Reference footage… and the planning process.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to bring up the topic of Planning and how I approach using reference to do that.

The first thing that I would like to bring up is that there are MANY ways of planning a shot, but the 3 main ones are recording reference, sketching thumbnails, and watching reference.

Watching Reference: This is less about planning, and more about getting an idea about your subject matter. Getting information about your subject, doing your research, tremendously helps the planning process. If you research what your subject matter does or doesn’t do, you won’t make those mistakes and put them in your animation, only to realize it not correct and have to take it out later. Some scenes are hard to act out this way.

If I had shot where Remy would crawl up a sewer pipe or run across a table, I wouldn’t go record reference for it. If our Rats walked on 2 legs instead of 4 legs than maybe I would. But they generally don’t.

I could thumbnail it out. But as I’ll mention later, that’s not my style. So instead I will watch LOT’s of reference. This way I can get a feel for what the Rats move like, and try to mimic that feeling in my shot.

Thumbnails: Thumbnails are a great way to explore a shot. We can use thumbnails to quickly try out poses both Body and Face. This allows us to roughly see the shot and get a sense of where it’s is going to go. You don’t want to spend a lot of time on your animation only to realize that where you were going with the shot isn’t going to work. Below are some thumbnails that Stephan Gregory had done on cars. It shows a good example of exploring the expressions for the shot.

Generally thumbnails are not something that I personally explore much. I occasionally do use thumbnails,…but my personal drafting skills are pretty horrible, and so I feel more comfortable either quickly posing in the computer, or recording reference.

Recording reference: This is something that I use quite a lot. Why? Well….the first reason is that I love acting out my shots. Not to say that I wouldn’t do that with thumbnails, but it’s really a state of mind thing.

Now I don’t want to take reference, and then Copy what I recorded exactly in the computer.  That would look too rotoscoped, and we have motion capture for that.  Reference is more for about getting my ideas down so I don’t forget about them.   I can also refer to it at anytime as I work on my shot.  I like to look at it to see my general timing and ideas.  It’s like a mirror that I can pause myself in.

Second, I like being able to play my dialogue on a loop, and record myself acting to it right then and there. I usually have a general idea of what I want to do. BUT sometimes if I’m not sure what I want to do…. I just start my dialogue on a loop and start acting to it. I just want to see what my body does on the fly; what my acting chops are on the fly. This is some of the most natural performances you will get, because it is as unplanned as it can get. It can also however be some of the worst, because it’s not planned and maybe my acting chops aren’t up for the “Make it up on the fly” routine. But as far as I see it,….it sure doesn’t hurt to try. There might be something that I do that I will keep for later.

After I try several unplanned takes, I start thinking about my planned idea. That general idea that I was talking earlier about….this is where I really start to flush it out.

Now sometimes with a planned idea you get yourself in a rut. While it’s great to have a planned structure for a shot, sometimes that structure becomes a prison. No matter how much I record myself, I keep doing the same things over and over and over again. I can’t do anything else.

So what do you do?

Well,…..take a break. Come back and try it again later. Maybe that break will be enough to get the idea juices flowing again.

Say you always start in a particular pose….try a new one. If you start with a new pose, it might force you to take your acting in a different direction.

Pull a friend in and ask them to act it out. You might be surprised how they approach it.

Now this next part is a very important part for me. I like to set up my acting room as close as I can to the room that is represented in my shot. So if there is a table in my shot, I make sure there is a table when I’m acting things out. If the character is holding something, make sure you are holding something when you are acting out your shot.

The reason I like to do this is to have more of my imagination work towards my Acting, and not trying to remember what is in my scene. I want all my brain power to focus on the acting. If I have to keep reminding myself that there is a table in the room, then I am doing something wrong. Having similar props in your reference will keep your acting true.

It’s like when actors have to act on a green screen, or on a set. Everyone is going to choose the set, because it’s there! They can use it! Work with it, or against it….whatever. It is also very important to keep your character in mind. If you are animating a Large character, and you are a small person and Acting like a small person,…your reference won’t be very useful.

Take for example the Captain in Wall-E. He’s a large guy. I’m a really small guy. I wanted to get into my character more (the Captain), so I requested a pregnancy suit. You know,…the kind that people wear so you can get an idea of what it feels like to be pregnant. If I could wear this while acting out my shots,…I could get a real sense of the weight that the character feels. All of a sudden, picking up a cup isn’t as quick. Or getting up off the chair isn’t so easy.

I remember when I was animating my Mike Wazowski test, I printed out a picture of Sulley’s face (this is who Mike was speaking to in the dialogue) and taped it way up high in the acting room. The reason I did this is to make me act UP to someone. Mike Wazowski is much shorter than Sulley, so I wanted to make sure my acting reflects that. Again,….I just focus on the acting, I don’t have to think to look up, I do it automatically.

Below are a couple of examples of me doing reference. OKAY,…this is me putting myself out there.  It’s a little embarrassing, (At least there aren’t any real emotional shots) hope it’s worth it.

The First applies to a shot I did in Wall-E where Auto is trying to grab the boot from the Captain. In order to get a better feel for the movements, I asked a fellow co-worker to help me out. I asked Tom to keep the boot away from me, while I really try to grab it.

REMEMBER you can click the “Watch in High Quality” button. I would recommend it for the Confession Scene.

WALL-E Ref:

The second is a little thing I did after Cars for the Rascal Flats. It was Mater introducing the Band when they went on tour. This shows how I still do reference, even though I am animating a Tow Truck. In my original blocking I did present the Rascal Flats to the side like I do in my reference. However, since we did not know what they would be coming out of, the decision was made to just have Mater go forward toward the crowd. This was also very difficult to animate because of the Ratio Constriction. I didn’t have much room to play with on the sides. So I tried going toward and away from the camera more often, so it didn’t seem like Mater was just standing in 1 spot.  I also don’t have reference for the beginning of the shot, because I knew what I wanted to do with that part already.

Cars Ref:

Cars Shot:

The third reference is for a Class I did for Animation Mentor. If you are a student of the school, you might have seen my lecture series where I show how I Polished the shot. Again, I recommend watching in High Quality.

Reference:

Shot:

You can see the reference I took. There wasn’t much exploring because I knew what I wanted to do. See how I use the table and even tied my hands together with string to simulate handcuffs.

The last is just a picture of my using a scarf thing, to help me with the shots of Ego and his scarf.