a dot for the position fof the wrist for #2…and so on.

By the time you’re finished you’ll have a sheet of paper that looks like this:

That’s what it looks like if it’s done properly. If you’ve made an arc mistake, it’ll look like this:

If your walk is to look smooth and natural, your arc paths must also be smooth, curved, natural shapes. You should repeat this process for every part of the body to make sure they all move properly.

If you’re new to this: draw simple cartoony characters at first. Don’t even think of attempting anatomical designs until you’ve gotten comfortable with the simple ones first.
That’s all for now!

The Frogumentary ~Disney

2010-02-16T15:10:00.001-08:00

I saw this on YouTube. Eric Goldberg is an amazing animator at Disney... if you're an animator he's a household name... The part 3 video shows Eric drawing Louis (the Gator from Princess and the Frog), he was the Lead Animator on Louis. It's amazing to watch him draw and if you've seen the movie you'll agree that the animation on Louis was breathtaking! So fluid and organic feeling. Pure Awesomeness. These are filmed at the Walt Disney Studios. Part 4 talks about clean up, it's pretty cool.

He also has a book that I recommend to everyone either in animation or just starting out. It's called: Character Animation Crash Course.
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A Clean Start ~ Eric Scheur

2010-02-15T15:09:00.000-08:00

I found this little nugget on the 11 Second Club. I know that I've been posting a lot of notes about planning.. this sort of falls under that category, but more along the lines of file management/organization. I really thought I was organized before my current job; I wasn't. File organization is HUGE... especially if you're working on something as big as your own short film. Making sure that you name your files correctly, incrementally saving and probably most importantly BACK UP YOUR WORK, daily to an external hard drive, then I usually do weekly backups to a DVD and store in a fire proof safe, but that's a whole other discussion for further down the road... I digress, back to file management. Here are some folders that I personally use to better keep track of: video reference, renders, texture maps, characters (untouched), scenes, audio, uploads and movies. I usually have between 10 and 20 folders organized for every animation I do. It makes my life a lot easier, especially months down the road if I have to come back to the animation, whether it be to polish something up or adding to the animation! Once you're ready to get into the computer he also talks about organizing your workspace in whatever software package that you're using. This too makes life so much easier. If you're just getting into animation you're going to need a pretty 'beefy' computer, but one thing that I recommend are getting dual monitors, I don't know how I managed prior to having them. Monitors have come way down in price and it will be a wise investment (trust me). 22 inch wide screen should do the trick but 24 inch monitors are sweet!

Thanks a ton Eric, great post.
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A Clean Start

By: Eric Scheur

Published August 28th, 2009

It's time to talk about one of my favorite subjects: Getting Organized.

There's this notion out there that "creative people" and "organized people" are made from very different building blocks. You can't be creative if you're restricted to specific boundaries and procedures. You can't organize a creative process that needs to be free to move as new ideas and fanciful little whims present themselves. Right? Wrong! (of course)

While there are artists who feel comfortable and at ease in a kind of "fog of creativity" (papers lying all over the place, unwashed clothes on the floor, seven empty cans of Red Bull scattered around the computer desk), there are just as many who find that a little structure can help them focus their mental attentions on all of the creative stuff since they know that other technical and outer-worldly concerns are straightened away and taken care of. Whether you're the former or the latter, or somewhere in between, you may find some of the following can help you put some order into your workflow. Ideally, these are things that should be done before you've animated a single frame, or drawn a single thumbnail. This will set the stage for the month of work you have ahead of you.

A quick note: All of the following is my own personal preference and you are encouraged to find a system that works for you. Feel free to deviate from my suggestions, or invent your own system. My hope is to inspire you see how a few small preparations in the beginning can save massive headaches later on.

Ready? Let's dive in!

Folder Structure

It's been my experience that most animators who work alone keep their files clustered together in a general animation folder, or sometimes straight out on the desktop. I used to work that way, too, and I remember the convenience of having everything all in one place. That is, it was convenient in the beginning. Once I had a few versions of a scene or several different walk cycle attempts, that one folder become more and more difficult to navigate. Plus, if I ever moved stuff around on my desktop, or placed one folder inside another, or renamed something somewhere, I'd encounter all sorts of error messages about missing files, references that couldn't be found, and audio files that no longer matched what my software was expecting.

