Animation Blocking - Notes and Chunks - part 8

As the semester is coming to an end I noticed an uptick in students mentioning their difficulties managing their schedule and getting work done. This happened in my online and on-site Academy class and even the Animation Mentor class I just finished, so it's a common issue for a lot of people.

 Now, I can't really make suggestions regarding people's personal life since I don't know what they have going on. You could be overloaded with too many classes, or classes and a job, or classes and a family, or classes and a job and a family, etc. etc.

 But animation wise I can make some suggestion regarding your workflow and how you can save time.

 Know what you want to do. 

 It sounds simple and is really hard to do. BUT. It's better for you to spend more time thinking and planning out your animation than animating. Why? If you just start a shot you will run into problems, noodle things to death, restart, get a lot of notes from friends and teachers and it has a good chance to end up being a mess that you're not happy with.

 But if you spend time coming up with just the right idea (and yes, there is always room for changes down the line), with good thumbnails, or storyboards or reference (or all of them combined), then you have a really solid ground work as a starting point. You know what to do and you can execute. It's not uncommon to spend 50% of the time planning things out and 50% of the time animating. That being said, the schedule at school might lean towards more time spent animating, so talk to your teacher and ask if extra time can be allocated for planning. At the same time, it's also important to practice quick brainstorming and quick planning so that you can animate the shot as soon as possible.

 Have your tools ready. 

 Make sure your rig you've chosen works and doesn't have crazy bugs, so test out your rig. Sudden rig problems can be a time suck. Have a pose library ready (hands and face). No need to make poses you won't need, so once you're done with planning, you will have a good understanding of what hand poses and facial expressions you will need for your shot(s). Reposing fingers over and over is also a huge time suck. Same for mouth shapes. A body picker is also helpful. Try to avoid to do tasks over and over. If you do, then there's probably a tool or script out there that will help you shortcut wise. 

 But the main focus of this post is on your workflow regarding addressing notes and how you work through those notes.

 Make a list of notes and work in chunks. 

 Having a critical eye for self-feedback comes with time and practice and experience, so at the beginning you're going to rely on your teachers and friends when it comes to feedback notes, and hopefully those notes will be somewhat structured. By that I mean the following:

- the first notes should address the general tone and feel of the shot; is it as funny or sad as you're intending it to be? Was the audience's reaction what you were hoping for? If you're going for a sad tone and everybody is laughing, then you might have to re-evaluate the general acting choices, staging, etc.

 - on a visual and technical level you will want to address major issues first: are the poses clear, is the timing successful in portraying the right acting choices and emotions of the character(s), are the body mechanics working? Address the root first, then the chest, then the head, then the limbs. Of course you will have to go back and forth and some actions will have a specific focus but in general you will want to fix the broader controls and work your way into more detailed areas. It's of no use to polish fingers and sweat over arm arcs, if the root needs a complete overhaul (and if you move your root it will mess up your arm arcs for instance). Working in a layered fashion will help you go through each body part.

- once the main structure and timing is working you can go into details like hands, fingers, feet, the face, etc.

 Once your eye for self critique gets better you will be able to identify the major points that need fixing. Areas that make you cringe upon first viewing of your aBlast (or whatever you want to call the movie of your animation; depends on the software).

 Let's pretend you have pages of notes for a 10 second shot, what's the best way to address them apart from what I mentioned above?

 Work in chunks. 

 Unless you're doing a single action your shot can be broken up into beats, chunks, sections, etc. If a character is walking, sitting down and resting, then you already have three distinct sections your shot can be broken into. If the walking has multiple complex actions, then you can divide the walk into those separate chunks as well. That way you concentrate your fixes on one area. You will be more focused and it's going to be mentally also more manageable. If you don't care about beats then you can also attack your shots in 50 frame chunks. Or 100 frame chunks. Attack one section, done, next section, done, etc. etc.

 Of course this can get pretty complex if you have multiple characters, interactions, creatures and humans, camera moves, etc. but the same chunking and focus principles apply.

 You might also have a shot with a central objective exercise wise, like a weight assignment, or a sit down, but you've added a few actions before and after the main exercise. It's also helpful to just concentrate on that section only until it's working really well. If you still have time, then you can start working on the beginning before the main action, or the end, whatever makes the shot better, and maybe you even have time for everything. But that way you're not wasting time on details on a section that's not the main challenge (like portraying weight).

