RVG Animation Blog

"Arte y Animación" Animation feedback!

2012-02-26T06:52:00.004Z

Yay! Just on Friday I saw my animation videofeedback at "Arte y Animación" and it was absolutely fantastic! Really makes me wanna go back to the shot and make further tweaks, I hope I get the time soon! Also many congratulations to Marta Segurola for her second position and videocritique too!!

Many thanks to Christian Dan and Pedro Daniel for the prize and the critique. Pedro is a supervising animator at "The SPA Studios" (Sergio Pablos Animation) in Spain, and his experience in animation spans over 15 years and a solid ground in traditional animation.

I'm trying to get used to my new WACOM as well, hopefully will be able to post some sketches soon...in the meantime, here is the video feedback!(it's in spanish....I'm considering doing a little translation for it so that it can be more accessible, but will see...I've had people interested in watching it despite the language barrier which is great!).

Video Feedback for my animation:

My original animation:

Marta Segurola's Video Feedback:

New stuff!

2012-01-26T19:52:00.007Z

Hey all!

So...firstly.. I've managed to win the Arteyanimacion contest, so great! Really happy for the experience and had a lot of fun doing the scarecrow shot!

Secondly, I'm currently working in Kandor Graphics as a senior animator....so awesome as well, and intimidating to be surrounded by some pretty amazing talent I have to keep up with. The feature film I'm working on also I have to say is looking pretty amazing... "Justin and the Knights of Valour"

Finally, I've uploaded a new demoreel...as usual, lots of tweaks needed, but I just need to keep my stuff updated and wanted to change the site with a more mature feel...as my animation is evolving towards that as well I think...Hope you like it!!

"Arte y Animación" Animation contest entry

2012-01-09T12:18:00.003Z

My entry for the "Arte y Animación" animation contest.

Would love to improve the facial acting and fix some body pops and spacing issues too but today is the deadline :( I'll see what the reaction is out there and whether it will be worth polishing it more or not.

Thanks to iAnimate, Ben Rush, Pierre Perifel (pierreperifel.blogspot.com/) and Victor Vinyals for the character rig, and to the "Arte y Animación" blog for bringing this contest. It was fun to work on for the time I had and I wish everyone all the best.

Simple and well taught animation tips

2012-01-05T08:41:00.006Z

Happy new year all...

Some really good and simple tips I've found around the net recently. Didn't want to forget them so I've decided to post them here as part of my "interesting findings" collection. There's soo much stuff available nowadays online is crazy to keep up...

Centre of gravity and weight in poses.

Eyes: blinks, darts, lids, etc.

Internal silhouettes:

iAnimate showreel 2011

2011-11-27T09:59:00.004Z

Being part of iAnimate has been one of the best things for me. I'm constantly surrounded by awesome talent and have learned quite a lot throughout my time in the course. This compilation of some of the best work, was actually released for CTN... and last night I got the link to it. I'm constantly watching the amazing work other people have done! And also excited to see three of my shots being there too!!

A big shout to all the iAnimate community, you guys rock!

Limitless anatomy

2011-11-23T20:21:00.004Z

Is very astonishing to see the human body breaking its normal limits and, with it, conveying feelings...because the average is not used to perceive such uniqueness in movement and deformation.

We react to this in many different ways: we joy in delight seeing beautiful curves in a ballet dance....but some of us maybe jolt back in disgust, and perhaps pain, when seeing a tiny thing like pushing our finger backwards and seeing it bent...the logic obviously being that for most people it usually hurts.

From crazy stunts to beautiful choreographies...dances, postures, demonstrations, etc... Is something I've been intrigued with always, how the human body behaves and deforms. This is just a little recollection of some interesting videos I've seen around the Internet lately. Mostly are related to dance choreography or martial arts...because those are the most well known ways to play through beautiful poses in movement and beautiful timing. But there is beauty also in holding a pose....like for example in Yoga.

Is truly an impressive art, to make yourself fly, defy the laws of nature...to achieve perfect curvature with your spine, move your limbs in synchronised melody, and demonstrate to the world that you can actually move in a different way than the rest...and that's what part of your personality as an individual to stand out.

Anisketch 2

2011-11-20T20:34:00.002Z

Felt really attracted to feline motion after watching L'ours so many times...so decided to do a little reference study to try and see what was it so attractive about it.

I felt that the line of action is soo fluid despite coming from a real life reference (reality usually is not that perfect I think...). Such flow makes the animal elegant, bewitching and powerful at the same time! The particular walk I was trying to draw was very rhythmic and subtle in timing. I enjoyed a lot with this one...

Mumbai Frozen

2011-11-20T12:59:00.004Z

Not so animation related but nevertheless trying to tell stories through imagery...

Brief travel log at "The Silent Babbler".

Animated people - Prana Studio

2011-11-15T03:00:00.005Z

A quick and big shout to the animators and seniors I met yesterday at Prana in Mumbai, India....you guys rock! Prana is one of the best (if not the top studio) in India for animation and VFX. As awesome as they are, they have their reasons not to disclose any material so I'm not gonna be their burden with that.

Huge thanks go to fellow animator and friend Sachin Desai, who showed me around the studio...great environment, awesome projects, great talent and really nice and friendly people... I always was skeptical about the industry in India but I can see somehow that in a few years time things are gonna be really highend...they already are at Prana!! They also have great animation figures coming to their studio too: http://vikrampandya.blogspot.com/2011/08/live-conference-with-doug-sweetland.html

I was overwhelmed by the experience, the showcase and the content. Really glad to have met you guys.

L'ours: editing and non dialogue narrative masterpiece

2011-11-07T18:06:00.004Z

This is a gem for me, very very inspiring... I haven't seen the whole movie unfortunately but I'm really eager to do so asap! I'm blown away by it for various reasons: sublime editing, fantastic use of minimal sound and beautiful and engaging visuals. All to combine together and make a nice and simple story of an innocent little bear in danger from a predator.

The composition in all the shots are very well planned, like when we can see how the Puma imposes so much to contrast later on with how diminished we see the young bear on screen space. Also the way the shots have been edited give a really thrilling progression to the narrative, with a very controlled pace (we can see really fast cuts during some parts of the chase, and within that same chase some shots hold longer with certain elements of surprise like the Puma entering on screen, etc...).

Acting wise is obviously hard to judge, but if anything, is nothing short from awesome. And probably the editing contributes to enhance some of the shots meanings performance wise too. It somehow feels soo humanised, and not in a literal sense but rather in the perception of it all...which to me is an amazing achievement.

Something that could have easily been a BBC or National Geographic documentary with a voiceover giving us the narration, but on the contrary is presented in a daring and much more engaging way (in my opinion) by making it far more cinematic...Superb video, I love it...great piece of animation reference too!!

Anisketch 1

2011-09-28T11:12:00.002+01:00

Hoping to do more of these whenever I have time...like to keep them rough and very loose.

From the Eyes of a newbie: up to what extent should an animator rely on live action reference?

2011-09-17T03:21:00.021+01:00

A prominent topic of discussion in every art form, and especially when doing it professionally, is the prior preparation work that is required to execute the final piece with maximum success. Animation is no exception at all, and is interesting how in the top elite group of animators the discussion goes to broad extents.

At iAnimate I've been exposed to a lot of top feature studio workflows, ideas and approaches. In Computer Graphics Animation, the level of believability in animated characters demands higher attention to detail and physics of real life, because of how the medium allows us to get a big proximity with real life itself and how accurate and precise the technology allows us to be. But the control over that power still has to come from us animators. I truly think this has a logical justification, and it’s also something I've had to embrace throughout my learning process in the course, to try my best to produce feature quality CG animation.

It was not a surprise to know how heavily live action reference footage is used and massively encouraged by every instructor. What was interesting was to see each one's point of view, and se e how “religiously” some people would follow their reference, in comparison to others who argued very valid points regarding reference as a mere starting tool, but nevertheless an important one.

For a long time I used to think that using live action footage to create animation defeated the point of us trying to achieve “the illusion of life”…that it dangerously felt in the realm of “rotoscoping”, which I did not like without prior understanding of its validity (it definitely has its place).I did always value the training of observation from real life though, and hence I’m a drawing fan (not as good as I´d like to be, but definitely one of the tools in my arsenal that I use when I animate or plan things out). I probably am not alone on this: a lot of people have felt like “cheating” when they used their acting reference (or any researched video) heavily in their work. However, until very recently it did not click on me that it was something normal, and indispensable in many cases, depending on what you tried to animate. The magic of classic Disney movies mesmerizes me every time, but throughout time I’ve come to understand better and better (or think that I do) how artists could get someone to act and move in such a smooth and “believable” way, and how could someone give life to a talking, thinking and breathing character. This also shed some light to my thoughts:

But who deserves credit? The animator or the actor who played the initial reference for Gimini Cricket? This debate is huge....so big that it has got the Academy of Motion Pictures doubting about which category should films like Avatar (or almost every motion captured based character performance movie) be placed in. Some animators accept the reality that at the end of the day the performance and storytelling counts, and the director has the upper hand on that. Others voice their opinions arguing quite valid points. Even Andy Serkis talks about actors deserving award nominations for motion capture performance too, which has led some animators to controversial arguments. Check out this blog post by lead animator Tim Borelli. Very good points stated indeed.

Back in 2008 Carlos Baena, from Pixar fame and one of the founders of well known “Animation Mentor”, came to Gran Canaria to give a talk about his work and promote AM. He showed us some clips of his acting reference for Finding Nemo, and we saw the raw performance of his shots...and how he progressively combined it with reference from various fish to get the characters in the movie to behave convincingly like talking fish. He told the audience clearly that “Using reference is NOT cheating”. Now having embraced it myself so much, I can understand better his statement.

Back then I was still skeptical. A lot of traditional animators criticized the heavy use of live action recording as a reference tool. Kevin Koch covered the subject extensively in a series of great posts in his blog, and I absolutely agree with him about the final conclusions. Is interesting to read his anecdotes about the trends though, like what he mentions about his time doing traditional animation in DreamWorks back in the day, when scanning photos and recording video felt like a crime…that’s how farfetched it got to be. I’ve even heard rumors about animators in certain studios who, as soon as they come to know about someone who is about to show a blocking pass in dailies without having used any reference footage, are discouraged to hand the work and asked to shoot some live action footage to get into the habit…all this of course, ignoring how good to blocking is! Crazy stuff.

At “Speaking of Animation”, an animation website ran by several Dreamworks animators, most of them instructors at iAnimate too (Benjamin Willis, Jacob Gardner, Stephen Melagrano and AdamStrick), they’ve posted a recent article regarding comparison reels ….how actually showing original reference side by side with your animation does more harm than good. One of the points was very clear: if the reference acting you´re basing your animation on is not good enough, your animation might be technically sound but will not have the optimum performance value.
This same site actually has a lot of info on the subject matter. Some of the podcasts deserve a special mention in this post:

1. Interview with John Hill: John is a supervisor at Dreamworks and he comes from a traditional animation background. John admits barely using reference in his work! But acknowledges the relevance and the need for him to embrace it more.

2. Comedy in Animation: A roundtable of senior animators and supervisors (two of them my teachers at iAnimate, Ben Rush and Ken Fountain) talk a lot about comedy and…usage of reference! Funnily enough they take diverse stances between themselves upon the usage of lipstick cams…again, demonstrating how great guys like them also differ in their opinions.

Big names in animation have also criticized heavy usage of reference. Keith Lango talked about “roto-lite” in his old comment, also on Kevin Koch's blog:

"I’m not a big fan of the results of what I’ve come to see as ‘rotoscope-lite’ - the practice of using video reference as the visual foundation of a scene. It’s slightly different than getting reference as a way to organize your thoughts. Those who employ Roto-Lite will copy exact poses and facial expressions and much of the timing as well. Unless you’re doing something like Gollum I think it is a crutch. But I see a lot of younger CG animators using it in cartoon projects as well. My personal guidelines for reference are simple: Use reference to understand something, don’t use it as the visual basis of your performance. It’s like writing a term paper in school- you use reference (encyclopedia) to understand your topic, but you can’t just copy the text from the book into your term paper. That’s plagiarism and doesn’t show your instructors that you understand what you’re talking about."

Not everyone is against its practice though. Jeff Gabor, one of the most well-known Annie award nominee animators today, did a very recent walk through webinar with the online animation school Animschool. He broke down his workflow on using reference, which was very neat (the people at Animschool where even kind enough to share the video files with the attendees). It’s fascinating to see him do all the prep work prior to his shot: he makes sure he gets the reference damn right. He also did “pose tests” with himself, checking with mirrors whether his pose, silhouette and staging felt right for certain parts of his shot. He would stand around, feel the space around him...make sure he knows the set very well. Sometimes if it was about a cartoony character like Ice Age’s Scrat he would speed up the performance, but usually he kept it raw. He rarely asks others to act for him (unless the character performance demanded a very specific behavior he himself could not achieve…like the minor nuances of some girly mannerisms for example) and he will do reference for a two character shot (or three or four even)all by himself, working out all the eyelines and everything.

So there is this massive contrast in opinions, which to someone initiating into the world of crafting their own soulful characters and making them breathe and think and perform, is confusing. And none of them are wrong.

I think this point of not relying so much on reference is very much valid when we see stuff like this clip that I recently saw, also from old school Disney…

That is fantastic usage of reference. Nothing that looks heavily rotoscoped. The cartoonyness of the characters is so unique, full of creative spark from an animator. The timing and texture in the acting is enhanced from the live action reference.

But Alice stands out compared to the rest… maybe seems to be far more “realistic” in her personality than the other characters. Notice that the mere distinction of Alice as a character who obeys to different physical rules, ones more bound to our world, the real world, demand on her behavior a far greater attention to live action. She is in a surreal place where she actually doesn’t really belong, a magic world full of bizarre occurrences: the story itself demands it. A lot of times having totally distinct styles within one movie breaks consistency, but in this film it never felt wrong to me…Also there is to bear in mind that we can break it down to "motion" and "graphic value": the character design clearly does belong to the world of the movie, but the motion has a more sophisticated, often subtler flavour. That's why it never feels rotoscoped to me: motion itself is a quality to be analysed too. Poses cannot just be analysed in singularity in animation, they need to be looked at collectively as well, to craft good timing, flavour, texture, phrasing, and rhythm.

One of the most influential animators of modern times, Andreas Deja, gifts us very often through his new blog with animation treasures. Take a look at this post about Milt Kahl’s extensive research on some of his Jungle Book work.

Looking into stop motion, there is an interview with Michael Parks at 11 second club blog with very good insight on his work as a stop motion artist. Michael also posted a video of his workflow in which we see him acting the performance out:

Check out this Coraline making of vid too. Clearly animations spiced things up as you can see:

So…what am I trying to get at is the fact that these various notions about the subject brings me to think that we animators sometimes have to adapt to the demands of the story, the shot and the character, but ultimately it doesn’t matter how you get there. To try everything is the best thing for me. Sometimes I’ll shoot reference, sometimes I will just do pose tests, other times straight to thumbnailing, and at times doing both reference and breaking it down into the valuable keys, and redrawing and enhancing those keys, shifting the timing around, etc…last but not least, youtube and google always help :)

But the core has to be the acting. I’ve come to appreciate this so immensely now that I am thinking of talking about live action a lot more, to go in as an animator and try to understand better, analyze and pick what really speaks to me emotionally and break down both the physiological and contextual meaning of the performances.

