Spline Doctors

Orange You Happy 2 See Me?

2009-09-28T21:42:00.001-07:00

Orange You Happy 2 See Me?
Originally uploaded by sclarky.

-Scott
from my iPhone

NEW LOOK TO OUR SITE

2008-05-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

We have a new format for our website.

www.splinedoctors.com

Please update your links. Thanks for the support and stay tuned for more Spline Casts and info.

-Andrew

New Blood Coming Soon

2008-04-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

Yes its been a while since I have posted anything. I am sorry to say that Adam Burke, will be taking a break from Spline Doctors. The good News is that we possibly will be getting 3 really great new Spline Doctors. They are:

Mark Walsh - Mark has been working at Pixar a little longer than me (almost 11 years) He was directing animator on Finding Nemo and Supervising Animator on Ratatouille. He also just finished up some amazing animation on Doug Sweetlands new Short film. He is currently teaching animation at the Academy of Art

Travis Hathaway - Travis came on around the time finding Nemo and has become one of Pixars best animators. He did some of the best stuff on Ratatouille and is a great teacher. He and I ran the Pixar intern program last year. I am really happy that he wants to post on Spline Doctors.

Michal Makarewicz - Michal started on Incredibles. He then did some really great work on Cars and most recently Ratatouille and Wall E. He won an Annie award for his work on Ratatouille. He was one of my best students at the academy of art in San Francisco. I am looking forward to reading some of his posts.

Some other stuff thats going on

New Site Coming soon. We have a redesigned web site that is being done by Ben Lew. Its looking good. We may even get sponsored by someone. Anyway, hopefully it will be easier to find old posts and have a better overall look. Suggestions will be welcome. We will go live within a month.

Spline Casts:

I am going to get the ball rolling again with a fresh batch. Hopefully the next big one will be with Doug Sweetland.

Over and Out....

Andrew

John Kahrs Spline Cast - Polish

2008-03-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

This may be the first interview I did. Its with animator John Kahrs. John Worked here from 1997 to 2007. He was nominated for 2 annie awards for his work on Monsters and Incredibles. His work on the films was always among the best. It had a great sense of weight, physicality and a high level of polish. I thought it would be good to interview him to help with teaching and just to talk to him about his process. John recently left Pixar and is now working at Disney Feature Animation.

Enjoy. Again, sorry for the lack of sound quality.
It was recorded directly onto an ipod

John Kahrs Spline Cast

Coming Soon.... Spline Cast Vault - John Kahrs

2008-03-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since we have done any podcasts. In the next few days I'll post some or all of an interview I did with former Pixar veteran animator John Kahrs. The interview is focused mainly on polish. Its super ghetto quality, recorded directly on an ipod. Look for it soon! Sorry for the time its taking. We don't have any fancy sponsors.... :)

-Andrew

Class Posts

2008-03-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to write posts on the class Andy and I teach at the Academy of Art, over on my personal blog. I didn't want to clog up this blog talking about our class, but if you would like to follow along and read about what we teach and the problems most students run into then give it a look.

Click here to read along.

--Dr. Stephen G.

Sack, Sack and more Sacks....

2008-03-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

I challenged my class at CCA to take a piece of music and animate flour sacks to it... If they wanted to they could also pick a favorite sequence from a film they love and animate it with flour sacks. The purpose of the assignment is to explore staging, acting, cutting and most of all, Straight Ahead style animation. Here are a few of the Sack tests the students did...

Great job to everyone! Expect the other students films soon.

Note: These will play from Safari but need to be downloaded on Firefox

Daniel Gonzales
Nadan Pines
Kyuhee Lee
Bessie Chiu
Grey Jenkins

Fun Micro Expression Test

2008-03-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

A while back we had a great Facial Reading expert come to pixar to help us understand more about the face. We learned about something called micro-expression which are expression we make very quickly that can reveal how we are really feeling. It is very useful for people trying to spot lies and so forth. Its also great to try and put into our work, especially the work of a computer animator, who can get lots of subtle stuff into their work.

Here is a Micro Expression Test. Click on the number, then whet micro expression flashes by.

Expression test

Why the muppets are such great inspiration for Animation

2008-02-21T19:59:00.000-08:00

Lately I've been watching alot of Sesame Street. I have a one year old. She loves it. In terms of acting, the characters on the show can act better than most real actors. You always know what they are feeling and they dont even have faces that change (except of course the mouth) Its amazing how believable the performances are. The characters all have specific ways of moving. Alot of that is based on the characters up and down movement or what we call TZ (translation in Z) or Y if you work in Maya... If these characters had animation controls, there might be about 20. Its just goes to show you that it does not take a heavily rigged character to get acting ideas across. I always love hte head acting on the characters. The angle of the head can really tell you alot about how the character is feeling. Take a look some of the clips here

http://video.sesameworkshop.org/

Watch how grovers acting style is well contrasted with the other character. Also take note of how he moves.

Kermits acting is awesome. Its interesting to watch how his head accents the lines of dialogue. As far as staging goes, its is very clear who you should be looking at. The characters play very well off each other. Cookie moster also has funny interesting mouth movements. In general, this clip shows two great puppeteers at work, Jim Henson and Frank Oz.

This one is just great becasue you get to see bert go through different attitudes. Its also nice to see him with another real person and understand the difference between the two.

Oscar Nominees Blog

2008-02-15T09:54:00.000-08:00

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

A Great Animation Resource

2008-02-14T14:53:00.000-08:00

Carlos Baena just updated his website and it has loads of great animation resources...

Check it out

Carlos Website

More Brad Bird

2008-02-07T16:17:00.001-08:00

Here is a really cool interview a fellow animator found with Brad Bird on "Airtalk"

Link to Airtalk interview (requires realplayer)

Link to file on Spline Doctors

its also available on itunes as a podcast. Keyword: airtalk

-Enjoy

Animation Workout.

2008-01-23T23:12:00.000-08:00

Your animation muscles are just like any other muscle in your body. They need exercise so that you can make them stronger and less flabby. I love animation and I love animating and the thing I do most outside of work is an animation workout. It’s easy to do and doesn’t take a lot of time. Many of us get caught up in animating huge acting assignments or even longer pieces of pantomime animation. I think these types of assignments are useful and necessary on a reel, but sometimes I think a quick workout can really be more beneficial to your overall success. What I mean by a quick work out is I take one principle of animation or two and create animation to focus on them. I generally just use a prim box or sphere, that way I’m not tempted or distracted by complex humans characters. Remember the goal here is just to focus on one particular thing and animate it really well, polish the crap out of that box so much the corners become rounded. For example lets say I wanted to focus on Overlap. I could easily create a prim box, parent another prim box to it and I’ve got a rough stand-in for a chest and an arm lets say. With this built I’m off and working out my overlap. Turn the box and have the box arm overlap not that hard or is it?

Slow-in and Slow-outs no problem create a prim sphere and just have it move from one side of the screen to another and back again or have it move around the screen slowing in and out of certain key positions. Quick and easy. Want to focus on Drag create a prim box moving up and down and around the screen picking one corner or edge of the box to lead while the other end drags behind.

None of these are going to go on your reel, but hopefully you’ll get a better understanding of the animation principles. That way you can put them together in a more complex piece of animation you would put on your reel. You’ll also get a better understanding of how to use your tools. You might focus one time trying to animate the slow in and slow out of a ball moving around just with the graph editor with just keys at your main poses. Or you might animate something in stepped mode animating every frame so you get a better understanding of spacing and how that relates to the graph editor. Maybe you have a problem with things strobing all the time in quick moves. This is a perfect way to help figure out to solve that problem. Without the pressure of an acting piece or pressure from anything you are free to experiment and mess up and try again because they don’t take very long, and no one is going to see them. Just like working out it’s the end result we are working towards.

Dr. Stephen G.

Anticipation, Arcs and Overlap Oh My!

2008-01-21T14:44:00.000-08:00

I had this posted on another blog, but now that a new school semester is about to start I thought I would repost it here.

As a teacher your always getting asked questions about what the secret is, the formula or the answer to creating good animation. Many times I would say there aren't any formulas or secrets just the principles of animation. I was wrong, and I think I've figured it out; the secret formula is the principles of animation. I'll break it down to the most important ones for me, keep in mind all twelve are important to creating great animation. Here's my short list Timing, Anticipation, Arcs, Posing, Squash and Stretch and Overlap. Without these you got nothing with them you might have something. I see too many assignments that generally don't include any of these. My question is why don't people use these principles or think to use them? It's rather simple I make a checklist starting with Timing; I make sure that the scene isn't even, and then I start analyzing my individual motions making sure they are not even also. Posing is next, looking for tangents, silhouette, attitude, complex shapes, awkward shapes, balance, etc. Then I make sure I'm using anticipation before my major moves, gestures or actions. Next on the list is Arcs, checking the wrists, nose, fingertips, root, shoulders, etc. I'm checking all of these parts to main camera in my shot. Finally I think about the overlap, you might say your character doesn't have a tail or floppy hat so what is there to overlap? The whole body is made up of elements that can drag, overlap, and follow through. The arms are a huge element that you can apply the principle of overlap too. Fingers, legs, eyebrows, jaws, eyelids and many more elements can also all overlap depending on the action. So next time your animating a shot or a test maybe think about using a checklist. It works for me.

One last thing no matter what you do, above all everything you do should support the acting and storytelling of the shot or test.

--Dr. Stephen G.

More on Shape Change

2008-01-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

A long while back we did a post about shape change and how important it is in your work. I wanted to reference a couple of examples on YouTube. Hopefully we can do more of this action analysis in the future.

Watch how the force causes her body shape to change. Its amazing how her torso reverses. Also notice how everything overlaps (torso, chest, neck and head. Reversals are key to nice animation.

Yeah, I know, you have seen this. It really is amazing to see how much the body changes and how this guy can change the appearance of his body by movement. Look at the patterns on his arms. Really nice fluid stuff.

Ok, this is just crazy. Obviously this woman is beyond flexible. Its really great reference for articulating a torso. Look at how appealing the shapes are yet the rib cage always stays solid. Its really important to remember that your characters have a rib cage and to keep that part of them solid.

-hope this helps a little...

Why We Animate...

2008-01-05T14:43:00.001-08:00

I was listening to a great interview with Woody Allen on NPR radio today. It was about a new film he is coming out with. The interviewer asked him why he does what he does. His answer was "To escape everyday life." Ultimately he wants to go into another world and leave the regular life behind. I guess for me, animating is similar. I'm trying to create this performance that takes place in a virtual world. When I'm animating, I am trying to get into the characters skin and really feel what they are feeling. Animation is different from live action in that its not improvisational. It takes alot of sweat to recreate a performance that looks natural. What I found interesting about the Woody Allen interview is that he, with all his stardom, still wants to escape every day life. He also said he does not have many friends. Work is his ultimate passion. At 72 he still has the same drive. I ask myself... will I be able to animate with the same passion in another 10 to 20 years, much less 30 or 40? I think it comes down to alot of factors. One, is never feeling like you have arrived. One thing that Woody said was "Don't listen to them when they tell you are great, and don't worry what they say if they don't like your work. Just shut up and work." I think that egos can get in the way of good work. I think its so important to try different things. If you are an animator, you have to challenge yourself to do different characters and scenes. I think what I find most difficult these days is putting the grease and polish back into the shots. Some of my students that work here now, have polish that blows me away. I love asking them what they are doing to get that. You really always need to be a student in order to keep up. Sometimes, when I'm sitting in my office, I forget to pull in a buddy to get their opinion on a shot. Its so important to do. I guess the point of all this is to stay hungry and understand why we love what we do. Its very easy to get jaded in this industry, but ultimately, animating, and creating character is one of the best jobs out there. Take a listen to the interview. If you take one thing away from it that you can use, it was worth it.

-Andrew

Happy New Year

2008-01-02T11:44:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a great New Year. We hope this year will be a good year for animation and the Spline Doctors Blog. This year we will have a new site with new articles and lots of new Spline Casts. We really want you to post who you want to be interviewed. Also, please send us any topics of interest you want to see on the blog.

Happy New Year.

