Animation Mentor Tips & Tricks:
Keep Secondary Characters Secondary
By: Shawn Kelly
Welcome back to this month's Animation Tips & Tricks article!

Last month we talked about showcasing (or "spotlighting") your facial expressions to make sure they are clearly readable by the audience. We went over how you need to be careful to stage changes in your facial expressions so that they aren't lost in movement - such as flipping emotions during a quick head turn. As always, your primary concern needs to be clear communication - staging every aspect of your shot in the way that best describes the actions, emotions, and story. Facial expressions are no different than any other aspect of your shot, so try not to treat them as an afterthought, particularly because they are one of the most (if not THE most) communicative aspects of your scene.

So, enough about staging facial expressions. I'm pretty sure I beat it into the ground last month, so how about we talk about something completely different?

In my long tradition of segueing from one unrelated topic to another, this month we're going to spend a few minutes talking about multiple character shots.

So, if you're an animation student, which I'd assume the vast majority of you are, you've probably tried your hand at animating at least a single-character shot. If you're reading this newsletter, and you aren't currently an animator or an animation student, then you must be one of the following:

1. An animation student on the inside, dying to bust out of the shell and dive into this fun and challenging career head-first

Or

2. My Mom

So, other than my Mom, I think it's safe to say that you're probably an animator or student, and you've probably tried animating at least a single-character shot. Many of you have taken a crack at multi-character shots, too, but I just had a couple quick tips to throw at you guys regarding shots with multiple characters.

So here we go - Tip #5: Keep Secondary Characters Secondary

Particularly the first few years of your animation life, we are constantly plagued by the nagging, overwhelming need to have our characters doing SOMETHING at all times. We're animators, after all, and we want to animate! A character can't just stand there doing nothing! He'll look dead! He should always be doing something, right!?

The danger in this, of course, is twofold - movement ceases to be initiated for a reason and just becomes movement for movement's sake, and constantly active characters have no contrast in their performance.

In a multi-character shot, this tendency to give every character something to do can completely ruin the flow of conversation, will look far too "busy" visually, and will destroy any control you have over the eye of the audience.

The goal with a multi-character shot, as always, will be to clearly communicate your ideas, right? Well, in order to communicate those ideas, it will be your job to direct the eye of the audience, to lead them through the conversation. You want to stage your scene, and plan your timing in a way that allows you to hold their hand, and walk them through the animation. You need to whisper in their ear "hey, listen to what this guy is saying... okay, now - quick! Look over there! See what that other guy just did? That's important to the story. Okay, now forget that guy, instead, pay attention to this other guy over here..."

If you can't do that, your scene will be a jumbled mess of confusion, and at best, will never be as entertaining as it could have been. Story points will be lost, jokes will be missed, and emotions will be muddy.

The key to making things read, is to only allow secondary characters to do secondary actions.

Secondary action is probably an article all on its own, but the quickie version, if you don't know, is this: Secondary actions are actions that add to the character and augment the emotions WITHOUT distracting from the primary actions in the scene. The term "secondary action" is sometimes confused with concepts such as "overlap" or "follow-through," but it's actually quite different.

Character 1 is shyly asking a girl out on a date, but behind his back he's subtly fiddling with his pencil. The "fiddling with the pencil" would be a secondary action in that scene, and we know this because in almost any instance, the animator of this scene would want us focused on the character's faces, or physical interactions - the "fiddling with the pencil" is there to subtly boost the feeling of nervousness in Character 1.

Okay, so let's say you have a scene with three characters. They all have lines at different points in the scene. Just to make it even harder, maybe they even have lines that overlap each other. They're talking quickly, frantic about something, or joking around. Let's say their names are Chris, Andy, and Jay.

Well, that's going to be a hard scene, but with some careful planning, you should be able to direct the eye of the audience, almost regardless of what the dialogue says, or how it is delivered.