I agree with Kevin Koch: improv. acting classes and acting workshops might not be every animator's cup of tea. Same with drawing skills, not every animator indulges in sketching but nevertheless they're very amazing animators. But having said that, I would never discourage the practice or trial...every life experience surely helps. A lot of animators are music lovers and somehow that comes across in their understanding of timing and phrasing...that's how amazing it is!

I just felt like talking about the subject because of some of the outrageous trends I've heard of in the industry (especially Computer Animation). I just believe that as entertainers we have to think about getting to the audience, and they surely will not care about whether is rotoscoped, mocaped or totally inventive…and whatever helps best the purpose of story and character, will definitely work best. Although maybe not the case 100%, I'm sure they care about empathy, communication, entertainment and meaning: they will value and perceive story, perhaps on their subconscious mind, but probably as much as we care about crafting and delivering it as storytellers.

sketching

2011-09-17T02:06:00.003+01:00

Awesome animated works to remember

2011-09-11T11:58:00.004+01:00

I know there are countless of sites and bloggers out there who post links and videos to notable works too but I've decided to do the same on my blog as well in case I have a hard time finding them again!

Some truly awesome stories, characters, design, originality... and animation of course, altogether!! So refreshing to see stuff like this every now and again...

Bushi ya sōryo

2011-08-18T20:27:00.004+01:00

I´ve been doing some digital painting, getting away from animation for a bit to get back later on with fresher eyes.

Inspired by the following story, the Bushido code and the Art of War, which I´ve always been a big fan of:

A big, tough samurai once went to see a little monk. "monk," he said, in a voice accustomed to instant obedience, "Teach me about heaven and hell!"

The monk looked up at this mighty warrior and replied with utter disdain, "Teach you about heaven and hell? I couldn't teach you about anything. You're dirty. You smell. Your blade is rusty. You're a disgrace, an embarrassment to the samurai class. Get out of my sight. I can't stand you."

The samurai was furious. He shook, got all red in the face, was speechless with rage. he pulled out his sword and raised it above him, preparing to slay the monk.

"That's hell," said the monk softly.

The samurai was overwhelmed. The compassion and surrender of this little man who had offered his life to give this teaching to show him hell! he slowly put down his sword, filled with gratitude, and suddenly peaceful.

"And that's heaven," said the monk softly.

author unknown

Learning to Look (by Anil Dharker)

2011-08-16T10:42:00.002+01:00

I wanted to refer to some paragraphs of an article by Anil Dharker, a newspaper editor and writer in India:

<<" I don´t understand art". How often have you heard that phrase, in every part of the world, and coming from perfectly intelligent people? Yet, you never hear people saying "I don´t understand cinema", or "I don´t understand literature". I suppose the reason for this is that movies and books are narrative forms which use words - spoken or printed - to tell a story. Unless we are students of cinema or writing, we cannot be aware of how the plot is constructed or the devices the writer/film maker uses to keep us interested while he moves the story forward. But that doesn´t matter because we get engrossed in the story unfolding before our eyes.

That doesn´t happen even in a narrative painting because the artist isn´t putting his ideas into words. He is often telling a story; the people we see on the canvas may have their own idiosyncrasies, but who is to explain them to us? One option, of course, is for the artist to append a note with each painting, explaining its every detail.

Would this be a good idea? Without doubt not, for a variety of reasons. To start with, most artists would make a hash of it. That´s because expertise in one form (painting) does not automatically give you expertise in another field (writing). Many artists are not articulate, and many are not even proficient with the language. You can see that from the titles some artists give their paintings. They are often banal, sometimes even puerille.

Another reason is that if the artist does manage to write out a readable and full explanation, it immediately narrows the painting to that particular explanation. Is that what we should want? The so-called "disadvantage" of art, that it has no words, is actually its biggest advantage. That´s because a painting, because it does not say something in concrete terms in words, can actually say very many things.

(...)Normally we move around in a gallery quickly, moving from painting to painting, getting only a general impression of what is on the walls. We certainly don´t stand in front of an art work and analyse it in detail.

(...)Forced to look at a painting with some attention, each person interprets it in his/her own unique way. One painting, therefore, gives up several different interpretations, each version varying according to the viewer´s personality, character, world view, experience, etc. Why would we want to lose this unique characteristic of art by trying to pigeon-hole its content into one "authorised" version?

These are some of the reasons why one shouldn´t say "I don´t understand art". The key to understanding art lies in you. Yes, you can train yourself by reading, going to exhibitions and seminars so that you learn to really look at art. But finally, your interpretation is as good as mine. Or - dare we say it? - as good as even the artist's.>>

Small update

2011-07-20T00:37:00.004+01:00

Well, things have been very active in iAnimate, which I´ve been giving priority to for the past 6 months...and it never seems to be enough. There is so much to learn is just incredible.

I felt like I should post this small notice on my blog to spread the word a little, and to keep friends and family updated...looking into sometime in August, I´ll be starting to work on my first CG feature quality animation project :)

The project is called "Lucy". Its a short animated trailer the crew at L7 pictures have been making, and the opportunity to work on it comes as an internship that is part of iAnimate, with a crew of top animators and a fantastic director who used to be my instructor in Workshop 3 (the first semester I started the course): Ben Rush (Supervising Animator at Dreamworks Animation).

Enough said..I´ll leave you a link to the blog which you can check out yourselves...at the Anatomy of a Nightmare blog. I´m eager to work on it, and reunite with my instructor and friends at iAnimate for some animation fun :) I get the feeling this will be the project that will squeeze my animation juices the most....

Bears

2011-05-19T02:47:00.003+01:00

Trying to get my head around color work. Did this as a job for a friend... first gig as an illustrator "ish"...not 100% yet, but hopefully will get there one day...

2011-05-15T23:55:00.000+01:00

More Drawing (Recent)

2011-05-12T19:08:00.000+01:00

It kinda sucks not to have a local life drawing class where I live, but I guess I can make up for it by just gesture drawing. I used to enjoy figure drawing though, so I just tried out drawing from photographs....is not the same though, but well, is still better than nothing :)

I´ve also posted some of my storyboarding stuff from my latest assignment at iAnimate. Trying to learn a bit about cinematography, is quite exciting and daunting at the same time...

Gesture Drawing

2011-05-09T16:42:00.013+01:00

Animated people - Ryan Woodward

2011-05-09T11:07:00.031+01:00

Last week I had the chance to attend "Animayo 2011", the local animation festival put together by acclaimed director and film maker Damián Perea. As most festivals, is a great chance to meet new faces, and chit chat about the wonderful art of animation and film making, and share views with enthusiastic and professional folks alike.

What I never expected was how big this event could become. Not only for the benefit of our community here in the Canary Islands, but on a personal level too. I had the great honor to meet an outstanding artist...

Yep, this is it, Ryan Woodward! I assure you this is not photoshopped, even though it came out a bit shaky...if you´re bothered by that, you got to understand that you´re just getting a sense of the intensity of that moment, nothing else :)

Ryan Woodward has become an extraordinary inspiration for many artists out there, including myself. Photographers, designers, traditional and digital artists, animators...a huge variety of individuals enjoyed his workshops during the festival. His range of work is quite diverse, from illustration to effects animation, concept and figure drawing, comic books, advertising...Right now he works as a storyboard and animatic artist for films, and also teaches Animation in the department of Visual Arts, at BYU Brigham Young University in Utah (USA).

Unlike just a "behind the scenes" or a "making of" type of event, Ryan really did leave something behind for the audiences to learn from. He showed us the essence of his work, he talked about why he made certain choices...it was not just a technical showcase of his portfolio: he really did talk about the creativity behind his work and his feelings towards it. He even dared to share very personal stories that made him who he was in life, both as an artist and a family man. Having met him in person and having seen his work many times by now, I think that he truly embraces the artistic path as a way of living and is not afraid of the challenges that such journey will bring, but also actually enjoys very much the learning experience and the work he passionately puts into getting better and better every day. And I believe it even more so after getting his prompt response on his Vimeo comments box, and briefly talking to him in person about his experiences with Michel Gagné, and hearing him making clear that he is no more than just another lover of art and animation, and that he still has a lot to learn. A very humble person, very inspiring and very down to earth too.

Some examples of Ryan´s work that reminded me a lot of Michel Gagné:

[**Missing some notes from the first workshop....will write these when I compile them together and write it in a logical form when I re-edit this post**]

We had a deeper insight on Ryan´s professional work: he took us through his workflows for illustration and quick concepts (photo reference – pencil and ink – digitizing and color in Photoshop) and showed us some of what I´ve found to be the most impressive film animatics and storyboards I´ve ever seen in my life (at least till now). He talked about the balance during production: sometimes you have to just not worry about story (unfortunately) and dive into executing something that satisfies clients demands (ie. Advertising agencies) and looks aesthetically pleasing.

For storyboarding and film making was quite different though: a more considerate process, but heavily dependent on teamwork and of course the director. Interestingly enough, Ryan has a very strong, marked style of work that we can identify, but he has worked in both Animation and Live Action, so he has been forced to adapt his style to whatever medium needed. He mentioned how for animation you might need more poses and key frames to draw, but things would be a bit more rough and sketchy, to get the sense of movement….whereas in Live Action you wouldn´t need such accurate definition of where things go in terms of motion, since its naturally easier for actors to define it themselves when they act. Also, on Live Action, directors apparently tend to like very pretty looking boards, with strong compositions and a good grasp of the mood and feel… but not always. Sam Raimi was the person he told us about as an example of this being true. Apparently the boards for Spiderman 3 were of such detail that the Production designer got angry about it, since it also touched upon his own job of making things look in a certain way... Spike Jonze seemed to prefer a bit more of an ambiguous look to his shots in Where the Wild Things Are, perhaps busy and not with such nice compositions ... to get a more intimate feels with the main character, as if we were looking through his eyes. However, the core of storyboarding is essentially the same in any form of film making: thinking about the area in which everything is taking place, sometimes throw the camera out a bit to establish positions and character relationships, or bring it closer to convey more emotion through the character´s face, or play with angles to add a more dynamic feel, or flatter for a more “comedic” effect, etc…

His animatics were mindblowing. The audience were literally hooked at the amazing work he had put on the animatics for some of the Hollywood films he worked on. Very readable, and executed with a lot of details...reminded me a lot of the storyreels from "The Incredibles", where timing, keyframes, scene mood...even things like camera focal length and depth of field were defined. Music and sound effects, scratch voices...he admitted that doing animatics is like making "little films" and you really learn a lot from doing them. I asked him how does he figure the timings out of each element (scene, shot, actions, sounds and music sync, etc...) and he just simply replied that is a matter of "figuring it out" with experience and your brain. Really fascinating, and worth attending his talks just to see his animatics!!

On his last workshop he talked about a very interesting side of formation as an artist in the industry: personal projects. Ryan said that all creative people have a desire to show the world their artistic expression. He had a quite simple yet clear and concise concept to follow: "Inspiration never comes if you wait for it, is just moments in life which inspire you to do something and give birth to motivation (...) ... each and every one of us has a creative beast inside...that beast is what makes us want to make stuff of our own, our own personal little projects. If we don´t feed that beast, the beast will eat us!" Such mentality took him to amazing journeys in life, and to meet people he would have never thought of. And despite all the financial hurdles he might have faced in order to accomplish such endeavors, he got by and made the best out of it by branching out and opening new doors in the industry.

For instance, he talked about his short film "The turtle and the shark" based on a legend from the island of Samoa, in Polynesia (Oceania)... Very personal in nature, this film took inspiration from Ryan´s own interest and experiences with the culture and life in Samoa , and he dared to conceive the whole visual style to resemble traditional Samoan paintings and craft. And while he admitted his personal striving did not succeed much, he revealed that it did help him to get exposure and get to be known by "The Polynesian Cultural Center" (Laie, Hawaii), which commissioned Ryan to do multiple animations in the same style. You can watch these in his website here.

Ryan´s work is aesthetically unique, very graphic and visual, but also very rhythmic and musical. He talked about how much he loves dance, movement and kinetic forces in his drawings. His personal project "Thought of You" became a booming phenomenon over the internet in the past 8 or 9 months or so...he himself declared to the audience how he believed his piece was the reason he was called to Animayo this year. It is also what allowed me to know about him, and what brought me today to write about it. “Thought of You” has definitely had an amazing impact on my understanding of animation as art, and on the fact that, really, it is realistic to say that “there is no limits” to our imagination…and is beautiful, rewarding, and satisfying, to keep doing this for a living and to keep striving for the best, no matter where we are…
I thanked Ryan personally, but I´d like to thank him again, for all what he has shown with just his presence and his love for animation and art. I´d love to attend his class at the States someday and never stop learning from him.

ADVICE FOR ANIMATION PRE MAJORS : RYAN WOODWARD (7 PART Video on Youtube):

...

2011-05-06T10:44:00.004+01:00

An old character sheet. I´m tempted to give a shot at animating this guy...

Catch up

2011-05-01T11:09:00.002+01:00

Hey all, just finishing my break from iAnimate, and getting back on track. In the meantime I´m posting this little interview I did with one of my lecturers at University in the UK...

I´ve been also busy learning some photography, is amazing how every artform is interrelated and you never feel like wasting time when doing some else that´s not necessarily animation, yet still keeps your creativity growing.

More to come (hopefully). Need to do some more sketching too.

iAnimate.net Promo Reel

2011-04-06T12:18:00.003+01:00

Yay! The iAnimate promo reel is out, competition is healthy and fierce at same time but I´m definetely having a great time at the course. I have to say, this showcase is amazing but at the same time is just a teaser....so much awesome work is being done here. The direction at which we get pushed is really strong. Managed to get one of my shots featured in the very end of the promo!

iAnimate.net from iAnimate on Vimeo.

Watch out for the full showcase later in the year, as some of the stuff at the moment is still in progress (even my shot currently featured).

Big, huge thanks to the iA crew and classmates!

Is all about relationships...and emotion!

2011-04-04T01:00:00.010+01:00

One of life´s core elements is relationships, for sure, whether love, friendship, genetic, symbiotic, or even business. Whether relationships inherently work on an emotional ground is another subject, but emotional relationships are definetely the deeper, ever lasting, and most interesting ones to explore, live and experience.

For me films are essentially an emotional medium (might have stated that more than once). You always try to create empathy. Even when taking a look into the Hero´s journey from Joseph Campbell, the figure of the hero somehow seeks a relationship (rescuing a princess and returning, seeking a gift from a Goddess), or is involved in one or many throughout his journey (helpers, mentors, guardians, etc...). It does constitute a building block of life and, therefore, stories too.

I got inspired to write this brief text on relationships because of how much the subject touched me on these really cool short animated projects. They are ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS. I´ll leave you the clips here, enjoy...they´re honest, beautiful and sincere works with a lot of heart.

Drawing Inspiration from Wesley Louis on Vimeo.

Sometimes the Stars from The Audreys on Vimeo.

And ...to just make a brief reminder....almost ALL THE PIXAR SHORTS are about this too:

Finally, two of the classic short films:

Life Drawings and other drawings

2011-03-30T04:38:00.003+01:00

Doodles

2011-03-27T23:35:00.007+01:00

iAnimate Latest Assignment WIP - March 2011

2011-03-22T13:46:00.001Z

Hey all, I haven´t posted anything regarding my iAnimate stuff since I ever started, so I thought to show some of my latest WIP. Is just a rough 1st pass planning, felt like doing a lot of planning for this particular shot before jumping into CG.