Andrew

End of the year thoughts

2007-12-09T19:45:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts. Its the end of the year, and everyone is working alot. I know Adam is in crunch for Wall E and I'm cruching on the short that will be in front of the feature.

We are in the process of redesigning the Spline Doctors web site. Hopefully it will be alot easier to navigate and all the past posts will be better organized. A really talented guy named Ben Lew is helping us. Also, all the Spline Casts will have their own page. In the upcoming year, we have alot of new spline casts coming. This blog will move more towards podcasts. We will still give tips, and write about animation, but we want to focus on creating useful podcasts for you to hear.

On an Animation note, there was a lot of animation this year. I saw a bit of Enchanted and really enjoyed it. Hats off to all that worked on it and to Baxter Studios. I am curious to see Beowulf, but the eyes on the characters really weird me out. I have to ask why they just did not decide to do this film live action? I appreciate the work, but I really just want to know what is gained by doing cg humans? I can understand doing penguins, or Gollum or giant apes. When I look at the cg human, the uncanny valley effect sets in and I just disconnect. I'd be curious to hear what people thought. One thing I also dont understand is why the film is being considered for academy consideration for animation. Ok, there may be some animation, but the film is not animated by hand. Apparently, the Academy and the powers that be, do not agree with me.

Education in animation is really gone through the roof. Students have so many choices these days when it comes to learning character animation. On-line schools like Animation Mentor, as well as many brick and morter schools are out there to choose from. The bay area is booming for animation education. One thing that I still feel is a big issue is how students go about making thier own films. If you are doing a film in cg, either you have to do it very simple, use pre built rigs or have an amazing amount of knowledge of 3d software to build a good piece. Schools like Cal Arts does great 2d films, but when it comes to 3d, they struggle. The opposite happens at places like the Academy of Art. The Academy has an amazing program, if you are talented enough to get in the track with all the guys from Pixar teaching. They turn out amazing animators and the teachers are all awesome. Its just that you don't see alot of student films. Places like Animation Mentor are using pre built rigs to have students do films. I think its a good idea and at least it gets students immersed in film making. The last thing we need is for schools to just pump out animators, much in the way technical schools pump out electricians or mechanics. I sometimes wonder if the industry is large enough to support all the animation students that will be coming out every year.

Have a great new year and expect more to come next year.

-Andrew

Flip Blog

2007-12-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hey, here is link to some pretty neat tutorials, put together by Cameron Fielding. They are worth a look and thanks to Cameron for taking the time to put them together.

Flip

--stephen

The Original Spline Doctor

2007-11-04T16:40:00.000-08:00

Adam Burke and I did a great interview with Ed Catmull. Thanks to everyone who sent us questions. Special thanks to Ed for doing the interview and to Adam for setting it up. The fact that Ed made time to do this interview says alot about him and the kind of company he runs.

You can download the podcast here:

Ed Catmull Interview

Happy Halloween

2007-10-31T19:55:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all your questions to ED. We had a great interview with him which should be up shortly. Sorry for lack of posts. Things are very busy here. We had a great costume contest for Halloween at work. Former Spline Doctor, Angus Maclane and I took first and second place.... He was a half order of chicken and I was global warming. Expect some new posts soon.

-Andrew

Upcoming Spline Cast

2007-10-19T22:34:00.000-07:00

Our next Spline Cast is pretty exciting if I say so myself... Dr Burke set this one up. Our guest will be Ed Catmull, founder and President of Pixar and Disney Feature Animation. Anyway, I am posting this so that readers can send in some questions. We will pick a few of the best ones. Just send them to the comments section with your name or if you want to remain anonymous, that's fine. Obviously, we are not gonna ask him any questions that deal with upcoming films or company stuff.

Thanks to Dr. Burke and to Ed for doing this.

-Andrew

Design the Spline Doctors Website

2007-10-16T22:51:00.000-07:00

Ok,

Lets face it, the Spline Doctors web site needs a face lift. We dont know much about web design but we do know about animation. We are seeking an individual who can help us redesign the website/blog and in turn we are offering tutoring in the art of animation (and some swag). Anyone interested should email gordo@splinedoctors.com. We would like to see the web site design work you have done and a portfolio of your animation. At the end of the month we will pick the winner. We think its a very fair trade and good exposure. We are also looking for people who do music to design the opening and closing of the Spline Casts. We are looking for something other than a stock garageband loop. Anyone who can help, please email us.

-Andrew

Re-Doctered Spline Casts

2007-10-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

A lot of people complained about the volume on the Spline Casts. One of our sound engineers at Pixar helped fix the levels and re-exported them. He also fixed the Pete Docter Spline Cast so that it actually had the bi-naural head effect working. It sounds really cool. Listen to it with head phones and you will experience how it was meant to sound. Here are the links to past Spline Casts. I'll update them on iTunes when I have the chance. They are all audio only and the Pete Docter Spline Cast is in a semi-rough format. All the great info is there though.

Stanton part1
Stanton part 2
Stanton part3
Mark Andrews/Mathot
Animation Round Table
Art Round Table
Brad Bird
Nate Stanton
Pete Doctor
Ralph Eggleston
Spline or Line

Animation Mentor Fall Showcase

2007-10-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

Our Good friends at Animation Mentor have posted the works of their fall show. Carlos gave me a look, and man is it good. Amazing job to all the students and teachers. Animation Mentor really is committed to animation education. They really care about the students which is not the case with a lot of animation schools out there. I expect it will only get better and better. I'd love to hear any comments from students about the program.

http://www.animationmentor.com/index.cfm

Some Cool 2d animation software

2007-10-04T20:32:00.000-07:00

The best thing animation students can do is to do 2d animation before they enter the vast world of 3d animation.It teaches you the basics much quicker and really helps you understand the process. Here are a bunch of 2d animation software packages that are out there for the computer. I like using these packages because it lets me experiment more and try out different techniques. Its also easier to make changes.

Here they are:

Pencil - A free open source program

Mirage - Alot like deluxe paint 4 for the Amiga only better! (TV Paint is the european counter-part)

Flipbook - widely used 2d program. Very simple and robust

Feel free to submit any other 2d animation programs that you know of.

-Andrew

Art Department Roundtable!!!!

2007-09-29T17:46:00.000-07:00

We're proud to announce the next splinecast in our Animation Roundtable series. Andrew and I were very fortunate to gather an amazing group of some of Pixar's art department A-listers for our Art Department Roundtable. In this podcast we are joined by production designers Harley Jessup and Bob Pauley, director of photography Sharon Calahan, art director Tia Kratter, and character designer Teddy Newton. Andrew and I can't thank them all enough for their participation. We had a great, anecdotal conversation about the development process from art's point of view with some of the most talented designers working in animation today. Below is an mp4 and wav file of the recording. Andrew and I will do our best to publish a polished version with recorded wraps and slideshow up on iTunes as soon as we're able. Till then take a listen to a group of people who have had a hand in creating some of the most stunning visuals in film's recent history. We hope you enjoy it.

-Adam

wav
mp4
mp3

Spline Doctor Q&A Answers

2007-09-29T16:48:00.000-07:00

Sorry, about this post I was suppose to post the answers last week. I got really busy, I'm leaving for Europe and New York for a month, and haven't had time to edit it together. I promise I'll post it as soon as I get back. There were a bunch of great questions and I want to make this a great splinecast that will be informative as well as interesting, unfortunately that takes time. If you want you can post some more questions in the meantime if you have any. QA@splinedoctors.com

see you all in a month!
-Dr. Stephen G.

Jeff Pidgeon Interview

2007-09-28T10:24:00.000-07:00

Hey guys I found this interview with the amazing Jeff Pidgeon on-line today. Everyone should check it out. Jeff has been at PIXAR forever and he is in my opinion one of the most influential artists of PIXAR's earlier films, Toy Story,Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, etc. Worth a listen.

here is the link!

--Dr. Stephen G.

Elements of Strong Posing Part 2: Weight & Balance

2007-09-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

We're all familiar with this concept from having to do "heavy object lift" tests and the good ol' "ball bounce" but what weight and balance really do for your poses is give them a sense of "believability". One of the gifts we have in animation is the boarderless playground of our imagination to create whatever characters and worlds we can dream up. However, in order to get our audience to believe in the products of our imagination we have to give them credibility. No matter how caricatured you are working, weight and balance should always come into play or there will be something about your work that will look odd, wrong, or worse yet....unbelievable.

Take a look at this pose from Frank Thomas of the woman and Merlin squirrels from "Sword in the Stone".

The female squirrel has a great sense of weight (and I'm not talking about her size). Her sense of being off balance is reinforced by the Merlin squirrel leaning in opposition against her. You can see by the use of straights and angles in the arms the tension and strain of Merlin trying to hold up the other squirrel.

Last year I had taken my family to see a performance of chinese acrobats. Beyond the amazing and entertaing feats of physical discipline, I was fascinated by studying how they carried their weight. No matter how fantastic the pose, the heads of the performers (unless balanced by a wider stance) was always in a direct plumb over the weight bearing foot. This idea of weight and balance should also apply to the physics of your animation as well as your poses. Keep Sir Isaac's laws in the back of your brain when posing and working on the physics of your movement. You can have a character with 8 legs walking on a planet made of spounge cake, but does it have a believable presence in the space it's occupying? That's where wieght and balance help the audience connect with your work.

Law and logic clearly prove to me that a coyote cannot ski down a hill with a refrigerator on it's back. However, if you show me an entertaining and believable pose....you can probably talk me into it.

-Adam

Elements of Strong Posing Part 1: Attitude

2007-09-17T09:58:00.001-07:00

I was going back through some old reference material and was reading up on the elements that factor into character posing. I'm constantly surprised how much I learn by just refreshing myself with some of the most basic principles. So I'd like to spend a couple posts going over some of the basic elements that factor into clear and expressive posing. The first element I'd like to talk about is "Attitude".

I just purchased one of the Looney Tunes DVD collections recently for my sons because if I heard one more episode of a screaming Nicktoon I would have been compelled to take my own life. So in the effort of saving me from myself and to preach the gospel of quality to my boys we popped in Chuck Jones' "Duck Amuck ". I probably hadn't watched it in about 7 years and I was smiling from ear to ear by the end of it. Not only did I have the joy of watching my 6 year old see it for the first time, but to watch my seventeen year old recite along with it like he saw it the day before. I began thinking about what it is that makes it such an enduring short. Clearly, it's a very imaginative premise, but then I tried to analyze it with an animator's eye and I kept focusing on Daffy's poses. They are so expressive and had such clear attitudes. When you watch the short there is never a doubt in your mind how Daffy is feeling or what his emotional state is. Attitude is how your body language and thought process comes through in your pose.

It's the tiny details that are easy to overlook that can help to strengthen the attitude in your posing. Explore all of the possibilities while you're working out your poses and ask yourself questions. "What if I drop the shoulders a little more?". "Should we see more of her face?". "What would widening the stance do?". It can also be as simple as showing your pose to a friend or colleague and asking them "How does this read to you?". We'll talk about more over the next few weeks. Andrew and I just recorded a new round table so stay tuned for that as well. In the mean time, watch a little "Duck Amuck".

-Adam

The Doctor is in.

2007-09-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about these splinecasts and round tables that Andrew and Adam have been so nice to put together for all us, and realized that none of us have been the subject of one. So I figure I would do a Doctor Q&A with me, Stephen Gregory. I'll also open it up to our readers who might have questions for me. If you have a question send me an e-mail to this address QA@splinedoctors.com by Thursday September 13th and I'll answer your questions in my splinecast I'll post next week.

-Dr.Stephen G.

Whats up, Doc?

2007-09-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

Finally, The Pete Docter Spline Cast is up on Itunes. I'll be tweaking it a bit, but the interview is done and hopefully the audio is ok. We did it with a special microphone at Pixar.

Enjoy!

Pete Docter Spline Cast

Introducing the new iTutor!

2007-09-05T13:53:00.000-07:00

Interested in tutoring? I'm going to be taking a few students in November for more info click here.

Spline Doctors, where are you...teaching?