My eyes were really opened up once I began working in a commercial studio, where animators access their files from a server that also supplies files to the modelers, TD's, riggers, and texture artists. It was no longer acceptable to name my files whatever I felt like at the moment ("trying_that_middle_part_again.mb" wouldn't cut it), or to make a new random folder ("new animation" doesn't quite work because a week from now, the name has lost its meaning). Folder Structure and File Naming Conventions were integral to a job moving forward efficiently.

Of course your home computer doesn't require a system as sophisticated as a fully-functioning studio, but you'd be surprised just how far a little organization can take you.

As an example, we'll pretend that we're going to animate a piece for the 11 Second Club. (I know it's a crazy example)

First, we're going to need a permanent and reliable place for our projects to live on our machine. Whether you're using Windows or OSX, your system has provided you with a "My Documents" or "Documents" folder (respectively). I recommend creating a sub-folder from here, and naming it "Animation."

This is where all of your animation files will live from now on. If you'd like, you could even create another sub-folder called "11 Second Club," to distinguish your 11SC work from work you do for business, school, practice, or personal projects.

You can see that I've also divided my 11SC Folder into the different monthly competitions I have worked on. This may start to look over-organized, but after only a few months I find it much better than having just one folder that looks like this:

I mean, think of how long it takes to scan through those names in an "Open File" dialog before you find what you're looking for.

Now it's time to actually set up the folders for our project. If you're using Maya, you can use Maya's "Project > New Project" menu to automatically create a set of folders for yourself. If you're working with a different 3D Package, or working in 2D or stop-motion, it might be nice to set up your own folder structure. Here is a basic 3D setup that I recommend:

AUDIO - Once you download this month's audio file, place it in here.

CHARACTER - This will be the rig file that you use for the piece.

SCENE - This is where all of the versions of your scene are stored

FINAL - This is the File you submit. It will only ever have one file in it, and that will happen at the very end of the project

PREVIEWS - This folder will hold your playblasts and previews that you make. These will probably also be files that you choose to upload to the Works In Progress Forum

That should be enough to get us started. Depending on your needs, you may also like to create folders for RENDERS, POP-THROUGHS, REFERENCE, CHARACTER DESIGNS, THUMBNAILS, etc. The important thing is that we have all of these folders and files inside our one main project folder, which is inside our 11 Second Club folder, which is inside our Animation folder.

Naming Conventions

Before moving on, I want to talk about File Naming Conventions. That's a fancy way of saying "Call your files something that makes sense." You will almost always want to be able to tell, at a glance, which is the newest file. A good naming convention can also help you track your progress backward through a project in case you decide to make some changes to an earlier file. The easiest way to accomplish this is to choose one file name and save numbered versions of it as often as you'd like. For example, let's say we want to call our file:

The name indicates what will be going on the scene (there will be a guy, and he will be in a bar--natch), but to really prepare this file for the production process, let's modify it just a little:

Ah ha! That's more like it! I can now start saving versions of this file for as long as I'd like, and the computer will keep them organized for me. Weeks from now, instead of looking like this:

My folder will look nice and clean, like this:

I know what you're going to say: "But Eric! With that new filename system, I can't tell what changeshave occurred in each file. The good thing about the previous method is that it was like taking notes on what stage I was at. I could tell whether I was still blocking the scene, or starting to smooth the first twenty frames, or adding eye darts. You've taken that away from me."

Oh, but hear me out, doubting animator. There is nothing preventing you from adding extra words after the version number if you'd like to. Like this:

The value of doing things this way is that you not only get those little reminders to yourself about what stage of animation you're at along the way, but the files are still nice and neat in chronological order because of the way the computer keeps things alphabetized. What's more, you can almost get a sense of your workflow when you look back at those notes later on. As long as you keep those the same string of letters and numbers at the head of the filename, everything is is automatically taken care of for you.

Note to Maya users: Maya allows you to save your scene files as either .mb (Maya Binary) or .ma (Maya ASCII) file types. .mb files are the default, and help keep file sizes small. However, you may want to consider using .ma files, which can be opened in a text editor to locate and troubleshoot any technical problems that might crop up. Many studios prefer using .ma files for this very reason.