Fun piece to work on, quite a tough one though. Lots of mechanics to be aware of (walk+gestures, stops, turns, head and hands interaction) plus the performance part (emotionally strong, but also with subtle sniffs and breaths, and also really internal in subtext).

Hope execution goes well....wish me luck! :)

EDIT*: Thanks so much to my sis in law, Venita, for doing some awesome acting :) is all her performance really...

oldies

2011-03-17T06:45:00.004Z

more sketches

2011-03-16T14:40:00.004Z

Sketching: Lets start failing!

2011-03-16T01:45:00.028Z

I´ve realised my shyness as an artist needs to go away, and in an effort to do so I´ve decided to try just post the crap out of my sketching junkyard. As an artist I´m pretty damn awful but if I keep using that excuse I´ll never grow,so I guess I need to throw myself out there and get eaten by the public lions :)

There is a lot of old crappy doodles I might have also posted earlier, but just wanted to recompile and throw it all together... Anyway no more talking, here I go... beware, is all junk!

Kick starting the blog in 2011....and the neverending questions.

2011-03-14T17:49:00.016Z

This is my first post in 2011, yay!

Sitting in deep concern, recollecting all plausible knowledge I can possibly gather from my experiences as a creative person engaging in others creative efforts, both as spectator and contributor, and also exchanging views with people from the closest and pertinent circles, I realized that I’ve always been attracted to the unique, subjective dilemma that, in my own senses, every single art has always suffered from, "sincerity versus aesthetics".

In the medium of films, animation becomes one of the many tools used to envision a story. Combining cinematic techniques with animation tools just lets you create another audiovisual experience, but ultimately is a film, and it needs to have a story. The better the story, the better the film will be? I would tend to believe so, but I´m not sure myself 100%.

The art of character animation has to serve the art of storytelling, at least in this instance. What is a story? And why is it so important? Wikipedia has a great explanation for these questions. The bigger question then would probably be "Why we watch films/see the same stories if we know them?". "To get entertained". Ok....now what is entertainment exactly? Is it anything that someone enjoys either by just being present or by actively participating in it for sake of fun and/or leisure? This is the part that businesses exploit, because it makes money at the end of the day. Is the easy way out. But storytelling is more than just entertainment: you can share experiences, learn from others experiences, retain and retell those experiences in your own way....ultimately, storytelling to me is about the human itself, the people.

I really think that the beauty of the art form itself can be the very essence of storytelling too. Amazing aesthetics could extraordinarily take the capabilities of storytelling beyond your usual formula, and make the experience unique. Maybe this makes it “less cinematic”, though, but surely keeps it "entertaining". Video games could be using this to its full extent, since is all about the interactivity with the player. Is also present in films, but rather creating that sense of entertainment purely from the artistic audiovisual magic you get to contemplate, which ultimately though, serves the purpose of storytelling.

Perhaps this is why overall people tend to label animated films as “animation movies” or “films for animators”, since us who indulge in the creative process can appreciate this further. And more so in the classical animated films. I don´t cease to backup Brad Bird on "animation NOT BEING A GENRE", but I'm getting tired of recurrence to the same subject. And then the next question would be "what is good animation"? It depends, to great extent, in the story demands. And is a topic I keep referring to constantly in my blog.

Anyone could dare to draw an analogy with VFX and the stereotype Hollywood gizmos: giant robots, special effects, big explosions and exotic digital environments (and nowadays making everything “3D”). These things tend to adorn and overwhelm in order to dramatize hyperbolically, to the point of sometimes even detracting from the main point or hiding the weaknesses, but if done well, they cause marvels in order to deliver a story. Peter Jackson´s Lord of the Rings would have fallen apart if the extraordinary visuals, actors, musical score…..”the aesthetics” were not taken as seriously. Same for Terminator 2 or Jurassic Park. Even the classics from Ray Harryhausen are revered today.

Here are some awesome clips which I thought illustrated my point regarding how great usage of aesthetics can be the essential component in good story:

There is always the statement that perhaps every story has been told already: there seems to be nothing to invent, to conceive, or formulate. At the same time though, there is for sure a place to imagine, to interpret and perhaps to discover, both introspectively and objectively. And along with this exists also a place for embellishment, diversion, and entertainment.

To me, it’s the dual existence of sincerity and aesthetics that keep a successful balance in every art. A dancing choreography can be purely showcasing acrobatics, but surely when there is a story told with it, it becomes captivating. Music can be purely aesthetic, or it can also convey a story and draw from nature. Classical paintings tend to communicate either a story or a certain emotion, through great compositions, uses of color, shapes and forms. Same with photography.

Is more apparent when we talk about visual mediums....but then, people like Gareth Edwards are also right when stating that sound can be more important than visuals (in films):

video platform
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video player

Numerous times we’ve seen the same stories told again and again, in various forms and sizes, but somehow even more versions get made. I truly believe though, that when the author's mark is seen in his work, the connection with the audience is much more tangible. Sometimes emotions go beyond our body and verbal languages, but we understand them and feel the connection when is properly achieved. And arts are always about emotional reach, emotional connection, or emotional reveal. Is all about honest and sincere delivery.

Politics have a major role (if not "the major"), no doubt: budgets, company demands, markets, decisions by superiors....all these affect the work as a product down the line.
Deadlines are seen by some as a hindrance too. Along with technical limitations. I am myself a victim of this, and hopefully after this post I will feel more enthusiastic about "failing" in order to keep going forward. Here is an awesome article by Phil Willis at Animation Ideas.com, called "Deadlines vs Perfeccionism" (thanks to David Martínez from "Chronicles of an animator" for the source!).

But within all these constraints, you can still dare to play the game. You can still pursue true expression, value and growth. As much of a sermon or an idealistic view as it might seem, I truly believe so, specially after watching this very inspiring speech by acclaimed digital artist Bobby Chiu, at the Creative Talent Network Animation Expo 2010:

His perspective on career growth, individual expression and creative satisfaction is so confidently daring and honest. His talk about knowledge forging someone’s style is what really makes an artist grow. Someone who constantly ventures himself to obtain new interests and wisdom, and embraces this passionately as a way of living, will surely be far more capable of adapting and excelling on whatever bureaucratic limitations might fall upon his work. In fact, as Chiu suggests, sometimes you can use these in your favor to enhance your motivation and transform your ways. Adaptive thinking becomes vital to survive. Also I agree in the fact that, observing closely someone´s work, you get to know the person, or traits of his personality...this is probably applicable to every aspect of real life.

In such a complex Zeitgeist where competition is inevitable and saturation in the market is taking place over variety, where demands seem higher than what is being produced, technology grows exponentially, and ideas become more and more difficult to come up with, I guess there is still an opportunity to make work stand out. Either from an individual standpoint (Bill Plympton) or collectively bringing something to the table (Headless productions) the doors for independent art and, in this case, film making, are gradually opening more. Formulas might be the same, businesses still will be hungry for money, but audiences are evolving. And with them, the art itself is growing.

Then it comes the question of which stories are actually better? There seems to be three types: character driven, plot driven, or a hybrid?

Obviously the latter is the best one...right? hmmm...again, something I´m not sure of 100% myself.

A plot is not just a mere part of the structure of a story, a sequence of events....is also an emotional curve. Plot establishes the highs and lows in the pace, where drama takes place and how intense catharsis can be. But I also mentioned beforehand that emotions are a consequence of thought in our brains, which is purely human, so....isn´t it ultimately about us, people? And what a better way to make this "through characters"? And acting is how characters perform, in any kind of medium. A single pose for a model in a painting is also an action, perhaps captured in time/space, to suggest a story through one still image. But it still has rhythm, highs and lows, and an infinite variety of aesthetic elements that enable it to creat a story.

As a closure to this post, I´d like to quote my uncle, acclaimed fiction writer Anil Menon, on an email from a few months ago, in which he explained to me how the mechanics work for the audience when it comes to narrative:

"All stories try to play the audience's need to know what happens next. Plot-driven stories engage the audience's intellectual curiosity, while character-driven stories work with the audience's emotions. In both types, somebody wants something and there is something that's blocking the person from getting it. Plot-driven stories will focus on the blocking and its removal, while character-driven stories focus on the wanting and its resolution.

A lot of genre fiction is plot-driven. Westerns, murder mysteries, science fiction, romance novels (like Harlequin), adventure stories, quest fantasies, etc. In the 1930s, Vladimir Propp studied Russian folktales and found that they all involve some subset of 33 situations, and that too in a fixed order. There's even a Brown University program to automatically generate a folktale. I blogged about an experiment I did with it sometime back.

Agatha Christie's murder mysteries, Barbara Cartland's romance stories...

Stories like Star Wars are largely plot-driven, I think. Lucas was strongly influenced by the Campbell's Hero With A Thousand Faces model. Most Hollywood studio movies have bought into Vogler's mythic-model of developing screenplays. Those are all plot-driven stories. The specifics of the characters don't matter so much. Video games are mostly plot-driven.

In contrast, movies like Scent of a Woman or Forest Gump are strongly character driven. Most of Kafka's stories are character driven. Literary fiction has mostly moved to character-driven stories; plot is considered something embarrassing.

Movies like Pulp Fiction or Gladiator are both character driven and plot driven. Even when people have forgotten the movie's complicated non-linear structure they remember the strange, powerful characters."

More on this soon (I hope)...I pen off here.

From the eyes of a Newbie: Character Animation in Feature films nowadays (Occidental Mainstream Animation!!)

2010-11-14T09:44:00.009Z

Recently I did a presentation at work about the current state of character animation in feature films. My proposition was to look into animation history in order to further understand how we approach animation in CG nowadays (because that is the medium I work on).

I also discussed this topic with fellow classmates at Ianimate and some interesting stuff was covered. I just finished writing a reply on a forum post regarding this matter and I thought it would be good to expose it in public through my blog. Didn´t want things like these to get lost and thought the blog could be a good way to record it.

So here was my reply:

Wow willem, really good insight and truly inspiring. Your views are absolutely right too!

I think what Angelo meant wasn´t the fact that one generation is better than the other, is just that our technical demands have a historical ground and have evolved. By all means, the 9 old men defined what we know as "classical animation", the "classical principles of animation": by classical I mean timeless....a style that defines other styles...the reason why it became mainstream (even more so than Stop motion, which kind of had a slightly different development path at the beginning with timelapse photography and VFX stuff like Ray HArryhausen, which nevertheless was amazing too). That´s why most of the time when I talk to people about classical principles, people easily understand "the disney style"...is normal. And most schools and character animation education is based upon these principles, cause even if you wanted to make something like South Park I guess is important to have a solid understanding of the principles in order to break them and repurpose them. Kind of like Picasso did prior to Cubism, as Ed Hooks points out, he had to master first the naturalistic approach to painting, on the likes of Michaelangelo and such.

It is an outstanding achievement from these people to have "made" this happen. But I do think there has definetely been an evolution. And sophistication in terms of demands....from an audience mainly.

My personal focus for the presentation (which generally went well by the way) was "feature films in western animation" (it would be way too much of a complex topic if we involved japanese anime and the likes of Akira or Ghost in the Shell....which again, in western society wasn´t mainstream back then, and probably it isn´t still...but i might be wrong so correct me if so!!...likewise I didn´t really cover stuff like Hoodwinked, or Fantastic Mr.Fox, or Shane Acker´s 9, etc.)... And to even be more simplistic, I tried to focus on the approach of cinema, and mainly staging, but also some insights on other animation principles such as timing, solid drawing vs. solid modeling and rigging, etc... It was only a 40 mins presentation hence I didn´t have much time to go really deep.

Classical Animation (which back then probably was predominantly the "Disney style", which has defined the nature of mainstream stuff, even I´d say on animation nowadays) originated in a historical context influenced very much by the cultural factors of the time: great deppression, world war, etc... At that time, musicals and theatre were popular mediums of entertainment, perhaps (i don´t know 100%) more than watching a film. And one thing I noticed was that, mostly, the staging in animation is pretty "flat" compared to films nowadays.

Look at "The Illusionist" and you´ll clearly see what I mean (although Illusionist is not a film from the 30´s it heavily draws inspiration from that I think): very rarely you see an extreme closeup, or an over the shoulder shot, or a dutch angle, or a POV....in traditional hand drawn animation I think.

Shots are held longer. Audiences have a chance to "explore the picture"...there are no frequent cuts (well not as much as in a Transformers movie anyways :P). And framing is done almost mostly with full body or mid body, so we see clearly the performances. And that was key back then far more than now: shots were (in my opinion) far more "Choreographed" and performance led. It was all resembling the theatres and musicals. It was all about the audiences entertainment, and by entertainment I mean being disconnected from the materialistic nature of their real world at the time, to get moved by this different world being "played" in the stage they are watching...the animated film in this case.

Performance led shots are very challenging, and hence the brilliance in traditional character animation is far more appreciated. The simplicity of the reality (by simple i dont mean easy at all!) was accepted far more than nowadays. It was a lot about how "appealing" the personalities were on screen. You talk to a kid now and i´m sure he can tell you what is good or bad animation "technically". Back then I think it was about the personality of these characters far more, and you wouldn´t care if in a stop motion piece you could see wires and imperfections on the character.

Look at this "The wrong trousers" example, if you are a bit of an animation geek (like me!)you´ll start to pick on things like the overlapping action on the ears, arcs and squash and stretch, etc...but that is clearly not the point at all in this type of animation!

You are led by the character´s performance. You wouldn´t get Eddie Murphy doing Donkey´s voice...the voice actor of Donald Duck was "The Donald Duck guy!" for me (two in this case I guess).

This is a contemporary example of the whole performance led thing:

This opinion kind of came to me after looking at these storyboarding notes by Hat Liebermann. He talks about Theatre staging vs. Cinematic staging, and the goals you achieve with both:

Now if we look at the first two pictures... doesn´t the framing resemble some of the disney classics animations? and I mean mainly from the 30´s throughout the 50´s. Wasn´t this predominantly the type of framing you would get in shots? The audience is just looking from their seats, being distracted with this "entertainment", but they´re not "emotionally intimate" with the characters as they would be in contemporary films. Look at both the physical and "abstract" gap between audiences and the film. That gap has a lot of meaning...and a lot of impact in the way we suck the film experience! Cinematic techniques of nowadays allow us to be far more "intimate" with the characters...although if overdone it just look like fancy cinematography and you end up having "style over substance" i guess...

This again, is subjective. The way each one of us gets to that emotional engagement is different. Im just talking in this case about staging, but it can purely just be through character animation... Here is an example of this flat staging approach (variations on how tight we get with the characters are there, but angles are still flat)

This might just be true to all of cinema, not just animated movies...but when I think about stuff like Hitchcock I tend to avoid talking about live action. Hitchcock was a genius, and the whole thing gets too complex hahah :P

Now why all this changed? In the "Thinking Animation: Bridging the gap between 2d and 3d" book I think there is one chapter where Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff mention how in the late 80´s and early 90´s VFX started to dominate. CGI just played with our everyday reality and "enhanced it". Photorealism is just one of the many things you can pursue in CG. Things have far more detail of sophistication (which one is harder? I dont know, thats a different question though,and personal to the artist. Im not here to say if 2d or 3d was harder...is just a medium, an artform, and a way to communicate, and it depends on the artist´s imagination how hard it can be...thats what I think).