2007-08-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

Its the new semester and a lot of folks have been inquiring about where they can take classes that the Spline Doctors teach at. Originally, when this blog was started, all the teachers were at the Academy or Art University in San Francisco. It was myself, Angus, Mike, Scott Clark and Stephen Gregory. Alot of us are doing different things. Angus is not teaching right now, Mike is also taking a break, as is Stephen Gregory. At the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, here are the guys teaching the 4 animation classes that are within the "pixar" track, which is not really supposed to be called the pixar track. Pixar animators just happen to teach there.

Level one: Matt Majers and Michal Makerawictz (Matt is great animator who attended Cal-Arts and Michal is one of my former students that has been at Pixar for 4 or 5 years now.

Level one (class two) Andy Beall and Travis Hathaway. Andy and I went to school together. He worked at Warner Bros (iron Giant etc) and has headed up the animation fix team. He is a great teacher with alot of passion and knowledge. Travis is a Cal Arts grad who has been at Pixar since days of Finding Nemo. He is an amazing animator and a great teacher. We taught the summer interns this year.

Level Two Animation: Adam Burke and Mike Wu
Adam is an animation veteran of just about every major studio (Bluth, Warners, etc) and came on during the Incredibles. He brings a wealth of knowledge and a back east attitude. Mike is a 10 year Disney vet who also came on during the Incredibles. He is an awesome teacher and both guys can draw like mo-fo's.

Level Three Animation: Scott Clark and Mark Walsh
Scott was a Supervising Animator on Cars and is Supervising on Pete Docters new film. Mark Walsh is a 10 year Veteran who was a directing animator on Finding Nemo and a Supervising Animator on Rat. Both guys will be working on the third installment of the Virgin Voyage group project, which is as close as you get to doing feature quality work in a school environment. Students are also going to be doing individual projects.

I am taking a semester off from the level 3 class to help start the Animation Program at the California College of Art (CCA). We are gathering some really good people to get the program going and we hope it will be different from other Animation Schools. Hopefully, Mark Andrew's will be coming to teach Story come spring. I am really gonna miss teaching with the guys. It was a great run and most of all, I'll miss the booze afterward and of course, the students.

As for Stephen Gregory, he is currently taking a break and is seeking individuals to mentor. (I think...) You will have to confirm with him... He is an amazing teacher and I would sign up if I was a student.

Former Spline Doc and veteran Pixar animator Billy Merrit is teaching at Ringling in Florida when he is not enjoying a cigar or fishing.

Good Luck to all the students this semester and keep your eyes peeled for more Spline Casts, Roundtables and posts during the year.

-Andrew

Way to go OHIO!

2007-08-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm sure many of you have heard about FJORG at siggraph this year. An Iron Animator event in which 16 competing teams from around the world had 32 hours to create the most impressive character-driven animation of at least 15 seconds in length adhering to at least one of two themes and using at least one of 16 sound bites. A couple months ago, I went to teach animation for a few days in Ohio. The guy who invited me to BGSU was head of the computer animation department at BGSU, or so I thought. His name was Jim Levasseur. We corresponded for a few months to actually set this thing up. When I got their, he picked me up in an old beater car with two other guys, Tomas Jech and Jacob Gardner. They looked really young to be faculty. Turns out they were not faculty, but students. Jim and the other guys were part of a computer animation club. They totally orchestrated the process of getting me out to BGSU. These three guys were totally driven. They really wanted to learn animation. At the very end of the class, they showed me a short film they were working on to get into the Fjorg thing. I thought it looked great.

Anyhow, they went on to win the FJORG competition! Three guys from Bowling Green State University. A true Cinderella story. Competing against professionals from places like Polygon Pictures and Tippet Studios. I did an email interview with them.

Interview

Great jobs guys. Any studio would be more than lucky to have you working with them. Especially, now that you proved that you will work long hours... :)
-Andrew

other links:

FJORG documentary
The film the submitted to get in
The Film that won

Story Spline Cast with Mark Andrews and Ted Mathot

2007-08-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to editing a version good enough to post. This is an interview I did with Mark Andrews and Ted Mathot in the Lucky 7 lounge at Pixar. Mark was the head of Story on the Incredibles and Ratatouille and Ted is a veteran story artist who will be working with Brad on his next project. I hope you enjoy the Podcast. Expect a version with chapters and images on iTunes soon. I wanted to get this one up ASAP. The audio quality could be better, and it will be with the next Spline Cast! I just finished one with Pete Doctor. Expect that one in the next few weeks.

Hope you enjoy the Spline Cast.. Please send your feedback

Download the Spline Cast Here

-Andrew

Californias' Best Kept Secret

2007-07-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

CSU SUMER ARTS 07

In terms of animation education, one of the best programs I have seen is CSU Summer Arts. When I got out of high school, I really wanted to learn stuff about animation. I think it was something I saw in an issue of Amiga World Magazine (I'm dating myself) that prompted me to check into a computer animation program that was being run by this organization. Back then, all the stars of computer animation gathered at Humboldt State University. We did films using swivel 3d. It was great! It was the first time I really knew that I wanted to make films. The CSU summer arts program has been running for 21 years now.. Lately, its been at Fresno State.

This Year I had the privilege of being a guest artist for the 5th time. Rick Vertolli has been the guiding light of the computer graphics program at CSU summer arts. The range of Guest Artists is really amazing. We had Mike Wellins, who is an independent film maker and director. He works up at Leica. Rusty Mills, who has been a Producer/Director for many projects including Pinky and the Brain and animaniacs. Brian Boyd, a TD from Pixar was their to talk about all aspects of color, lighting and also rigging. Chuck Harvey, who trained under Milt Kahl was also one of the guest artists. Chuck, having worked with the greats, had so much inspiring artwork to show. His collection of animation art blew everyone away. The subject of this years workshop was character development. The students got to take acting classes from a teacher from Second City and then develop that character using a CG rig. Things like Walk cycles, Pose Tests and Acting scenes are some of the work being done. The students were also lucky enough to get a tour of Pixar, which usually is impossible to do for a group this size.

Another great thing about summer arts is the fact that alot of other workshops are going on around the campus. There is an energy that really feels great. Students are working till 2 am. Its an intense experience. One thing that should be noted is that 80% of students receive some sort of scholarship. When you think about how expensive animation education can be, this is why Summer Arts is the best kept secret in animation education. The culmination of the work will be on Friday, the 27th of July 2007

-Andrew

Spline Casts Coming Soon!!!!

2007-07-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, its summer, and that means things are a bit slow. What a perfect time to grab some artists and do some Spline Casts. Here are some of the Splinecasts you can expect in the Future:

Story Roundtables

Animation Roundtables

Doug Sweetland

Pete Doctor

etc etc... Be patient, they are coming.

Here is a preview of a Story Roundtable interview with Incredibles and Ratatouille head of story, Mark Andrews and Veteran Story Artist/Supervisor Ted Mathot. Look for the entire interview in the next week or so.

Remember, safari has problems with mp4 files... Also, if you like the interview feel free to use the tip jar at the bottom of the page to support getting better equipment. All donations go to making this a better program.

-Andrew

IK Is Not Always OK.

2007-07-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

One thing I've noticed a lot of students do recently is animate with IK on for no apparent reason. For example, a character just walking forward in space and gesturing with his/her arms would be animated with the arms in IK. I'm not sure if this is a rookie mistake, laziness, or if people do it so they don't have to deal with orientation switches but, in my opinion it is very noticeable and it almost always looks wrong. If we just look at the terminology we're using we can get some obvious hints that will help you with your work method. "Inverse" means the reverse of something. So the opposite of FK, or forward motion, must be obstructed motion or motion impacted by an external element.

That external element makes perfect sense when it's something like a ground plane, table top, or any surface that your character may need to interact with. However, if a character is just walking around or standing still and gesturing and the arms are free of any external element, then IK stands out like a sore thumb and your animation looks like a puppet with arm rods. Movement begins to look externally motivated. You don't want to do anything that's going to break your "illusion of life". I love the Muppets as much as the next guy and those characters seem real to many people but Kermit's arms still look like their on sticks..... which is just bad IK.

-Adam

When The Dialogue Ends, The Character Keeps Talking.

2007-06-28T22:41:00.000-07:00

I've been planning a lecture recently on dialogue and I was trying to grab some images as reference. I did a Google image search for "mouth + lips" in the hope of finding some diagrams of the mouth and it's mechanics and the image of the Mona Lisa popped up. I stopped dead in my tracks. I have a point in some of my notes addressing the importance of "inner dialogue" and keeping a character alive when they're not talking, but this simple image search made me think of the concept on an entirely new level.

Most of us are familiar with the Mona Lisa and it's significance in history. Having said that, anyone I've talked to who has actually seen this piece in person at the Musee du Louvre, the first thing they usually say is, "I never knew it was that small." What an amazing statement that is if you analyze it. Why does that surprise people? Because of how large an impact that picture has had on people for centuries. It's amazing to see what a sideways glance and the upturned corner of the mouth can do to inflame the imagination of an audience. I don't mean to raise the bar too high, but that's the exact kind of thing you should be thinking about when animating your dialogue. When the track ends, you must keep the character alive. Thoughts need to remain engaged, and it's amazing sometimes to realize how little it takes. I find myself also being reminded of the power of a single, motionless pose.

What is truly amazing to me is that the piece transcends the artist. I'm a big fan of Leonardo, but when you think about it, this piece is far greater than the artist who created it. Why? Because after more than 500 years... it's still alive.

-Adam

Annecy Links

2007-06-22T14:44:00.000-07:00

I was going to give an update about the stuff I saw at Annecy, but Cartoon Brew beat me to it. The most memorable film I saw was Peter and the Wolf by Suzie Templeton. It was a stop motion film. It was about 30 minutes. I was in awe watching the film. The overall feeling was great. The cinematography was also amazing. It was a different take on the classic story. One thing that really impressed me was the lack of expressions that Peter had. When I say he had a lack of expressions, I mean that they did not animate from one to the next. All you needed to know about what the character was feeling was told with one pose. I really felt for the characters in the film. Ultimately, the film won the Annecy Cristal award and audience favorite. I think this is due to the strong story. For me, it really does come down to how the story is told. I cant sit through alot of films because they just have no point. Ok, maybe they were done with some strange method, but I want to be transported. Peter and the Wolf did this for me. Here is the link from cartoon brew:

annecy on cartoonbrew

What inspires you?

2007-06-21T22:53:00.000-07:00

I have found myself recently in a position where people are looking to me for advice when I'm still looking for the same sort of guidance for myself. I've learned along the way that there are very few absolute answers and that after you learn techniques and strategies, your education begins to become more of an exploration of discovery. Since I've started teaching, students reach out for an answer to their animation and film making problems, only to find that there are none. At least in the sense of walking away from class with a guarantee for success. There are tried and true principles that can work for you and we as teachers help to facilitate passing the knowledge of such things. However, so much of what your work comes down to is what you are inspired by and how it strengthens your instincts. The tools at your disposal are useless if you don't know how to use them or fully understand the potential of what they can give you. A lathe in the hands of someone trying to fix a kitchen chair leg is different from a lathe in the hands of a master craftsman.

We all have movies that inspire us artistically as animators, but try looking a little deeper. Look at a favorite film of yours, one that you don't equate with your passion for animation, and take a moment to ask yourself questions about it. Why do I like this movie so much? What makes this entertaining? Why is this moment so funny? What makes this moment so powerful? Now go through the analysis of finding the answers to those questions as you watch your favorite movie again. Perhaps hold the film and those questions up to comparison with a film that you don't enjoy as much and and look at how they differ. You'll be surprised and inspired to find how the answers can directly relate back to the animation work that you do.

In the upcoming weeks I'll try to post some individual examples of what I'm talking about. I'd like to talk about design, composition, and music. Some things you wouldn't immediately leap to discuss when you seem to hear everyone going on about arcs, timing, and overlapping movement. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch The Odd Couple again and try to figure out why I still laugh so hard at Felix clearing his sinuses in the diner.

-Adam

Where are all the US animation festivals????