The First File

Once all of our assets (our audio file, our rig file, any props we'll be using) are safely organized into their appropriate folders, it is time to create our first scene file. Our Version 01. Whether we decide to import,merge, or reference (techniques which are beyond the scope of this article) objects and characters into our scene, the important thing is to start clean. Our Version 01 file should have all of the pieces in place, but no poses on the character and no keyframes on anything else. This way, we will always have an untouched version of our scene should anything unthinkable happen during the course of the month. There will always be this file to come back to.

Once Version 01 has been saved, we can save Version 02 of our file and really get to work!

But we're not ready to animate just yet. There are a few small tasks to take care of before we can finally put all of this preparation work out of our minds.

Just Five More Steps

1. Make sure you're working at the proper framerate. You'd be surprised how often animators get into working on their scenes only to learn that they've been animating at 30fps when they had intended to animate at 24fps. Changing these settings at a latter point can shift your keyframes in unexpected ways, often placing them between whole frames (on frame 15.72 instead of frame 16, for example). Instead of dealing with this headache later on, let's just confirm that we're working at 24fps right now.

Note: The 11 Second Club has no rules about what frame rate its entrants must work at. You may work at 24fps, 30fps, 25fps, 12fps, etc. Ideally, however, you will choose your frame rate at the beginning of your project and not change it down the road.

2. Set the timeline to the appropriate number of frames. It's good to have a sense of how long your shot is before you begin to animate. With the audio at the 11 Second Club, you are likely to have a scene that is around 260 frames (24fps) or 330 frames (30 fps). Just as we did in step 1, let's set this frame range now so we don't have to think about it later on.

Note: You may find yourself changing the timeline quite often as you work (especially if you follow the advice in Jason Schleifer's Helpful Hint), but it is always good to keep in mind the full number of frames you'll be rendering out or making a preview of at the end of the month.

3. Create a Select All Button/Selection Set for your character's controls. Whatever software package you're animating in, it is useful to have a few shortcuts when it comes to selecting controls on your character's body. Whether it's a button to select all of the joints on one hand or a drop-down menu to select only the IK feet and hips, most 3D programs allow you the ability to create these custom selection sets. One of the most frequent sets I use is one that selects the controls for the entire character--this way I can be sure I am setting a key on every control for a single frame. This key-every-control workflow can come in handy when timing out your poses, and adding breakdowns, anticipations, and follow-throughs. Once you've created a Select All Controls button, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

4. Use your new Select All Controls button to set a key on your character in its default pose at frame 0. Chances are very likely that at some point in your animation you are going to come to a point where your character's joints are rotated into positions that you had never intended and you can't seem to figure out a way to get it all untangled. But if you have the character's default pose already saved somewhere in your scene, all you need to do is copy that pose (or just the pose on specific body parts) to your trouble-spot and let the untangling begin! Make sure your timeline begins at Frame 1, but always know that Frame 0 holds that special pose, already keyed, waiting to help you out when you need it most.

5. Set up your viewports. This is the final step before animating, and to me it always feels like setting up my own private workspace. 3D Software packages allow you to view your animation from any angle at all, and from multiple angles on the screen at one time. The trick is to be able to take advantage of the viewports and not leave any part of the screen unused. I'll show you the way I usually set up my screen and explain why I like to work this way, but please experiment and find what works for you.

This is the screen configuration I use 98% of the time:

In the first pane, I keep my camera view. I lock my camera so that this view never changes. I turn on this viewport's Safe Frames (or Resolution Gate) so that I know the ratio of my final output, and what will appear on screen. Once this is all set up I will always have this pane to refer to while I'm animating, and I will be able to 'animate to the camera' with certainty every step of the way. If possible, I will turn off the visual display of all controls and any other non-character elements in this viewport so I will have as close a representation of my final render as possible.

The second pane is where I do most of my actual animation. I keep this pane in Perspective mode most of the time. This allows me the ability to rotate around a character, zoom in close, select what I need, move and rotate body parts as I please, all without disturbing the camera view. Occasionally I will turn this pane into a Top, Left, or other orthographic view, but for the most part I stay in Perspective and it is all I need to navigate around, select controls, and manipulate my character.

The bottom pane is one long stretch of screen real estate that tends to stay unused while I am blocking--although it can be useful to have a long Side Orthographic view if your character is walking, for example. Where this part of my screen really start to get useful is when it comes time to deal with the Graph Editor. With this long space, I have enough room that I don't have to worry about the Graph Editor edging over into space I need for my Perspective and Camera views, and I have the perfect stage to look at my curves (which I believe are most intuitive in a lengthwise view).