To me, audiences just where getting saturated with the old classic fairy tales...animation started to become more corporate, and people where trying to do more stuff and cheaper. That´s how cartoony TV animation from saturday mornings developed...but more than a business need, it also had an impact in the artform itself when things like Tex Avery stuff or Tom & Jerry kind of cartoonyness started to come out. Even in terms of stories, "The secret of Nihm" or any Bakshi movie, were deviating slightly from the "all family audiences" idea and exploring new themes, perhaps closer to real world issues. Audiences clearly were asking for "more intimacy", more emotional connection with the characters and stories, "more empathy".

Again I´m talking about "western features" animation, because things like Miyazaki´s stuff adress really mature stuff sometimes in a beautiful way, but is just this whole idea what was "mainstream" in western society. And likewise Disney´s films maybe pursued really mature themes as well...but the presentation was in a way that was "easy to digest"...which to older generations started to become more of a "kiddie´s thing"...this is why a lot of adults think that cartoons and animation are the same thing and that they´re "just for kids". Is this whole idea of trying to entertain, but the entertainment standards were different back then...hence also the "principles" were slightly differently approach (they are the same, just applied differently).

So, Disney throughout this transitional period (since walt disney died, up to the 2nd golden era) suffered quite a bit i guess, because the industry demands were changing but they didn´t cope up with it as well as they should have. Black Cauldron is cited as a great example of the least success in Disney.

This whole thing was, again, led by audiences demands. People wanted more. People wanted real world issues to be discussed, and identify closely with stories. VFX stuff started to develop and now adults could enjoy animation as much as kids would. Look at Jurassic Park or Terminator 2, or Aliens, or Star Wars...

This was reciprocal...it had an impact on the 2nd golden era of disney I think. If you look at animations from the 30´s and 50´s, they were far more musical and rhythmical in nature than maybe "Lilo & Stitch" or "Mulan" were. But the later two were drawing far more reference from real life than stage acting and showmen. Look at Mulan for instance in terms of story, it deals with the strenght of a woman against a male dominant society. That´s a slight deviation from the classics I think, and that I believe is what Angelo meant? Is more human, and artists are daring to caricature the human characters far more, in order to reflect these themes.

Is true that reference footage was used also back then for animation reference a hell of a lot, but the approach you have now is in my opinion different. It almost leads you to question whether you could potentially be "rotoscoping" your live action reference!! Back then people would either call up the subjects on the studio (animals for BAmbi or Lion King...or showmen, entertainers, stage actors, etc...) to draw them and do gesture and life studies....or to record them perform with cameras at half speed I think (again, correct me if I´m wrong cause I´m not 100% sure!). And rotoscope was there too (Snowwhite...) but it was different I think. I mean, our instructors here worked on MEgamind, and they tell us about how the whole thing was first shot in liveaction....the whole thing!! And even if animators are not happy with one particular aspect of the performance, they get up and shoot the thing again, or that particular part of the performance...the easyness of using the technology allows us to be more demanding also. You end up "frankesteining" your reference (thanks for the term to Joost Van Schaik, fellow classmate :D )

Also...CG uses computers...and computers are by nature logical...therefore they always have a tendency to be "perfect". And too much perfection is what we kinda fight against in CG in a way, to make things more organic. But...at the same time, we are so minimalist...that we try to mimic "perfect imperfection"....or something. How to Train your dragon is a great example.....the ambient animation there is insane. I think for instance you wouldn´t get that kind of minimalism in hand drawn animation, OR (to correct myself) you wouldn´t approach the
minimalism that way...you would present it differently. You see what I mean?

On a minor note, notice the technicality of the lip sync in Shere Khan on the previous jungle book clip....he is just perfect! But if we try to do that kind of lip sync in CG is just gonna translate to jaw opens and closes. We have to work out the little shapers and things to bring the flesh and volumes out in a more detailed approach in CG I think.

[b]BUT[/b]....CG can let you "mimic" other styles too!! Or create new ones deriving from others, for that matter. You can emulate and repurporse other styles within CG. Some quick examples I could come up with:

Animators back then drew a lot from showmen, entertainers, comedians on stage...theatre play, musicals, musicians, jazz players.....it really was about "Rhythm" a lot of times.

Now I think is a lot more about live action, improv actors, cinematic direction, real personal engagement and deeper subtexts. Instead of rhythm it has become more about "Texture".

By the way, for me animation terminology sucks. Is really confusing hahaha. Because to me these two things are essentially the same: variation in timing right? right?...hmmm....dunno.

There is this ongoing debate at work about what film was better and which one deserved an Oscar, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" or "Up". The argument being, what was the point on making a film like "UP" when is so close to live action, when you could have done it with VFX and real actors....whereas Cloudy is far more fun and "animated"....

My contribution to that was that they are JUST DIFFERENT. Is like comparing Philip K. Dick to Kafka or to Agatha Christie. The medium is animation / writing novels. And the themes and stories are different, therefore the style/writing style has to reflect that. And fair enough Up draws alot from Live action but ITS STILL ANIMATION: you are personifying archetypes, you are playing with film timing in a far greater range than live action could do, and you´re bending the laws of physics far more than with live action I think (even more than Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon´s flying kung fu hahaha). So, to me, Up is just as unique as Cloudy. And i can really see why it won an Oscar, although Im not here to say "because is better"...but is again, this whole idea of reaching the audience far more. Going back to the staging example, if you read one of David Anthony Gibson´s posts in his blog, he talks about staging in Cloudy and how it was an overall style decision from the directors to "flatten things" more:

Is all intentional, and super cool. And the directors know they want that effect because they know is gonna play well with the whole story, the design and the character´s performances. Is all serving its purpose reeeeeally well. I love this film, and I also love UP.

Read the post here: http://davidanthonygibson.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/cloudy-animation-now-with-more-meatballs/

And this post at the "Temple of the Seven Golden Camels" relates alot to what staging can do to the nature of a film: http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2009/01/flat-is-funny-depth-is-dramatic.html

Someone on the comments even says that is like life itself. That´s such an awesome analogy!: the more we try to undestand life the deeper and deeper we get, the more superficial and "ignorant" we stay, in a way the "happier" we could be? HAha...well sounds pessimistic really. But I can totally understand this point of view.

But yeah...so thats where it is I think, that´s what I kind of covered in my presentation. Is just an evolution of things. Is not that one is better than the other by all means. The 9 old men were amazing pioneers. But the new animators are also amazing, you cannot discredit some of the stuff we´ve seen from Pixar or Dreamworks, or BlueSky, or Sony. You cannot compare, is just a whole bunch of factors that have influenced the course of things.

BAAAHHHHHHHH looks like I´ve done the whole presentation in written form! hahaa

I love healthy discussion, please enlighten me more if I need to...I love animation and I love to learn!! :)

I would love to let the authors of their respective works posted here in the blog entry that by all means it was all done for educational purposes, and please feel free to let me know if you don´t want me to talk about / show your stuff here.

Thanks!

Flipbooking

2010-09-12T11:32:00.005+01:00

So I've set myself to try and learn Flipbook, the amazing software Jason Ryan and the crew at Ianimate are going to be using, mainly for thumbnailing shots, planning, and correcting notes.

It was kind of a weird experience at first....I'm a very visual kind of person, so thumbnailing is usually what I do. If I had enough time to work on a shot, I'd do it in Flash, since it was the only software I knew to take my thumbnails to a more readable step. But usually I never go away from the paper sketches due to time constraints.

So comparing it to Flash, Flipbook seemed a totally different beast. But as I went along with my first test it got to a point where I almost felt sucked into my animation, trying to put too much detail! I can say Flipbook is "dangerously good"...it is definetely an innovative device to help on cg animating, real time saver....and a lot of thanks go to Jason Ryan for promoting it and letting us know about it.

Anyway here's my very very first flipbook test. My objective with it primarily was to try out as many things with the software as possible. I wanted to learn the shortcuts, menus, tools available, etc...so by no means the animation is great. But it did help me to warm up and get a loose feel when brainstorming.

I have to say some of my fellow classmates at Ianimate are absolutely amazing...and when it comes to flipbook i've seen some really amazing things done. Oh well, lots of practice awaits. I really feel comfortable with it, it is my thing...however it will be a case of finding the balance and keeping it simple.

Dracula 4D Artwork

2010-09-04T13:50:00.003+01:00

Here is some concept art I did for the film Dracula 4D at Red Star

Up the ladder!

2010-09-03T08:09:00.003+01:00

Nice! After showing my latest reel to Jason Ryan, I've been proposed to start straight away on semester 3, Facial Acting and Lipsync!

Can't wait, I've already seen some other fellow student's work and is very inspiring and competitive... :)

Ianimate!

2010-09-02T00:43:00.004+01:00

I'm glad to announce officially I will be taking part in the Ianimate course. At the moment i'm aiming to start from zero and go for Sem1, but I still need to discuss this with Jason Ryan and see what he thinks.

The other thing is that now thins seem to be slowly moving forward. I've met a lot of the people from the course (online of course) and we're all a happy and enthusiastic bunch, from newbies to experts, all a happy colorful collage. Also my website is now up, is a provisional version of what I would like the website to be for definite. Is work in progress but better than nothing....

so please feel free to head towards rvganimation.com and watch the latest reel (part of the ianimate submission, with lots of work in progress).

Glad to be back in the blogging world!! :D :D

New website on the way

2010-08-01T15:20:00.009+01:00

Hey all, I've not been very active on this site for a long time, but I'm currently working on a new online portfolio and just want to give a new revamp to this blog too...

In the meantime have a sneak peak at the short film I've been working on with Redstar:

http://www.redstar3d.com/index_sleighride.asp

Also forgot to put this before but there you go, just for some good laughs...the making of Dracula 4D!!

Animation education

2009-12-20T00:58:00.003Z

We're all aware of the existence of vast resources everywhere nowadays when it comes to learning about animation. From books to DVD's, websites, software, university courses, Animation Mentor and other online based teaching services...

However, I wasn't aware of how the best ones really came about as awesome as they are, and how tough can it be for someone to make the best possible content without previously having a great talent basis. The following video just made me stop and think about all these things and more. How much more in depth can you go with animation is ultimately dependent by your imagination. And animation is an artform and not really "one unique style". The emphasis Eric Riewer puts on the very basic foundations of art applied to animation is very intense, and at the same time just mindblowingly saddening for those who still aspire.

The big relevance the people give to arts in the programme at Les Gobelins is very encouraging to those who are willing to embrace the art and science of animation and not just limit themselves with mere technology.

I myself have worked as an animator for only CGI projects, but even then I'm a firm believer of art and drawing being extremely inmportant visualisation aids which can just let you have the maximum quality of work you can produce.

more doodling

2009-12-07T00:52:00.003Z

Forgot to sign on the last one! :S

2D Pencil Test

2009-12-05T19:05:00.003Z

Back to the basics!!

Doodle

2009-12-05T19:04:00.001Z

SIFFF 2009...what an experience!!

2009-11-08T13:06:00.013Z

Hello everyone,

October has been a hectic month. Here's the reason why I had disappeared for a while...

I was invited to the "Seoul International Family Film Festival 2009" (www.sifff.org) to deliver a workshop on 3D Stereoscopic animation basics, aimed primarily at families and children. The event was promoted as a Red Star Studio workshop (www.redstar3d.com) which is the studio I work for at the moment. I would like to write a bit about the experience, which will also serve me to keep it for myself as a good memo!!

The city of Seoul is very modern, full of lights, people, cars, buildings...and screens! I felt for a moment like Lost in Translation, everything seemed surreal. The place where I stayed was "Myeng Dong", where apparently there is a massive japanese population.

Unfortunately there wasn't much time for sight seeing, but nevertheless the whole trip was a fun experience. I managed to meet some great people from all over the world, most of them film makers...some of them were really big in the live action industry, like Christopher Wyatt (film producer in the US, one of his well known films was "Napoleon Dynamite") and Randal Kleiser (great director, made films like "Flight of the Navigator" and "White Fang"). There were also some great talented directors from Europe, such as Nils Malmros from Denmark, Johan Bogaeus and Fredrik Edfeldt from Sweeden, and Luigi Ferloni from Italy.

The workshop sessions went very well, my schedule involved 3 days of presentation talks on one hour slots, and one of the days I also had to take part on a 30 mins Q&A session after the screening of Red Star's award winning short "The Curse of Skull Rock". My talks were about concepts of animation, stereopsis, and showing goodies of some redstar films (animation passes, renders, video captures of rigs, etc...) as well as screening "The Curse of Skull Rock". The results were very positive, and kids really loved it! I will never forget how one child came to me and was full of happiness confessing he wanted to become an animator when he would grow up...his parents even asked me to take a picture with them!

The experience was wonderful. Teaching audiences about animation was just fantastic. Korean audiences are very smart and seemed to understand very well. Both parents and children enjoyed and reacted to what I showed. Some even confessed to me after the talks that they got inspired. It all was surreal and I loved every minute of it.

I was also interviewed by a journalist from a national film magazine (see the pics above), and it was a lot of fun! Whoever knows korean could please translate the pages for me, I'm really intrigued!!

So yeah, now I'm back and hopefully will be posting more in the blog....oh wait, I've got another presentation next wednesday at the Bradford Animation Festival 2009 Games event!! Yep, though is not a big talk, I'll be contributing for 10-15 mins on a talk about my experience in animating characters for Broken Sword: Shadow of The Templars Director's Cut...Hopefully I'll see some of you in BRadford!!

Here, a nice 2 min. portrait sketch of myself, by Randal Kleiser!!

sketch of the day

2009-09-27T23:58:00.002+01:00

Another really quick one, should be sleeping instead of doing this :P

Oddosketch fun...more sketching!

2009-09-27T00:18:00.002+01:00

After I saw Keith Lango's latest post about a new online sketching program called "Odosketch" and seeing his cool doodle I felt really intrigued to use it.

Expect me to post more of these....I'm already in love with it, simple and fun!

This one came out after 10 mins of doodling...more to come!

More Sketching

2009-09-10T23:44:00.004+01:00

Just threw a rough one. Not as quick as I thought it would take me but I decided to stop and leave it rough. Plus Photoshop decided to freeze at one point which doubled the sketching hours. It was a lot of fun though so thats what counts!!

Drawing fun, after soo long!

2009-09-06T15:30:00.004+01:00

I missed drawing and painting so much. Just started to get back into the habit and it feels really good!

There is a running joke at work about my passion for eating....I really like good food!! Somehow last friday, after being called "Ravinator" once again (that's the nickname everyone has blessed me with, yup!), I was thinking of how would I look like if that passion for food was turned into something really dark...and this sketch came out of that thought...

I guess I also got some influence from expressionists drawings I've been looking into lately. Specially from Lorenzo Mattiotti's Dr.Jekyll & Mr. Hyde graphic novel.. They are amazingly beautiful and dark at the same time.

Creepy... ;)

RVRex - Work in Progress

2009-08-29T09:24:00.013+01:00

In an effort to teach myself some of the other skills in a computer graphics animation pipeline, I've been working on this 3D model for a while during my spare time. The whole project started back in January 09 but it has been worked on several days on and off, sometimes with a whole month of no work. I stopped working on it by May, been giving myself a little break from it.

My objective is to one day finalise it as a ready to animate rig, and make something nice for a demoreel piece. I also chose a photorreal looking dinosaur due to its complexity in every aspect, including the modeling and the texturing. Though it resembles a TRex (I used references from real birds, other movies, etc...) its slightly different in anatomy.