2007-06-10T23:45:00.000-07:00

Being here at the Annecy Animation festival really makes me wonder why the US does not have any animation festivals anywhere near the scope of Annecy. Sure, there is Siggraph, but I'm talking about animation, not just computer animation. There are so many films represented here from all over the world. Every medium of animation as well. I just find it odd that the country that in some ways invented animation does not have something like this. Maybe the US views animation in a much different way than the rest of the world. Anyway, its really inspiring to see so much animation going on. I'll try to post some of the films that I thought were great and where they can be viewed.

-Andrew

Annecy Info

2007-06-10T01:26:00.000-07:00

For those of you who will be in Annecy this year, there will be a few Pixar talks related to Ratatouille. I'll be talking on Wednesday the 13th. Two other animators, Ross Stevenson and Patty Kihm will also be presenting material. Click on the link below for more info

http://renderman.pixar.com/annecy.html

Contrast in Animation

2007-06-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

I think one of the most powerful principles is Contrast. Contrast is obviously not one of the original principles of animation, but it can be found in many of them. Lets explore some of them. Contrast in pose for instance. Having two characters posed differently can tell the viewer a lot about each character and create an interesting dynamic between them. In the example of Bob and Helen arguing, there is a really nice contrast between Bob's hunched over pose and Helen's more upright one. This then gets flipped when Helen becomes more angry. Contrast is also really great in motion. It directs your eye to where you should be looking. An obvious example would be two people talking. You would not want to move the character that is not talking too much so that you could take in what the other character is saying. Another example could be a crowd of people moving around. The person that is not moving is most likely the person your eye will be drawn to. Animation is like a choreographed dance. You really need to understand how to weave the different elements in and out of your scenes. That reminds me of contrast across many scenes. You want to think about it not just on the scene level, but on a more global one.

Hope this helps...

Andrew

Developing your Eye

2007-05-21T22:42:00.001-07:00

In Animation, one of the best tools you can have is an eye for what looks right or wrong. Some people can really see the elements that are or are not in a shot. Like any good art form, it takes years to develop an understanding of things. In animation we are usually looking out for good poses and design. There are so many different aspects of animation we need to "see" in our shots. Pose, Polish, Cliche acting, Weight transfer, contacts, arcs, texture, asymmetry... The list goes on and on. So how can a young animator develop his or her eye to recognize such stuff? One way is to look at really well done work and break down the components of what makes it so good. Whenever I see something that catches my eye, I really try to frame through it and understand what is going on. Just recently, I saw a bunch of Aardmann Animation. One thing that really blew me away was how good the facial performances were. They had so much thought process and character. I was grinning from ear to ear watching them. It made me want to look at them again as a student. I think that is the key. We can enjoy a film or cartoon as an audience member, but then you have to look at it with another set of eyes. Look at it again with the eye of an animator.

Another way of developing your eye is to look in everyday life. How people or animals do things. If you can, hang around people that are better than you so they can teach you a thing or two, here and there. Whatever you can do to pick up things. Its very important to grow. Ultimately, you are developing your style and that hawk eye for spotting what is and is not working. It takes time, but like anything good, its worth it.

-Andrew

ps - More splinecasts coming. (Anim Roundtables, Pete Doctor, Doug Sweetland) Bare with us, they take time. Feel free to leave a tip in our tip jar at the bottom of the site to help purchase some better equipment.

Congratulations "Virgin Voyage"!

2007-05-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to tip my hat to Andrew Gordon, Scott Clark and all of their students who worked so hard on their class project last semester "Virgin Voyage" which recently took an award for "Audience Choice" at AAU's 1st annual Epidemic Film Festival in San Francisco. For those not familiar with previous posts about this project, Scott and Andrew recorded improvisation performers and had their students put it through it's paces, simulating a working production environment. They designed characters and sets, laid out the sequence, animated, and lit and rendered. It's great to see innovative teaching and great student work get recognized. Congratulations again to everyone involved!

Adam

5 great student films

2007-05-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

A bunch of us animators are going down to the Cal Arts producers show on Thursday. One of the people here at Pixar pointed us to some of the films that did not make it into the show. Here is a link to five films that were not accepted but are very well done. Congrats to the directors for making such great films.

5films

Let's put this 2D-3D thing to bed. Shall we?

2007-05-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

Dr. Stephen has been posting some great stuff recently. Most of all, that last Milt quote. I read a comment from that post questioning whether Milt's statement carries the same weight when compared to how things are done today with CG animation. We've tried to state this fact in previous posts, but let's try to tuck this one in and send it to bed.

I think it's vitally important to remember in these CG days of ours that everything in Milt's quote is more relevant than ever. The problem with a lot of CG work is that people who have never learned to draw, design, or study composition fail to think about their work graphically, and for some reason believe that the computer will carry part of the load. For that matter, they neglect to think about their work at all. Yes, you can easily turn something in space. No, you don't have to worry about your ability to draw. But 3D Max does not have an "appeal" filter. There is not a mel script on the planet that can create fresh and exciting, organic timing. CG does not let you off the hook. It takes discipline, work, and an eye that a computer can never give you. I hate to burst any bubbles out there. Truth be told, a pencil can't give it to you either.

Pencil or mouse, the struggle doesn't change. I don't care whether you think you can draw or not. Think and thumbnail! Animation is too time consuming and too messy a medium to go into without having invested a good deal of thought and care into what you're doing. 2D animators of years gone by had to deal with draftsmanship, yes. They also had to deal with timing, appeal, performance, story, and entertainment. Nothing has changed. If the classic masters invested this amount of forethought into their work before composing their drawings, don't you think it's equally important to have thought things through before you start manipulating a model that has over a thousand controls?!?!?

Please try to get it out of your heads that animation is a trade that can be learned once you acquire the right amount of knowledge or learned the right software. It is an art form. And like any art form it takes an eye, discipline, and an ability to observe what is around you. I wish I could tell you that it takes this, or it takes that. Believe me, having such knowledge would make our lives a whole lot easier. Alas, it's not the case. Animation is as good as what you bring to it and what you are open to learn along the way. We can give you tips and insights based on the successes of our predecessors in addition to what we might have learned from our own mistakes, but in the end it's all up to you. We're recording some more roundtables in the days ahead and Andrew has another great Splinecast interview planned, so stay tuned. Thanks again for visiting the blog.

-Adam

Great Quote

2007-05-01T11:13:00.000-07:00

Here is a Quote from Milt Kahl, which is from the "Walt Disney's Nine Old Men & the Art of Animation" by John Canemaker. My friend Billy Merrit pointed me to the other day.

In a talk to students in 1976, the year he retired, Kahl was unusually articulate in summing up his thoughts about the art of animation. "it's a very difficult medium," he refelected. "Animation requires a pretty good draftsman because you got to turn things, to be able to draw well enough to turn things at every angle. you have to understand movement, which itself is quite a study. You have to be an actor. You have to put on a performance, to be a showman, to be able to evaluate how good the entertainment is. You have to know the best way of doing it, and have an appreciation of where it belongs in the picture. You have to be a pretty good story man. To be a really good animator, then, you have to be a jack of all trades. I don't mean to say that I'm all fo these things, but I try hard. I got accused over the years of being a fine draftsman. Actually, I don't really draw all that well. It's just that I don't stop trying as quickly. I keep at it. I happen to have high standards and I try to meet them. I have to struggle like hell to make a drawing look good."

How about them apples?

--Dr. Stephen G.

Want to se some good drawing?

2007-04-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

go here

the Firehouse Stomp

and here

Temple of the Seven Golden Camels

or here

Drawings From A Mexican

there's tons more if you follow the links from these blogs.

-Dr. Stephen G.

Computer Animation and Drawing.

2007-04-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

Many students get really intimidated when they are asked to draw or do thumbnails and show them in class. It's understandable, now days you don't have to be a great draftsman to get into animation school, heck for some schools you can have never drawn anything and get in. Computer animation has liberated many great animators, who may never been able to get into animation due to their lack of drawing ability. So on one hand the computer has allowed so many more people to access animation as a career and also allowed animation to become as big as it is these days, from computer games to the Internet, to commercials, feature animation etc. The flip side is that because of this access and the possible feeling that drawing doesn't relate to computer animation, the overall quality of the animation being produced is getting weaker and weaker. Many students now days can go to school learn everything there is about Maya, and graduate with only taking a few drawing classes and possibly never taking story or design classes. It's really a shame, for one that students don't demand story, design and drawing classes and also that schools don't find them important to the curriculum of computer animation. I had four main classes at Cal-Arts that repeated every semester for four years; Story, Character Design/Design, Animation, Life Drawing.

I've kinda gone off topic I'll come back to drawing now. The reason drawing is so important and life drawing in particular is that in one class, if taught well, you can learn about story, design, weight, physics, balance, squash and stretch, overlap, follow through, positive negative spaces, silhouette, composition, structure, rhythm, line of action, so many things all from a single drawing class. The other important thing is that if you keep going to class and keep drawing all the time you are constantly working on and being reminded of all of these things all the time. It can be really overwhelming to think about all of that stuff all the time but that's ok because your not just creating one drawing, you'll have many drawings where you can work on these things. One of the best things for me is to take one of the life drawings I did in class. Put a piece of tracing paper over it and try to look at the drawing and think about design or weight and re draw over my drawing thinking about one of the things mentioned for example, balance. Then keep repeating until you've addressed all the ideas, overlap, squash and stretch, silhouette, rhythm, etc, etc. I don't think you need to be a gifted draftsman to be a great animator but I do think you need to understand all the principles that are taught in good drawing, to be a great animator. Plus there is no need to be intimidated by drawing, only you are going to see them. You don't have to show your drawings, or thumbnails to anyone if you don't want to. While your in class don't even worry about the drawing who cares, worry about the process and thinking that goes on while drawing. If the drawing looks like junk but in the end you came away with a better understanding of how the forms work together and where the squash and stretch was working in the pose, that's cool. You'll remember that for next time and you'll remember that next time you sit down to plan out a shot or pose a character. I don't worry about the drawing anymore, I focus on trying to learn something while doing each drawing.

Just for fun and to show you that your drawings don't have to be great or pretty or nice or presentable I've included some thumbnails of mine from various films. These may or may not be pushed or the final poses for the characters in the shot. I tweak poses in the once they are in the computer, when I'm working to the main camera. Here I'm really trying to get and idea of what the pose will be and also what my acting is gonna a be and how it's going to move. I take a lot of notes along with the drawings to help describe motion, arcs, antics, or ideas that I can't draw. They are the road map of my shots but not always the final destination.

-Dr. Stephen G.

Animation, is Animation, is Animation.

2007-04-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

There was a comment in the last post about Walt Stanchfield's amazing drawing notes, which you can get at animationmeat.com, about how some students or even non-students dismiss these because they feel it only relates to 2d animation and doesn't relate to 3d computer animation. I guess this might be why people are always looking for books on computer animation which is silly. Animation is Animation. Animation as and art form or craft exists outside of the medium your using. It really doesn't matter if your working in clay, sand, pencil, computer, paper cut out, or any medium the principles of animation exist in all of these. The principles of animation exist outside of these mediums. So anything that would help in one medium would also help in the others. As far as drawing goes, and learning to draw or understanding the principles of design and composition these are some of the most important things we can have as animator to help tell our stories. So to dismiss these ideas and concepts because, you are not a graphic designer, a cinematographer or a 2d animator is really just hurting you as an animator. The best animators I've come across are really talented at all of these things, Design, Composition, Acting, Music, Dance, Film history, Observation, Drawing, Story Telling, Attention to detail, Physics, and Passionate. I've always believed that what makes animation so hard to master, is that you have to have an understanding of so many things. Like being able to understand body mechanics and human emotion to having the ability to draw like Rembrandt. And then having some concept of almost everything in between. It's hard trust me, and I myself am no where near knowing all of it. The only thing I do know is the people that tend to be better at all of these things tend to be better animators.

The catch in all of this is that in your quest to become a better animator it takes a tremendous amount of time and focus. Thus potentially limiting your time to explore other areas of art and life. In a field that really needs you to be an extrovert and observe life, animation really makes you an introvert and locked down to learning the craft at a computer or drawing board. I guess that's the rub.

