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