The modeling and UV unwrapping was done in Luxology Modo, further sculpting in Pixologic ZBrush and texturing in both Pixologic Zbrush and Adobe Photoshop. As for the rigging part, is has not been started yet. I've been looking into muscle solutions since is a new ground for me, but find it way too technical to understand properly, so I'm thinking to probably stick with traditional deformers. I've managed to pull off a test with the head and seems to work fine in terms of comfortability to animate.

Here are some WIP stills:

Base Model in Modo with UV's layed out

Testing compatibility between Modo and Zbrush for Displacement maps. Really had a hard time trying to work this out, and still not very satisfied...

Started sculpting details in Zbrush

Testing the displacements from Zbrush to Modo with default GI lighting

Finalising textures in Zbrush

Render Test of final model in Modo (no teeth)

Final look with some HDR lighting in Modo. Very nice look but very expensive in resources! (I wish I knew how to do this more efficiently)

Jeff Gabbor - Animation workflow

2009-08-28T20:21:00.002+01:00

Jeff Gabbor, amazing animator at Blue sky whose work has been nominated at Annecy, has posted recently a new video of his workflow in Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I'm not sure whether video compression plays a part on this but its a shame that the final rendered version is so dark...I feel that lots of animation subtleties are missed. Such an amazing job, really inspiring stuff...

I'm also posting his old "Horton hears a who" workflow vid, which I luckily found on Youtube as well:

Is interesting how standards are soo different depending on the quality expected for the demanded product. Currently my daily production as an animator at work is variable, ranging from 1 or 2 seconds a day, up to 30 seconds a week. The media I work for is nowhere near feature film level, yet some skill is required to train yourself in compromising things to efficiency and speed.

However, I think if I was given one month to tackle a complex shot, I would never be able to come up with something so good as this...(not yet anyway hehe :P). Combination of creativity and discipline is definetely needed. Looking at Jeff's reel one would probably see the result of "day 1" as a product of not much work, but I believe there is just so much thought going on from the start to sort things out: composition and staging, pace, music and sound flow with length of shot, camera movement, vision consistency...and of course lets not forget about revisions.

Keith Lango posted an entry on the 11 second club forums saying that "chasing notes is probably 1/3 the time spent on animation in films". That's so true. There is always the revision stage with the director/client, and there is also the peers feedback you gotta count on.

Animator Adam Green also posted in the same topic and worked out the maths...75 frames a week!! I personally don't look at it from this point of view but rather consider it as a whole...like in a pice of artwork, you probably block out the rough shapes then start working the detail. But whichever standpoint you take to analyse this shot, one thing seems clear: its a very long (300 frames) and complex shot, and heavily relying on character animation rather than direction and cinematography. Is a big pressure considering the audience has to be entertained all that time, and audiences are used to fast pace nowadays (ie. Transformers...though a bit too fast in my opinion).

Really inspiring stuff, makes me realise I got a hell of a lot to learn and should never give up...time to animate!!

Very inspiring films

2009-08-22T13:16:00.003+01:00

Second Wind:

El Empleo (short excerpt):

This one Time:

In the Box:

returning to blog once again

2009-08-22T12:32:00.003+01:00

Hello again...It has been really hard to try and keep this blog running and with the amount of blogs already out there it feels even harder to keep things interesting. But I quite enjoy writing about my own experiences and conclusions, and have been missing it for a long time.

Anyways I hope I keep up the blogging and will try my best to post more often. Here I just found a very cool news on BBC about how western people interpret facial expressions differently from east asian people: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8199951.stm

Probably this justifies why a style such as japanese anime gives a lot of emphasis on the eyes of a character, both in aspects of design and animation...having a look at the emoticons comparison, I could work out the same sort of emotion being conveyed with a different aesthetic...yet if it was a more specific expression it could have conveyed a different result.

From the eyes of a newbie...What is a cartoon?

2009-02-14T10:07:00.006Z

Scott McCloud is a comic author and theorist, who has pushed the boundaries of comics (and all the visual arts in my opinion) to unimaginable dephts of understanding and innovation. I just recently came to know about his work and I regret so much not having familiarised myself with it before. Thanks go to my director at Red Star studio, Benjamin Smith, for the recommended reading... cheers Ben!!

From the vast amount of amazing facts and theories that Scott explains, I wanted to post here something that has bugged me for years, since childhood, and probably the main reason that things like animation and drawing, as we all understand it in a commercial sense, are mainly tagged as "something just for kids"....one of the many "million dollar" questions...

What is a cartoon?

Most people will relate cartoons either to animation or drawings, and will not take it seriously at all (most people that I've met in real life anyway) since its main element is most of the time "humour". But I always thought the definition of the word "cartoon" had much more depth than such a simplistic assumption, and finally, thanks to Scott, I can safely say that it definetely comprises a much richer meaning.

The word cartoon, as defined in wikipedia, has changed and evolved over time. But its main essence, and the reason why we instantly think "2d" when we talk about cartoons, is because it's nature is that of an icon...it "resembles" whatever the creator of the cartoon wants to represent, in whatever level of detail desired. Scott Mccloud states that "by stripping down an image to it's essential meaning, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can't". What does this mean? In my opinion cartoons can reach different depths in telling a story than realism can. Obviously the opposite could also be true (I'm not a liveaction film maker nor photographer so I don't understand the full capabilities of such mediums, and I don't mean to dismiss any of these by comparing them to cartoons), but many people like me, who love animation and cartoons, who create their own and who try to tell stories through such mediums, identify themselves with the cartoon not because of its simplicity and efficiency to reach an audience in emotional ways, but also because of its universality.

Scott McCloud simply states that when who the messenger is matters less, what the message is matters more. That's why cartoons are so simple, rounded, childlike, efficient and understandable. Cartoons deal more with inner realities than the physical appereance, and this is why we can bring inanimate objects to life, because we emphasize in the idea we want to represent, not the original thing we want to represent...we can idealise our own little world, create our own stories, and populate them with our own characters....we have the freedom to play like gods....yet we can risk to go way too abstract as to no one understanding us...and this is when the element of "cartoon" kicks in: by getting inspired from elements of our reality, borrowing their essence, their appealing features, and whatever we want, we enrich and humanise those phantasies far more than a photoreal representation. We enhance the emotional value, the appeal, the empathy, and the communication of our story.

This is what cartoon is, and further more, in my opinion. This is why I'm doing animation, drawing and whatever releases my creative juice, because I feel free creating my own visions. I don't necessarily feel that cartoons should be just about humour. Is a form, not a genre. Is an artistic medium to express, whether animated or still, the essence of it is always "drawing". Drawing is predominantly 2d. And since I love drawing, I love cartoons too!

That's all for now. As a conclusion, I'll recommend to those of you haven't heard of Scott MCcloud yet, to purchase his book "Understanding comics", and absorb all that knowledge he exposes there...is pure gold. And don't think just because it has the word "comics" in the tile it limits itself to that medium...we all know that comics are another artform and therefore share lots of conventions with any other art...including animation!!

And here's a video of him giving a speech at TED.com about the power of comics, and the bright future that awaits.

Adios

Broken Sword, Shadow of the Templars - Director's Cut

2009-02-12T21:03:00.005Z

Finally this game is coming out! I worked on it back in 2007 and it was my first break in the industry. It has been quite a long time since I lived the experience, and there were really good times as well as bad, being my first professional job and all. A hell of a ride! But finally the product has come to public and the Broken Sword franchise can grow once again! Hmm....don't know if it's my animation bug kicking in but I swear if I could go back I'd improve soo much of my animation....but is great news anyway and I'll leave you all with this vid, most of the character animation was done by me, excluding the character of "Imelda" (animated by my friend Aron Durkin) and the closeup artwork and facial animation. I also designed the new characters featured in the game (Imelda, Carchon, Mime, and new Workman).

Enjoy!

Devils, Angels & Dating - Production diary - Environment & Prop designs

2009-02-11T21:36:00.002Z

Some sketches for the DAD project, this time: Environment rough color test and Chairs sketches.

Contrast can make a BIG difference!!

2009-02-09T00:51:00.004Z

Hi all,

I've recently watched the film "La vie en Rose" and I personally thought it was a magnificent piece of work. Direction is great, the story is engaging and the actors performed really well, specially Marion Cotillard, who I'd like to talk about in this post as her performance is in my opinion what makes the whole essence of the film.

I invite you all to watch the movie first, and then take a look at this scene (I apologise in advance if I'm breaking any copyright laws by posting this, and I state that the only purpose of this is purely didactic; I am not the person who uploaded this video):

Biggest element that sticks out to me in this whole scene: CONTRAST....something so important in EVERY FORM OF STORYTELLING & ART, including obviously animation and character performance.

I was just blown away by the acting as well as the direction in this scene. Is all one shot, and from the happiest woman ever to be in love, she instantly turns into the most deppressive, paranoic and devasted person you could ever imagine. It all sounds very typical and lacking of any new elements, but the way it was delivered was just simply amazing.

Performance wise, Cotillard has pulled it off really well. Edith Piaf (as portrayed in the film) was a very expressive human being, who grew up in slums and poor areas of France, and she was always surrounded by rudeness and carelessness, which has molded her character and has had a major impact on her personality. Intelectual barriers and formalities are not there to stop her, and as she grows up she can overcome them by being her own self. But this scene is very special because you see her being capable of being beautiful and elegant on her own way, and respectfull, and noble, and embracing the goodness of humanity in its pure form...everyone experiences the feeling of love at some point in their lives and Edith was experiencing it THIS very time. What nobody knows is that she is just seeing visions, is a complete farse. But she lives every second of it full of joy and happiness. She is in love. She is living a fantasy.

Then direction drives her progressive change and desperation taking place....big house, random people appearing and intruding on her little moment of joy with her lover, nobody doing anything to help her out finding that watch she soo wants to give to the guy....she still retains that rude, careless, expressive personality inherent in her, and it manifests as soon as things start to go wrong. This whole bit is probably (as I see it) an anticipation to what's coming next, loss of control. Also the fact that is all in one camera shot makes everything more intense.

Performance at its best, Edith Piaf is told about her lover having died from a plane crash...nothing, in a split of a second, makes sense anymore...Is like all of a sudden someone sucked the last drop of water that was left in a huge glass. Everything is just hollow. She doesn't like it one bit, she was enjoying that last drop and it was taken out so quickly. She doesn't have time to react, no matter what she'll do, that water drop has been taken already, but she still tries to rectify this by "trying to drink anything that still remains in the glass" (or literally just going to check that Marcell was actually there with her, in the bedroom). Nothing is there, the water has gone for real. She is alone, in a desert of misfortune and hopelessness. She has lost it, and doesn't have a clue as to what to do. Her loneliness takes form and haunts her as all the things of her past are coming back without Marcell being there to share it all with her.

I might have gone a bit too far with the metaphor, I guess I enjoyed it a lot because I tend to be a very sensitive person at times. I like emotions and deep reactions from people. I find them to be the main reasons to drive someones actions in certain ways (I believe Ed Hooks would agree with me on this haha). My whole point is that thanks to contrast this whole scene was soo exciting to watch. It was such a simple concept, and it could have just been shown with the last bit of her having heard the news of Marcell dying and desperately crying, but it wouldn't have had the same effect at all. Contrast is not only about "Fat and thin, big and small, heavy and light..." when it comes to animation. Is not just a "physicall" thing, in my opinion. And this has proved it to me really well. The contrast here was needed as well...because it was what hinted us to the schizophrenic evolution of Edith's character.

Hope this all makes sense and that people understand what is it I'm trying to say...have a good day!

Devils, Angels & Dating - Production diary - Death (character sketches)

2009-02-03T01:52:00.003Z

Some more concept art...this time, experimental sketches for the "Death" character of the film.

Devils, Angels & Dating - Production diary - Introduction

2009-02-02T00:02:00.006Z

Hello readers!

I'm happy to announce that I'll be collaborating on an independent CG Short film called "Devils, Angels & Dating" directed by senior animator Michael Cawood . At the moment I'm helping out as much as possible with preproduction material, designing some concept art and sucking as much knowledge as I can from Mike and the rest of the team! So far I've met animator Ryan Hagen, great people and very experienced and talented as well.

Devils, Angels & Dating is a short film where "Mr. Cupid, Master Devil and a rather sexy young judge, jury and executioner in the form of Miss Death gather in the After Life War Room to attend to their daily routine of manipulating our lives down on Earth with modern techniques that would put our internet dating generation to shame. Each of them, reluctantly compelled to play out their role in the game of life in order to maintain the balance. There's an unspoken attraction in the room and their true contradictory personalities are gradually revealed to each other, when someone gets a bright idea and re-purposes their high tech weapons to turn the tide of war and flip everything on it's head." Head to Michael Cawood's official website to learn more about the film and possibly join us!

I will be posting in my blog some updates to the project, and the stuff I'll be working on. Feedback is much appreciated!!

ALternatively I'll also be posting updates in the 11 second club forum thread for the project, here. You can subscribe to it and get the updates from the whole team.

Adios

Life drawings from last year

2009-01-31T20:19:00.002Z

Some more sketches. These are from my last life drawing classes back in October/November 2008

Random sketches - jan09

2009-01-31T03:03:00.002Z

I wanted to start posting more doodles i tend to do on my spare time and that way keep those raw ideas floating around even more than just in my sketchpad. So I'll start with these lot.

WallE - a goldmine

2009-01-31T02:21:00.001Z

Hello readers!

WallE has become a big international hit, and behind the kind little robot's cuteness there is an incredible amount of high quality work worth looking into. The interviews and podcasts with Stanton, the talks from the story guys, the hype from animators who have worked on this film....everything is full of so many interesting facts. I've seen it thrice, one of them dubbed into spanish, and is one of the few movies where language did not matter at all, preserving the emotional play between characters consistently all the way through. As an animator, I have learned that consistency in animation is one of the big things to achieve in order to make something good: consistency with character, consistency with model, consistency with your fellow animators views, consistency with the direction and story, consistency with the voiceover...

But what about the stage above the performance? What about the way this performance has been directed and shown on screen? Although I do personally think that the essence of this film was the soul of WallE as a living and breathing entity (he is no different from a microwave literally speaking, since he just switches on/off like any robot, but he exceeds that limitation and conveys emotional value to each and every action....he is "animated" in the pure sense of the word), I do also think that such element of the film wouldn't have worked the same way if they didn't orchestrated the movie the way they did. And the amount of work in the direction is just minute and absolutely fascinating...

Storyboard artist Karen J Lloyd has dissected in her blog several shots of WallE...the posts are worth a read (http://karenjlloyd.com/blog/2008/11/20/shot-tells-story-walle/). They're a bit old now I guess but I just came to find out!! From how to why, Karen has done a great overview and analysis on the directorial aspect of WallE. A great film with great animation...not just a film about animated characters.

And that's the dilemma: what's more important, story or character? Some prefer the former, others the latter. Whatever it is, I think if you excell in both you totally have the upper hand. Both have to work for the best out of a film, and Walle has achieved this balance greatly in my opinion.

People training for dogs

2009-01-17T21:40:00.002Z

Absolutely fascinating material...and so useful when comprehending animal psychology! Definetely useful for animation as well:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6361385827312960989

Observations on body language, attitude and power centers...Really cool and useful. Cesar Millán definetely has an eye for observation!

Happy belated new year...