So remember the more you can learn about anything especially drawing, because it incorporates things such as design, weight, balance, emotion, story telling, physics, the better off you'll be. Just because you work on a computer doesn't mean you don't need to draw. Now let me clarify a bit I'm not saying you have to be an amazing draftsman you just need to be exposed to drawing and constantly trying to become a better draftsman because through that process you'll become better at all things you can learn from drawing.

How could notes like these not help you in any form of animation?

Or Understanding great Design ar appreciating Art like this Mattise not be helpful?

The nine old men did and even refer to fine art and learning from it in the "Illusion of Life". It's kinda funny that it's at the begining of Chapteer 16 my favorite chapter.

--Dr. Stephen G.

Who opened the flood gates?

2007-04-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry guys,

Now that I'm on this "Illusion of Life" rant I just can't shut up. A couple of posts ago I mentioned that there is a section I would read before every shot I did on Toy Story 2 and Monster's Inc. Combined that's about three years worth of production and about 60 to 70 shots, worth of reading. The section I would read and still do although not as much, even though I should, was chapter 16. "Animating Expressions and Dialogue". Now there was a comment made somewhere that said "The Survival kit" told you how to animate and the "Illusion of Life" told you why. I don't know how that comment came about because this chapter is all about how to do it not why you should animate. I'll agree there are not a bunch of pictures showing you every frame exactly where it might be on a given frame, but there are still a bunch of great pictures that relate to the text. Like on page 454 and 455, the animation drawings of Stromboli by Bill Tytla. Where they talk about the face and how the elements of the face work together when creating expression, or just being animated that everything is related to each other. Or on page 465 Frank Thomas' drawings of the door knob from Alice and Wonderland and how he used the design of the lock to create new and interesting mouth shapes while still creating lip synch and how this mouth keep the viewer still believing it's a door knob and lock. Well there are too many wonderful drawings that tell you more about how to animate than why to animate.

I agree the book does do a great job of giving you history and the art behind animation the heart and passion of the individuals working in animation at Disney during the early years but that is just one part of the book. I see the Illusion of Life as an animation manual not just a great source of inspiration.

Just a note the principles of animation section is at chapter 3 that's a whole 13 chapters before chapter 16 so if you just keep getting stuck there maybe you should move forward in the book there is a whole bunch of how to animate chapters beyond that one.

-Dr. Stephen G.
My belief's may or may not reflect those of my fellow doctors.

ok, let's not get off topic here!

2007-04-25T10:46:00.000-07:00

A Comment from the last post about reading the Illusion of Life.

"David > I actually remember the first time I read Survival Kit, I sort of "waited" as I read for the walk part to be over. It's all to easy to read through and not comprehend a damn thing. I knew lots about animation so I let it go over my head. Now that I've actually animated I realize it simply WAS over my head, and it means something SO different to me now that I can't believe it's -given away- for the price it is.

As for "Illusion," I've only read it once but it's truly inspiring. Not this "Ooh, this or that is GOLD" all talk and ass-kissing and no substance stuff, it actually makes you feel good and motivate you and appreciate your roots all at once.

There's a post on AWN that says it...Survival is how to animate, Illusion is WHY..."

OK, LET"S NOT GET OFF TOPIC HERE!
We're talking about the Illusion of Life not the Richard William's book. Although Richard William's book is quite detailed and has lots of information, many students can get confused, by all the pretty pictures. Like I said before you need to read the book. The main problem with Richard William's book, is we know students don't like to read, and they just wind up copying all the pictures. (Why do students wind up copying from books? My theory is that many people think animation is like math, where there are exact answers on how to animate or formulas. Unfortunately animation is nothing like math and there are very few if any formulas. It's an Art form and there really are no answers just experience and a good eye is all you have to go on. Sure there are some tricks, mainly the principles of animation. Really animation is about exploring and trying things and making adjustments until it looks right. Repetition creates perfection, the more time spent generally creates better animation. Although too much time can ruin it. I may be wrong here but this is what I think, now back to what I was saying.) Copying pictures in a book is not animating or even learning to animate. His book is great don't get me wrong, but the temptation to copy vs reading is way too strong. Reading along with the pictures will help you understand what's happening in the pictures, thus allowing you to begin to understand how some of these animation principles work. REMEMBER READ THE ILLUSION OF LIFE! understand it READ IT AGAIN, and AGAIN then a after a year of READING THE ILLUSION OF LIFE, maybe pick up the Animator's Survival Tool Kit and read it, but don't sell your Illusion of Life to buy it.

Just my two cents
-Dr. Stephen G

I haven't posted in a while because....

2007-04-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

My number one animation prescription is this. READ "THE ILLUSION OF LIFE" BY FRANK THOMAS AND OLLIE JOHNSTON. Don't just look at the pictures, READ THE BOOK, and when your done READ IT AGAIN. I've read it over and over for the last 14 years, it got so bad that I would re-read certain sections every time I started a new shot on a film. Most of it will be over your head and you won't understand it, I know I didn't either I still don't but it's like a magic book. Over time it starts to make more and more sense. Also I know this sounds crazy but READING THE WHOLE BOOK is actually really helpful, not just the squash and stretch section. Anyways READ "THE ILLUSION OF LIFE" I always say if you have money to buy only one book on animation buy "THE ILLUSION OF LIFE" BY FRANK THOMAS AND OLLIE JOHNSTON, and if you don't have money to buy the book sell all your other books on animation and buy "THE ILLUSION OF LIFE" with the money you've made. You can buy it on Amazon.com.

Thanks,
Dr. Stephen G.

Great Spline Tutorials

2007-04-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to put together some kind of post regarding spline work and polish recently when I came across some great posts on the blog of one of our colleagues, Victor Navone. Many of you may already be aware of Victor from his famous short "Alien Song", but I know him more as a very talented and technically proficient animator that I have the pleasure of working with and learning from here at Pixar.

Victor has a 2 part tutorial he's written titled "Splinophilia" which gives a wonderful overview about spline work that includes info and visuals that are more comprehensive than anything I probably could have put together. It covers visual understanding, basic strategies, and what he calls "spline hygiene". This information is vital to giving your work any sense of refinement or polish. Please take the time to check them out. Your work will thank you. And I'll go thank Victor.

Adam

Splinophilia Part 1

Splinophilia Part 2

The Power of Silhouette

2007-04-08T21:15:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has read "The Illusion of Life", or went to a half-way decent art school has been drilled with the concept of "silhouette value" as it relates to the graphic strength and clarity of a pose. Being a student of classical 2D, we would sometimes be encouraged to visualize or actually color in our drawings to get a sense of our pose's silhouette value, and thus judge whether or not we had pushed a pose to it's fullest potential. One of the great things I've come to learn, now that I work on the computer, is the ability (in many animation applications) to render out work in silhouette. What an amazing tool!!

Mike Wu and I recently did an assignment in our Pixar 2 class at AAU this semester where we had students block out a dialogue assignment and render it in silhouette. As the students are just beginning to work with dialogue, we wanted an assignment that made the point that performing to dialogue is not about mouth shapes or lip sync, but about the global performance as it relates to body language, phrasing, and clarity. The students were amazed to find how much more aware they were of their posing and choice of gesture when everything was "blacked out" and the readablility of a pose was represented in such a pure form.

For those that have the luxury of using a software package that has such a feature, use it to your advantage. What does it take to block out a shot and playblast a silhouette render to see if your poses are as strong as they could be before moving forward? If the application you're using does not have such a feature, or if you're doing 2D work, take a moment to look at the graphic elements of your pose and ask yourself if it does justice to the character, the moment, and if it inspires your audience to feel what you want it to feel. Revisiting such a basic principle can not only inspire young minds learning animation for the first time, but also reinvigorate the work of the most seasoned veteran. I know at least one animator that will be looking at his work in black & white with a little more frequency from now on. Thanks for visiting the blog.

Adam

Complaints

2007-04-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

I wanted to respond to some gripes about the quality of the podcasts we do at Spline Doctors. I was recently reading some user comments on the Animation Podcast. Some of the users don't seem to like the quality of our interviews. What I have to say is this...

For one, its a podcast, not 20/20. The fact that we are able to even do them is a miracle in itself. We do them so that not only you, the listener can enjoy them, but so that we can get inspired and learn more about how people do things. I won't appologize for my phone ringing or there being too many um's and wows in the interviews... We are not professional interviewers... We are Animators. The podcast is an amazing thing. It gives people a chance to almost have their own radio station. When I was a student, and professional up until a few years ago, all you might be able to get your hands on was an old lecture taped at Calarts. I remember seeing a copy of a copy of a James Baxter video lecture. The quality was crap, but I didn't care because the info was gold. I felt lucky to be able to watch it. Now, there is so much information online, you can pick and choose where you go to get your education. My point is this, it ain't always about how perfect the recording is. Its about content and understanding that its free. We don't have advertisers paying for equipment. Everything is done with no budget. So those of you who don't like the quality of the podcasts don't have to listen.

Those of you who have supported us and given great feedback, we appreciate this and keep doing these Splinecasts for you.

Sincerely,

Andrew

Updates and other news...

2007-04-04T22:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry its been a while since our last post. Ratatouille is finishing up. Animation has wrapped and we are all taking a breather. Adam and I are planning to do some more Animation Roundtables as well as some new Spline Casts... Stay tuned.

As for other stuff going on, I will be teaching an animation workshop at a school in Italy on June 15th. The class will focus on all kinds of Animation Techniques including acting, design, facial animation, blocking and planning and so on. I am also going to be Guest Artist at CSU summer Arts program for the 5th time. The class is Character Development for Animation. CSU Summer Arts is a great program. Check it out. I will be attending Annecy Animation festival. I am set to give a short talk on the subject of animation on Ratatouille. It will be for the Renderman group.

Keep your eyes open for some new posts and upcoming podcasts.

-Andrew

The Virgin Voyage

2007-03-16T14:28:00.000-07:00

We never did post the final version of the project we did last semester. Here it is. It does not have alot of the sound effects or Music yet. Scott and I think the students did a great job!

All the students in our class are extremely talented. Alot of them are out on the job hunt. Maybe someone out there needs some animators... Feel free to contact us regarding any of the work and we will put you in touch with the student or students who did the work. You can email us at gordo@splinedoctors.com or clark@splinedoctors.com

Link to Virgin Voyage

(remember to right click in safari. It may come in as a text file.)
if it does download as a text file, remove the .txt from the end of the file and it should play fine in quicktime.

BRAD BIRD SPLINECAST!!!

2007-02-14T18:31:00.000-08:00

NOW ON ITUNES...

On Valentines day we are trying to show the love.

Adam Burke and I did an interview with Brad on January 8th. Its a great interview and we think you will really like it. Please post your comments. Yes I know some of the audio is low, but most of it is great. Expect it on itunes in the next week or so. Special thanks to Brad for taking the time to do this and to Adam Burke for helping organize it.

ENJOY!

Brad Bird Spline Cast

Pixar 2 Student Work, Fall '06

2007-01-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

I'd like to post some of the student work from last semester's Pixar 2 class. Most of these clips are from our 2-person dialogue assignment and the other is from an assignment we called "Subtext From a Hat". This involved giving each student an original line of dialogue. We then had them draw a slip of paper from a hat that had some sort of emotion or character trait on it for the subtext of the perfomance. Here are some of the assignments we thought were particularly successful. We're proud of all our students and their efforts. Hope you enjoy these clips.

-Adam

Ben Kerr
Curran Giddens
Julie Choi
Chris Turner

Pose to Pose w/ Layers

2007-01-25T22:39:00.000-08:00

Since Andrew asked me to join him and the Pixar guys who teach at the Academy, and then Spline Doctors, the one thing that I've seen most consistently asked of students is advice on work method. Now, I'm a 2D guy. Not including one shot I did on IRON GIANT, INCREDIBLES was my first experience with 3D. I'm the least tech savvy of the fellows who started this blog (and for that matter, probably of the people I work with), but I figured it was about time I faced some of my fears and ventured forth from the safe harbor of my previous posts regarding performance and address some of your questions regarding 3D work method. Bear in mind, there are people far more talented than I who can address some of these issues, but I figured if an approach can work for someone like me....it can work for anyone.