The basic idea is to direct the audience's attention through movement, anticipations, eye direction, and through the contrasting rhythms of who's active and who isn't at any given moment. Let's say Chris starts the scene off. His line is the setup for the joke that the scene is going to revolve around. Well, that sounds like a pretty important bit of dialogue for the audience to pay attention to, doesn't it? Simply hearing the words is not going to be enough for the audience here (otherwise, they may as well be listening to a radio-play! You need to create a performance that brings the mere "words" to another level - that's why we love watching a good acting performance!), so you need to make sure the audience not only hears Chris, but they see what he's doing and understand his emotional state. How do you do that with three characters in the scene? Well, there are a lot of ways, actually. The most basic of all, is to have Chris be the only character who is moving. If Chris is setting up the joke, and Andy is doing jumping jacks while Jay is running around in a circle, there is an excellent chance that the audience's attention will be on anything other than Chris, correct? So, at the most basic, fundamental level - if Chris is talking, Andy and Jay aren't doing anything at all. Now, that's not going to usually be the absolute best choice for your scene. It's probably a pretty boring choice, actually, but you know what? Better it's boring and clear than visually stimulating, but confusing. In my opinion, it's better to have Andy and Jay basically "die" on screen, than to steal the attention of the audience away from that important story point of the moment. That said, though, you're much better off finding character-specific secondary actions for Andy and Jay to be doing. Maybe the three of them have just been jogging together, and now they've stopped to rest on some benches in a park. Chris is setting up a joke, which means that at that precise moment, he is the most important character in the scene, making him the "Primary Character." Once you have that bit of information, you know exactly how you need to stage things. Chris' facial expressions should be staged clearly to the audience while he's talking (if possible), and his gestures should, generally speaking, be far bigger and/or faster than anything Andy and Jay are doing. They should probably be listening to him at this point, while doing some kind of secondary actions (since they are the secondary characters). Maybe Andy is heaving, because he's heavier than the other two, and is really worn out from the run. So maybe he's just sitting there breathing heavily. That could be his secondary action. Maybe Jay, who is more athletic, is sitting calmly and wipes the sweat from his brow while listening to Chris.

As long as Jay doesn't start furiously scrubbing at his forehead, no one's attention is going to linger on Jay during this moment. They might glance at him to gauge his reaction to what Chris is saying, or to notice that he's sweaty, but they'll immediately look back to Chris, since Chris is primary and Jay and Andy aren't doing anything interesting enough to hold their attention.

So right there, you've controlled the eye of the audience. You've made a conscious decision to stage the acting performances in a way that keeps people focused on Chris.

Now, let's say that Jay replies to what Chris has just said. At this moment, your job is most likely to transition the audience's attention from Chris over to Jay.

Jay's line of dialogue is enough to get you started. As soon as he starts talking, Chris and Jay trade places in the hierarchy of the scene. Jay is now top dog, and Chris has become a secondary character. Because of this, the audience will likely at least glance over to Jay as he starts talking, but this is one of many crucial moments in the scene. If Chris continues to be as animated as he was while he was talking, and Jay continues to just sit there wiping sweat from his brow while delivering his line, most people will look back at Chris.

The solution, of course, is to immediately flip Chris to doing something secondary instead of continuing his primary action, and vice versa for Jay. At this point, Jay could forget about the sweat on his brow, and be gesturing with his dialogue, or doing an even bigger action, like taking off his shoes and throwing them over his shoulder or something. That's a big, primary, "hey everyone, look at me!" action. Since he's talking, that's a great place to put an action like that. With Jay talking, and Chris throwing shoes around, once again, the audience will be looking at the wrong person.

So - if your character is secondary, keep them with secondary actions only. When you want the audience to look at a certain character, give him something bigger to do. Or conversely, sometimes you make him SUPER still amidst a lot of movement - either choice will draw the eye right to the character you want people to see at that moment. The point is you have to make the conscious decision to direct our eye, so we know what we should be looking at.