2009-01-17T21:28:00.003Z

Well I'm a bit late with greetings but nevertheless I wish you all a very good start of this year 2009. And to have a good start, I couldn't help myself from making this little drawing dedicated to one of my favourite characters of all time, Dexter Morgan!!

I hope to dedicate more time to this blog than I want to but things get on the way....There is a lot that needs to be written down, I know people who have surprisingly been following it! Which is always a plus, to all of you thanks and please keep the support coming!

Afly...

Jason Ryan Webinar

2008-12-07T00:02:00.004Z

I've just finished attending an Animation Mentor webinar with Jason Ryan, and I have to say it has been wonderful to see him animate live! Questions that were thrown around were also great, everything went pretty smooth and the two hours never felt long.

I managed to take some small notes....some of these emphasize on points that already most professional animators know...others where just tiny but revealing at the same time. I might be wrong in some of these though but this is overall what I got:

- generally character designs and inspiration sketches are made "before" the story reels...which is why a lot of times directors/storyboarders can get to draw key poses in their boards that fit with the character.

- 3d Layouts are mainly used for staging, composition and camera work, whereas 2d Storyboards/Animatics deal mainly with direction and also aid to decide on acting choices and help animators to nail the golden poses if drawn exactly the way wanted by the director.

- Jason Ryan's workflow, which involves a 2d pass in Flipbook prior to working in 3d, helps to coordinate and deal with both posing and timing "interactively", meaning that Xsheets are not really trusted...there has been a discussion among animators nowadays to whereas we are becoming lazy to just keep playblasting stuff til "it looks right" instead of knowing what we are doing beforehand...I got the impression Jason just easily sorts this problem by coming with ideas constantly via quick yet powerfull drawings, and still manages to have room for "interactive" repositioning and redrawing of poses.

- The more time you spend on your golden poses (keys+breakdowns), the less you will spend on the inbetweens.

- Jason prefers to create overlaps within the poses of the character, rather than offsetting things. Reason for this is that is much easier to reposition and tweak elements as a whole, rather than individual parts with their own different range of keyframes. Keying all the body controls of the character is what mainly helps to develop a workflow closer to the "2d" approach.

- Naturalistic animation is like caricature...is not really a full "cartoony" style...examples of this are the Incredibles humanoid characters, or the humans from the upcoming "Monsters vs Aliens", in which Jason is currently working.

- Cartoon and Naturalistic animations are generally snappier and faster than real life motion. That's why Jason said that we should be carefull not to rely 100% on any reference footage we might take for the purpose of helping us in doing our animation. Obviously if things are photoreal, more attention to reference from live action is required.

- Jason mentioned that 1 feet of animation is 16 frames, and there is a general requirement of creating 5 feet a week per animator (80 frames), although sometimes this can go up to 10 feet.

- Stereoscopic 3d makes approach to animation slightly different in certain aspects. There are times when shots need to be framed differently, because what we see is felt like a window to another world, with its own depth, instead of a flat monitor.
Eyelines in Stereoscopic 3d need to be spot on, otherwise they'll look wrong if slightly off. Also poses cannot break the frame...sometimes you're required to scale things (not literal scale but positioning with depth towards camera) intentionally in order to give certain effects, but you have to bear in mind they don't go out of the frame ever so slightly.

These notes were quite helpful. His animation session live was also great to watch. He also does the same in his tutorials, which you can purchase at www.jasonryananimation.com . Also you can purchase his Boris rig (I already have and is quite fun to animate with!!). Really great stuff, very inspiring!!

11 second club - November 2008

2008-12-05T21:44:00.006Z

Hey all!! Haven't been posting in a long while but I am quite happy to pop in with my great news: came third (out 109 entries) at last month's 11 second club competition with my "Police Nitwits" Entry!! Not bad huh? I've received some really nice and constructive comments as well. I'll leave you the clip here, hope you like it :D

I'll be writing more on how I made it soon... Hopefully will get into evaluating my own animation as well (loads to learn still). Tomorrow I'll be attending the Animation Mentor Webinar with one my favourite animators: Jason Ryan. I reckon is going to be amazing!!

Adios!!

Amor e Morte - live action short film

2008-10-03T19:37:00.023+01:00

After some hesitation to go public with it, I decided to just do it. I finally uploaded my very first live action short film project, which was co-created with my brother Jay: Amor e Morte.

I wanted to share with everyone the experience on working with live action in this post, being always part of the world of animation. Is quite a long read, but I hope is interesting and helpful to you.

In an attempt to learn more about direction and cinematography, we came up with this little initiative to get ourselves a camera, use as much stuff we had laying around at home as we could, and just shoot something between us, trying not to make out of it a hollywood production with dozens of people but instead keeping it to ourselves (for obvious reasons that don't need explaining).

It all started with my brother's curiosity to explore digital video editing, and make such experience worthwhile. I coincided with him into making something meaningful and dig our hands fully on a practical task to get some knowledge out of it. It has proved to be much better than if you sat for hours listening to someone explaining it with theories.

Jay also has full credit on the creative idea: he suggested the simple settings and the simple characters: two contestants playing chess sounded very ideal. But when the two characters started to get a bit more complicated (death being one of them), the story demanded a deeper meaning. We suggested a backstory for the main character, which would give him the reason to be playing with death and would romanticize the film: the loss of his beloved one, which has triggered his deppresive behaviour and has pushed him to the realms of a suicidal and self demeaning world. Such backstory needed to be very intimate and personal though, but it couldn't be replacing the game with death itself, in terms of relevance.

With help from my uncle and sci-fi writerAnil Menon we developed a short script for the two characers who were going to appear, and we started boarding as soon as we were happy with the script. Ideas kept bouncing around between us though, just till we actually started to film. I drew my version, Jay drew his, and added to these we drew random ideas too. At the end we compiled everything, went through the bunch of doodles, and decided to re-draw a final version with everything organised on scenes.

The character development process came along with the script writing. Since there were only two characters, and both me and Jay were handling the thing ourselves, we decided to split the task. He had a chance to get more creative with his impersonation of death, which I think he successfully managed to pull off. Direct references for this included Bergman's Seventh Seal, Ledger's Joker acting from Dark Knight, and the 1994 "The Crow" film. As for the main protagonist, we made the mistake of not really managing to pull off the most out of him (well, I did, since I was the actor :P). It ended being too plain and monotonous, and hence that feeling of "desperation" wasn't truly felt. But there was a nice contrast between the two which was present at some points and gave flavour to their face to face encounter. The reference for him was my own self and experiences, nothing beats that I guess (how corny!).

Jay's version of death was somehow contemporary: not to extravagant, not too stereotypical neither (we totally avoided the whole "Grim Reaper" imagery, although I do admit I was tempted to give him a scythe!), and slightly elegant. However, by doing this, we were fearing the audience would not know who this character is meant to be. Contrary to our thoughts and luckily for us, everyone who has seen the film so far has had no doubt Jay was death, something I'm very happy about.

As for my character, we gave him a ring, to help us explain the backstory he carried with him. I admit we have not succeeded in this at all, because people keep asking us what's the whole point with the ring disappearing, and why the character talks about "her" in the first place. The reason why it disappears is because it resembles how he is coming back to his own self after gaining confidence accepting his destiny of having lost the game, but without giving up on his beliefs and persona. He was brought to that game because of love...love was dragging him to death. This argument was the hardest thing to portray on a 3 minute film though, hence the incongruent result at the end.

Here are the final storyboard pages:

Once you watch the film, and follow the boards, you'll notice the almost identical scheme we followed. The main reason for this was time: we made this whole film, from preproduction to post, in only a month. We decided to have things as clear and concise as possible beforehand.

It was somehow "familiar" how some of our approaches were very similar to an animation production: workflow, staging, direction and character development. I always knew the principles of visual storytelling and cinematography are fundamentally the same, but in practicality I never had experienced it before, which was quite intriguing. I remember reading sometime about how Hitchcock used to also thing about his staging in terms of silhouettes with his characters, and would try to force a certain pose in certain shot. We unknowingly did the same thing, I think.

In the schedule we made, we allocated a week and a half for planning, two days for material gathering and scenario setup, and two days for filming, so we didn't really have time to go through a library of rushes, have dozens of takes of the same shot, and experiment a lot with camera. Our approach had to be as direct and well thought as realistically possible.

After the planning was established, our next worry was the setting...where would we shoot this? It was an experimental thing, it required a background full of void and darkness. But we couldn't think of any place we could possibly use. We ended up deciding on our garage at home (how typical) and go for a home made green-screen setup, mainly for financial reasons. We thought this would give us the flexibility to stylise our film, being such a low budget project, and would also allow us to set an appropriate world for our story to take place in, since it had such a surreal atmosphere.

But we didn't realise how hard it would actually be to properly light subjects so that silhuettes were clear enough to have a clean chroma key. Lighting is such an essential tool in film making, we unfortunately had only one light stand and a few bulbs to create our own setup (one of which blew up due to the intense heat!). Grading and color correction also were hard jobs. We wanted the "washed out", ink contrast of the recent Frank Miller's movies like 300 and Sin City, to give it a very graphic style. But the footage for it needs to be clean and well lit, which unfortunately wasn't in our case. We ended up going for a hybrid between this extreme and a "cheaper" look, leaving the noise of the HD footage of our Panasonic HDC-SD9, which most likely appeared due to our lack of knowledge in treating AVCHD native formats on a suitable editor. Apple's iMovie and Final Cut Pro seem to handle them quite well though, which is amazing. As for us (Windows users), we went with the software that came with the camera and ended up having to convert to MPG2.

Here are some comparisons between original and comped shots. Some of the lighting was truly poor, but I'll leave that to you to judge:

I'm happy with the staging and silhouette in this shot. Not keen on the lighting though, which had to fake and contrast a bit more in post. Lesson learned: lights must be good FROM THE RAW FOOTAGE!!

Seemingly easy shot to key the greenscreen from, but prooved harder due to the spilling of green on his jacket and hat...hence the noisy and grainy borders. Lesson learned: rim lights are very important for creation of successfull silhouettes.

Again, lots of green spilling on Jay's arm in this shot...hence the little transparency at the end which can be seen on the final footage. Lesson learned: always avoid green spilling by good lighting!!

This is all I can afford to write by now, more to come soon. I hope is useful to anyone out there, since this is is all from a newbie´s point of view. See you next time!!

Creature Animation Reel

2008-09-15T23:11:00.006+01:00

Managed to get some renders of the work I did from my last job. Still need to improve a hell of a lot but I'm very happy of being part of such fun project. Dinosaurs are always cool and joyfull to imagine and give life to. It was a whole different approach to animation from what I was used to normally (character based narrative, acting, cartoony stuff, etc...). Lots of video reference, patience and tight deadlines due to the nature of television production.

I definetely do feel I gained a lot of experience with this project, and from here I wanted to thank everyone in the team, who worked so damn hard to pull things off on time. I might dig more into analysing some of the pieces here, meanwhile I can only show you this edit I threw last night to keep things rolling. Hope you like it!!

Simplycg Hotpotatoe challenge

2008-08-24T11:12:00.012+01:00

Well I'm quite shocked for today's news!: I was declared runner up of the SimplyCGnetwork hot potatoe challenge (and since the winner was one of the admins and pointed that he can´t really get any prizes, he passed his over to me!!). Check the entries here at the hot potatoe challenge montage video!! You can also see my entry here.

It was definetely a lot of fun to do and an animation piece I'm quite happy about, although is very sketchy. See and judge for yourself!!

I'll definetely be pimping the super cool T-shirt that's awaiting....cheers to all at simplycg, you guys rock!!

Surpassing the uncanny valley phenomenon...

2008-08-21T19:54:00.002+01:00

This video of the CG model "Emily" has been circulating around the net for quite some time now. It caught my attention how accurate and perfect does she look like.

This just looks perfectly real to me...I don´t even have to bother with the whole idea of her being CG or not, she is just being herself....as part of the realm of "our" reality, the "human" reality...outstanding achievement I think. If this footage was cutting to another person, on a set, sitting and talking, as part of the continuity with Emily's dialogue...I'm sure it would perfectly and seamlessly fit together.

If we start to dig into the moral usage, the implications and the purpose of such creation, there would be plenty of things to spot from both the good and bad sides. Like...why would anyone want to do this instead of simply shooting footage with a camera, for eg.? But that's a whole new level of discussion I don't really want to get into. I'm just amazed at how accurate this is...a big step in the CG industry probably...or all just something gimmicky...either way, i felt it was worth putting it in this space.

Video Podcasts are great!!

2008-08-06T19:27:00.003+01:00

This whole videopodcast idea is amazing!! My brohter emailed me this link the other day, just after I had discovered the Pidgeon impossible blog... check it out:

There is tonnes more of them if you go to the author's youtube channel....funny and very usefull for amateurs like myself to get a glimpse at how your ideas are not so easy to put across as a final product...

Really cool stuff!!

PI podcast is great!!

2008-08-01T01:06:00.002+01:00

Maybe I'm the only one who's late, but luckily I've managed to come across this really cool blog from Director/Animator Lucas Martell, in which he hosts a podcast on the production of his short film "Pigeon Impossible" and keeps reporting in detail about a lot of relevant new experiences he has gone through during the years of development of his project. Is great because each video he posts is so fun to watch! Funny, clear, realistic, entertaining, and helpfull to any animation creative.

Lucas Martell, from here I'd like to thank you deeply for such a great idea of sharing your experiences with the world! I hope you keep at it as it´s really very inspiring to do this kind of thing.

Do schools kill creativity? By Ken Robinson

2008-07-19T19:45:00.002+01:00

TED.com is an awesome website...This talk I´ve linked in this post is one of the best talks I´ve ever listened to (and to be honest I´ve almost enjoyed every talk they´ve done!!)...full of funny stories, interesting facts, entertainment... and broad analysis towards the concept of creativity in general. Some really important points to take into account... (thanks to my brother Jay for the link....gracias hermanitoooooo!!)

Eyedoll animation test

2008-07-10T00:09:00.003+01:00

I've got a very simple custom rig called "Eyedoll". I wanted to do something with it for a while and just threw this little test a couple of weeks ago. It was a lot of fun to animate it.

Direct Link: click here for Quicktime movie

Please feel free to drop any comments/crits/ideas...

Jason Schleifer Interview

2008-07-07T00:18:00.001+01:00

This seems quite old and might already have been spotted by many out there but I just felt like having a link here cause it didn't seem to be mentioned at any blog so far...

From the eyes of a newbie...Martial Arts and Animation

2008-07-06T12:10:00.008+01:00

Martial arts have always been one of my interests, not directly as a practice but as a big influence in the development of my tastes. With the advent of Kung Fu Panda, I've been intrigued by how the profound meaning and methodology of these arts could be related to animation somehow. And so I went on to join some classes for a start and, I’ve got to admit, it has played a major role in the way I perceive things.

