By: Shawn Kelly

“Oh man, I feel great.

You know that feeling you get when you finally achieve a long-held goal, or you've been working on a project for a year and finally wrap it all up?  You cross that last "t" and dot that last "i" and can sit back and say, "wow - it's done!"

That's how I feel right now.  A couple weeks ago, the best team of animators I've ever had the honor of working with just finished Transformers, and I couldn't be more proud of the animation in the film.  As Transformers fans from childhood, we really put our heart and soul into the animation, and worked hard to make those shots as cool as we could get them.  The uber-challenging work, some long hours - none of that mattered, we were just excited to have the chance to work on the movie, and whether it turns out to be a success or not, we'll always have the satisfaction of knowing that we got to be a part of something that inspired so much imagination in us as kids.

Why do I bring up Transformers?  Well, it sort of plays into what I want to write about today.  You see, for a little over a year, I ate, breathed, and dreamed giant transforming robots.  They were my life, quite literally.  On a project like that, if you want to perform at the level you're expected to perform at, you really have to throw yourself into it as wholly and completely as possible.  Maybe this is a sad commentary on the way films are made, but the reality is that we spent more waking hours with our robots for that year than we did with our families.  Far more.

The point is, the project becomes a huge part of you, in a very real and tangible way.

You spend more time thinking about how to make a robot smash through a bus, or climb up out of a swimming pool, than you do thinking about your friend's birthdays or the list of household chores you know you won't get to until the movie is done.

The project becomes your life.

And that's OK.  It's supposed to.  That's what they pay you for, you know?  And you should go into this business with that expectation.

That said, it's important to try to "leave the robots at work," if you will, as much as you can.  Time with your family, or playing with your 360, or vegging out in front of the TV watching Heroes - this stuff is important as well, because in a way, that's your chance to recharge your animation batteries and avoid feeling burned out.  Get outside on the weekend and relax a little bit.  Whatever it is that you enjoy, don't put it off for the length of the project, make some time for it wherever you can, as meager as that time may be.

Maybe you'll spend more waking hours with your work than you do with your loved ones, but the key is to make those hours at home count as much as possible, so hit the beach, or hug your family, or fire up Halo2, or watch Hiro learn how to use his sword.  Whatever it is, make some time for that too, ok?

Ok, so...  back to the feeling you get when you finish that project.

Generally, I feel great to be done with Transformers, but if I'm honest, with this project completed I also feel sad.  It was unquestionably the most fun I've ever had as an animator, and I miss it already.  A lot.

Not only that, I'm having a hard time getting over it.  Not the sadness, or anything mushy like that - I'm having a hard time getting myself out of "robot animator" mode.

And that is what I want to write about.

For a year, everything I've animated was made of steel.  Gears, pistons, and giant armor plates.  30 foot tall warriors in hand-to-hand combat.  How does a giant heavy guy with wheels for feet move down a highway?  How can I try to make something as detailed and complex as this have poses that read as clearly as possible?  How do we give them weight, but also the speed they'd need to be the badass robot warriors that we want them to be?  That's where my head is at.  I've spent a year thinking of pretty much nothing but that, as far as animation goes.

Well, that show's over, and it's time to work on something else.  On this new project, I'm suddenly animating a fleshy 5-inch tall medium-cartoony creature.

Now, if you can come up with a more radical changing of animation gears than "30-foot Steel Warrior" to "5 inch cartoony guy," I'd love to hear it.

I've been on this new project for one week, and I'll be honest.  I had a really hard time that first week.  Changing those gears in my head has really hit me hard.  Suddenly all the things I've been training myself to focus on for the last year are borderline irrelevant.  It's like I spent the last year in Venice (I wish!) speaking nothing but Italian, and suddenly someone flew me to Paris, dropped me off, and pointed at me, laughing "forget Italian, it's time to speak French!  Oh, and hurry!"

Now, don't get me wrong - a lot of the stuff I learned on Transformers (and let me tell you - working with that group of animators, it was impossible NOT to learn!) is totally applicable to what I'm doing now, and will be very useful knowledge in the long run, no matter what character I'm working on.

Remember the trusty "filing cabinet" we keep in our heads for observation and animation knowledge?  Well, I'm just cramming some of it in there to draw on later, and hopefully I won't lose too much of it over time.  That's pretty much all you can do when it's time to move onto the next project.  You almost have to make room in your head for this whole new set of files or something...

However, you still have the problem of wildly conflicting STYLES, which brings me (finally!) to today's tip:

*Tip #19:  STYLE FIRST!

*What I mean by that is that the style of the project is paramount in importance - beyond any animation principles or specific animation techniques.

So here I am, on this new movie.  No more robots battling, it's time to animate something a little cartoony.  He's fleshy.  Bouncy.  Quick movements.  Incredibly intricate facial stuff.

Even if you are new to animation, I'm sure you can envision the idea that the animation I'm doing right now couldn't possibly be more different, both in substance and style, from Optimus Prime.  So now the trick is to flip this switch in your head, where you shove all your "badass robot warrior" stuff to the back, and start searching through that filing cabinet for the stuff to replace it with.

This is exactly what I'm struggling with this week.  I feel like I'm almost there.  Tonight, just at the end of the day, I finally felt like maybe I wasn't a completely lost cause after all, and that I was finally starting to get the hang of it a little bit.

To be totally honest, I had to almost completely start my shot over mid-week.  The blocking was a mess.  It was just all over the place stylistically.  Too fast here, dead there, hyper and cartoony here, realistic there...  Ugh.  Just awful - trust me.  The new blocking is finally feeling like maybe things will work out, but it took me some time to switch those gears.

And in retrospect, I think "style" is what my problem was.  I didn't really take the time to properly consider the overall style of this new project.  I just jumped right into it, as though it was just another robot shot.

What I should have done, was study as much footage as I could from the work that had already been done on the movie.  I did watch a lot of footage, but if I'm honest, that's all I really did - watch it. 
Watching it isn't enough - I should have studied it.  I should have taken the time at the beginning of the week to REALLY figure out how this character moves, and why.

I should have figured out exactly what the rules of this movie's universe are.  How does gravity affect this character?  Where does he fall on the "Tex Avery - Davy Jones" scale of cartoony vs. real?  How many frames is an average footstep for him?  How does he carry his weight?  Personality quirks?  Acting traits?

Basically, I should have taken my own advice from the beginning of this column 20 months ago, and remembered that planning is not only essential for every shot, but for every project as a whole.

Anyone who has been doing this animation stuff for a while knows that every movie has its own style.  The more realistic the work, the less variance in the style, I suppose, but it still exists nonetheless, and it's important to really nail it down before you sit down and start saving keyframes.

Think about Davy Jones on the big screen, Peter Griffin on TV, and Tony Hawk skating across your Playstation.  They are all great animation examples, and done perfectly for their respective mediums and universes, but if you plucked any one of them and swapped them into each other's worlds, they would look ridiculous.

Tony Hawk's animation in the games are terrific.  They're really well done, consisting of a great blend of complex animations that are carefully timed to be responsive to the crisp controls of the gameplay. 
He pulls off his amazing tricks with great poses that blend perfectly from one to another as you try to string your skating tricks together, and then always manages to get back to its default "skating" pose. 
(Unless I'm playing, then Tony always manages to end up at the "Tony just cracked his head on the side of the skate ramp" pose).

So, in the world of the Tony Hawk games, that animation is perfectly done, in my opinion.  However, if you took Tony Hawk and had him skating around on Davy Jones ship up there on the big screen, his animation would look very out of place and odd.  For one thing, because his movements are designed in the game to be able to quickly react to your controller, he can move really fast.  He'd look like a hyperfast spaz on Davy Jones ship, probably, just as the super-detailed Davy Jones would look startlingly out of place wandering around Tony Hawk's skate park.

Do I even need to mention what either of them would look like sitting in Peter Griffin's kitchen on Family Guy?  Or how Peter would look on Tony's skateboard?

These are all obviously very different styles of animation.  None of them are "better" than the other, all are carefully tailored by talented artists to meet the demands, expectations, and challenges of their mediums.  Davy has to look real and emote.  Tony has to do cool tricks and react really fast.  Peter has to have the funniest comedic timing on television.

Nail down the style of the animation first, because the style will
inform every animation decision you are going to make on that project.  
Timing will be based on the style.  Posing will be based on the style.

Most of all, acting decisions will all be made based on the style of the work.  Is the style really cartoony, or realistic and contained?  I may have mentioned the ideas of "Representational" acting performances vs. "Presentational" acting performances in the past, but basically those ideas break down into two different art forms.

You've got "Representational," which is all about what is real. 
Photography, still-life paintings, and most modern film acting would all be considered "representational."  They depict what life actually looks like.

On the other hand, you have "Presentational," which is more about "showing" the audience something slightly more abstract or "showy." 
Theater, Picasso, Cirque Du Soleil, and Tex Avery are all examples of "Presentational" art forms.

Again, neither one is better, and neither could be said to be more "artistic" than the other.  Optimus Prime and Davy Jones would be said to be representational, while Scrat from Ice Age would be somewhat presentational.  Something like Nemo would probably fall somewhere in between, and often that can be where the most magic is at - right smack in between the two.

Anyway - you need to figure out right away where your character and project are at on the ol' "Presentational vs. Representational" chart before you'll know how they will move, or, more importantly, what sort of acting choices they will make.

Specifically, this will inform the amount of "exaggeration" you will be applying to the principles of animation in your shots, and will affect the level of theatrics in their movements.

Ok, that's it!  Hopefully that was helpful to someone other than me...

Once again, if you have any thoughts, ideas, complaints, cocktail recipes, etc - feel free to email me personally at
tipsandtricks (at) animationmentor.com .    It's been awesome hearing from you!

Oh, if anyone has a time machine and can send this article back in time to me one week ago, that'd really help me out, by the way...  I really could have used it!  :)

Special thanks, by the way, to my beautiful bride-to-be for the great topic suggestion for this month!  Funny, smart, artistically amazing, a knockout, and can talk about animation styles too?  Man, did I luck out or WHAT?

That's it for me.  Keep animating, and as always, have FUN!

-Shawn