The main point is that nothing should ever distract the audience from whatever it is you want them to be looking at. If one character is really active, the others should likely be pretty calm unless the story calls for a more chaotic, frantic scene. Even in a scene involving a heated debate, or very quick dialogue where the characters are talking over each other, you can use this trick of "who is secondary and who isn't" to lead the audience through the scene, ensuring that they don't miss a single emotion, gag, or story point.

If you watch your blocking and feel that the characters are competing for your attention, it's a good sign that something is wrong, and the solution is very likely going to be toning down some of the characters during another's "primary" moment.

This is getting kind of long (sorry! I always do this... D'oh!), but I just want to quickly touch on some other ways you can direct the eye:

1. Eye direction. If five characters are all looking at a sixth character, every person in that audience is going to be looking at the sixth character too. If the characters suddenly look screen left, we're going to look screen left as well, expecting that whatever or whoever they see will be revealed to us. In these instances, you are using eye movement to direct the audience's eye through the frame.

2. Anticipation. That one's huge, and would be a full article all on its own, but basically, you can use a character's anticipation to direct the audience as well. One way it would relate to a multi-character scene would be to have the character who is listening but about to speak - that character could anticipate their response. For example, let's say Andy is talking about being so tired from the run and how he wants to quit, and Jay, who is more athletic, is disagreeing with him. Maybe 3 seconds before Andy is finished talking, Jay could start shaking his head (indicating he disagrees with him). This shaking of the head would not only lead nicely into Jay's next line, but it serves as a nice way to transition the attention of the audience from Andy over to Jay, and when Jay starts talking, the audience is already focused on him.

3. Contrast. This plays along with the "primary/secondary" idea, but just to clarify, I think you can think of that whole concept as "contrast." If you have 5 characters dancing around, and one is standing still, we're going to look at the still one, at least until he bores us. If you have 5 characters standing still and one dancing around - well, it's obvious which we will focus on. The dancer! The point is, making someone "primary" doesn't always mean you are giving them bigger and broader actions (though it often does), it simply means that they are doing something that contrasts enough with the characters and environment around them, that it draws our eye.

4. Composition. Definitely an article all on its own, but it's certainly a factor in directing the eye of the audience. Where you place characters within the shot not only can inform their status and emotion, but can certainly affect the likelihood of the audience paying attention to them at any given moment.

So, these are just some of the tools that you can use to work your way through a multi-character shot - something that can easily become a confusing, jumbled mess. Always err on the side of caution - you are much better off having a less entertaining scene with clear communication than you are with a visually active confusing scene.

The goal, of course, is to land somewhere in between, with something that is visually interesting, fun to watch, and clearly communicates the story points, actions, and emotions of the characters!

Good luck, and have fun!

Keep animating...

-Shawn :)


Book Showcase: Inspired 3D Short Film Production
by Jeremy Cantor and Pepe Valencia
AnimationMentor.com:
Please tell us a little about yourselves..

Jeremy Cantor:
I grew up drawing pictures all the time, dreaming of someday becoming an artist. However, social pressures pushed me into studying pre-med and computer science in college. But the dormant "creative person" inside of me eventually won out after a few years and I ran away to art school where I got a degree in Illustration. After college, I worked for a few years doing storyboards and trying to build up a career as a freelance illustrator, while taking animation classes and teaching myself computer graphics in my spare time. After putting together a (now embarrassingly primitive) short CG film that somehow managed to be included in the 1991 LA Animation Celebration, I was able to use that as a portfolio piece to help land my first "real" job at a small video game company. I spent about 5 years in that industry doing all manner of art and animation at varying levels of seniority and then (after completing a second animated short on evenings and weekends), I finally "made the jump to light speed" and joined Tippett Studio in Berkeley, CA as a Character Animator on the film Starship Troopers. I worked at Tippett for several more years (which is where I first met Bobby Beck), then moved back to Los Angeles, taking a job as an Animation Supervisor at Sony Imageworks where I stayed for nearly seven years working on various film productions including Hollowman and the first Harry Potter movie. I am currently the Animation Director for Insomniac Games in Burbank (best known for the successful "Ratchet & Clank" series) and I just finished my fifth year teaching character animation at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia.

Pepe Valencia:
In a sentence I'll say that I am a passionate Spaniard in love with my profession: animation (also in love with my wife and kids of course.) But in an official manner, I joined Sony Pictures Imageworks in 1996 where I served as an Animation Supervisor on The Aviator, Peter Pan, and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Other credits include Open Season, Early Bloomer, Stuart Little 2 (winner of the VES Award for Best Character Animation in an Animated Film), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the Academy Award nominated Hollow Man, the Academy Award nominated Stuart Little, Snow Falling on Cedars, Godzilla, and the Academy Award nominated Starship Troopers. I did camera direction with Robert Zemeckis on The Polar Express and Gil Kenan on Monster House. Before joining Imageworks, I worked at Cinesite as a Technical Director on Space Jam and at a number of smaller production houses. My independent work has been shown at SIGGRAPH '90, Imagina '92, Art Futura '92, and Cannes '94. I served as a member of the Animated Short Films jury for the 2001 ASIFA Annie Awards and have written articles for Cinevideo 20 and Campana. I am the co-author of the book 3D Short Film Production. I have taught Maya Master Classes from Seoul to San Diego and am a Maya Master Class presenter on the Alias DVD, Previsualization: From the Director's Concept to the Stage. I hold a Junior's Teacher Degree from the Autonomous University, Madrid; a Computer Science Diploma from Universidad Pontificia Salamanca; and I received a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue my MFA degree in Computer Graphics from the Pratt Institute, New York. I have taught courses at Torino University, IDEP; the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, and at California Institute of the Arts where I am currently a faculty member of the Program in Character Animation. I have lectured at the Reina Sofia Art Center, the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Action-Filmmaking in Kuala Lumpur, and Virtuality in Torino. In addition to a strong background in both the visual arts and computer technology, I bring to animation a breadth of experience in theater including four years with TEC in Madrid.



AnimationMentor.com:
What inspired you to write the book?

Jeremy Cantor:
Somewhat coincidently, Pepe Valencia had been bugging me for years to write a book with him on CG shorts. Then, out of the blue, back in January, 2003, I got a call from Kyle Clark (former co-worker, and author of "Inspired CG Character Animation"), mentioning that he was continuing on as a series editor for Premier Press (now Thomson Course Technology) and they wanted to publish a few new titles. Kyle asked me if I would be interested in writing something for them and one of the ideas they proposed was a book on CG Short Film Production. So, of course I agreed, and then rushed over to Pepe's office and said, "You'll never guess the title of the book I've just been asked to write!" Pepe came aboard as my co-author, and we immediately started in on the formal proposal, which the publisher approved, and then the fun began...

Pepe Valencia:
My students at Calarts, definitely. For the last four years, I've been teaching a year long course at Calarts, designed to guide students through the process of producing a short animation project, the production pipeline from initial concept through final output. I couldn't find a book that covers the whole process so I decided to create it. The perfect opportunity to make my desire a reality came from a colleague of mine, Jeremy Cantor and Premiere Press when they proposed collaboration. The book was published a year and a half later.



AnimationMentor.com:
Please tell us about the book.

Jeremy Cantor:
Inspired 3D Short Film Production is broken up into 4 separate sections, each one dealing with a different phase of a typical CG short film production cycle:

1. DEVELOPMENT, which covers the initial planning stages including story development, character design, art direction, and storyboarding.

2. PRE-PRODUCTION, where the digital elements that will be included in the film are planned, created, and assembled. This section includes chapters on schedules and budgets, dialogue, 2D and 3D animatics, CG modeling, texturing, and character setup.

3. SHOT PRODUCTION focuses on the actual production pipeline, from animation, through lighting, rendering, FX, and compositing.