Firstly I would like to give my insights in Kung Fu Panda. Such an inspirational masterpiece... A lot of things worked so well together and every frame of that film felt like a great painting/photograph you could easily have framed on your wall. From my experience, being a CG film, sometimes this is really hard to achieve. Lots of people I’ve talked to complain about how simple and straight forward the plot is....but that for me is the greatest element of it. Such a classical approach yet innovatively well put together, with really interesting personalities and rich environments. And the choreographies were spectacular, in terms of animation, direction and composition. I've also managed to purchase the "Art of" book and the amount of planning and conceptualisation is vast and rich. Every single element, from why some of the characters are dressed the way they are, to what kind of colours certain locations should convey in order to transmit specific moods and feelings for specific scenarios...everything is so well thought out. Some tend to justify by saying that obviously a lot of talented artists were involved, and that they can afford it with their ridiculous budgets. But even though if that was the case, I believe it's not easy at all have such coordination, vision, agreement, and energy to keep going till the end. If we start being picky we could mention things like how some of the characters remained very much kept in the background of the story and were not given more relevant challenges (i.e. the furious five), or how some gags were kind of predictable and perhaps a tiny little repetitive (i.e. Po’s colloquialisms), but these didn’t bother me at all and I think is a very good example of an analogy with the concept of a hero’s journey in “The Hero with a thousand faces” by Joseph Campbell. I really love this film. I love it.

Now to the martial arts stuff. I started on some classes of "Jeet Kune Do" (JKD) last week. JKD is a martial arts philosophy and discipline invented and introduced by Bruce Lee, so is quite a modern variation of Kung Fu which doesn't deal with any of the traditional routines. From the beginning of the lessons, I instantly felt so familiar with a lot of their principles. I'll mention some of these and I bet animators will be able to draw a lot of analogies that make perfect sense:

- JKD’s fundamental core is nothing but simplicity and effectivity. Quoting the master himself: "My movements are simple, direct and non-classical. The extraordinary part of it lies in its simplicity. Every movement in Jeet Kune-Do is being so of itself. There is nothing artificial about it. I always believe that the easy way is the right way. Jeet Kune-Do is simply the direct expression of one's feelings with the minimum of movements and energy."

- JKD’s training methodology evolves to suit ones needs. You start with what everyone knows by logic: punches and kicks, body mechanics. You pass on to usage of those in practicality (combat), and how the same mechanics can be used for different variations. Then you learn the flow, how some combinations could be entries and how others could be finishing moves; how ones are peaks and others are subtle moves. Finally, you interpret these yourself and you build your own way to get by.

- The essence of JKD relies in the way you develop it's elements further, so that your JKD skills will be enhanced and richer in depth. Such elements are mainly timing, distance and position (anything familiar here fellow animators?)

- Execution of most body mechanics starts from the hips. The bigger the recoil in the root, the bigger the anticipation of the upcoming move and the stronger such move will end up being. Also tension and rigidity must be avoided in order to let ourselves loose and avoid breaking of joints and articulations, and therefore having a smoother and more fluid motion. When executing moves, you should not do them one step after the other but rather let everything flow in an overlapping sequence to develop speed.

-Last but not least, if you listen to this interview there are some key points that Bruce Lee mentioned himself that you will find, although not really innovative, quite well put together and wisely spoken:

These are just a couple of observations I really wanted to share with everyone. I’m not an expert to evaluate these from every martial art’s perspective, hence I kept it to what I’m currently doing which is JKD. But I’m sure at least some of these are applicable on every art, being traditional or modern. Martial arts were created for combat but have evolved into other major forms as well, including dance, theatre, acrobatics and many other…and for me personally, has to do with how we canalise our inherent human aggressivity in a beautiful and healthy expression…an artistic expression, with no restraint in style. And at the same time, animation is not just about how we move things about to put them in motion, but rather how we express ourselves through such art…

Wow…A bit of a philosophical post….blame Dreamworks and the awesomeness of Kung Fu Panda!!

Adventures of Mr. Coo

2008-06-22T10:15:00.003+01:00

This series of flash animations, done by Nacho Rodriguez, is amazing. All done "straight ahead", no previous planning whatsoever...just letting the spontaneity and surprise enrich the flavour of every drawing that comes out of his great talent. He has also managed to win the 1st slot at the "Cold Hard Flash's" 10 best flash shorts. You can read an interview with him here.

Here is a compilation of some episodes I could find on Youtube:

The animated survival kit

2008-06-07T21:45:00.002+01:00

I know this has already been shown at Cartoonbrew but I had to post it anyway to keep reminding to myself of how promising it looks.

Really looking forward to this. And some opinions from the brew readers are also very interesting. Some of them talk about why they're not big fans of Williams's work and they justify it with quite good reasons. Go to the post at Cartoonbrew to find out more!!

Exaggeration

2008-06-01T00:30:00.005+01:00

Recently I had the chance to go out with a couple of friends, and while having a good time, we eventually started playing a little funny and crazy mini game about...well...coming up with ways to kill yourself...and act them out to illustrate everyone else. Yeah, pretty weird I guess, but it's pure fun when you see how exaggeration plays a very important role when you try to get the message across. Surprisingly, this coincides with one of the Spline Doctors blog posts about an air guitarrist who's really into the music. I think I could perfectly identify with what Andrew Gordon said: "The fun part of pretending to be the drummer or guitarist for whatever piece of music you are listening to is how much you exaggerate what you are doing". Applying this to our suicidal play, you can start to picture various situations in a way that's entertaining to watch, not necessarily implying funny comedy....(although it did end up with lots of laughter in our case, perhaps because of our "cheesy bad acting" too!!). Some of the simple wacky ideas we acted out were:
- Pointing a gun into our mouth and pulling the trigger
- Taking pills
- Sitting on an electric chair
- Jumping off a cliff
- Seeing our other half with someone else and stabbing ourselves after being heartbroken (this was a really funny one)
- Hanging with a rope

I also wanted to share this video to illustrate my point:

The famous performance by Chaplin in "Modern Times", when we first hear his voice. What I find really amazing about Chaplin is the fact that he always acts with a context and meaning. His comedy is not cheap, is always natural, and has a purpose. And if we didn't have the element of exaggeration, I don't think it would have been as funny. What he talks is gibberish, but what he acts out is beautiful and fully understandable. He is trying to entertain the audience, the way he best can, to save his job. And does it with exaggeration and good timing too.

This one is also a great performance in my opinion...and fully relying on exageration. I would love to know who this duo is...perhaps anyone out there could let me know?

Although not apparent context or drama going on as in Chaplin's performance, this duo makes the most out of exageration to the point where they both can be compared to cartoon characters. I think, if applied to animation, these things should be taken into consideration when exagerating things...the fact that there is a purpose for it and that if it's well done, it will surely guarantee entertainment...no matter how simple the act is gonna be...

Animated people - Ben Crowe

2008-05-31T03:58:00.006+01:00

Hello world!

Well, as promised, this is finally, the Rebirth of RVG Animation blog!! I've tried to make the comeback as best as possible...and what better than having with me a top notch animator to give us some info!

I'm pleased to introduce you all to Ben Crowe, australian senior animator I've worked with for the past 6 months at Red Vision Ltd., and lead in our project. Ben's career spans over 10 years of experience in the CG industry, he has worked at many places around the world and in many fields within 3d animation (TV, games, commercials, you name it). Some of his work can be seen on his reel (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiTDPbLUnWs). Places he has worked at include Nexus, Realtime Worlds and Ambience Entertainment. Most importantly, he is a very funny guy and a brilliant actor (specially when he does Arnie's impression). So, here we go, "Animated People - Ben Crowe"...

- Hello Ben! Thank you for your time. Feel free to be yourself :P
G'day Ravi. I'm honoured. And flattered. Honatttered?

- Tell us a bit about you, how did you get into animation, your first steps climbing up the ladder, etc...?
Well... I started before 3D really took off. I was obsessed with 3D animation from the mid-80's for some reason. I used to gaze in wonder at a vase changing texture or a dodgy flying logo. Then when I finished my science degree and took a year off to work out how I could escape from my honours year and I somehow got into a course. I was the only one without an art portfolio, but luckily I can sketch ok and this was enough. That and creating good enough little animations with 3D Studio Max after a quick tutorial. It was 1996 and it'd just been released. Later that year you couldn't wipe the smile off my face in the cinema watching Toy Story. I knew I'd fallen on my feet and one of them was rammed firmly in the door.

- How would you define "animation" in one sentence, what you personally think it is.
The act of bringing life and often personality to an otherwise inanimate object by creating many images of it and thowing them at our eyes fast enough to fool them.

- What have been for you the key differences when working in animation across different mediums? TV, games, commercials...
Well, games are unique because you're using technology as it's being created, and usually having to allow for your animation to be viewed from all sides, and as a result you're having to tone down your poses to the lowest common denominator. On the plus side, games are more likely to be permanent and allow you to live outside of big cities like London. Commercials are a flurry of highest quality activity over a short time, film a long time. TV is usually belting large volumes of lower quality stuff out over a long time. There's less money in TV from what I can tell. Almost none in music videos. All the above is generalisations:)

- What's your favourite type of animation? Why?
I like 3D and I'm not really sure why. Something clicked in my brain when I was about 10 years old. I think it's something to do with how it looks so real. Having said that, now I can't stand uncanny valley style attempts at photorealism (eg polar express) and motion capture leaves me cold as a performance tool.

- What has been the character/scene you've ever had most fun with when animating? Why?
The GTA Coke Ad doing the main guy (Ray) in the last scene. I had some dance reference and in one version I animated he did a clap and a spin which got taken out because it was too camp heh heh. Great, talented people, great script, great place to work. I even liked the tune --- which was a good thing having different versions of it running through my ears for 2 months!

- To be a lead of a team of animators...how do you get to that stage? Time? Experience? Good eye? What do you consider the most important qualities to be a successful animator like yourself?
I think, in fairness, being a lead is about being organised a lot of the time. You're often required to be responsible for your team and you can't be forgetting deadlines or lipsynch checks. A couple of times it's been only about quality and helping people and those are the bits of the job I most enjoy. You also need good communication skills which doesn't come naturally to a lot of .

- What's the most common mistake you see in younger animators?
In 3D people are tempted to think they can just move a head or an arm and nothing else. This looks robotic. You can't take shortcuts with poses. That and tilting the hips the wrong way --- hips function as a spring to take strain off the knees and spine.

- Has traditional arts/performance been a big part of your learning process? what are your influences?
I've done improve theatre (Theatresports) back in Canberra which was a lot of fun. Stage acting is close to animation because you have to exaggerate to get your point across to the cheap seats;) I love watching films as well. The flight back to Oz is excellent because I just sit there catching up on it all.

- 3 favourite cartoons?
Toy Story, Lisse and the Wild Emperor (can ANYONE find me a DVD with english subtitles of this?), Akira

- Do you like Brown sauce?
Yeah I love it. We call it BBQ sauce in Oz (only for BBQ's!) and I think people use it too often here. Sometimes you just gots to trust the chef!

- Thanks a bunch for the time Ben, best wishes from here. How do you say goodbye in Australia?
No worries Ravi. Seeya later! Hooroo! ('cultural cringe')

This is it for now folks. Hope you all enjoyed the reading as much as I have enjoyed being part of the questionaire. Happy animating!!

Ravi

Getting renewed

2008-05-26T01:44:00.006+01:00

Hi to all, if you're still there :P,

I know I've been kinda "dead" all throughout this year. Life was (and still is) going too quickly because of all the fun and business. Hopefully now I will be catching up. Thanks to my new relaunched website I can feel more confident to return to write posts in my blog and keep improving my limited knowledge in animation.

Just so you all know what the situation is, I'm currently working at Red Vision, a vfx studio in Manchester (UK). To know more about my work history you can visit my Linkedin profile.

That's it for now, I won't be promising things to then disappoint people but I can assure that a post or two will come along next....Welcome back!!

Some awesome toons and silhouettes

2007-11-11T10:39:00.000Z

John Kricfalusi is just one of the greatest cartoon creatives and his demoreel stuff prooves it. Ridiculous and crazy PURE FUN. His stuff is just...awesome! Check it out here: http://www.cartoonthrills.org/demoreel/

This music video is also really good. Very stylised....cool stuff with good music as well. Is just pure fun!! "Word of Mouth" By John Reuben. Directed by Chris Oatley, with contributions of Pablo Smith (animation), Brian Campbell (clean up), Andy Friz (animation),
Lora Innes (backgrounds), Angie Oatley (clean up),
Steve Umbleby (animation), and Sam Walker (clean up).

Finally, some of the most beautiful silhouette performances I've ever seen...from the famous "Pilobolus" dancing crew.

From the eyes of a newbie...Small talk about the biz

2007-11-10T00:36:00.004Z

The world of Animation is so vast and limitless, and it's becoming even broader as time goes by. But one of the key things is the market at which is aimed at. When trying to make a living out of animation, I always think about the word "business", and this fundamental triangle comes up in my mind:

(sorry for the crappy image, it was a quick photoshop job :P)

I have to thank mr. Paul Peppiatte, creative director of VTR North (www.vtrnorth.co.uk) and lecturer at the University of Bradford (UK), who taught this concept in more extension during my final year. As far as my understanding goes, the key is to keep the balance within this triangle to obtain best results, since every element compliments each other:

- If you pursue money, you will need time and a good skill set to produce something decent and consistent.
- If you want a long piece, you will need a big budget, and good quality on your work (by quality I'm not necessarily limiting the possibilities to the technical side of things, but also to its efficiency towards the market that's aimed at).
- If you are aiming to produce good quality work, resources and time are essential.

You can have a high profile film made, with outstanding quality and lots of time to spend, but you will surely need a massive budget for it. Similarly, if you were already provided with the budget, you could surely hire a lot of talented artists to make it splendid, but your deadlines will need to be tighter. Usually in this kind of cases I think you would pay the artists based on either the man hours invested to produce the work, or the amount of work itself being produced (for animators, measured in "animation seconds"). Otherwise you will need a hell of a lot of time to finish. On the other hand, your schedule could be very short and the payment could be very tempting, but most likely the quality won't be great, since animating (or any other task) in a rush most of the time has a negative effect on the end result (I say "most of the time" cause I'm no one to fully confirm it as a fact, and there are always exceptions to the rules), the word "rush" being very relative, as you may observe by reading this old post from Keith Lango's blog: http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?p=544 .

These are just a few possibilities I came up with from my own experience, but obviously there are lots that could illustrate it better.

Some examples of "commercially" successful animation projects where this triangle has been kept balanced:
- The Incredibles: A high profile movie with ground breaking visuals, 3 to 4 years of production and massive budget, but nevertheless ended up with a worldwide gross of more than $630M...
- The Simpsons: Tonnes of episodes and entertaining stories with lots of following. As the series started to gain popularity, a growth in quality could be seen with an evolution on the drawing style and a debut on prime time TV, with a consequent increase in budget that allowed production subcontract to several studios to create most of the animation.
- Pocoyo: Visual quality and assets are simplified, saving time and money to make the series quickly but yet keeping a consistent and marvellous style.

However, when we talk about "business" we obviously talk about the stuff that makes money, and when we talk about "good animation", making money is not always present. Which is a real shame because there are so many great works out there deserving attention and remuneration (Iron Giant, Gruesomestein's monsters, Grave of the Fireflies...).

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves"...a Shakespearean quote I read in a post of thedrawingboard.org by "stingicide". People here have discussed a lot about cartoons on TV nowadays and how is all, like artist Elliot Cowan has put it, "a f*%$&·* cacophony". Society is like a modern day, consumerist, unfit and spoiled person who always wants easy fast food that, although it might taste good, it destroys your health slowly.

I better get back to work, since I´m still a newbie doing just "small talk"!!

I´m not dead...yet!!!