A question that has come up in recent comments is, "How can I work pose-to-pose and still use a layered approach?" I don't claim to know the answer but I can share with you what has worked for me. First, I can't start a scene without knowing where I'm going. I will thumbnail every scene I get so I have a roadmap of the poses, beats, and attitudes that I know I am going for. I will then pose out my shot to match the thumbnails I've done. Bear in mind that some of these poses are going to be breakdowns of action that will help me map out the transition of movement from pose to pose. The biggest mistake I see students make working pose-to-pose in 3D is not thinking about the actual movement. They get lost in the poses and forget about the animation. I will then time out the shot with a series of holds not unlike on old-school, 2D pose test.

Once I feel that the overall timing and poses are working, I will immediately go into spline work polishing the main movement in the shot, working from the root, outward. I'll start off by invising geometry that might distract me (i.e. arms, legs, etc.) and bring into the spline editor the controls that define the main movement of the shot and start polishing. It may be the root. It may be the chest, neck, and head. It may be just an arm and a hand. Whatever it is, I will work from the inside out and I'll never polish any more than 3 to 4 controls at a time while I'm working in the spline editor. I will then work by tweaking and adjusting my animation and playblasting often. Even though you're working on a computer, animation is a very organic process. Work with your shot so it feels right to you. Don't let the computer dictate what you will accept. If it doesn't feel or look right, keep working at it until it does. If you still don't see it (and don't know how to get there) find someone more tech savvy than you and see if s/he can steer you to what controls you need to manipulate to get the results you're looking for. DON'T TAKE "NO" FOR AN ANSWER.

Once things seem to be moving the way I've envisioned, I will then start re-vising geometry and begin polishing outward. Please bear in mind though, that this approach will work ONLY if you have truly thought out your shot. Your original vision may evolve along the way, but you can't work like this without a clear idea of what you're going for. For that matter, whether it's 2D or 3D, you should never start animating before you know what you're going to do. Good luck and I hope this helped.

-Adam

The answers aren't in the animation.

2007-01-21T10:05:00.000-08:00

I was hoping to post some student work but I'm still waiting for some files from a few folks, and where I promised Andrew I'd post something this weekend I figured I'd follow through on my promise and cover a topic that has come up quite a bit recently.

Our director was in dailies with us this week and the subject of the difference between contemporary animation and that of the classic golden age came up. It was observed and generally agreed upon that the largest shortcoming of present day animators is the ability to reference past work as a means of problem solving. Unfortunately, it's very easy to do. How can you not watch Bagheera and Mowgli struggling to get up that tree, or the dwarves sadly approaching Snow White's casket, or Stromboli tearing Pinnochio a new one without thinking that you've found the answers to everything you need to make your work great? The flaw in that reasoning however becomes apparent when you remember that the talents that generated that work did not have the luxury of such reference. I believe our generation easily forgets that and from there we develop movement and performance cliches that can make modern animation unsatisfying, if not down right annoying to watch. The answers to our problems are not in the work of our gifted predecessors, but in the same place they found theirs. In life.

It is nearly impossible to do this job well without a keen sense of observation. Your job as an animator does not stop once you get up from your desk. When you're strolling through a mall it's your job to notice certain things. It's your job to notice the look on the face of a husband following his wife around the store when there is only 15 min. before the game starts. It's your job to notice the body language of a mother with a stroller full of twins being followed by her four year old who is screaming for a toy in a shop window. Perhaps even pausing a moment to see the the way someone scarfs down a Hot Dog on a Stick. These observations will provide you with what you need to make those interesting and unique choices that will reach out and touch the audience watching your work, and separate it from the person who has ripped off the the ol' Baloo-rubbing-his-hand-on-his-neck-while-he's-thinking bit for the millionth, freaking time.

The work of the pioneers who have blazed the trail we walk on now should continue to be enjoyed and will always be a source of inspiration. However, in the interest of pushing the medium to be as great as it can be requires that we not use their work as a means to solve our problems. Frank and Ollie didn't write the "Illusion of Animation". It was "The Illusion of Life". Make the effort to take a good long look at it and let it strengthen your work.

-Adam

Back up on Itunes

2007-01-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

We are back up on itunes. If you can, please write a review if you have time. The others were wiped out.
-Andrew

Animation Round Table

2007-01-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

A bunch of us animators, Adam Burke, Angus Maclane, Scott Clark, Stephen Gregory and I thought it would be cool to sit down and just talk animation. The result is this podcast. I'm not sure how it worked out, so let us know. We basically, set up a microphone, put out some snacks and drinks and began with whatever came to mind. I am in the process of updating the itunes feed, so dont expect it to be on itunes for a bit. I hope you enjoy it. Remember, all of this is just for educational purposes and by no means do we think of ourselves of knights or doctors of animation. We are are still learning and always students...

link to audio only

link to chapters version

The Virgin Voyage coming soon

2007-01-11T10:40:00.000-08:00

We did a cool new short film in the 3rd level Pixar class. Its called: The Virgin Voyage. Here are some images of the characters and a short clip of some of the animation. Basically, we recorded some improv actors and built a story around it. It was a really fun excercize and we hope to get the whole thing up and rendered soon.

New Spline Casts coming soon

2007-01-10T20:33:00.000-08:00

Just when you may have thought this Blog was dead or dying... Think again. We have Two new Spline Casts coming up. The first one is an animation Round Table discussion with Myself, Adam Burke, Angus Maclane, Scott Clark and Stephen Gregory. We recorded it just a few days ago, so its fresh off the press. Look for part one in the next few days. I am using a new format. Its called, Record, Edit, Upload. There will be no fancy openings or garageband music. They will be available on itunes and on the site soon.

The other splinecast is a mystery guest. We were unable to get Doug Sweetland, but we were able to get someone you will not be disappointed with. I'll give you a hint... Who is your dream guest?
Its probably one of them...

We also have student work from last semester to show off and hopefully some insightful posts for the new year.

Stay Tuned and pass the word.

-Andrew

Happy Holidays!

2006-12-22T08:38:00.000-08:00

Well, the semester has ended and folks are taking some much deserved time off to spend with their families and to recover. Our students did a great job this semester and once the holidays have passed we will post some of their work. Scott and Andrew's Pixar 3 class completed an animated sequence that went through the full course of production from design all the way through to lighting, which I know they're looking forward to post. Bobby & Ross' and Andy & Stephen's Pixar 1 classes introduced some budding talent to the reinforcement of classical principles and how they translate to CG. Lastly, Mike and I spent this semester with our Pixar 2 class concentrating on acting and dialogue. We're very proud of everyone's efforts and look forward to sharing their work with you soon. Also, we are scheduled to record the next Splinecast the first week of January so keep an eye out for that to post shortly after. Have a happy holiday and a safe New Year's.

-Adam

Work with an image.

2006-12-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

Mike Wu and I had a class this week working on a two-character dialogue assignment. Everyone in class did very well with week one as far as the blocking they showed. Most of the shots the students showed were very clear , but what was consistently lacking was the performance oriented details. Much of this comes from relying on the line read and not exploring much further beyond that. The line read is only going to give you so much. Mike always says, "Lead the line. Don't let the line lead you". You have to fully know and understand a character in order to give a convincing performance. We segued this idea into showing some Mr. Bean footage to illustrate our point. I personally feel that Rowan Atkinson is one of the top 5 physical comedians/performers of all time. In researching him and his inspirations, I came to learn that Rowan always envisioned the behavior and mannerisms of Mr. Bean to fall in line with those of a mischievous 9 year-old boy. What a wonderful springboard to launch from. If you have a clear vision in your head as to who the character is, or what you think he/she represents, this then puts you in a better position to latch on to an image of something that can help steer you toward making interesting choices. These may manifest in body language, expression, or gesture. The more you bring to the party before you've picked up your mouse, the better your animation will be. 2-D, 3-D, or live-action,..... if you don't know your character you're screwed.

If you have a character oriented assignment/challenge that you seem to have a hard time overcoming, revisit or create a backstory for the character and give yourself an image that will help shape the mannerisms and performance of who you're animating. Doing so will help you to make unique choices, steering you away from animation cliches and provide you with fertile ground to plant an interesting, organic performance. Be it a 9 year-old boy or a pneumatic drill, an image can help shape a good piece of animation into a performance that brings a character to life.

-Adam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbyQHgiv1z4

Michael Caine Videos

2006-11-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

One of the Readers (Jeremy Hopkins)was kind enough to email me the location of a bunch of Michael Caine on Acting Lectures. I'm sure there is some good stuff in there. Here are the links...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHfz7_YjRww
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McNdeKm5c_k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iEsYH8pYrI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0IlqAd6dcY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgCl2OEOljI

Happy Thanksgiving!

2006-11-22T08:32:00.000-08:00

Not much right now except to wish everyone a pleasant holiday. After the break we'll be posting some new thoughts. We've figured out how to attach YouTube clips to our posts so we'll now be able to provide reference clips for some of the ideas we're discussing. In addition, we've got some ideas for a couple new splinecasts which we hope to get going after the holidays. This crunch is probably the craziest we've been through, so we continue to ask for your patience. Also, feel free to comment on things you're curious about. Perhaps a teacher has given you a note on your work that you don't quite understand, or maybe there is something that you notice you're having consistent trouble with. By posting a comment we can better shape the topics of the next few posts. Most of our brains are elsewhere right now (or mush), so help us help you. Have a great Thanksgiving everybody! I know I'll be thankful for a couple of days off.

-Adam

Revisiting the mission.

2006-11-12T08:58:00.000-08:00

The mission statement that is. The tongue-in-cheek genesis of this blog was an attempt to pass on information about the great masters of animation's past to a generation of students who spend more time learning software than they do the principles and history of their craft. In an attempt to reinforce what this blog was created for, I'd like to share a little about an evening I had recently with a wooden puppet, a dog, and a doorknob.

My teaching partner Mike Wu and I were in class last week giving a lecture on dialogue. It wasn't so much about mouth shapes or the technical aspects of animating dialogue, as it was about the "phrasing" of your animation in a dialogue driven performance. For those unfamiliar with the term, animation "phrasing" has a similar meaning to it's grammatical and musical counterparts. It is the composition of movement used to communicate your ideas to the audience. In addressing several principles and old guidelines (some of which we can post about later) we showed several clips that we felt showed what we were talking about better than we could ever explain it.

The first was from Pinocchio. We were talking about the design of your mouth shapes being consistent with the expressions and attitude of the character. We showed the sequence of Pinocchio and Lampwick shooting pool together on Pleasure Island. The shape of Pinocchio's mouth had a great asymmetrical smirk which worked with the vocal performance and reinforced the idea of that young, forced bravado and trying so hard to sound grown up. Next, after talking about designing mouth shapes and maximizing their appeal, we showed the doorknob sequence from Alice In Wonderland. This is one of my favorite classic Disney performances. Frank Thomas took the challenge of animating a talking doorknob and designed it and handled it in a way that was not only entertaining to watch, but made you believe it! The artistic choices he made for mouth shapes using the key hole were inspired. Then, discussing phrasing and clarity, Mike Wu brought out some big guns. Lady and the Tramp. This oft-forgotten movie has some of the most brilliant character animation ever done on film. We watched the sequence of Tramp warning the neighborhood dogs of how things change for a dog once there is a baby in the house. This sequence, animated primarily by Milt Kahl and Frank Thomas, has scenes in it that as an animator took my breath away. I felt like I was watching it for the first time the other night in class, or perhaps with different eyes. In the context of our lecture it demonstrated that animating dialogue is more than properly articulating mouth shapes to an audio track. It is about whether or not the character "feels" like he is delivering the dialogue.

What made the biggest impression on me at the end of class was how high the 9 Old Men and other Golden Age animators had raised the bar for us with what they achieved, and how rarely contemporary animation comes even remotely close to that bar. There are certainly diamonds in the rough out there, but by and large we still have so much to do when it comes to living up to the legacy of those who forged this medium. Take the time to watch and study the artistry of some of this classic stuff. Also try to remember, that when these great films were made it was a new and exciting technology. However, in order for these films to resonate with audiences they need to go far beyond a bunch of moving images. Funny how some things never change.