 I hope this helps and as always, if you have any questions, let me know!

Cheers
JD

Animation Blocking - Sound as Reference - part 7

Part 7 of the Animation Blocking series covers an animation workflow that I feel is criminally underused. It's quick, you don't need help, you can do it all yourself and you can use it in a simple way or go crazy. I'm talking about making sounds as timing reference. This can work for movements and physical actions but also internal monologue.

What makes a great animation demo reel?

Head over to Artella for a write up on how to make a (hopefully) great animation demo reel, written by yours truly!

7 Things All Animators Need to Start (or Stop) Doing Right Now

Great list of body mechanics dos and don'ts by Brian Mendenhall! Head over to Animation Mentor for the post!

IAMAG Animation master class with Nicolas Prothais

IAMAG Animation master class 16, 2016 from Nicolas Prothais on Vimeo.

Animation Bootcamp: Animating Cameras for Games

Love this talk!

GDC16 Flash Forward: Animation Bootcamp: Tricks of the Trade

First time at GDC! Will be lurking around during the day! Come and say hi!

Add Character

As many of my students know, I'm always harping on about CHARACTER, to a point where it became a meme in my last AAU class. Thank you George...

To me it's just more interesting to see a character make choices that are influenced by their emotional state, by what's happening to them via outside forces (through another character or environmental forces, etc.) and so on as opposed to seeing just movement (like a dance or martial arts).

You can have underlying character traits inform the character's acting choices. Your character can be honest, loyal, determined, adventurous, pessimistic, mean, rude, greed, cruel, picky ,silly, fidget, deceptive, etc. etc.

You can also have gestures or body tics that are specific to one character. It can be tricky to put that into one shot as it might seem repetitive or just look like bad acting:

... but it's still something to think about. As mentioned above, the environment can also alter your acting. Take your current acting scene but place it somewhere where it's really cold. The character's posture is going to change, some gestures might be faster or reduced in their scale maybe because he/she wants to go back to putting his/her hands into the coat pockets or whatever. 

A simple gesture or someone grabbing a prop is going to look different depending on your character's emotional state of mind, character trait, environment, or even if the character is familiar or unfamiliar with the environment and/or prop(s).

All in all, every move should hopefully tell the audience something about your protagonist/antagonist/extra/etc., so don't forget: add character. :)

Lecture on smear frames - Jeremy Lazare

Every Frame A Painting

Check out the playlist of Every Frame A Painting, if you're into analyzing filmmaking techniques. Below are two examples.

iAnimate Lab - No21 - Brett Pascal

iAnimate Lab - No21 - Brett Pascal from iAnimate on Vimeo.

Stop worshipping animation companies.

Everybody has their own favorite company they want to work for. Each student is different. I see and hear it all the time through my teachings, from AM, to the AAU and in my workshops.

But there is one consistent problem.

As long as you worship your favorite company you won't question teachers who work for that company enough, if at all. You end up being a drone.

Fanboy-ism has always existed and that's fine. I'm guilty of this as well. But there comes a point where it's not helping you. For example. Last week in my class, a student showed me work from another class and I asked what the notes were for his shot. The student recited what he was told to change but when I asked why he had to make those changes, the student didn't know what the reasons were. And that's the problem I see over and over again. Students blindly following what teachers tell them, without asking why.

Is it fear of questioning the wisdom and authority of your teacher? Is it fear that by doing so you might ruin your chances of getting hired at your favorite company that teacher represents?

Teachers don't know everything. They can also be wrong.

Not everything you hear is holy scripture, especially when it comes to performance related advice, since a lot of it is based on a subjective preference. Technical notes you should really follow though. But either way, ask why if you don't understand the notes.

It's okay to question things. How else will you learn? If you don't understand the notes, then the teacher is just animating through you. And the next time you start a similar shot, you will either make the same mistake or ape the notes you were given without understanding the reasons and principles behind it.

As a student you are paying for classes and the teachers are there to help you. Don't just blindly accept every note. That's a waste of time and money.

JD

pic credit

Facial pose can ruin everything

A lot of times maquettes have a cool body pose, but then the face just ruins it all. Enter these two from Star Wars.
The Grievous/Shaak Ti could have been really cool, but look at Shaak Ti's facial expression! Same with Asajj. It's so emotionless, what is going on?!