2007-10-31T19:50:00.000Z

Hello there everyone!! Can´t believe it, just when I was getting hold of things I had to leave this blog for an entire month! Well, this is the outcome of moving house and taking time to set up an internet connection...IT'S a NIGHTMARE!! (Apologies for that little bit of frustration).

I've been digging a bit more into 3d animation workflow, since I'm in the process of trying to get used to work the most efficient way possible. I found a video breakdown on a Shrek 3 promo video, from animator Justin Barret. Note: it's in spanish, so read the titles above to follow ;)

Also I've been working on some things, I will try to post them here as soon as I can.Meanwhile I can leave you with something that shows I've tried to keep up animating and stay on shape with the basics...don't worry I'm obviously not asking for kudos here :P

Master Williams...

2007-09-26T23:36:00.000+01:00

Many people have already seen it I bet but I just had to...I just had to post these...Richard Williams, marvellous animator, authentic master and one of the greatest contributors to teaching animation...

Some gesture drawings

2007-09-25T12:10:00.000+01:00

I've been babbling a lot lately about Animation stuff, but actually haven't shown anything from me so far. For now, I'll post some gesture drawings I did a couple of weeks ago, while at lunch time. I love it, sit there and observe people without doing any harm... a great break from the computer!

See what y'all think:

From the eyes of a newbie...What's good or bad? Part 2

2007-09-24T18:22:00.002+01:00

Questioning the old methods, the traditional ways of learning from the old school guys and coming up with different ways to enhance our creativity other than the conventional ones is always beneficial towards learning. This has been a topic I've been discussing lately, where people from different backgrounds come to the same goal at the end: animating. Bakshi talks about 2d vs 3d and mentions a very good analogy between animation and music:

"I always thought the difference between my films and the Disney ones was the difference between rock n' roll and a symphony. I love them both if the music is right."

This whole discussion adds up to my previous post, "what's good or bad". It's strange how people who come from schools get so obsessed with the medium and the workflow they adopt, and discuss a lot about it being "right" or "wrong". People like Caroline Leaf, Piotr Dumala, and Yuri Norstein have proved such constraints do not exist at all, and that as creatives we should embrace any form of expression. These personalities work in their own way because they feel comfortable creating like that, not because they were taught to do it in such way explicitly.

I think that when we start to patronize, we close doors. Both commercial and indie works can be as good. I love to hear from both sides as long as the product satisfies me. I do understand though, that big enterprises tend to spoil creative possibilities for the sake of marketing. After all, when you talk about business, audience demand is what counts... however, as many other great animators, I would love to just be free and create what I please, and enjoy it to the greatest extent. What shall the balance be? Process, or product?

There is also the aspect of "learning". This interesting read from Krickfalusi's blog states how learning to draw can be approached in a different way other than life drawing. Similarly, Keith posted the "Stick Figure Fundamentals" article where he stated that drawing is not restricted to be only done with a pencil, but you can "draw" within the medium you work on (in this particular case, 3d software), encouraging those who don't feel confident with traditional medium. It surely defies the conventions, which creates some hardcore debate between experts who have been doing it "the normal way" for years. Isn't this kinda confusing for newbies? As a beginner you will always be asking what's the best way to learn, what's the best workflow, how do you approach certain things the best way, etc...

I guess what I want to say is that I don't like to be snobby about these things...I find interesting to read opinions of people about certain mediums, what do they find lacking, what do they feel about it, but I certainly find it confusing when people talk about "succeeding in the animation industry" and, in conclusion, "what's good or bad"...

Animation from MAKE

2007-09-18T10:14:00.001+01:00

This introductory video to the "Association of Independent Commercial Producers" is just mind blowing. Some serious work has been done in this piece: style, characters, plots and subplots, entertainment, fun... definetely something worth looking at (Click on the image to watch the video).

The mixture of CGI with the cut-out style, dirty textures, odd characters (animals, humans and anthropomorphic altogether!) and toony animation works really well in my opinion.

Animation Painter: Alexandr Petrov

2007-09-14T18:08:00.000+01:00

Alexander Petrov is a unique animator whose style defines his works. Sounds cliché but its absolutely true in this particular case. His work is purely defined by his stylistic approach and the way he puts together the visuals to tell his stories.

He reminds me of old school Romantic painters, who portrayed nature and life as faithfully as they could with their own subjective touch. Having a look at Wikipedia, I found this quite interesting definition:

"People, animals and landscapes are painted and animated in a very realistic fashion, but there are many sections in his films where Petrov attempts to depict a character's inner thoughts and dreams."

I personally think this is very, very difficult. But Petrov has manages to pull it off beautifully in his work. I recall my brother Jay telling me about Hemingway's "Old man and the sea" and how simple the book's plot was, yet it immersed the reader with the main character's inner thoughts so well that you would actually be reading his mind. To do such thing in animation would be a great challenge, an ambitious idea.

Petrov animates using glass as canvas, and likes to focus on real people. By focusing on real entities through traditional media, he recreates a reality of his own that audiences can easily empathise with since it shares the essence from our world too.

My favourite of his works is "The old man and the sea". The beautiful colours and illustrative quality of each and every frame is just like any of Goya or Delacroix's paintings:

Alexander if you ever happen to read this blog (which i doubt) I would really like to thank you for the inspiration and the innovative approach to animation that you have shown us all these years. Cheers!

Animation....what an inmense world of variety and colors!

2007-09-11T00:29:00.000+01:00

Some great examples to show what I meant by my question of "What is good or bad?" in Animation (read my previous post on this subject here:).
Not all of them might be popular, and some are even rare, which adds up to the interest.

We've got (from the many, many different approaches you can think of):

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- Classical 2D Musicals:

- Cartoons (Warner Bros, MGM, Hanna Barbera, Tex Avery...):

- Stylised 2D Hand Drawn Animation:

(Thanks to http://dwerf.wordpress.com for the link).

- Claymation Fun:

- 3D (Games, TV Series, Commercials, Films... ):

- Experimental (Regardless of medium):

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With this showcase I have not pretended to create some kind of classification. I just wanted to show a hint to the vast amount of possibilities that are out there, a sample of the many ways to express yourself through this artform. Like director Brad Bird says, "(...) people keep saying, `The animation genre.´ It's not a genre! A Western is a genre! Animation is an art form, and it can do any genre."

More stuff to come later on folks ;)

Taking a break at work...

2007-09-07T17:34:00.000+01:00

Just a quick test I did when took a break from work...

interesting thing was to play with the timings and get different feelings from it

About motion capture...

2007-09-06T22:57:00.000+01:00

This article is worth reading, for those who wanna start the usual "mocap vs keyframe" animation debate.
http://animatedfilms.suite101.com/article.cfm/is_motion_capture_animation

Quite old but interesting nevertheless. Also great animator Michael Sporn commented on this issue back in January, with a lot of interesting points to clarify how motion capture can differ considerably from rotoscopy: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/?p=935

For me, as an animator who uses the classic principles of animation from Walt Disney on his works and adopts the classical style, I would say that Motion Capture could be good as a source of reference to work with, but I personally don't like it when the basis of the animated element consists of mocap data and then everything else is fleshed out "from it". This is clearly explained by Michael Sporn in his Splog:

The “animators” have become interchangeable and almost irrelevant.
You aren’t able to define anyone’s animation style behind any of Tom Hanks’ characters in Polar Express. You can only see Tom Hanks or Savion Glover in Happy Feet.

That's exactly what I mean. In Rotoscopy, you are able to appreciate the animators work because the drawings (or any way the animator would express himself) would showcase more the creativity of the artist than the live actors recorded performance. The creativity of the artist becomes the essence. But with characters like "DJ" from Monster House or "Santa Claus" from Polar Express the essence comes from the recorded live actors' acting and not the "drawings" of such characters in motion.

I do not think that Motion Capture is gonna kill keyframe animation and that is something "bad". Is just another "tool" that I'm barely familiar with and I've never had an interest in, seeing the results from other animation projects where it has been used. I admit I don't completely dislike it, and the main reason behind my openness towards it is the beautifully pulled off character of Gollum in the Lord Of The Rings movie Trilogy by Dir. Peter Jackson. I've never quite understood how Weta Digital really gave life to Gollum: some say it was purely Andy Serkis's performance that drove the character; others say that motion capture was used as the basis to flesh out keyframed animation from; and a few out there, the ones I would like to agree with the most, mentioned how mocap data was recorded "just as reference" and that talented animators created content from scratch. This would consequently support Sporn' views towards motion capture not being able "to help give the character a soul".

VFXWorld.com talks about "keyframe animators mimicking Andy Serkis’ movements" (http://vfxworld.com/?sa=adv&code=1e242f07&atype=articles&id=1974&page=2). I'm dying to know what do they mean by "mimicking" and "rotomation". I might be talking to the void here but if anyone out there could clarify this for me I would be very grateful!!

From the eyes of a newbie...What's good or bad?

2007-09-05T23:32:00.003+01:00

I'm gonna start to write some personal views on the world of animation, and talk a bit about myself and the experiences I'm going through (good or bad, who knows), within this context.

It would make sense to say that every person is a different world. Animation encompasses such a huge array of methods and ideas that each and every single "animator" can have it's own perception of things, making this popular statement even more evident. This might be why in order to be "good" you should adopt a "habit of knowing" (Eric Larson on "Our work habits"). I assume this is common in every single art form, but animation somehow is enriched even more by the combination with all other ways of expression like drawing, painting, sculpting, music, dancing, acting, acrobatics,... It doesn't go away from being another medium to "express", but at the same time is even broader and has a deeper effect, its disadvantage being that is harder and more time consuming to create.

Which at the same time makes it even more difficult to criticise. What are the judgement criterias when we talk about "good" or "bad" animation? Is it about "the torso needs to be rotated on the right position and moving the arms a bit higher can give a balanced pose with good arcs", or is it simply about having success at giving an emotional message to the audience? Is it about expressing yourself the best way you can, or approaching certain techniques and styles for the sake of matching a designated "look"? Maybe in something like "South Park" you wont need to apply the "12 principles of animation" from Walt Disney but it certainly is animation because it's visual content being "created" and brought to life on its own way, faithfully delivering emotional effect.

Another element to consider is the bias towards a medium, an example of this being my self claim as a "3d Character Animator". The initial reason behind calling myself like this was because basically my foundation in animation has closely been attached to the Computer Graphics Imagery tools, and I'm very familiar with it since most of my portfolio of work consists of "3d" animations, being able narrow down the market in which I wanted to focus on to get jobs. However I do not consider myself being dependent on the CGI toolsets if I want to "do animation", because the principles and processes are shared within every medium, and that's what I'm trying to do as an animator: to create based on such principles. So I guess is something vital I've realised now, that I should rectify once I update my portfolio of work.

To conclude this post, I would like to share a link with all of you out there who bother reading my blog, where you can appreciate some really unique animation work, not mainstream at all, and that is amazing and worth knowing about: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.2/3.2pages/3.2student.html

Who doesn't like Anime style fights?

2007-09-05T22:36:00.000+01:00

Students Matthieu Bessudo, Douglas Lassance and Jonathan Vuillemin from Supinfocom School of France have made this short film that resembles classic japanese animation style action to the max...interesting element of it being that is completely in CG! Now you might be thinking that is something that has been done before (Appleseed, Final Fantasy Advent Children?) but this reeeeally resembles "classic" old school anime action and in my personal opinion it has been transferred quite well! Which is unique on its own way. When I mention "classic anime action" I refer to the style common in martial arts based Anime series like Dragon Ball, Ranma 1/2, Saint Seiya, Fist of the North Star...what kid who grew up on on the 90's is not familiar with Son Gokuh?

Very cool stuff indeed, check it out:

Animator Parkour!

2007-09-05T19:31:00.000+01:00

What an innovative way to approach animation. This is very intriguing stuff, from great masters like Jason Schleiffer.

I had never seen it before although apparently it has been out there for a year now. Pretty cool!

PS: Forgot to say....FUNNY AS HELL!!! lol

Strutyourreel August 2007 entry experiments 2

2007-09-02T17:30:00.000+01:00

Managed to have some free time and decided to move on with this piece. Yeah yeah I know, the character is totally different (before it was a bulky guy, now I'm using a slim character), but I couldn't really find any character suitable for this so I grabbed a free rig from highend3d.com (this rig is "Max for Maya" and can be downloaded here: Max for Maya Download Link ).

In the audio track itself the voice seems very hyperactive sometimes, but I gotta watch out for too many drastic "ups and downs". There is still work left to do on arms, fingers, clavicles, torso and facial features, since it's just the 1st pass of my blocking stage. Some breakdowns have been added just to get a better sense of things but nothing much yet. Literally I've translated all my thumbnailing into 3d and that's about it, so a loooot of polishing is awaiting. Gonna try and experiment a lot more during the blocking, and try to "draw" more solid poses within the 3d package before jumping into timing. Keith Lango's latest post ( http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?p=690 )
has inspired me a lot to do this.

I'm having lots of fun though and it's a shame the submission period for this entry to the Strutyourreel website has ended.

Backkom

2007-09-02T13:20:00.000+01:00

This grey bear has made me crack up with every single episode. RG Animation Studios (http://www.rgstudios.com), based in Korea, has surely done a great job with this character. Of course I must admit, the format and style of the series has been done before. The comedy and timing are, in my personal opinion, very well performed and the acting choices on some of the animations are brilliant.

There are a few of them posted on youtube. Also you can watch samples here: http://mugtravel.ohpy.com/

Life in Transition

2007-08-31T10:19:00.000+01:00

Oh this is sooo good!! I know, two posts in a row, but i just had to put this in my blog cause I really love this piece and I just remembered to show you now...

"Life in Transition", a short film by John Dilworth. Surrealism and animation....at its best!! :D

Heavenly Sword and some other things

2007-08-31T09:52:00.000+01:00

Last night I was watching the episodes of the new "Heavenly Sword" animated series (http://www.heavenlysword.com/). I haven't played the game or have any idea of the story background, but in terms of animation I would say it's has very stylised visuals. The fine art feel to it is present, with the animation seeming to be a blend of cut-out and 2D drawings moved in 3D space. It also seems very dark and dramatic, which I both like. Overall looks quite promising!

Check the latest episode here:

As for other stuff, I just wanted to express my dislike towards extreme patriotism through my artwork, and recollected this piece from my latest sketchpad. I've always disagreed with mandatory military service, and embracing a whole country's ideals through actions that you are not keen on, but your authorities force you to do. The way I'd really see the Lord Kitchener and Uncle Sam's propaganda would be something like this:

Anyway enough of my political garbage. Here I post some other doodles of what I thought could be cool characters if developed further.

Strutyourreel August 2007 entry experiments

2007-08-27T23:43:00.000+01:00

Hello ppl!! Just experimenting with some ideas for the animation contest at Strutyourreel forums. Very loose, done after thinking a few acting approaches. Never have the time to really polish this piece as much as I would like to but hopefully I will manage to get it done some day:

The dialogue is from Ed Wood(1994) by Tim Burton. Johnny Depp speaks as Ed Wood:
"Are you people insane! I'm the director, I make the casting decisions around here!"

Working with this blog

2007-08-27T03:04:00.001+01:00

Its 3.00 am. here and I'm still having fun with my blog...lol

I'm trying to figure out how to make all the cool features work. So now I'm gonna post a vid of my work for you to check. It's my Animation Demoreel 2007 (Latest up till now). Hope y'all like it ;)

...and this is my "Technical Showreel" where I show my overall skills and not just Animation specific: