Anim Crit #1

Two blog posts within ONE WEEK. Truly shocking.

The first Anim Crit is done! I think it's going to be a good learning experience for me. I got all fancy and was able to figure out how to record a video crit, with drawings and everything. Cam is going to be very proud of me.

Please be warned of some audio feedback in the video. It's in-and-out in a few places. Apologies for that, but I wasn't about to re-record it for a few hiccups. Also, my wife comes in and says hi to me in the middle of it. Picture me waving my arms frantically to try and tell her I'm recording whilst trying to remember what I'm saying. SLICK.

(video playback is not realtime due to capture process)

The one thing I forgot to mention in the walk crit was that of side-to-side weight transfer. The slower the walk, the more the weight has to move over the standing foot in order to maintain balance. Imagine how the body has to lean when standing on one leg as opposed to a fast walk. For Irene's walk to it would be great to feel that lateral movement. I think I mentioned torso involvement in the vid, but I don't think I explained that all that well. Consider this an addendum!

I hope to improve my note-giving as I get more comfortable with the recording, but I hope Irene finds this useful, anyway. It's tough to be structured when you're winging it. Need to make notes first so I don't miss important points like that above.

Here are a few things for anyone considering sending stuff:

• If you send multiple videos I can't spend as much time on the details of any particular shot due to time constraints.

• In your intro email please let me know if you give consent to making the crit public, for if it's a "no" I will be able to tailor it with that in mind. It is encouraged to make it public though, for that's how we get better as a community.

• Quicktime movies are a must, (see previous post for requirements), as I don't trust .avi or whatever video playback on my aging Apple laptop.

 BYEEEE

Anim Crits

I've not posted since January? That is rather lame...

With my tenure as a Campus Mentor at Animation Mentor finished, I thought that it would be a good idea to use some of that freed up time on the weekend to continue helping out if I can.

To that end, I will do one free crit a time to anyone who is interested. Hopefully someone will be! Here is how it will go down...

When there is an upcoming spot, I will put it on Twitter. It'll probably be midweek sometime. My account name is kevanshorey. The first person to email me expressing interest reserves the spot. I'll put it out on Twitter who got it, then they'll then have a few days to get the work ready for our conversation! The Animation will need to be submitted by the start of the weekend (PST) in order for me to take a look. If you want to reserve a spot in order to ask a detailed question regarding Animation technique or approach then that is fine too. Either way it'll be time to help us both improve and learn.

My crit/response will probably be in the form of emailed notes, but maybe as I get a bit more confident with my skillz I will try doing extra stuff like drawovers.

Here are a few pointers for smooth sailing:

* Please email me with the subject "Anim Crit".

* Animation submissions can be links to youTube or Vimeo but be aware that streaming vids can't be stepped through. Good for broader comments or demo reel picks.

* Direct movie links are good. They can be shared from somewhere like Dropbox. 

* Please virus scan all stuff, for if there is anything insidious lurking in there I won't open the movie files and go and hide in a cupboard instead.

* Encode movies and key every frame so that they can be stepped through. Though not small, JPEG compressed movies, keyed every frame at SD resolutions work a treat. H264 is probably also fine with similar settings.

* Do a backup movie with different settings just in case! Troubleshooting stuffs isn't much fun and if things don't work then we can't talk about Animation.

* Only one slot will be filled at a time based on the people who reply, so it's first-come, first-served.

* This is not affiliated in any way with Dreamworks Animation or Animation Mentor. Just something I'm doing on my own to informally help out individuals within the Anim community.

* By signing up you agree that I can use your name to announce the filled slot, and also talk about your work on the internets if we come across something cool. Any linked work would be credited and permission sought prior to talking about stuff.

* Something will probably go wrong somewhere in the process. It's OK, we'll figure it out.

* It'll be free, and you can ignore everything I say because it's your work!

I really hope that this will prove to be useful to people.

Let's give it a go, eh?

Fuzzy Timing

There are shelves of books concerning Animation theory and technique available, and reading them allows an individual to benefit from the experience of others, standing on the shoulders of giants to increase our own grasp of the craft. Ultimately, however, the actual craft of Animation is something that can only be appreciated through application and labour. Every piece of work is unique and there are always personal discoveries to be made. While somewhat laborious to recount, (please forgive the long-winded post), I made an interesting observation recently that got me all Animation-dorky/excited. Let's call it fuzzy timing - it will make it sound very important, but really I just made that up. (Copyright Shorey!)

A little while back I was working on a shot with Astrid as the main focus. It was a great chance for me to observe, analyse and attempt to incorporate small gender-specific details in to the performance. I didn't want it to be over the top or obvious, (it's really easy to do), instead favouring a natural female feel to reinforce the main acting beats. I decided to have the character unconsciously flicking her head to clear her hair from her face in between the lines of dialogue. I've seen this little gesture from lots of people with long hair and bangs. As an aside, it is my observation that people with finer hair will head-flick if they can, but those with coarser, heavier hair have to use their fingers to accomplish the same thing - heavier hair needs help to get it of the way. Most of the time people don't even know that they are doing this. Interesting thing #1.