Again, this is merely the way I am most comfortable working. I have seen different screen configurations with almost every single animator I've watched, and everyone seems to have their own reasons for why they like their screenspace set up a particular way. The key is that they do have a reason for working the way they do instead of just using the default layout that the software presents them with out of the box. Experiment and think about what works best for you, and make sure your viewports are set up in a way that will be most productive for you.

And now, with all of this organization finally behind us, we are ready to tackle our new animation scene. So let's get to it, eh? There's only so long before the deadline at the end of this month. See you there!

- Eric

Work Flow ~Jeff Gabor

2010-02-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

This is a post from Jeff Gabor talking about work flow and the importance of consistency when animating. I refer back to this usually when I'm starting a new animation (but, I think it's invaluable). Coming up with your own unique work flow is one of the most time consuming parts of learning animation, it takes so much time (a little guidance) and a lot of falling and getting back up to get your own flow down. But once you do, your animation will go so much smoother and you'll be much more efficient. A thousand thank yous Mr. Gabor!

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Here's a workflow outline I did for a few of the animators at Blue Sky a couple years ago:

I go through a very consistent pattern in going through a shot.

Watch, Listen, Think and Ask, Act, Record, Edit, Block, Spline, Polish. (WLTAAREBSP for short)

Watch -

Watching the boards several times trying to note the work others have done is always my first step.

Listen -

I love to loop the audio several times just to make sure I can hear each beat or clue.

Think and Ask -

For dialogue I listen to the beats, note the ups and downs, apply emotions and intent to the tone of the voices, and if there is time I love to involve set pieces or props.

Action shots are a bit different. To me action shots are begging to be unique. I ask myself what “new” thing can I add or combine? What action would surprise the audience? This is where asking fellow animator's is most useful.

Act -

Once I have a group of thoughts or ideas it's mirror time!

My first acting attempts I try to leave loose and natural and let new quirks or gestures come in randomly.

I'll take note of the changes and write down each of the quirks.

Eventually, I'll make a tree branch of different scenarios for the acting choices.

Record -

I don't think there has been a shot yet where I didn't pull out the camera for something.

My drawings don't show me poses very well, so I work them out on camera and then caricature them in 3D. I use thumbnails specifically for broad actions.

For action shots or tasks that have delicate movement that I just can't seem to remember how to do them in real time, I'll act it out in slow motion and speed it up later.

Edit -

I capture the material in Premiere and layout the selected takes, and one by one weed out clips 'til I have single good clip.

If there are parts from one clip I like over another I'll edit the two together, but the idea is to get a single reference clip to export so my idea is concrete.

For action shots I almost always speed up my reference, at least a bit.

Blocking -

I use my reference to pick out all the main storytelling poses and do my best to run through the entire animation without any detail work.

I ask myself several question in order to know how to precede.

What's the attention on?

What's driving what?

How much time do I have?

I start by blocking out the main character or speaker, but in the case of extreme object dependent shots (ie. Scrat Flipping shots) Objects take precedence over characters.

For the flipping or vaulting sequences I did, I found it far easier to work out all the beats animating the driving object first. Not just blocking it, but going straight to splining it.

I often find it easier to work out timing ahead of poses. Sometimes I'll have a bouncing ball or square animated and fully splined to determine my timing before heading to my character's poses.

The “how much time do a I have” basically tells me how much blocking I can afford to hide before showing a supervisor. If I can get a way with it, I'll hide my blocking work until I have got through the entire animation once, then go back to add 1-3 breakdowns per key frame to demonstrate the movement.

Conscious Blocking

When I block I'm very conscious of how this will spline. I add my keys for holds that sups won't see but will be notes to me on how long poses hold.
ex. I have a pose at 101 and new one at 130. I know I want 101 to hold until 125, so in blocking I'll take the time to put that key down now so I won't forget during splining.

OverBlocking

Thanks to Hans' Vulture work on IA2, I now “over-block” my shots. I generally make it a rule to have a new pose fully worked out every 3-5 frames during motions.

The idea is that there isn't a single un-answered question or confusing part about the motion to be “explored” in splining.

Facial Blocking

I feel like to sell a shot to a director over blocking the dialogue helps a ton. While talking I usually make a new facial pose every 5 frames and add one inbetween afterwards. I like the toolbox but never just plug and play.

Hitting Early

I usually like to see how early I can hit a shape before it actually makes the sound when doing dialogue. I love it when a sup says, “I think you may be too early on that shape,” as opposed to, “it's hitting late.”

Splining-Ahhhh, sleepy time. If I did my blocking right I get to turn my movie up and turn off my brain. Specifically, I work 15-30 frames at a time starting from the beginning. I work from the inside of the body out. Hips, Spine, Legs, Head, Arms, Toes/Fingers, and then face.

I rarely actually grab tangents and move them around any more. I simply grab keys and hit my short-cut for autotan/autoconv to set up all my moving holds and eases.

Polish-This usually means asking fellow animator's what I could to do to finish up the shot. By this time I've lost my eye for the actual motion so I'll often flip my flipper horizontally to check my motion but I do this sparingly so I don't get used to the flipped image as well. I almost never leave a flipped image looping cause I loose my eye for it quickly.

Watch the Eyes ~Cameron Fielding

2010-02-11T12:40:00.001-08:00

I found this on Cameron Fielding's blog FLIP... Talking about the importance of eyes. A handy-dandy post if I do say so myself!! Cameron is currently working at DreamWorks but he has worked at numerous studios around the world! Thanks Mr. Fielding.

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Just going to post this up quick. Something I've though about before when I'm animating something is how we animators have a kind of 'wide eye' for the shot were working on... like we can see the whole frame in our vision and judge the motion within it, rather than just concentrate on whats deemed as 'important'. Its like when we watch our motion back on the playblast - we tend to watch the whole character, by looking at their `average point`, because we're trying to see how everything works together as a whole, as well as concentrating on the specific part we just changed... its as if were trying to look at every little detail all at once.

When you learn about animation you find over and over being told how important the character's eyes are to the performance, and its equally true to remember how the audience will spend all of their time almost exclusively looking at the character's eyes. For me personally, its kind of odd how much I don't think of this when im animating... I tend to concentrate so closely on the eyes that I forget to watch how they fit with the rest of the body... either that or I'm looking at the shot 'wide eyed' and not seeing the details...

I think a good approach is for an animator to look right into the characters eyes when running playblasts. In fact, I think it would work too to look into the eyes of your character while posing - even if your posing the hand or foot, you can get the overall "shape" of it by looking in the eyes, then afterwards looking at that specific part and posing the details. Same too maybe if were animating the hand of our character, look in the eyes as you watch the playblast and see how the motion reads there, rather than just staring at the hand, or staring at the shot 'wide'.

Video Reference ~ Kevin Koch

2010-02-11T12:11:00.000-08:00

I wanted post something in regards to video reference. When you're starting to work on your next animation, first you want to brainstorm, sketch out some thumbnails, etc. But before you start animating getting good video reference is a crucial point in the planning stages. Good video reference means that your thumbnailing, notes and planning (I know I have a ton of posts referring to planning, it's important and it's definitely one thing that I'm trying to improve on) will make your life in the computer that much easier... this is only part of the article so if you want to read more CLICK HERE.

I found this on SyncroLux, a blog by Kevin Koch who is at Warner Bros. and a Mentor at Animation Mentor. Really good stuff, thanks for sharing Mr. Koch.

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In a sense, video reference isn’t any different than using reference like Muybridge, or finding a great clip of animal action on a nature show. On the other hand, if you can’t work out of your own head, then you’re going to be limited to what you personally can act out. Then a tool becomes a straight jacket.

Here are the few tips I have for effectively doing video reference. First, if you’re too shy, you should probably not bother. I used to be so inhibited that I could only shoot reference if no one else was around, and even then it was crummy reference. It took animating at a 10-20 seconds/week pace, in a studio with nothing but open cubicles, to get me over most of my inhibitions.

Second, make it super simple. If your production allows a webcam and appropriate software on your computer, great. If not, consider a notebook computer with a webcam or a digital camcorder. If the process is simple enough, you won’t get precious with the process. I found when I had to go to a production coordinator to get the key to get into the dedicated video room, and when I was done filming then had to spend several minutes encoding the video and transferring it to my computer, I tended just skip the whole process. It needs to be as easy as standing up from your chair and acting things out, as we do all the time, whether we’re shooting reference or not.

Third, grab a friend or two if they’re likely to be better actors or better at a certain behavior. Know your limitations. If you really, really can’t act, then you’re risking a garbage-in/garbage-out scenario.

Forth, I find it necessary to trick myself, by planning to do 4 or 5 consecutive takes in rapid succession. I figure that by the third or fourth take, I’ll be relaxed and natural. Ironically, I usually find that my first take is the best, but if I try to do it in one take I always over-think, or tighten up. And if the first passes aren’t any good, delete the file and start over. There’s also nothing to stop you from editing parts of different takes together.

Fifth, use props. Jeff does a nice job of that. I find I need to set up ‘prop heads’ if I want to appear to look at other characters. If I don’t set up a fake head or two, I have to consciously think about where to direct my gaze, which kills my meager acting. Set things up to be as natural as possible.

Finally, I actually prefer the low resolution and low frame rate of a cheap webcam. For me video reference works best when I’m using it to get the basic gesture and timing of the movement. I know I’ll need to exaggerate, and I find it easier to exaggerate from a fuzzy image where everything isn’t perfectly clear (just remember to convert everything to 24 fps!). The exception is closeup facial shots, where I make sure the lighting is decent to get as good an image as possible.

In those close-up scenes, I try to be ‘in the moment’ (which is frankly something you can’t really try to do, but you know what I mean) and let the chips fall where they may. If I focus on saying and feeling the dialog, I tend to get a fairly natural performance in the eyes and brows. If I think about facial expressions, it all becomes contrived. It’s important to know the dialog cold, and to know just where the accents are and what kind of emotional tone the voice actor used. It’s also crucial to actually say the line out loud, and not try to lip-sync it, or your facial performance will be hesitant and restrained.

Happy filming.

3 Speeds ~Victor Navone

2010-02-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

From Victor Navone's Blog, a really good article about the phrasing in your animation. Mixing up the tempo so not everything is hitting on the same beat. This really adds to the appeal/entertainment of your animation.

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3 Speeds

Something I heard back when I was first learning animation that still really helps me to this day: always try to get three speeds in your shot. Put in slow moves, medium moves, and fast moves. This will help give your shot texture, interest, and emphasis. If you can have different parts of the body moving at different speeds, even better! Take a look at this clip from 101 Dalmatians. This animation is beautiful in many ways, all of which I wont go into here, but pay particular attention to the timing of the actions. Pongo is sleepy, so naturally there are lots of slow movements. But there are also faster moves for emphasis, such as the ear scratch, the collapse at the end where he lets gravity take over, or the high frequency shaking during the stretch. Not only are there three different speeds of animation, but some of these speeds are happening simultaneously. Another example would be to have a character shaking his head as he raises his arms up slowly in anticipation of a gesture. The more variation you can add to your timing, the better. I see a lot of student work where the characters are always moving in a "snappy" fashion. This is fun to watch for a while, but soon the timing becomes boring because there is no contrast. So don't forget to shift gears!

Creating Good Poses ~Keith Lango

2010-02-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of tutorials from Keith Lango's YouTube page. He goes into some good stuff about posing, line of action, balance and getting your characters to have life and emotion. You should definitely watch them if you're about to start working on a new animation!! Really helpful stuff, thanks Mr. Lango.
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Demo Reel Tidbits

2010-02-10T09:56:00.001-08:00

I found these on the Tips and Tricks Volume 2 eBook HERE. Since I'm in the middle of looking for a studio that wants me I figured that this would be a useful post to refer back to. Having completed my demo reel, seeing my fellow students work/reels, and seeing the quality of animation that the big studios are producing there's so much more than just animation to get into your dream job studio. I want this post to focus on the non-animation aspect of animation. The first article is from Keith Sintay talking about the importance of music on a reel. A lot of people say that you shouldn't put music on your reels... but if you look around the Internet at various studios from around the world 99% of them all have music playing on their reels... so it's a personal call, obviously you don't want to use extreme music, common sense will go a long way.. but enough about what I think, let's see what Mr. Sintay says..
The second post is from Carlos Baeana's Website talking about demo reel dos and don'ts.

