Animation Mentor Newsletter



	Hello there! So, if you've been following these articles the last couple of months, you know that we're playing with a new format. More of a Q&A format, where I'm giving short (no, really!) answers to whatever questions you happened to send me! (Got a question? Hit me at: tipsandtricks@animationmentor.com) I should tell you, though, that the old format of "Shawn babbling endlessly about whatever topic he wants" isn't gone for good, and even though I've received a ton of awesome questions from you guys over the last couple months, I already have the itch to write up an old-school good old fashioned Tip! So I'm guessing the format is going to flip-flop now and then, depending on what seems the most interesting information to throw at you on any given month. Next month, I think I'm going to write a tip that I'll call "Back to Blocking," or something like that. I've received a lot of questions about how you deal with making big changes to a scene after you've already started polishing the animation. Obviously, that's something that happens to all of us, so next month we're going to talk about some practical ways of dealing with that. But for now, it's time for our second Lightning Round! There are a lot of questioners who have been patiently waiting, so let's just dive in and see what's waiting for us in my inbox, shall we? Our first question is from Siva Kumar in India, who writes: "Have you ever been in a situation where you had to forgo animation principles to get the animation done according to the director's expectation?!" Oh, boy -- we're starting off with a bang, huh? This is probably kind of an explosive topic, as the situation you mention is not only incredibly frustrating, but sadly not all that uncommon in the industry, regardless of the medium you are working in. Since this is Lightning Round, I'll keep this short and sweet: Yes, this has happened to me. Yes, this has happened to most of the animators reading this. Yes, it's very frustrating. All you can do is keep in mind that you are the tool (remember?) of the Director, and the job you’ve been hired to do -- when you really boil it down -- is to make the client happy by putting something onto the screen that matches the vision they see in their head. Sometimes clients don't really have any solid grasp of body mechanics or how things should move, or how to properly stylize something in a way that is clear and entertaining. Sometimes (OK, often!) clients have no idea about the principles of animation. Sometimes (d'oh! even more often!) clients aren't even sure what they are looking for. In these situations, your job is to take their comments, and do the best you can to make the work look good and special IN SPITE OF their comments. You want to get their ideas in there, and as much as possible, you want to try to find a creative solution that makes their ideas work. Sometimes, however, this will mean that the animation will be "wrong," in your eyes, as frustrating as that is. I will also add that if you have the time, it can sometimes be helpful to show the Director two versions -- one that has their "wrong" idea in it (say, no hip movement in a walk, or something like that), and one that is more of compromise and has more "correct" body mechanics, exaggerations, etc. Often, they will choose your "better" version. Sometimes they won't. Be ready to accept either decision, and try not to let it sap away your enthusiasm for the project because once that motivation is gone, that's when the job will get really tedious. OK, who's next!? Next up, we have a question from Montevideo, Uruguay. Victor Escardo asks: *"What does an animator has to learn about traditional acting? And how this learning stuff should be applied to our animation?" Good question! First, I'd recommend checking out a couple older Tips & Tricks articles from back in the day related to acting: Acting:* https://newsletters.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0406/feature_geek.html#animationTip Operative Words: https://newsletters.animationmentor.com/newsletter/0106/feature_geek.html#animationTip The quick answer would be that as an animator, your job is to bring the character to life, which means that in a very real way, you have to be an actor. Your job is to BECOME the character, especially in your reference and planning, if you want the performance to be unique and believable. This is a must. As animators, we don't necessarily have to know everything about acting. Generally, we are being given an existing line reading, for example, but we also must know how to dissect that line reading and figure out what the actor was thinking when he delivered that bit of dialogue. What was his subtext? What is the operative word? What are his motivations? What does he WANT most in the scene, and what is preventing him from having it? Sometimes you have to make some of this stuff up to create a whole picture that you can work with, but it's very important to go through the process. To me, the main stuff I find that I apply to animation is: subtext (it's often better to animate what the character MEANS rather than what they are SAYING), operative words, backstory (who the character is, where they came from before the scene, where they will be after the scene), the desires of the character, the obstacles keeping them away from their desires. In my video reference (using all of the above), I always try to truly get into my character's head, and TRULY feel the emotions and desires the character is feeling. When I don't do that my reference always ends up being useless and predictable. However, when I do become the character, the reference is always a huge help. Next up, we have Andi Putra from Perth, Australia, who asks: "In simpler models, what I did is key everything together at the same frame so I will not be confused when I try to move things around. Now I'm working with a character with a mouth, eyes, and full facial rig. Do I key the face controls along with the rest of the body, or do you re-block them on their own pass? What is a normal workflow?" That's a great question. Working with a new character is always intimidating (but exciting, as well, as you get to explore how that new character works, puzzle out new solutions for movement, etc.!), and jumping into your first "fully rigged" character is even scarier than normal. I work just like you, Andi -- I block in the scene in a "pose-to-pose" way, using my reference and planning as a guide, and saving keys on every body controller as I go. HOWEVER, your question raises a great point that I don't think I've mentioned in the past, and that is the fact that I do NOT save any keys on the face at all during this first pass at blocking. I just ignore the face completely, and in my mind, I imagine what the face will eventually look like. Even with eye darts or blinks -- all that stuff I save for a completely separate pass. I don't know if that's the "normal workflow" or not, as everyone works in whatever way works best for them, but in my experience, doing any facial work in the first pass of blocking has a decent chance of being a waste of time, as the body performance/timing might not be really locked down yet, and the facial emotions and thought-process needs to be very integrated with the acting choices, gestures, and body mechanics. You might as well wait until the body is really nailed down and 90% finished before jumping into any facial stuff. It'll save you a lot of headache in the long run, in my opinion. Next up, we have a question from across the pond in the UK. Jose Lopes writes: "When you applied for the first time as an animator, when did you decide, "Ok, I know I am ready, I have the scenes needed and it's a wrap". When did you know you were ready to apply to movie studios?" This is a great question, and something that many students (as well as experienced animators) struggle with. For me, I lucked out and had an amazing mentor in Wayne Gilbert (who I'm sure you remember from last month!). I worked on my demo reel (while working another job) for about two years until Wayne said he thought it might be ready to send in. So, for me, I knew it was ready when a professional told me so. Obviously, this is an ideal situation to seek out, though not everyone will be able to find a professional. The best bets are to go to conferences like Siggraph or animation festivals and find professionals you can show your reel to. Many professional animators would be eager to look at your stuff and offer advice. This is something we have been doing at the Animation Mentor booth at Siggraph for the last couple years (having your demo reel critiqued by pros). The feedback has been great so I think a lot of people are finding this sort of thing very helpful. If you can't travel to any major animation/CG conferences, then I would seek out online animation communities such as cg-char (http://www.cgchar-animation.com), which is what many of us did back in the day. Forums and communities like these can be invaluable for figuring out where your skills are at. Lastly, I would encourage you to just apply for the jobs you want! There's really no downside to sending in a reel that might not be 100% ready. Maybe it's 95% ready, and they'll see the potential in you. Who knows? If you know for sure that it's nowhere near ready, that's another story, as you don't want to get a reputation for wasting the recruiter's time at a specific studio, or for badgering them with nonstop demo reels. Only send it in if you think it truly might fit with what they may be looking for, AND only reapply if you have made some significant changes to the reel. If they've already seen your older reel, be sure to put your newer stuff at the beginning or they may recognize the old work and say, "Hey, we've seen this one already" and turn it off. Oh man, I better be careful. I could talk about reel submissions all day long! OK, how about one more topic: Last we have Muhammad Zohaib from Pakistan (who you can also thank for some of the older article topics as a couple of those articles grew out of conversations we had via email), who has a three-part question: (might as well end with a big one, right?) *1) "How do you spend your week in ILM?"* Honestly, it totally depends on what we are working on, and where we are in the production schedule. But I would say that my general statistics would be working around 45-50 hours per week. I get to work around 8:45, and on a typical day go straight to dailies where our work is shown up on the big screen and we all talk about how to make it better. Then it'd be back to my desk to catch up on my email, phone messages, and a couple hours of animating before lunch. Most of the animators eat together every day in our dining area, and we're a very close-knit family. After lunch, it's hardcore animation for me, and I animate until I go home, generally around 8 p.m. or so. The truth is that I am crazy blessed with this job, and literally get to just sit in a room with most of my closest friends and laugh all day long. We work hard, but we keep the mood light and fun as much as possible. 2) "On average how much frame u do in one week and what is required frames in a week for feature film, TV production, TV commercial and anything else you know? I have heard TV required 500 frames a week, Ohh man it is lots of animation in 5 days how do they do that, I think they must be superhuman?" I think they are superhuman as well!! Ha, ha, ha. This is a tough question, as every studio handles expectations and quotas differently. Generally speaking, the bigger the budget, the higher the expected quality, which means you get more time to create the animation. At a place like ILM, there are expectations to perform at a certain level, of course, but we don't have any specific quotas. LM doesn't say you have to animate a certain number of frames per week, specifically, but we all know what speed is generally expected, and it's obvious when someone isn't keeping up, so we all work hard to put out quality work. At ILM, the production department does a great job of shielding the artists as much as possible from the stresses of the overall production. It's set up so that 99% of the time, the artist is concerned far more with the quality of the work than they are with the quantity (number of frames) being finished. Shots also can vary wildly in how long they take to do. One hundred frames of a character not doing a whole lot might get finished in three days, but those same 100 frames might take a month to animate if it's six Transformers running around and fighting. Because of this, it's really hard for me to estimate a weekly frame count. As for the rest of your question, each studio handles that stuff differently. I've even heard of 800-1000 frames per week at one TV animation studio, which to me is just insane, but I guess they're fine with that level of quality. There is always a tradeoff between speed vs. quality of the animation, so it's up to each studio and production to determine the level of quality they are willing to pay for. 3) "Who is animation supervisor or lead animator? I mean what are his responsibilities? How an animator become lead animator mean what are the special skills required to become Lead. Is it experience or leadership quality or talent?" Again, this can vary from studio to studio, but for us, the Animation Supervisor oversees all aspects of the animation on a movie. They're in charge of the movement, staging, composition, of the characters and scenes. Their job is largely to be the one who spends the most one-on-one time with the Director of the film, shows him/her our work, and gets the feedback to give back to the animators. Their job is also to cast the shots (decide who should animate what), and to determine when our work is ready to be shown to the Director. The Lead Animators are sort of like mini-animation-supervisors. Some studios want Leads to be in charge of specific characters. At ILM, if you are animating a shot, you’re going to animate every character in that shot. Instead of being in charge of a specific character, our Lead Animators are usually in charge of specific sequences (A "sequence" would be a series of shots. A whole "scene" in a film, in other words, made up of lots of little cuts). The Lead Animator will give ideas and feedback to the animators working on his sequence, will help determine when it's ready to be shown to the Animation Supervisor, and will also usually be doing a lot of animation himself or herself. The Lead is also there to troubleshoot problems and answer questions from the animators in order to help the Animation Supervisor not be distracted from the bigger issues he's dealing with. In other words, the Leads try to put out fires before they get to the Anim Supe. As for how these people are chosen, it's based on skill and experience, but as you mentioned, it is also based largely on leadership ability. Solid communication skills are a must, not to mention being organized and having a highly developed sense of time management. And of course, most essential of all, is to have a great "eye" for animation -- knowing when something is wrong, and more importantly, now to fix it. OK, well I hope that answered your questions! Please feel free to email me any questions you have, and also let me know if you like this new format or would prefer to stick with the older style. I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions! tipsandtricks@animationmentor.com Tune in next month for a temporary return to old-fashioned tricking! Keep animating, and as always -- have FUN! Shawn :)