(password: education)

As I said, I wanted the flick to be its own thing, and not a gesture tied to the dialogue, for which I had already made other choices. The line is, "He flew away the second he was unleashed!". Acting it out, the most natural place would be before or after the delivery but as you can see I didn't have that option, with a tight edit at head and tail.

I blocked in the hair flick along with the rest of the acting and showed it to friends. They liked it, but thought that the move was an accent to the dialogue, rather than its own little thing. Ack! I played around with the flick timing for a good while, finally admitting that I would be unable to truly separate the ideas given the constraints of the edit. The gesture stands, as you can see, and it still works, but it means something slightly different to my original intent. Balls.

So why the different interpretation? I had a long conversation with my pal Mark, and we came up with a couple of conclusions - interesting thing #2: the types of sounds within the dialogue were making it harder for me rather than just the fact that it was dialogue. 

Check out this audio breakdown:

"THE-SEH" and "EESH" are examples of long, soft sounds with fuzzy™ ins and outs - I would have to give them more frames around their occurrence to separate the hair flick gesture than I would with harder, more staccato sounds. The fact that this dialogue happens to contain lots of the fuzzy stuff made their influence across the dialogue all the more pervasive.

Another observation that Mark made is that the acting performance required for the shot has a level of energy and tension that makes it harder for the head flick to stand out with its own intent. For example, if this were a less energetic shot then a head flick would maybe stand out regardless of where it sat in regards to the dialogue. There we could use contrast in energy to our advantage.

Due to my being a huge dork I found this stuff fascinating. I am not sure if anyone else will appreciate the technicalities of such a minor discovery, but it certainly made me more jazzed to discover this, and the reasons behind it. Even if I didn't succeed 100% in my intent, at least the shot looked OK in the end.

Thanks for bearing with me. If you finished this super dorky post I award you 1 gold star.

December 2011 Animation Reel

Hope you like!

Rani's Animtips

Rani's tips are also a bit long for the Twitter format to do them any justice, so here they are!

1# Put on your editor hat before you start animating

Look at the WHOLE sequence and see how your shot fits in, the timing/pacing of your shot and acting choices will all be influenced by what shots come before and after yours. A shot might not be funny by itself, but the same shot put in context can be hilarious.

2# Be Original in every way

With your posing, facial expressions, hand shapes, acting choices. If you're a beginner, do the basics / clichés... Get them out of your system first. This Quote from "Save the Cat" explains why: "True originality can't begin until you know what you're breaking away from.". So practice, practice, practice!

3# Don't be Afraid!

If you're building a house of cards, the more time you invest, the more protective you are  because you don't want the whole thing to topple over. When switching from step to spline, we tend to feel the same way. Fortunately, there is an antidote, it's called "save scene" Ta-da!! We forget that working on the computer is non-destructive, so both our work-flow and approach become so conservative that we end up missing opportunities where the animation could've shined. When this happens, I find the best thing to do is to save you scene, give yourself 30 minutes and just "get in there" and be brave with your curves. If it doesn't work out for you after a while, just reopen your saved scene and start again, VIOLA!

4# Don't Act the Emotion

When filming reference, It's common for us to "act sad" or force ourselves to feel a certain way....that almost never works. The trick is to "think" about something sad until you actually feel sad. Feeling is a by-product of your thoughts, so trigger your mind first.

#5 If YOU don't feel it, THEY won't

When do you know your reference/take works? When it evokes are reaction from you. if you look at it and chuckle, then there's a high chance it's funny. If, on the other hand, you look at it and assume its funny... why would anyone else laugh if you didn't!

Bryce's Animtip

Bryce sent me his Animtip to put on Twitter, but it's such a good one that I couldn't do it justice if I shortened the text to fit the 140 character format. Here it is, presented in its entirety:

Always remember that all this stuff used to be hand drawn.

When blocking, ask yourself if you'd be able to hand this off to someone else to finish?  Is it clear enough?  Are all of the key poses (drawings) the best in the scene? In case the person you hand it off to can't draw as well, or perhaps understand the intent as well, will your poses save the scene?

Is your timing tight enough?  If two frames are really similar to one another, and not telling us anything then why draw both of them?  You'd probably only want to draw one and use the other one to tell us something else - something more interesting.  You'll give yourself more time and space to sweeten other moments if you take all the unnecessary drawings out. If you wouldn't want to draw it, then it shouldnt be in your scene!

-Bryce McGovern

So good!

