Clean Blocking

I am always impressed with certain animator’s clean blocking. Sometimes, I end up putting in to many controls or in general too much before I show for a review. I can’t stress the importance of clean, clear blocking. In this day and age of computer animation, the best thing you can do is to simplify. Many times when I look at a past scene I did, I always like the ones that are simple in their idea and approach. I am from the old school of blocking on every 4th frame. I like to see the detail and even include my breakdowns in that first showing. I’ll also even flesh out things such as a head shake in the spline editor. The tough part is that if I get a bunch of direction, I have to tear down the wall and rebuild. Some of the things that save my butt are trying to keep as many of my controls on the same frame and not offsetting things until I have that clear path. I also believe in showing early, rather than later. The more information I have, the better. I don’t need to hide away until I feel everything is perfect. It’s good to take a swing at things. I also think that if you are in a place where you can show your work in some sort of dailies, the first blocking pass should be seen in that forum. If you are going for a laugh, or trying to get a response, that first showing is your change to sell your idea. As I work on this next production, I really do want to try new methods of blocking a shot. I have never really worked with the exposure sheet method, ie. step key blocking, but I think its time to learn. Essentially, if I want my poses to be stronger, I need to start with strong ones to begin with. With the old school method, your poses evolve and get better. The flip side is that they feel more organic. What ever your method, its always important to keep the perspective that no one way is right or wrong. Heck, I used to know a guy who blocked all his arms with IK no matter what. It looked OK to me. Another guy used only linear knots… That might be a little crazy… The spline is your friend.

-Andrew

Get down to the Root of things…

I wanted to quickly mention how important the root is in your character. With thinking about all our arcs, and overlap and all the critical principles. We can quickly overlook this fundamental area to pat attention to when you are cleaning up your shot. And that is the root of your character.

In case your asking yourself, what is the root of the character? It is the core part of your character (generally around the hip area) that translates the character forward or back. If for example, you had all your arms and legs on FK, your entire character would move if you moved your character by their root.

So, why is this so important? Well, like we mentioned before, it is the core movement in your character (Top of the group node), so everything is based upon it.

I see many students go into their work, polishing the arms, fingers, head, legs, BEFORE they have nailed down the timing of the root. If the root isn’t working, then your shot will never work, no matter how much you polish everything else. So make sure that it is working how you want it too, before you go and polish other parts of the body.

Below is 1 example of a students work, before they attacked the root. This is 1 of many that I found, and the problem that was happing was that they were focusing on so much at once (arms, hands, head etc), that they forgot to nail down the root. The second example is the same jump, but with the root being finessed. When that was done, there was a little finessing on the feet, to make the jump more believable. But that was done AFTER the root was finessed. I hope you can see the large difference between the two, just from finessing the root.

Before:

After:

Dr. Makarewicz

more on texture…

Here’s a scene from the Robert Altman film, The Player. I had been thinking about this post for a while and after reading Gordon’s latest I thought this would be a perfect extension of his point, but more related to dialogue as opposed to pantomime.

the-player

Watch Grant (the British dude) pitch part of his movie idea to Tim Robbins, a studio executive. Robbins’ performance is equally as interesting for all the subtext going on but I won’t spoil that for you. Here we’ll examine the texture of Grant’s performance in his body acting while he’s talking. Normally I wouldn’t advise hitting beats so “on-the-nose” as he does, as it tends to flatten a performance: why illustrate with the body exactly the words the character is saying? And certainly if all he had done was hit the obvious poses, the scene would be boring, or even worse, annoying. I want to talk not about the poses he hits, but what he does in between them that makes this scene so entertaining.

Take, for example, the first close up scene of Grant as he explains the car accident investigation. An animator would find it very easy and tempting to skip right from the “brakes have been tampered with” to the pose for “murder.” But Grant makes it interesting and convincing by doing a hilarious anticipation before the line. I broke the beat down into the five keys I’d pose for his action:

1) “brakes have been tampered with”

2) eyes close, head up

3) head down, hands up

4) hands hit down: “it’s”

5) head up to look at Tim Robbins: “murder”

(You’ll probably note that he actually hits a slightly different pose for “murder” before arriving and holding at the one I picked.)

Now he’s not just illustrating the line, he’s added a whole new urgency to it, and subtext that reads “no if’s, and’s or but’s, it’s murder!” And he’s broken up the action by having his hands follow his head as a second accent. He’s also acting within poses very economically; long holds with subtle texturizing movements. He’s covered all the principles! This whole scene is chock full of such juiciness (including preceding lines I cut for time). Look at the antic for the running action or the dramatic pause before “there’s not a dry eye…” And these are extreme examples; in animation even a two frame eye antic *before* your body antic can help show thought process and make a scene more entertaining. Bottom line: characters thinking = believability. Believability = entertainment.

Look for places to do this in your work!

-trav

Air Guitarist

I was listening to some music the other day that made me want to play the air guitar and air drums to it. A thought came to me regarding the timing of the drum beats and how I pretended to follow along to the music. The fun part of pretending to be the drummer or guitarist for whatever piece of music you are listening to is how much you exaggerate what you are doing. When a big guitar solo comes on, you invent new ways to deal with this instrument. One handed playing, playing with the whammy bar, behind the back, doing Pete Townsend type moves and so on. Its no different with animation. Its how you do the scene and what type of interesting performance you create which makes it interesting. Its also what comes before and after the big moments. You could say this is the texture of the scene. This can be the part when the guy from the video tosses his guitar in the air. For the animator, it can be the mannerism they do during a quite part of the scene. It may be a facial mannerism like a lip twitch or a gesture. The point is, it adds to the character. Whenever I have been in dailies and seen something great, I always think… “Why didn’t I think of that?” With the air guitarist, a lot of the talent is from the gut. Some people have it and others it takes more effort to come up with a performance worth watching. The great thing about animation is that we can plan. Planning will really help with the idea, even if its for a few hours before you animate. Its worth it.

In essence, A good performance has many ingredients that make it interesting to watch. Animation is no different. All the things we learn about in school such as anticipation, staging, timing, etc etc… are ingredients to bake the perfect animation cake. Its not necessarily the ingredients, but more how the cake is baked….

-Andrew

Oscar Nominees Blog

I was lucky enough to meet the nominees of this years oscar for animated short film. Ron Diamond of Animation World Network is bringing them around to all the studios to show their films and give them the royal treatment. I think its great that he does this, because animators quietly do their films with out all the hollywood glitz. Its nice to see them get the star treatment.

Check out the blog he has posted

AWN Oscartour

-Andrew