At least this Anakin one has an expression, but then the eye line doesn't match. Why is he looking above the Tusken Raider? No connection there.

What a bummer!

Now that's a lot better:

Looking at the Dianoga would have been cool though, but at least his pain is clearly visible in his facial expression.

Cloverball - and the importance of having fun

After a brief start in 2008 where I blocked out the first 5 shots I have now finally finished this little sequence last week and I had a blast working on it! But there's a little story behind it.

Back when I was teaching at the AAU I had every class start with a bouncing ball assignment for the first week. It was a great way to see how people would react to it (did they feel like they were above it, were they excited, confused, etc.) and seeing the clips gave me a good idea how each person was attacking an assignment.

Would they do just the minimum (or less), would they think they mastered it yet didn't really, was there more to see than the bullet points were asking or did someone go above and beyond?

Since taking up any kind of animation school demands a lot of work and time behind each assignment and exercise, why wouldn't you try to have the most fun possible? That was always my approach, even if I didn't succeed all the time. Some teachers thought I was just an over achiever, which baffled me. I was just having tons of fun and trying to milk the assignment and push myself. But years later I realized that you have to make sure that your students focus on getting the basics done, and done really well, before they go off and take on crazy stuff.

In my first character animation class, taught by the awesome Lisa Mullins, I learned what "animation jerk off" was. It was this clip:

It was a "getting out of a chair" assignment, which was supposed to last 5 seconds max. I will never forget her reaction to that clip. After an initial compliment on how I seemed to have understood the basic principles of animation (to an extent), she proceeded to rip the clip apart and it was the best critique I've ever gotten and a huge eye opener. My clip was just about moving stuff, it was animation for animation's sake, or "animation jerk off", instead of exploring the character, acting choices and breathing life into a computer rig.

She was so right. At the same time it was also extremely rewarding to just let loose and animate the hell out of something. I still indulge in this to this day, but I try to keep the balance in favor of character instead of movement.

But every now and then, I just like to have fun. And this brings me back to the bouncing ball assignment. What I would explain to the students back then was my view on what constitutes an F, a D, a C and a B, which I've tried to illustrate in the clip below:

(click image to play grading video)

This is of course all subjective and feel free to chew me out ("What?! You think this is a F/D/C/B?!")

Unfortunately, I don't remember seeing anybody go for an all out A with the "go big or go home" attitude. Of course, it also all depended on their skill set, school schedule, etc. but still, I missed the "fun" part in most of the clips.

So what's an A in my distorted point of view? It's a clip where you can tell that someone just ran with an assignment. Of course this can lead to questions like "Do you have a problem with women?" when faced with my very first bouncing ball assignment:

 ... and no, I don't have a problem with women, I was just being stupid and added "bouncy" things to the assignment... and I completely understand the question... (hiding in shame...)

Anyway, as posted at the top of this entry, "Cloverball" was my idea of what a bouncing ball assignment could look like. :)

And here are the usual suspects of video formats: youtube, vimeo and quicktime.

Cloverball from Jean-Denis Haas on Vimeo.

A bit more information regarding the planning of this sequence:

The original idea of doing this over the top bouncing ball, as mentioned, came out of the AAU days and it got mixed with the additional knowledge that I gained regarding camera work (thanks to Star Trek) and after having seen Cloverfield (hence the name Cloverball).
But this was all in 2008 (at least that's what the time stamp said on the last file when I opened it), and I can't really remember all the details. I just knew that I wanted to have a fight between two balls, taking place in a city.
This is as far as I got in 2008:

It was a week-end blocking out affair and got reopened last Tuesday, for another 3 day stint. So all in all 5 days, following roughly the main idea outline. As I continued last week, I knew that the red balls should assemble another guy with two legs, and that they would then walk/run towards each other and fight Godzilla style, with the red guy pushing the blue guy into a building as an ending.
That ending felt too open though and I wanted a better ending shot. First I thought about the red guy running/jumping into the blue guy and ending with a wide shot of a big mushroom explosion/cloud shot, but eventually settled on the current last shot.
The blue guy firing lasers and the red guy jumping away plus firing up his defense shield ideas grew pretty much in a straight-ahead fashion. Since I set myself a deadline (Thursday night, so that I could present it on Friday for a talk at the AAU), I didn't sit down to thumbnail or storyboard everything out. But I was really excited about finishing this whole thing, so tons of idea just popped up and I ran with what I liked the most.

