Geek Fact
Did you know that "Cars"', Pixar's new animated feature movie, working title in 2001 was "Route 66" (after U.S. Route 66), but in 2002, the title was changed to prevent people from thinking it was related to the 1960 television show with the same name? Another working title was "The Cars". The film's animators drew up over 43,000 sketches for designs of the cars. Also, Lightning McQueen's original number was to be 57, director John Lasseter's birth year. It was later changed to 95 to represent the year that Toy Story (1995) was released.

Animation Mentor Tips & Tricks:
Forget About The Legs
By: Shawn Kelly

Hello animators!

Okay, get ready for a shocker...

I'm actually going to talk about something *PRACTICAL* for once!  No, really!  I'm totally serious.  I know you think I'm going to *start* to talk about something practical, and then careen off into some bizarre tangent that's only barely relevant to anything you're working on, but this time, I'm really going to pass on an honest-to-God, bona fide "trick."

I mean, this is called Tips & Tricks, isn't it?  All I've talked about are tips, mostly, I suppose.  Mostly esoteric animation stuff I've probably spent FAR too much time thinking about...   Not much in the way of "if you save a key on this frame, and then a key on that frame, a good trick to favor one over the other in your timing is to blah blah blah" so far, right?

Well, forget tips for this month.  It's trick time.

*Trick #1:  Forget About the Legs*

Okay, so here we go.  First of all, like most great tricks, this isn't something I thought of myself.  It was handed down to me by who I consider to be one of the most talented animators I know (Glen McIntosh, Animation Supervisor at good old ILM), and boy oh boy did I have a hard time wrapping my head around it.

The trick is this: if you're doing an action scene, you hide the legs until you're happy with the body animation.

That's it.  It isn't terribly complicated, but man - it was really scary for me at first, but I have to say, I've found it extremely helpful.

Basically, the idea is this -- if you nail the timing and posing of the body (hips, torso, etc), then the position of the feet will already be dictated by the position/timing of the body, so if you just hide the feet and legs to begin with, and block in the body, you get the feet/legs for "free."

My first reaction to this was incredulous.  "How do you know where to put the hips if you can't see the feet!?"  I had a really hard time imagining working this way.  I've always been a pose-to-pose guy for the most part.  Thinking about my scenes as a series of (hopefully) strong full-body poses.  I couldn't imagine ignoring such important parts of a pose when blocking in my work.

What I've found, however, is that this method can save you some time, as long as you still do your planning, and know (at least in your mind) what your main poses need to end up looking like.  You'll likely have to get in there and adjust the hips and body position slightly to accommodate issues that might pop up when you start dropping in your leg animation, but for the most part, if the body truly looks right, the feet ought to work.

The big bonus is that you don't have to slow down to reposition your feet constantly if your character is running around, flipping, spinning, jumping, etc.  I was amazed to discover what an anchor the legs were on my "blocking time," and how much spending time with them really slowed me down.

I've used this method on four films now, and I'm finding that in any action-intensive scenes, I'm relying on this method more and more to block my work in quickly.

As an example, there was a scene in Star Wars 3: Revenge of the Sith where I had this idea of having Yoda chop this guy down and then throw his lightsaber at another guy, leap up onto his chest, pull out the lightsaber as the guy falls, and then leap over the dying guy's head to attack the next clone trooper in line.

This was one of the first times I really used Glen's trick of hiding the legs, and it worked so well for me that I used his method throughout that entire sequence.

First thing I did was hid his legs and feet, including the nurbs-curves of the foot controllers.  So now I've got legless Yoda just standing there.  I left his arms showing, left his head on, and kept his butt/hips so I could at least see the line of action going through his body (which helped me plan where I'd want the feet to plant later on, in order to have the strongest poses and silhouettes.)

I blocked in the whole shot this way.  Legless Yoda floating around, killing clones, throwing his saber, jumping, landing on the guy's chest - all of it.  Once the timing of the body felt right to me (which, by the way, meant that it didn't feel floaty at all, but felt like he was actually landing on feet, of course), then I turned the legs back on.

The legs are IK, so of course he was basically just flying away from his feet, and he looked like a ridiculous green midget Superman at first, but as I started to block in the feet, I was blown away by how easy it was.

I placed his feet on the first frame into the pose I had already been planning to aim for, and then simply moved frame-by-frame through the shot (animating the feet in a continuous "straight-ahead" style) and looked for the frames where his legs would suddenly hyper-extend and do the wonderful "IK-POP" we all know and love so much.  When I'd find that frame, I'd simply back up one frame, save a key on that foot, and then start to raise it on the next frame.  I'd go forward until his body started to "fall" onto the foot (the down part of his run), back up a couple frames, plant that foot that had just hyper-extended a few frames before, and viola!  He was running around!

In other words, his body position was dictating when I'd *have* to lift the foot, or else the legs would hyper-extend and pop.

So far, I've animated 2-legged Yoda this way, 3-legged walkers in War of The Worlds, and the 4-legged dragon in the upcoming Eragon, as well as a couple things I'm not allowed to talk about yet (sorry!  Don't you hate that?!), and it's been incredibly useful in every case, regardless of the shape of the creature or how many legs it happened to have...

You might be thinking this sounds insane, which is exactly what I thought when Glen tried to convince me, but it's worth giving it a try if you've never experimented working this way.  Maybe, like me, you'll find it handy.

Yes, it's a slightly "layered" approach to your animation, but I still think of my work as 100% pose-to-pose.  I'm merely putting off adding the feet to the pose that I already know I'll eventually want.

The benefit of this is primarily a savings in time.  Instead of mucking around with the feet as your move through the shot, inevitably creating a lot of keys that will probably have to be adjusted throughout the blocking process, you're ignoring them until you know exactly where they will need to be placed, and exactly what they're timing will have to be in order to accommodate the cool timing of the body that you've just nailed down.

Hope that helps someone!

So there it is, our first actual mega-practical "trick."  If anyone actually reads this column and has an opinion one way or the other about whether they'd like to see more "tips" or more "tricks" in the future, email me at: tipsandtricks@animationmentor.com and let me know!

Keep animating, and as always - have FUN!

- Shawn




Book Showcase: Peter de Sève Sketchbook

Bio of Peter de Sève
Peter de Sève has been drawing obsessively since he was a child. Born in Queens, New York in 1958, his love for drawing was fueled by monster movies, comic books and the work of Frank Frazetta.  In high school, he studied figure drawing at the Art Students League in New York on weekends while creating comic strips and fantasy illustrations in his basement.  He eventually managed to put together enough of a portfolio to convince Parson’s School of Design to let him attend their Illustration Program in New York City.  While there, he was introduced to contemporary and nineteenth century American and European Illustration which continue to inspire and inform his work.  In his twenty-five year career, de Sève has created editorial illustrations for most of the major American magazines including Time, Newsweek, Atlantic Monthly, Smithsonian, Premiere, and Entertainment Weekly.  He is also a frequent contributor of covers to The New Yorker Magazine.


De Sève has designed posters for Broadway shows and has created characters for numerous animated feature films.  His credits include The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan, A Bug's Life, Tarzan, Finding Nemo and the box office hits, Ice Age and Ice Age 2 The Meltdown, for which he was the sole character designer.  In addition to his extensive work in animated feature film, de Sève has provided character designs for many television commercials, including a Nike spot, titled "Destination Moon," which won a silver Clio award and an upcoming commercial for Dodge trucks.  In 2002, he received the distinguished Hamilton King Award from the Society of Illustrators.
Peter de Sève lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, Randall and their daughters, Paulina and Fia.


 

Animation Mentor:
What inspired you to create the book?