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How Important Is Music on a Demo Reel?
By Keith Sintay

Demo reels can be tricky things. Everything about what we do as artists is subjective; not everything you do will please everyone. And, putting together a demo reel not only involves your visual elements, but the auditory ones as well. I never used to be a fan of music on a demo reel. I was happy just letting my dialogue shots (and any incidental music that might be behind the dialogue) carry the sound portion of my reel. I had seen too many demo reels with, what I felt, was ‘cheesy’ music that didn’t help the flow of the reel at all, but rather hindered it. So, I figured, it’s just safer to leave the music off. Well for anyone that may have seen my reel lately, you will notice that I finally made the leap and put music on my reel. What changed my mind? Well, I was looking at my reel, and because of the length and variety of shots contained on it, I didn’t feel like it flowed as nicely as it did when it was shorter and I had only animated a few things. I looked at my colleague’s reels and saw how proper music can tie together your shots. Now again, this is all subjective, but I tried to pick music that was upbeat and not overly distracting to the animation, and above all that didn’t drown out my dialogue shots I think music on a demo (show) reel is a matter of taste. I am not an expert in this field, but from what I have seen in my professional experience, bad music can take away from great animation, and good music can help disjointed shots flow together seamlessly (like in movie trailers for example). I would simply ask around and find out if your friends or colleagues like the music you have selected. Get some feedback and then use that to help you make your decision.

Keith Sintay
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Demo Reel Dos and Don’ts
By Carlos Baena

Throughout my animation career at different studios and as a cofounder/director of sorts at Animation Mentor, I’ve watched many student and industry demo reels. I have also gathered information and spoken with recruiters, animators and supervisors about
how they select candidates based on the work they see in a demo reel and their interactions with the job applicants. For you, I’ve created a list of valuable tips for creating an animation demo reel that has a better chance of landing you a job at the studio you’d like to work at. Also I recommend reviewing my webinar from July 9, 2008, called Demo Reels Dos and Don’ts which you can watch at Animation Mentor.com.

Go to www.animationmentor.com/webinar and click on the Past Webinars tab. Also, check my blog www.carlosbaena.com for more information, tips, and ideas as I continue to learn and share more about animation.

1. Do NOT try to make a one-size fits all demo reel. This works in small companies, but for the main studios it may hurt your chances more than anything else. Make your demo reel specific to the position and studio for which you are applying. When applying, as an animator to a big animation studio where departments are very specialized, everything
on the reel should be specifically “animation,” not “texturing,” “lighting” or “modeling”.

2. You should NOT include everything you’ve worked on throughout the years. Keep it short. Remember that recruiters/supervisors only have a short time to look at reels and want
to get to the point right away. It should be no longer than a minute or so. Chances are that people who are reviewing your reel are looking at another 100. So, the easier you can make it
for them, the better. You don’t want to bore them. Instead, they should see your strongest work (even if it’s only 30 seconds). Leave them wanting more. Here’s another tip: put your very
strongest work first because if they aren’t hooked in the first 10 seconds, they may not watch the rest of your reel.

3. Make the reel original on the inside, NOT on the outside. Human resources, along with actual animators, will be looking at your reel, and they don’t care about a fancy outside package or what you include along with the reel and resume. From key chains to toys, I’ve seen people include all kinds of things with their reels that do not relate to their animation skills. Put all of your originality into the actual animation content. Make it fun and original for people to watch, but don’t overdo it. Your best bet is to put your resume and shot breakdowns as the cover insert of the DVD case so it can’t get lost or separated from your reel. Also, put your name and contact info inside the case and on the DVD just in case it gets separated and passed around. You’d hate to think they fell in love with your reel and then couldn’t figure out who it belonged to!

4. Do NOT include stuff that is too distracting, whether it’s music or fancy titles. If you have a reel with a dialogue animation test, and the music is too loud for people to hear the dialogue, or you overdub mega-loud techno music throughout the whole thing, it will conflict with the purpose of the reel, which is to show your animation skills as clearly and simply as you can. Everything else should be secondary.

5. Do NOT include anything animated by others. Be very clear and honest about what you have done. The industry is very small -- people go from company to company and they are very familiar with everyone’s work. Always include a credit list of the shots on the reel and what you animated for them. In the event that a shot is actually shared by two or more animators, you should clarify the work that you did.