-Adam

Let me hear your body talk!

2006-11-07T12:02:00.000-08:00

Leave it to the refrain of a campy, Oliva Newton John, 80's pop hit to clearly lay down an important principle of strong acting. Body language. It is something that I've been looking at and paying more attention to in my own work over the years and is something I find consistently lacking in student work. Mike Wu and I gave a talk in our Pixar 2 class at the Academy on this very topic not too long ago. How a character holds him/herself physically provides a tremendous amount of information to the audience and provides the real truth in a scene as to who your character is and how he/she is feeling. The body language may support dialogue being spoken or, in appropriate circumstances, completely contradict it. Of course, in situations where there is no dialogue the body is your only means to communicate to the audience how your character feels. Why do you think news shows bring in body language experts after presidential debates or press conferences? It's because when it comes to communication, the truth is always in the body.

Having said that, bear in mind the context and content of your scene. The rookie move I often see is to start adding a bunch of extra poses and peppering the animation with arbitrary gestures that don't support or, worse yet, take away from what you're trying to communicate. Start from the ground up. What's going on? A guy is asking a girl for a date. How does he feel? Nervous. What graphic elements could I put into my pose that will help communicate that? Concave curves. A sunken or deflated line of action. How is he holding himself physically? He can't look her in the eyes. He's holding his arms in tight around himself. How is he moving? He can't stay still. Just as your animation should build in a layered fashion, working from the root outward, so should your performance build. Start with content and context, and gradually layer elements which help support those ideas.

Mike Wu showed a clip in class from "Godfather II" that shows a brilliant example of skilled, well choreographed body language. It takes place shortly after young Vito has killed the old Don of the neighborhood. He is now speaking with a landlord on behalf of a friend "asking him for a favor". Watch it with the sound off like we did. It is obvious that Vito wants something from this man and the landlord is very clear about his dismissive attitude toward this thug who has the audacity to demand something from him. Now, in the very next scene, when the landlord learns from the neighborhood who Vito is and what he has done, the physical changes are sheer poetry in motion. The landlord has completely changed his physical demeanor. Vito, on the other hand, has what amounts to be a single pose that says more about how he feels than any line of dialogue ever could. Absolute gold!

Study similar examples and bear these things in mind as you work out the foundation of your performances. The eyes can't do it all. Factoring in these elements is what separates the great acting from mediocre or bad. Now, as Olivia would say, "Let's get physical."

New Doctors... and News..

2006-10-29T23:57:00.000-08:00

- We have added two Docs to the site. Adam Burke and Ross Stevenson. Both are animation Vets. Adam has been in the industry for 15 or more years and has worked at Bluth, Warners with Brad Bird on Iron Giant and other projects and even started his own Studio in the Boston area. He has been at Pixar since the Incredibles. Ross is teaching the first level class at the Academy and has been animating at Pixar since A Bugs Life. Look for a more detailed profile and hopefully some interesting posts in the coming year. Feel free to ask these guys any questions in the comments section.

- We are in the process of updating the Web Site so that we can archive all the past articles and Splinecasts. As you already know, we are in Crunch on our current film, so its difficult to get much of anything done. Its all done with help of volunteers. If you would like to be a volunteer, let me know and I'll gladly take any help with the web site and other stuff.

- I am trying to do another Spline Cast. Hopefully it will be with one of the animators. I also am in the process of doing a written interview with Doug Sweetland. I am at his mercy, so be patient. It should be a good interview!

- Sorry if I have not answered emails. My account was filled with 5000 spam emails, so I couldnt get in. my new email is gordo@splinedoctors.com

- Thanks again for all the support and continued interest.

-Andrew

The Brows

2006-10-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

As we get into facial animation in class, one thing that is often overlooked is the brows. The brow is such an important signal for telling you, the audience, how a character feels. So what?, you might say... What do I really need to know about the brow? Well, here are few things that you want to keep in mind when animating them...

For one, the brows should be treated as a unit. You often see animation notes that show the invisible line that connects the eye brows. This is done to retain a sense of anatomy and design. You don't want two French frys sitting up there. Another thing you want to try to incorporate is how you design the poses. An example of this would be leading the eye. If a character is looking screen left, you really want to pose the brows in a way that complements the direction of the look. It seems basic, but it is missing in a lot of work.

Transitions. The timing between brow poses is important to get right. You really want to think about how the actual muscle works. When I see a brow drifting for a lot of frames, it just doesn't look right. Usually, the transition between poses is relatively quick. Also, think about the clearest "change" from one pose to another. Don't over complicate it. The most successful brow animation I see is well designed, has good timing and is subtle as well. You can get really fancy with how your brows emote. Think of all the small details that a face has. Understand the difference between a brow going up and down, as opposed to Left and Right. Each has different meanings.

Complement them with the eyes. Usually when the brows are moving, you will get some small movement in the eye lids. This is important to understand. There is no rule for how much, its just something to be aware of. I can go into detail about this, but observation is your best friend here.

Happy Brow-loween

Andrew

Improvimation

2006-10-15T17:00:00.000-07:00

I wanted to talk a bit about what we are doing at the Academy this semester. This semester, Scott Clark and I recorded 4 improv actors doing random scenes. We then picked the best one out of 20 or so skits and are animating to it. The students are in charge of every aspect of the process. We started by doing visual development. Then tasks were assigned to each student. Some Model, Some are doing layout etc... We have cast out the scenes and the students are beginning animation. Each of them will have a chunk of very juicy shots to animate. The dialogue they are animating to is full of great stuff. It give them the opportunity to animate something original with interesting characters. Granted, the story is improvised, so it aint Bambi but its good and alot can be learned. Scott Clark coined the term "Improvimation" I think its a great way to generate content, especially on the student level. Alot of the time, students take dialogue clips from movies. Unless they are done really well, most of them are lack luster. Expect to see the final film at the end of the semester.

The image is of one of our characters "The Captain" It is a skit involving three characters.

-Andrew

Residual Energy

2006-09-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

Someone asked me to talk more about residual energy. There are alot of different ways this can be put to use. Residual energy is the energy left over from a primary or secondary movement. For example, a character does a gesture. When he hits the pose there may be a slight settle in the arm, hand and fingers. It is paying attention to these details that make the gesture look more believable. It could be how a hand comes to rest when it is placed on a surface. It is the small details that make it look physical. Overlap is another way of explaining this. When you think overlap, you think about hair or appendages or other broad things. Residual energy is a bit more subtle. There is a great scene in the incredibles that Animator John Kahrs did. Its when Violet is on the plane and is jostled by the turbulence. The way her leg bounces bounces up and down really makes her feel like she has flesh and bones. Understanding where the energy comes from is one of the most important parts. Then you need to figure out how it should be used. You don't want to over do it so that it take away from the main action.

Another thing you want to try an get into your work is patterns. I'll try to cover this in a future post.

-Andrew

Physicality in animation

2006-09-04T20:30:00.000-07:00

If someone says, you need to work on your physicality, what are they really saying? This is such a large topic. Making something seem physical can be related to weight or how the character holds themselves. It can be how a gesture feels wooden and non-physical. Lets talk a bit about the latter. When a character makes a hand gesture, it not only needs to communicate what the character is doing, but needs to feel as if the character has flesh and bones underneath. You need to understand the anatomy of the character you are animating. One of the biggest things that makes computer animation not look so good is that people do not pay attention to this. The computer will and can ruin good poses if you do not do the in-betweens and breakdowns correctly. It has no knowledge of all those things you should be putting in there likes arcs, overlap, slow ins, cushions, overshoots, anticipations, squash and stretch, straights and curves, contrast, etc, etc, etc.

If you want a sample case, I was working on the teaser for Monsters Inc. Mike does a gesture and then drops his arm. I really wanted to understand how that works so I did a bit of reference and it helped me understand the weight the arms has and how it comes to rest. A lot of what I am talking about has to do with this. Residual energy. I'll get into this more at a later time, but residual energy really has a lot to do with how your character recovers form hitting a pose or gesture. In essence it is overlap and follow through. One thing you do not want, is for the character to become over animated, so you really need to understand how to use it and where it is called for.

I hope to put together a better set of examples and post them at a later date.

-Andrew

Eyes in animation

2006-09-01T09:20:00.000-07:00

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. Well, in a film, the eyes are the first place an audience member looks, the second is the hands. We are trying to connect with the character on screen. The eyes tell us so much about what the character is thinking. It is so important to spend enough time making sure you put enough detail into the eyes and brows. What am I talking about when I say detail? When I was animating on Mike Wazowski, we did some reference to really see how the eye moved. I took lots of notes on the live action footage and applied it to an animated eye. Some of the things I learned were how the lid moves with the eyes, the different kinds of blinks an eye is capable of and many other things. For instance, a lot of the time when your eye makes a bid move fro left to right, your eye lid half closes. We learned that you need to shape the eye lid to help sell eye direction. There is a virtual laundry list of thing to make a cg eye look believable. What I am saying is, do you homework and look at how your eye works and try to get it into your work. In order to get better, its so important to take the time and really figure out how things work.

Here are few tidbits to remember about the eye.

Blinks: No matter how slow or quick they are, remember to add a little cushion at the top of the blink. When you don't and it just stops, it looks a bit mechanical.

Eye Darts: Eye darts vary. Sometimes they are one frame, mostly two frames. But there is no rule. The most important thing to remember about the eye dart is to think why you are doing it. Its usually nice to animate eye darts in a particular pattern. For instance if I was doing a close up, I might dart the eye left to right, then down, then back up. This would be because my character is looking at the left eye, then the right, then looking at the mouth. Its all about thought process.

Hope this helps a bit.

-Andrew

Summer Doldrums

2006-08-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons for lack of posts these days is production. We are swamped with work here and getting the time to come up with posts on a weekly basis is hard. Also, sorry if I have not been responding to email, but my inbox if so piled up with spam, I can even see anything. I intend to change it soon to clear out everything.

Anyway, classes will be starting again in september, so we will try to start putting some info up. Stephen Gregory and I are really the only two guys keeping this blog going and I know he is busy too. In the mean time, you can send in some possible requests for topics and interviews and who knows, maybe we will anser them. We are still committed to teaching animation, so dont give up on us yet.

thanks,

Andrew

Another Stanton Interview!

2006-08-01T13:29:00.000-07:00

NATE STANTON

I sat down for an interview with Nate Stanton, story artist to talk a bit about what he does here and how he got started. Nate has been with Pixar for 10 years and has also worked on such films as James and the Giant Peach. I hope you enjoy this Spline Cast. I will be adding it to iTunes shortly, but right now it lacks the opening and closing remarks and music background. I really wanted to get this up as soon as possible. I am posting an m4a file.

Link to m4a file

Sorry

2006-08-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of posts as of late. We all have been really busy, and haven't had much time to create content for the posts, with that said stay tuned. Dr. Gordon has something really cool to post in the next couple of days.

-Dr Stephen G.

Mark Oftedal's short films from Cal-Arts

2006-07-12T13:30:00.000-07:00

So here are two of Mark's great student films. A big thank you to Mark for letting us post these films, thanks again.

enjoy

4pm

Knife

Interview with Mark Oftedal

2006-07-07T23:00:00.000-07:00

Mark Oftedal was one of the core group of animators at Pixar to work on Toy Story. When I came to work on A Bugs Life, he had just finished work on Toy Story. Marks' animation was always inspiring to look at and really set the bar for others. He worked on Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2 and did a bit of pre-production on Monsters before he left to pursue other things. He has recently worked on a short film and is also doing a comic book for a wildlife rescue organization. He is also one of the partners of an animation software company called Digitalfish, started by another former Pixar employee, Dan Herman. Their aim was to make a really easy to use animation package. The software is called Reflex. Calarts is beta testing the software.
Mark will always be considered one of the best animators at Pixar. He was a great mentor and his interview is very educational.

I hope you enjoy reading this interview, as much as I did. Thanks Mark!

Link to Interview

Animation Clip

Upcoming Splinecasts and news

2006-07-04T11:18:00.000-07:00

- I want to Start interviewing some more artists at work. The next interview will most likely be with a Story Artist. I think it would be really great to hear from them. Who and when is the question... The great thing, is that artists from Pixar want to do it. People ask me at work if they can help, and I really appreciate that.

- I am going to post an interview with former Pixar animator Mark Oftedahl soon. Mark was one of the original core group of animators on Toy Story, A Bugs Life, Toy Story 2 and worked a bit on Monsters before he took off and moved to Thailand. Marks work always blew me away and I really learned alot from him. Expect that soon.

- Billy Merrit, animator at Pixar for 10 years, recently moved on from Pixar and is pursuing a teaching career at Ringling in Sarasota. Billy also taught with the group of guys over at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. He will be hugely missed.

- I will not be teaching the Second Level Class over at the academy of art in San Francisco. Mike Venturini and I are taking a break from teaching together for 4 plus years. We had a great run! Our students are working all over the industry (10 or so animators at Pixar alone...!) I will be teaching with Scott Clark in the Level 3 class. This semester proves to be very interesting. We plan to record improv actors and have the students animate a scene around the dialogue. It will be a great experience, both for us and who ever gets in the class. Start submitting those reels to get in. Remember, anyone can take the class, so if you are in the Bay area, give it a try. We usually like professionals who are taking the class to have taken class 1 and 2, but if your reel is amazing, we can make an exception.

- Our interns are doing great work and really learning alot. The work they are producing is amazing.

- I am headed over to Asia for a visit with some friends at 3dSense Media School in Singapore. There is an event going on called 3D overdrive, which is the asia equivalent of Siggraph. I am going to be giving a brief talk on animation and checking on the school they have set up. On the way back I am visiting with Cyberport in Hong Kong where I will be presenting an animation talk. None of the talks are on Cars, as I did not have much to do with that film. (only animated a couple shots)

As usual email me any comments or suggestions.

-Andrew

Being Directed - part 1

2006-06-21T22:18:00.000-07:00

Someone emailed me and asked me to talk about being directed. A good topic. I guess there are alot of things you could say about this. It always starts with clear communication. When you get a bunch of scenes given to you, you need to take good notes about what the director wants. What is the point of the scene, where is the potential entertainment value etc etc... Afer you get the shots, the next thing you need to do is present the director with clean shots. Clear blocking will close the gap quicker. The last thing you want to do is show bad blocking. The director will not know how to comment on the scenes. They may direct you in a totally different direction. If you show to much animation, you risk having to tear it up if you get big changes. I guess the key is to hit it somewhere in the middle. Every director has his or her own style. Some directors let the animator search for the idea and other directors know exactly what they want. You need to be able to accomodate both. Some problems may arise when either the director or the animator does not have a clear idea of what they want. Another problem is when the shot is directed by commitee. I can't really answer how to get past this because I have not experienced this for quite some time. All I can say, is try to really have a clear idea, before you get directed.

Hope that helps.

Andrew

part two - dealing with big changes...

5 sets of Eyes

2006-06-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

Someone was asking me the other day about having people look at your work. I think for an animation Student it is very important to have people give their opinion about what you are doing. If you work in a box and dont show anything to anyone, your work will start to suffer. I know it seems obvious but its always important to get different opinions. The other day some guests were looking at a bunch of shots and they didnt laugh where I thought they would laugh. It makes me wonder about the shot and really try to figure out how to push the entertainment value. On a professional level I try to have 5 people to show my stuff too. When I first started, I just wanted to have good work. I would try to ask the star animators to look at a scene. Sometimes the changes they suggested were too difficult to pull off or not within my comprehension to understand. The cool thing about it was seeing how much better I could make it. As you get more experience you start to become more confident, but it is still imperitive to show other people your stuff. I do wonder if animators like Milt Kahl or Frank and Ollie asked people for comments. It seems that when you get to that level, people are afraid to comment on that animators work. I think this is wrong. Once you stop being a student, you start to wither.

-Andrew

ps - sorry for the lack of articles. It is very buzy here. hopefully I will get an interview up one of these days.

Spring 06 Work - Level One

2006-05-23T23:19:00.000-07:00

Since everyone else is doing it I guess Level one will show some of our work too. Level one starts out with the bouncing ball, walk, jump, some other stuff and then at the end we start doing some acting assignments with no dialog. Well enjoy hopefully this will get more of our students wanting to share their work.

Dr. Stephen G

Chris Turner
Carlos Jay
Joon Yang
Venece Lyman

Spring 06 Work - Level 3

2006-05-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

Hello, Scott here to share what my class did last semester as well. I teach the Animation 3 (Pixar 3) class at the Academy of Art University. Usually I co-teach with Angus MacLane but he's taken time off from teaching. This time around I had the very talented and experienced Adam Burke along to help me out.

Because each semester is only 15 weeks long it has been very hard to get a filmmaking class going. Students simply need more time (like a full year) to truly develop a film/thesis project. Because of this time limitation, I decided to try something different and put together a "scene workshop". The idea was to give students a chance to work on a scene from a movie; to simulate the actual work environment of a feature animaiton studio. The hope was to force students to collaborate on the scene in finding the proper acting across the arc of the scene. I intentionally picked a scene that had clear characters, some fun dialogue, and a buildup to a climax and resolution so that it would be fun to watch out of context of the movie. The students were not told what movie the dialogue was from and were discouraged from seeking it out. Each student was given 2-3 shots and was responsible for all characters in the shot. Adam Burke and I acted as the "directors"; inspired by the students' best ideas, we steered them in a coherent directrion.

This scene represents 10 weeks of work. It was not nessesarily important to us that all the animation get finished/polished, but that the ideas and acting ideas make sense and be fun as the scene played through. It is my opinion that all too often, animation students worry too much about the details, movement, and polish in their animation without really thinking about the content. With this assignment I wanted students to think like actors and filmmakers. I was very pleased with the outcome and will continue to experiment with this idea for future classes.

For this first experimental class a scene from the movie "The Imposters" with Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt was chosen:

Download File Here

Spring 06 Work - Level 2

2006-05-17T14:57:00.000-07:00

As usual, this semester we had a great class. All three levels did some great work. In our level two class we focus not only on the assignment, but the character. We really want the characters to be very different from each other. This gets the students to think more about the acting and the situation, than some canned animation assignment. Using the Norman model, our students made everything from Old ladies to little kids. Great Work! Look for updates with more work from level two and the class project Level 3 did. They turned out a 3 minute sequence! You may need to download a media player for linux to view certain movies.... http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

-Andrew

KC Roeyer

Chiwook Han

Tun Veerapatra

AtSushi Kojima

Aaron Koressel

David Fong

Rini Sugianto

Al Cimino

Cal Arts Update

2006-05-13T11:32:00.000-07:00

Here is a link to the Animation gallery on Cal-Arts website. They have last years producer show and the year before. Thanks to Brian Brantley for the link.

click here to watch some fun stuff.

Dr. Stephen G.

Cal Arts producers Show!!!!

2006-05-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Hi All just got back from Cal Arts and what a great time. I just want to thank all the students for showing us such a good time.

For those who do not know what the producers show is at Cal Arts, it is where the faculty scores all the student films for the year and compiles the highest scored films into an hour and a half show. Then they invite all the studios in town to the show! It's an awesome event for not only the students who get to share their films with the industry but also for all of us in the industry who are able to share this great night with the students.

It's so nice to see a school still dedicated to teaching character animation. Most of the films are done in 2d pencil test form some colored most not, which is great it's all about the animation. Most students ask us about there only being 2d films, even though a few CG films were in the show. Wondering if that is still applicable in today's world. Now I understand PIXAR is a little different than some places, go figure, but we don't care if it's 2d or 3d we're just looking for great animation and great storytellers. The pencil or computer they are just tools they don't make the animation come to life or tell a story that still comes down to the talent of the student. We'll spend the time to train someone on the computer if they have great acting and storytelling abilities.
One moment that stood out form me last night was Glen Keane on stage telling a story about him showing some of the current CG work to Ollie Johnston one day. Glen was excited about all the detail work they have been able to do now using the computer, great cloth, hair, textures, and lighting, and Ollie looked back and said something like "Well yeah that's good but, what is she thinking?" This stood out to me and most of us there because when character animation gets boiled down to it's essence it's about what the character is thinking and how to communicate that clearly, and that has nothing to do with a computer, pencil, clay, or sand, etc. Animation exists outside of the tool used to create it.

I wish there was away for all of you to have seen and be inspired as much as I was last night. Unfortunately I don't think Cal Arts has any web venue for it's shorts or students. Some students have websites and one group of students http://www.nethatco.com has some of there great films on their site. I suggest looking at them all but JG has some funny films. All the films are so well done. If any of you Cal-Arts kids are out there and have your films on the web maybe you can post links in the comments section for this post.

now I'm rambling, anyways thanks again to all the wonderful students and all their hardwork to put on such an enjoyable evening for all of us who were able to attend. I hope to see you all next year!

Dr. Stephen G.

Guest Lecture Next Week and News

2006-05-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

- I just wanted to alert any of our academy students that we will be having Carlos Baena, fellow Pixar animator and co-founder of Animation mentor for a lecture next week. All three classes are invited.

- A bunch of Pixar guys are down at Cal Arts for the producers show. Hopefully Dr Gregory will post some good stuff.

- Stay tuned for more postings of our students work coming in the next few days.

- I am hoping to interview someone from the Story department for another SplineCast. Things are rockin over here so be patient.

-Andrew

The Gear Change

2006-05-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

Well, Its getting to the end of the semester and our students are doing really great work. One of our assignments is a gear change. A Gear Change is having a character change from one emotion to another. We ask our students to use the Norman model which was created by Morgan Loomis and Leif Jeffers for our classes. We want the students to really explore the character they are creating. The who, what and where are just as important to us as the assignment. By really getting into the character, the students can create a character with depth as opposed to using the generic model. It also lets them practice design. Here are a few examples of the gear change exercise. I'm going to start posting more student work in the next few weeks so stay tuned for some really great stuff. Our 3rd level class is doing a great series of shots that Dr Clark will get up when its finished.

Han Cho - Car Wash
Veerapartra Tun - Cheating
KC Roeyer - Electrical Worker

Animation in Spain

2006-04-30T17:06:00.000-07:00

Animation Education is alive and well in Madrid, Spain. ARS animacion hosted a master class series in which I was lucky enough to be one of three industry professionals teaching through the week. Lawrence Marvit and Belli Ramirez were among the others teaching Production and Design. I taught over three days an animation curriculum that included things like: Principles, Weight and Physicality, Layout and Design, Acting, Gesture, Facial Animation, Polish etc. It was probably one of the most difficult teaching gigs I have done because it was 8 hours a day of continuous lecture. But it was worth it! I had tons of examples and some great interviews with artist from Pixar to share with the class. The students really were very energetic. Alex, my English to Spanish translator works in the animation industry. He was able to take what I was saying and make perfect Spanish out of it. The school is a real gem in Madrid. They have traditional, Stop Motion and Computer animation going on. The teachers they have really care about animation. As for Spain, what a great place! All I can say is that they really know how to squeeze every drop out of life. People party all night, take 2 hour lunches and generally work to live... I was able to meet up with Sergio Pablos. He is doing great stuff with his studio. Lets hope the animation community only gets bigger in Spain. It seems to be as ripe as a Spanish Olive. Thanks to all the students and faculty of ARS, especially Oscar for making this happen.

-Andrew

Related Links:

ARS Animacion

Better Sound

2006-04-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

Ok, Clay over at Animation Podcast gave me some tips on how to make the audio sound better. So I replaced the file with a better one. It does not have the intro and ending but the interview is in tact. Now I know how to do better audio. Sorry for the problems.

-Andrew

Ralph Eggleston Interview

2006-04-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

This is a great interview with Ralph Eggleston. I did not split it up into separate pieces for time. I just didnt have the time to do it so its around 45 minutes. The Audio is a bit better than the last interview, but I am still trying to hit the quality that the animation Podcast has.

The file can be had at Itunes (do a search for SplineCast)

or download it here:

Eggman

Enjoy the interview and post any feedback.

-Andrew