The rig that I used was from Mutiny Studios, which you can download here.

The render was a standard software render using the DOF Control script for the depth of field.

Cheers
JD

Body movement in support of personality

Each animator will get to a point where they will have mastered the body mechanics enough so that they can focus on acting choices. But temptation is always there to have gestures or other body movements showcasing animation principles instead of personality. I totally understand and I'm guilty of that myself. A frequent example in my workshops is my Maya 3 assignment from the Academy, Ze Chair:


which was lovingly referred to as "Animation Jerk Off" by the awesome teacher Lisa Mullins. She immediately let me know that this is just animation for animation's sake. And she was totally right. I was more in love with the animation principles and focused on showing them off, instead of thinking about character and personality. I hope she's still teaching. Her class was the first real character animation class for me and one of the best ones.

So once you get passed that, it's less about "there's a pop on x17" but more about acting choices, which fall more into the "I prefer this over that." as opposed to being wrong (of course you can have totally inappropriate acting choices that will feel wrong, but I hope you get my point).

Which brings me to a workshop clip I was giving feedback for. The question from the animator was, which version I preferred. My response and preference was based on movement supporting a character's personality, which I'm sure is totally debatable, but I just wanted post the feedback from the Workshop Feedback page here as well:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

stuck02


IP10

(This is in response to which version I prefer.)

Funny enough, I like them both, but specific parts and would mix them. I know that sounds complicated and not sure if that's helping you. What I like about "stuck02" is the amount of rotation and overlap the body has after she's being stuck. In "stuck02" she goes pretty far down up to x54, whereas in "IP10" she doesn't go as far and stops a bit abruptly. So anim wise from a body mechanics point of view, "stuck02" feels better.

But what I prefer in "IP10" is her left arm from x51 to 74, because it's stiffer. She's surprised, a bit irritated, but tense, and that is reflected in that stiffer arm. In "stuck02", from x54 to 85, the arm is loose and dangling, and feels too out of control and animated. Too me it's not in character.
After that it's up to you. Neither versions are wrong, they are just different in terms of acting choices. In "stuck02" she looks back up to x100 in a slow way, which gives her a feel of "Hello? Uhm... anybody see that? Help me!". In "IP10" she goes up very fast to x93, which gives it a feel of "Oops! I hope no one saw that!", which is a bit more in character because she looks and moves like a confident business woman, so when she's in trouble, I think she would want to keep that strong and confident look, so she wouldn't look around for help, she would try to fix it herself. That strong personality is reflected in x182, how she puts her glasses back into the right place. Then at the end when the manhole cover comes out, that's what breaks her confidence and that's why she looks surprised and out of it at x240. It's good contrast and a change in her character, whereas in "stuck02", she already looks a bit helpless like that during the x91 area. So the ending in "stuck02" is a bit more of the same in terms of character and less of a contrast.

So basically, I would use "stuck02" until x56, then use the rest of "IP10". :)

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Origin of Acting Choices

One thing I always mention in my workshops in terms of acting choices is how the environment can and should influence the acting choices of your character.

The main example, which I ripped off of "Inside the Actor's Studio" (but don't remember who said it first), is:

- imagine a scenario where a character enters a room/place and gets ready to go to sleep.
- the steps involved in doing so could be: entering room, turning lights on, putting keys or other belongings somewhere, brushing teeth, undressing, going to bed

Now. Those acting choices and whatever the character is doing in order to go through those steps will be different depending on where the character is.

If the character (a man for instance) is at his own place he will be familiar with his surroundings, so when he enters his house/apartment/whatever and switches on the light, he won't have to look and search for the switch, he probably won't even look in the direction of the switch while he flips it, because it's a habit. All the bathroom interaction, etc. etc. will be based on familiarity and routine.

But. If the guy is staying at a hotel (first time there), the same steps (entering, lights, keys, etc.) will have different acting choices because he is not familiar with the place. He will have to look for the switch, for other rooms, etc. etc.

So the same action will be different depending on the environment and the character's relationship to that environment.

Why do I bring this up now? I was reading an interview about John C. Reilly and his new movie "Carnage" at hollywoodreporter.com and one of the questions was "What did you learn about filmmaking from Roman?" (Roman Polanski is the director)

I found his answer very interesting and it reminded me of that Inside the Actor's Studio thing.