6. Bring your own personality to the reel. Ultimately, many people can learn the techniques. What’s interesting to see and what recruiters look for, is the personality, the actor behind the reel. You’ll stand out if you can show your creativity in your acting choices. Show you can be subtle as well as do big performances. Don’t include content based on others’ animations. We don’t want to see a “Pixar” reel. Instead, we are looking for the talented actor that can help a studio make their work much more distinctive. It does help to be aware of the style of animation that a particular studio has or what kind of work they create. You wouldn’t want to apply to
a VFX Studio with a reel that has only cartoon work, or apply to a place where they do cartoon-type of work with a reel containing only creature work.

7. Find out what to submit and how. Go through the studios’ online sites and find out exactly what they need from you before you apply to them. Chances are, they may need you to submit a form before you send anything, or they may ask you to submit your portfolio in a particular way or format.

8. Be respectful and patient with the people reviewing your work. It doesn’t help your chances if as soon as the studio gets your reel, you call or email the recruiters and animators a dozen times a day. Be considerate with their time, and most importantly treat them with respect. They are here to help you and their job is not easy with hundreds of reels to watch over several hours. This is good to keep in mind after you send a reel, and you don’t hear from them immediately.

9. Pay attention to the details. Check your DVD and make sure it works before you submit it. Don’t use menus or make a recruiter work to figure out how to play your reel. Keep it simple. The best DVDs just start playing as soon as you load them.

10. And lastly, keep trying, and keep refining your animation. When you’ve progressed, resubmit your reel to show your growth and the new work. It takes time, motivation, skill and creativity to succeed in this fun and motivating career.

I hope this helps you!
Carlos

Animation Notes....

Animation Scout (you rock!!), Eyes/Blinks

This post is from The Gorilla Animators Blog... there is a ton of resources there if you're looking for anything related to animation... go and check it out. Here is some great stuff on posing, line of action and strong gestures to better help tell your story...

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Posing Characters For Animation

Age of Empires Animations ~Chazamation

Age of Empires Online Animations Part 1 Dear John

A Simple Approach to Overlap. ~Cameron Fielding

How to Cheat in Maya 2012 ~Kenny Roy/Eric Luhta

Product Description

About the Author

What Kind of Workflow Do You Use? ~Nelson Brown

When Deciding on Acting Choices, What Helps you Decide on Poses? ~Josh Riley

Tips on Speeding Up Animation Workflow and Animating Faster ~Shawn Kelly

Animation Checklist! ~Mike Stern

Can You Tell Us About Your Animation Checklist?

Perfect Imperfection ~Cameron Fielding

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Perfect Imperfection

Self Doubt Causes Stress ~Stephen Silver

Acting, Breathing and Al Pacino ~Brendan Body

Spying for Lying.... Huh?

What Takes a Demo Reel From Good to Great? ~Nelson Brown

Describe Your Workflow When You Start Animating a Shot. Is There a Right or Wrong Way? Travis Tohill

Plastic Animation Paper 4.0!! For FREE!

Workflow ~Mike Walling

What Seperates a Good Animator From a Bad One? ~Travis Tohill

Our Work Habits ~Eric Goldberg

You Graduated... Now What? Kenny Roy.

Organized Keyframing and How It Works ~Keith Lango

8 Basic Mouth Positions ~George Maestri

The Eight Basic Mouth Positions

Reading the Track

Animating Dialogue

Animating the Mouth

Vowels

Consonants

Eyes and Dialogue

Head Motion and Dialogue

Body Language and Dialogue

"FINAL" toughts on refining and polishing a shot ~Malcon Pierce

Gameplay Animation ~Jeff Cooperman

Blinks Have Meaning ~Shawn Kelly

Quick Tips ~Carlos Baena and Shawn Kelly

Timing in Animation ~Kenny Roy

21 Principles of Facial Animation ~Shawn Kelly

Acting Ideas... ~ The Spline Doctors

Stepped To Smooth ~Doron Meir

Walk Cycles ~the Angry Animator

animation tutorial-2 : walk cycle

The Frogumentary ~Disney

A Clean Start ~ Eric Scheur

A Clean Start

Folder Structure

Naming Conventions

The First File

Just Five More Steps

Work Flow ~Jeff Gabor

Watch the Eyes ~Cameron Fielding

Video Reference ~ Kevin Koch

3 Speeds ~Victor Navone

3 Speeds

Creating Good Poses ~Keith Lango

Demo Reel Tidbits

This post is from The
Gorilla Animators Blog... there is a ton of resources there if you're looking for anything related to animation... go and check it out. Here is some great stuff on posing, line of action and strong gestures to better help tell your story...