Merry Madagascar Reel Writeup

Of course it's taken me ages to begin writing this post. I put the video up and then sat back, basking in the warm sense of accomplishment. Time ticks by and I still haven't done it! Oh well. Here goes.

I don't know how interesting this is going to be, but I wanted to write a little about my process when it came to creating this work. The Merry Mad short was made for TV, but with Feature assets and crew, to a Feature level of quality! This really comes across in the final product.

For my own part I was given work in two sequences: in one the zoosters run in to the lemurs, who are then "attacked" by the Red Night Goblin (Father Christmas), and in the other the animals set off a house alarm trying to deliver Christmas presents. As you can see from the reel below, my shot range was wide, running the gamut from purely physical, to physical acting, to a few pure acting moments. This is good!

The shot that took me the longest time was that of Julian barrelling his subjects out of the way as he scrambles up the beach. I always felt that the shot was too short and very busy but the action and camera was pre-determined, as was the cut length. It is hard to register Julian's impacts with four lemurs in two seconds, but I did the best I could to track Julian's head through the shot, cheating it in screen space in order to improve the read. There is no computer inbetweening here - every single frame and pose is critical to the read, and thus is hand keyed.

A quick aside, if you compare Madagascar to Mad 2 (and Merry Mad), discerning viewers will notice a slight difference in the look and feel between the pictures. This is due to the amount of motion blur. Mad 1 featured very little blur, whereas subsequent Mad projects had what I consider to be a more "normal" CG feature approach to the technique. Both have their pros and cons. To me Mad 1 looks unique for that reason, being more like a traditional cartoon. It is great to being able to showcase fast motion. The downside being that it's harder on the eye, and will quickly wear the audience out! Softer blur fixes this, but you tend to lose detail in blur....

...which is exactly what happened in this shot. I have multiple Julians in this shot so that I can have arms and legs in different crazy places in the same frame, but unfortunately they are lost in the motion blur. Thinking further down the line in the production process is something I should have been more conscious of!

Julian makes it back to his lemur front lines and begins to direct the "battle" from the safety of his trench. His giving orders quickly put me in mind of Lord Horatio Nelson and Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, two of Britain's most famous military commanders. Both have paintings commissioned featuring their hand (or empty sleeve) stuck into the front of their uniforms.

I don't know if that was the thing to do back then, but that was the pose I wanted for Julian. Obviously I over-thought this way too much, and yes, I did get made fun when pitching it in Dailies, but it's a fun idea and made it in to the short! (I still get called Lord Shorey on occasion because of this). Julian picking a lemur up by the head and shaking him was also a me-original. Though it made the shot harder, it is more fun! Bringing something unique to the work and improving on the already excellent story boards and layout is always a great feeling.

You know when you watch those making-of's on film DVD's where superstar people showcase their amazing work having put in seemingly no effort? That's not me, and I envy those guys for my reality is very different. I am very attached to the work and the ups and downs that manifest themselves over the life of a shot. You can refer to the DVD's for the ups. Let's talk about a down - the shot that had me so frustrated it made me get all toddler over it.

Oh Gloria. Why did you have to run on ice around a corner at top speed whilst shouting? You don't make it easy for me, do you? I could not get that cornering right for the longest time. The physics is tough in itself, but the shot is also fast-paced and I was struggling to get her shape working. It put me in a foul mood, and I ended up wailing, "I can't do it!", at my cubemate Lou late one night. He sat down with me and on paper had me break down the physics of the body first then add in the limbs, coming up with the key pose, mid-action. Back on the computer I removed what I had, putting the new move in, and while rough, it totally worked. In five minutes we had solved it. I must admit to feeling like a bit of tit for all of the swearing and hyperventilating, but it's amazing what a mate and some composure will do for you when you're stuck. So not like the DVD's then.

I think these are good representatives of my work on the show, all of which you can see here - all 38 seconds of it! If anyone still reading this has any further questions about the work I will try my best to answer on this blog - and before 2018.

Looking back on this work, my response runs from 'Good' to 'Meh' as each shot plays through. Nearly three years on I am a different animator than I was back then, and hopefully a better one! With the benefit of subsequent experience and the distance that comes with time the successes and flaws are readily apparent to me, as I'm sure they are to you. Still, it's good to look back and remember my thought process and how it influenced my approach at at that time.

Thanks for reading.
-Lord Shorey

Merry Madagascar Reel

Sometimes it becomes tough to write an Animation blog and not have much footage to show. I write at great length regarding fairly involved stuff, without much for the readership to see. Clearly there is very little of my work easily available to discuss, all of which is under copyright restrictions. This post changes all that. The studio kindly granted me approval to post my work from "Merry Madagascar". This is a big deal, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to display studio work on my personal blog space.

If you can't see this directly, here is the LINK TO VIMEO
The password is "education". I welcome questions about the work, so that I have more to write about!