4. POST PRODUCTION deals with the wrap-up phase, which includes audio, final editing, titles, and marketing.

Our book walks the reader through the process of creating a 3D animated short by breaking down the steps along one possible digital pipeline into individual chapters where the concepts and techniques of the topic at hand are discussed and demonstrated by way of general theories, examples, suggested exercises, case studies, and occasional interviews with short film directors and various industry specialists. The book also features four "case study" chapters that provide the reader with detailed, real-world examples of production pipelines, as well as a few problems and solutions that the respective filmmakers encountered. We also included a set of appendices, with information on all of the (more than 120) films exemplified in the book as well as suggested reading and selected resources. The book also comes with a DVD collection of 40 CG shorts.

Pepe Valencia:
3D Short Film Production is divided into four areas; each one represents a different phase of a typical production cycle: development, pre-production, shot production and post production. It contains some testimonials from students, professionals and educators that add personal point of views and case studies about this matter. The book will walk you through the process of creating a 3D animated short by breaking down the steps along one possible digital pipeline into individual chapters and techniques of the topic are discussed and demonstrated by way of general theories, examples and suggested exercises. Each chapter will cover a different aspect of the short film creation process. It also includes a DVD with 40 examples of short animations. 3D Short Film Production is a great book that you should have in your library if you are serious about creating a short animation, and I'm not saying that because I'm one of the authors of course, but because I believe it.



AnimationMentor.com:
Do you have any additional tips for our readers?

Jeremy Cantor:
Artists, animators and filmmakers should always remember that there are no rules. Every apparent rule in our book (or any other for that matter) should be viewed as a mere principle, tendency, or suggestion. Trust your instincts and never forget that when it comes to creative expression, your innate and objective sense of style, quality, and appeal are much more powerful than any list of rules or formulas. Rules are tools and once understood, they should be appropriately bent, broken, or ignored in order to fulfill the demands of your unique creative vision.

Pepe Valencia:
1. Story elements are more important than production elements. The story is the foundation of what you build.

2. Don't bite more than you can chew. Be realistic, analyze your skills, strengths, time and budget.

3. Show some originality. What is unique in your short?

4. Save often and back up regularly. Some good habits can save you a lot of time.

5. Be open to critics. Try to show your work in progress for critics, be open and positive.

6. Keep it simple. One of the most common errors when producing a short film is pretending to create a "feature film" instead of a "short film". Try to identify the right number of scenes that can tell the story, and focus on the heroes.


To purchase Inspired 3D Short Film Production, please click here:

 

March US Movie Releases
Your inside guide to US movie releases and the visual effect companies who made movie magic.
Ultraviolet
U.S. Release Date: March 3, 2006

Visual Effects Studio:
Menfond Electronic Art
CIS Hollywood

Synopsis: In the late 21 Century, Earth is on the brink of a civil war between healthy humans and humans infected with a vampire-like disease that gives the victims superpowers. Violet (Milla Jovovich) is one of the infected and she takes it upon herself to protect a nine-year-old infected boy who has been sentenced to death.
Aquamarine
U.S. Release Date: March 3, 2006

Visual Effects Studio:
Animal Logic

Synopsis: Two teenage girls discover a mermaid in their beach club's swimming pool.
The Shaggy Dog
U.S. Release Date: March 10, 2006

Visual Effects Studios:
Tippett Studio
Stan Winston Studio

Synopsis: This remake of the '60s Disney family film has Tim Allen starring as a man who tries to live a normal life despite the fact that he sometimes turns into a sheepdog.
V for Vendetta
U.S. Release Date: March 17, 2006

Visual Effects Studios:
Double Negative Visual Effects
Cinesite Ltd.
Baseblack

Synopsis: Based on Alan Moore's alternate future graphic novel, in which Germany wins World War II and Great Britain becomes a fascist state, a terrorist freedom fighter named V begins a violent guerilla war to destroy totalitarianism. A young woman he rescues from the secret police joins his cause.
Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
U.S. Release Date: March 31, 2006

Visual Effects Studios:
Blue Sky Studios

Synopsis: This sequel the big hit Ice Age will bring back the three main characters Manfred (Ray Romano), Sid (John Leguizamo) and Diego (Denis Leary) for more chilling adventures.