Spline Doctors » Inspiration

January 9th, 2012
Inspiration |

The Mountain

Every shot can be seen as a mountain that animator has to climb. Some go on that mountain without the proper gear and bad weather comes quick and blows you farther down the face. This happened to me recently. I find that whenever I cease to do the work of planning a shot, I get lost. I think “How the hell did I get this job?” The shot becomes like a lump of wet clay that I am trying to find form within. There are drawbacks and some positives to this. The drawback is that you are not clear. You have not found the idea yet. You are searching for everything from strong poses to ideas that are not mediocre. The good thing is that it does force you to dig deep and pull out the good stuff if its there. Some of the things that can make it easier for you to get out of the “Base Camp” of your shot are having a second opinion. Another thing is to get a jolt of confidence. I was speaking to animator/director Mark Walsh the other day as he was telling me the story of how the great Freddie Moore started a scene. He would walk into the other animators offices and say something like ,” Tell me how good I am fellas”.. Oh, your the best Fred, remember when you animated this and that and so on… Fred would smile and walk out and begin his scene…OK, maybe it did not happen exactly that way but he needed a boost of confidence to take on that new challenge. Animation is hard. One of the things I remember clearly in the early days at Pixar was a certain genius animator’s shots. That animator, who shall remain nameless, struggled so hard to get the perfection he wanted. He thumb nailed, blocked and reblocked, polished and re polished, yelled, cursed, threw tantrums and so on. It was literally like climbing up the face of Everest, but when he got to the top, all was forgotten. The shot was the thing you remembered…. Not the pain, the deadline, it was the moment. We all make the same mistakes, but its important to know that we have to stay students and keep climbing!

-Andrew

8 Comments |
March 12th, 2011
Inspiration |

Character Development

Its been a while since I posted. I wanted to talk a bit about character development in terms of a feature. When you get on a film early, part of the process is to work with the riggers and make notes on models. Much of this is testing out how it moves and things like how the crease of an elbow looks. For me one of the more interesting parts is defining and exploring character. How do you get going? I find a good place to start is Reference. Fish, Superheros, Monsters, Rats, Car etc… They all have things we can study. For Finding Nemo, one of the more interesting things was learning to Dive. Ok, it didnt really help me animate my shot better, but it did allow me to have fun and relate it back to the work. We learn alot from experts in particular fields of study…. fish people, locomotion experts, race car drivers, etc… He told us about reef fish that row, and some that were flapping fish. This small detail helped us make the characters physical and move differently. We had a fish tank that we referenced with many types of fish. All that helped. Visits to the Aquarium provided such a huge reference point for us. Once the reference was done we first tried just animating a fish. Some of the things we learned from that were what made a fish feel like they were in water. Fish have no slippage for instance… They carve through the water. We noticed things like the surge and swell of the current affected the realism. Small details like that really brought it to the next level. What I really am trying to say is that understanding how to take aspects of the real world and put it into the work and to what degree is key. We noticed that we had to push the movements of the fish a bit and put a bit of squash and stretch into the body to make the characters feel fleshy. There were so many things I learned on Nemo, the most important being that if you are having fun at what you are doing, the work is more inspired. Also, working with a team, everyone pushes each other to the next level. As students, its so important to talk to the guy or girl next ot you.

-Andrew

6 Comments |
February 6th, 2011
Animation Commentary, Inspiration, out and about |

Planning

Tom Gately Shows Anim Interns a Strong Pose

The nine old men would say “spend half your time planning and the other half animating. While this idea is hard to uphold, the basic idea is true. Going into a shot blind is like not studying for a test or stretching before a race. Clear planning, forces you to really think about what is important in the shot. Every time I animate straight ahead, I fall flat on my face and waste a lot of time figuring out what I set out to do in the first place. It really must become part of your routine. It is so important because it creates a foundation, something you can fall back on. I was always amazed at the planning that Doug Sweetland went though before he animated. He drew so many different ways of doing the same thing through thumbnails. Then he went off to record himself. Most people do video reference these days. It’s no big secret. The hardest part is to not rely on it to closely. You want to use the best parts. Another thing I have seen animators do is to write down what the shot means to them in a sentence… Where is the beat change? What is the most important thing in the shot? You always want to be asking these questions. If I have a character sitting in a room and the point of the shot is for them to be upset, I want to create a back story as to why. Maybe he is lost, maybe his his heart has been stepped on. How do I relate that to something I experienced? What is the deeper meaning? If you animate simply the cliche of upset, there is not heart or pathos. Dig down deep and pull out something personal and it will show up on the screen…. Follow a ritual of solid planning and you will add a new layer of complexity to your work.

-Andrew

11 Comments |
January 18th, 2011
Inspiration, out and about |

People Watching

Have you ever sat down in a coffee shop or restaurant and just watched people? I know, it sounds creepy but it’s so different to look at people and do it though you were studying them. Years ago, I sat in on an acting workshop. The teacher asked the students to go out and observe 3 gestures and incorporate them into a scene. One student took a girl combing her hair, combined it with foot tapping and gum chewing. Yes, this may sound a bit cliché’ but it was taken from life and used in a different way. There are so many observations, good and bad that we can look at and learn from. A director did cool bit of reference that he showed the animator’s years ago. As I remember it involved a conversation between two people at dinner. You couldn’t hear what they were saying but everything was told with body language. It was staged perfectly. The situation was so clear. If you can see the acting without the dialogue, then you are in good shape. Coming up with good ideas is hard. As a student, or professional it’s so important to always be storing the moments you see in our heads. Some animators keep a notepad in their back pocket. I wish I did that. Try it for one day and see how many ideas you get. Many good ideas have been forgotten or watered down. The great scenes always stick out because they make you say, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Observation is the animators tool for building good ideas and believable acting.

-Andrew

6 Comments |
February 15th, 2010
Inspiration |

Olympic Gold….

I love when the Olympics are on. Even if you are not into sports, as an animator, you just have to watch. There is so much great stuff to be taken in at an event like this. On a physical level, you can learn so much about how the body moves and reacts to things. On the emotional level, watching the expressions and gestures of people winning and losing are amazing. Its almost just as fun to watch the reactions of family and coaches etc… after a win. When I teach, I love to show Olympic footage because it is almost an exaggeration of reality. I have already posted a similar topic in the past, but I really think its great to watch. Vancouver also holds a special place in my heart since I went to school there. What an amazing city!

-Andrew

8 Comments |