During rehearsals, I'd have this book in my hand, and I have to set this book down in order to do the next bit of acting, and he would say: "Why would you put the book down? You don't know that you're going to pick up the bottle yet. You're doing that because you know you need your hands free, but that doesn't make sense."

Totally true and a good reminder to question the origin of your acting choices!

Posts translated into Italian

Eleonora Tiberi has a great site in Italian called animatorspot.com and on it you will find posts from Spungella or Academyanimation translated into Italian!

The first one is "The Keys to Getting a Job by Pamela K. Thompson" and more are to follow. I will update posts and notify readers here.

Thanks Eleonora for doing that!

So head over there for the translated post!

Weight assignment - exercise or reel shot?

With the beginning of the workshops there are questions trickling in regarding shots and one of them was regarding a weight exercise and I thought I'd post the answer here.

"You can do a straight forward weight exercise, sure! If you want it reel wise, I would place the weight action among an overall action. So it's not just a guy in an empty room lifting a box, but maybe it's kitchen guy and it's rush hour, you just see frantic arms from a window that wave, signaling that they are waiting for the dish and he has to hurry. And the guy is trying to lift and bring over a huge plate with a pig head on it (and apple in its mouth). Maybe half way through another kitchen guy runs through the kitchen cutting him off so he has to stop, do a 360 and then continues.

Something like that. :)

Just think about movies you've seen (real and animated) where a character is lifting, pulling, pushing, throwing or doing something involving weight. You wouldn't think immediately that this is a weight assignment because it's part of a story and maybe buried as a secondary action within an overall goal of the shot.

The reason why I would go beyond just a simple exercise set up (unmodified character and set) is because it forces you think about the character and what he did before and what he's going to do. You're placing the character within an environment and that forces him (and in return you) to think about that space and that will influence his behavioral choices (and your acting choices). Add conflict to the situation and that will influence his choices as well. All those choices show us what type of character he/she/it is and ultimately that is the goal of your animation, to go beyond the physical motion and to add character.

And that to me is a good thing to show on a reel, since ultimately, when you're working on a production, you will have to think about all those things and concentrate on the character and the acting choices. I think it shows potential employers that you are thinking beyond the exercise and beyond the simpler act of moving things around.

And to me, this type of shot is also more fun and it shows in your shot when you have fun or if you're bored with an exercise."

Cheers
JD

Facial Animation and Default Poses

the woman and the guy behind Tribble are default-y as well. :)

This is something I mentioned just recently in the workshop:

When there is silence or a pause between sentences (or whatever the audio is) for your character, you don't have to put the facial features back to their default position. It's okay to keep the mouth open, it doesn't have to close every time the character is not saying anything.

And if you want a real life reference clip for the weirdness of going back to default, check out the clip on Gizmodo of Al Franken questioning Guy L. "Bud" Tribble (that guy must be a Star Trek fan!). Watch how Mr. Tribble drifts into a weird default face at 2:28, which is at the very, but for the full effect, start it at 1:21. :)

End of Day Deadlines

Something important to consider when you start out:

Double check what "end of day" really means in terms of deadlines. Not keeping your deadline can have consequences for many people around you.

Sometimes you hear end of day and it's open in terms of the specific time, since production will show it to the client/director the next day. If you're allowed to stay late then you work until it's done. That's what I would call a soft deadline.

But there are also hard deadlines, where the cut off time could be 6pm for instance. This means everything has to be really done by the end of the day, so that production can prep the shots for a transmission with the client the next day, where shots get sent to editors, etc. There's no wiggle room, so if you don't have anything ready by 6, production won't be able to show anything and that puts them behind schedule.

There's another aspect to consider though. Let's say a supervisor asks his lead if a shot can be ready by 6pm. The lead will check with the animator on his team about that shot and the animator says he'll have it by then.
What if the animator thought that 6pm = end of day, so he/she can stay late and didn't double check about the deadline? 6pm rolls by and the shot is not ready, which is not good for the animator, but on top that it's also not good for the lead, since he assured the supe that the shot will be ready.

Be aware of the consequences if you don't keep your deadlines. It's a team effort, so be mindful of the people around you and their responsibilities.

And yes, the lead could double check as well but don't wait for other people to help you, be pro-active.

Cheers
JD