Peter de Sève:
In a way, it was my wife Randall's idea to create the sketchbook.  I had collected hundreds of sketches, doodles really, that I had pasted into sketchbooks.  They were, for the most part, unconscious little scribblings on the corners of envelopes, post-its, and whatever paper was lying around.  Randall had always made a point of urging me to save these things and more importantly, to learn from them.  Too often she would say, "This is some of your best work!  You should bring this kind of looseness to your finishes!"  Well, that is easier said than done.  I had to agree with her, though.  There is something pure about the unconscious doodle.  Without the constraint of having to solve a problem, or even the pressure of having to show it to anyone, I find that my hand is freer and I'm often surprised at the results.  When I sit down to do an assignment, it's quite a different story.  My mind screams, "STAY LOOSE!!" and naturally, I clench.


 

Animation Mentor:
Can you tell us about your sketchbook?

Peter de Sève:
I suggested the sketchbook to my friend, Pierre Paquet at Editions Paquet a few years ago and he was enthusiastic about the idea.  My only caveat was that I wanted to package the book myself, which meant I wanted complete control over editing and designing it.  For me there was no point in doing the book unless it was something I could be proud of, because it certainly wasn’t going to make me rich.  My next step was to call one of my dearest friends and a gifted book designer, Lori Barra (tonbo.com), to see if she would design it for me.  I cannot stress enough how much work she put into this book.  She helped me choose the pieces, and with her typical boundless patience and enthusiasm, created version after version of the book for me to dissect and obsess over.  One would imagine that a collection of doodles with almost no text would be a simple task, but this project took usa good part of a year.  It was a labor of love for both of us, and it wouldn't be worth looking at without Lori's involvement.


Francoise Mouly is the cover Art Editor of The New Yorker magazine and wrote a wonderful and extremely flattering introduction, for which I am very grateful.  The book was published in Europe with very limited distribution in the U.S.  We have a U.S. Edition ready to come out sometime this summer (06), hopefully.  I've got most of the sketches ready for Volume 2 of the sketchbook, which I am hoping will include some color drawings as well.


 

Animation Mentor:
Do you have any additional tips you would like to share with our readers?

Peter de Sève:
The only tip I have, is an obvious one: That drawing is the best way to learn how to draw.  I am a bit of a hypocrite about this, because I don't carry a sketchbook with me anymore, but I do draw every day.  Either while working on an assignment or talking on the phone.  One more thing: Learn from your sketches.  I don't know an illustrator who doesn't slave over his or her finished drawings in an effort to capture something golden in that initial thumbnail.  That's because when we sketch, we tap into a part of the brain that is hard to connect to when we sit down to draw deliberately.  Trust the doodle!

To purchase Peter de Sève Sketchbook, please visit www.peterdeseve.com.



June US Movie Releases
Your inside guide to US movie releases and the visual effect companies who made movie magic.
Cars
U.S. Release Date: June 09, 2006

Animation Studio:
Pixar Animation Studios

Synopsis: Cars Is the saga of Lightning McQueen, a hot-shot animated stock-car voiced by actor Owen Wilson. In route to a big race, the cocky McQueen gets waylaid in Radiator Springs, where he finds the true meaning of friendship and family.
Click
U.S. Release Date: June 23, 2006

Visual Effects Studio:

Graphic Nature Ltd.

Synopsis: This comedy stars Adam Sandler as a family man who buys a magic remote control that can control time, but when he accidentally fast-forwards through a huge chunk of his life he must find out how to retrieve all the lost time.
Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties
U.S. Release Date: June 23, 2006

Animation Studio:

Rhythm & Hues

Synopsis: Jon Arbuckle travels to the United Kingdom, and he brings his cat, Garfield, along for the trip. A case of mistaken cat identity finds Garfield ruling over a castle, but his reign is soon jeopardized by the nefarious Lord Dargis, who has designs on the estate.
Superman Returns
U.S. Release Date: June 30, 2006

Visual Effects Studios:

Cinesite (Europe) Ltd.
Hydraulx
Soho VFX
The Moving Picture Company

Synopsis: When a cure is found to treat mutations, lines are drawn amongst the X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier, and the Brotherhood, a band of powerful mutants organized under Xavier's former ally, Magneto.