Snap or not to Snap?

On the opening day of Wall E and the Short film “Presto” which I had the pleasure to work on with two of my fellow Spline Doctors, Travis Hathaway and Mark Walsh, I thought it would be fun to talk a bit about snappy-ness in animation. When we think of snappy animation, we often think of Ren and Stimpy, or a host of other works such as Pocoyo. Its the way in which we get in and out of poses. In computer animation, snappy timing can be difficult to pull off in an appealing way. If the animation is snappy throughout, it becomes boring to look at and hard for the eye to follow. Some feature films have used this snappy style of animation which has worked for some and others not. I am not saying that we have figured anything out, but for Presto, we wanted an old school style which could be perceived as snappy. We looked back to the golden age of Warners, MGM and Disney. With the Warner cartoons, you have really great, funny drawings and wonderful timing of those drawings. The MGM style seemed to be similar with a bit more polish on the animation side, especially the Hannah Barbara Tom and Jerry’s. In CG, one thing you have going against you is motion blur. Motion blur can be your friend, or soften your work. Brad Bird would agree that motion blur still leaves some room for improvement. The big thing being that you sometimes want the blur to have arcs and its difficult to get that. Another thing is if you hit a pose in a snappy way, how does it settle? For Presto, we had to think about a few things. One was how snappy could you make the animation without it looking stiff and how could we break it up so that it was not always the typical snappy pose to pose. Another is thinking about how things settle naturally. You can have that snap, but how it comes to rest is an important detail that you will see in CG. Also, we thought about what aspect of the character to move. Maybe its a blink or maybe the overlap of the cloth dynamics will give me enough so that the character does not become wooden. Its always important to see how your cloth is simulated in order to adjust the animation to get it to behave correctly. All in all, snappy animation should be used like saffron. Too much will taint the recipe.  When its done right, it looks great in contrast with scenes that are animated around it. If the style of the film requires it, it has to fit into the context of the piece and the characters in the film. It was fun and challenging to animate in a style that hearkened back to the old classics. In doing it, I gained a whole new level of respect for the work done in the golden age of animated short films.

-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

Subtlety in the Face

In 3d animation, every detail can be seen. It is those small details that add a layer of complexity to our work and I wanted to talk a little about what interests me when I am trying to get that in my work. First off, not every scene calls for the smallest facial twitch. Sometimes many scene are basic and money spent on tiny details is lost. It is in those close ups that you want to add the proper amount of detail. I remember being an animator on a bugs life. John Lassiter wanted us to look at a film clip of two different eyes blinks on flick. One was a standard eye blink. It looked much like a camera shutter opening and closing. Not much ease out, the timing was the same and in general, when seen at such high rez, looked mechanical. The next example was a shot Mark Oftedahl did. The blinks he did were beautifully timed. The sides dragged , the shapes changes. They were perfectly polished and looked fleshy. Nowadays, this type of stuff is much more in the main stream of high end 3d feature animation, but back then it really opened our eyes (no pun intended). So what is in effect left in the realm of facial animation? Where can we push too? What improvements can we make? I think some of the answers lie in subtle animation. Yes, we work in a medium of exaggeration, but also one that lets us layer in detail. Of course, some of the examples I want to give are from the world of live action. Lets do a little action analysis of some of these clips…

First, lets just look at some of the “controls” our face has…

Interesting clip…. That one made the rounds in the department…

This next clip from “There Will Be Blood” Shows a lot of facial details that really add to the acting and intensity of Daniel Day Lewis’s performance. Its the stuff he does between his lines that draws you in. How he pushes his lips up, the changes and micro expression. Its a great movie to watch for acting as well as everything else.

That’s all for now. Look for some more stuff coming soon.

-Andrew

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

Revisiting what makes a good reel

Recently, I have been involved in the process of choosing animation interns for our summer animation internship. We have had hundred and hundreds of reels. I wanted to talk about some of the things that make a reel interesting.

1) Lets talk about the most simple - make sure it works well. Believe it or not, many people dont check if it works. If possible have a back up

2) Title and format - Simple is better. white over a black background is all that is necessary. Also, organize the dvd so that I can just hit play and look at the work. I dont need 10 chapters with sub chapters. Make it easy as possible for me to view the work.

3) What to begin with - Basically, you want to grab the attention of the viewer with the best work possible. Don’t save your best stuff for last. It may never get seen. Thats not to say that you should not put good work at the end of a reel. Always start strong and end strong.

4) Same old, Same old - If I see another canned physical test I might go crazy. We see alot of the same thing over and over. Whether its an animation mentor character jumping on some poles, or the same ringling assignement where you have to model yourself and animate a piece of dialogue…. It all starts to blend in. I want to see original ideas. Stories, interesting acting. Remember, its always about the ideas and acting abilites. Polish can be taught. Focus more on coming up with original acting and good ideas. The problem with many animation schools these days is that they seem to be copying each other. We see many different reels that contain similar models. If possible, create your own character designs.

5) Cover letters and reel breakdown. Keep the cover letter simple. Don’t try and write an essay about why you think you should be the one. It will always come down to the work. The cover letter and resume are glanced at. I often find it interesting that students have business cards that say character animator on them. They are really nice and glossy. Sometime, the presentation impresses me, but what I find is that the work on the reel did not have as much put into it as the dvd case and fancy cards. Also, you are a student, not a character animator. Less is more…

In closing, animation has come a long way since I was a student. We have higher standards. The important thing to understand is that good ideas will always win out. Show me an interesting character, not the same damn thing I’ve seen over and over. Be original with your characters, ideas, acting… everything.

-Hope this helps a little.

Andrew