Inside the Mind of Jaws & The Art Spirit

Been awhile! School is coming down to it's final months and it's an amazing time. I feel a bit like Heimlich from A Bug's Life. Chubby yet Bubbly.



CTN is rolling around the corner and I'm extremely excited to soak all of the knowledge that'll be exploding in Burbank. It'll be nice to just get away for a few days as well :)

So I came across this Panel that the DGA hosted honoring Steven Spielberg. JJ Abrams and James Cameron chatting along with him. Any aspiring filmmaker would geek out about the behind the scenes stuff he shares on stage. The panel lasts almost 2 hours long and is broken into clips, but the full coverage is on the top left of the little images they show.

DGA Tribute to Steven Spielberg

On top of videos like that (CTN Vimeo has such great stuff!), I've also been piling up my book collection. A friend of mine at Animation Mentor had a substitute come in for his weekly Q&A. The sub was none other than James Chiang - an all-seeing animator who has worked along-side with and even trained some of the best in the business. Marshall shared his notes from that class with me and in the Q&A James mentions a book called The Art Spirit by Robert Henri. The book is coming in the mail today and I'm excited because I hear nothing but good things about it. "A constant ever-lasting source if inspiration". Sounds awesome to me haha. I've got a lot of other books to go through, but I'll mention them when I've actually read through them.

Happy animating / art-making out there.

Old and New

After the much appreciated break we've been diving back into the 1-Person dialogue shot again. My mentor Greg Kyle has opened my eyes to a lot of problems with the shot I didn't realize existed at the time. Looking back at the old shot and comparing it to what it is now... I can only say: What was I thinking?!

Old:



This was with a few notes added from various folks. New hand gesture on the "I dunno" (thanks Drew!) and a couple of tweaks here and there. What I didn't realize was just how watery everything was. At the time I thought this was snappy. Greg did not.

New:



With added facial animation here. I still think there are bits that I could speed up, but because the animation had become so convoluted there were a couple of areas where it would have been a ton of trouble to shave just a single frame. Learned a lot from these past 3 weeks though. I have to go in and polish this now, but the jist of the assignment is pretty set. Hope to bring this new-found sense into the next assignment :)

Thanks to the plethora of teachers, students, and friends that helped me with this shot.

A Moment to Breathe

Can't believe another class is over. Class 3 to 4 was the hardest transition since it rolled from one class right into the next. It was tough to delve that quickly into acting and I think everyone felt that. Never-the-less, here's the current progress reel. I just realized I didn't put up any shots of my Class 3 stuff. All is included here in all of it's unfinished playblast glory:



This animjam (Class 3 work) will always hold a special place in my heart because I was taught so many lessons while going through it. By the end of the first shot I was planning to toss the idea out the window, but a quick pep talk by my buddy Mike showed me that the idea was limitless. I tried IK hands on that for the first time, I tried stretching into the more stylized animation, and even added a smear frame in there haha. It was tons of fun. The last lesson I learned from it is to put yourself out there. When we were finishing the last shot of Class 3 up, the AM showcase was taking submissions and because of my personal gripes with the shot I chose not to submit what I felt to be my most successful shot up to that point. Though the chances were very slim anyway, I'll always be left wondering "what if".

But I'm glad that happened. Now I know I won't put myself in that situation again as I move on.

The acting shots were really hard to do. That pantomime shot especially. We'll be going into the facial animation in the next class, but for now I'm just looking forward to taking a breather. What a rewarding class though, just learning about how people work has been such a highlight of Class 4. And I don't think this path of education is going to ever stop. I wouldn't have it any other way :)

Blueprints / Fear of Failure

An AM alumni by the name of Kelly Perez gave us a lecture / demo of herself planning a shot the other night and it was almost ridiculous how deep she went into each aspect of the shot. She posted the process over on this blog that covers her weekly Q&A stuff:

Kelly Perez - The Animation School Bus

I thought I broke down my reference and planned out my current shot pretty well - but when I was exposed to this, it really showed me just how slack I am at planning. I had a good basis, but I didn't know EXACTLY what I was going to do before I went into Maya. There will always be room to tweak things while you're animating, but having a clear plan first and not just "holds this pose for 24 frames" will save you headaches. In the end I had to improvise a few things that wasted a lot of time, but I'll definitely be taking this with me to the next assignment. And if you're reading this Jero, this goes for your walk cycles too! :)

Check out some of the other topics posted on Kelly's blog as well - very good info there. And congrats to her for nabbing an internship at LAIKA.



Quick switch of topics here, but the fear of failure has been a reoccurring theme I've been seeing lately. Fear is a really nasty thing. Generally you'd want to avoid doing something because it's dangerous. But in animation, what's the worst that could happen? Maybe being new to animation gave me the luxury of not being attached to a specific workflow or have any preconceptions of what animation is / was. I came into this world knowing nothing and was a metaphorical sponge - just soaking up whatever came my way. But especially now, going through with my current assignment, I think we shouldn't fear "fear". With a slight change of perspective you can quickly turn it into a positive.



I've been hit with this many times during my time at AM so far and I look back just a short 3 months ago and see how silly I was. Fear is something that should be welcomed. If you're afraid to tackle something, it's probably because you don't know how to yet... and if you don't know how to yet - then you're going to learn! It's a surefire thing that even if you come out with a total failure of a shot, you'll learn something. The key is to know when you're stuck and search for the answers whether it be on your own or with help from someone else (and this is why we have mentors!).

Don't be afraid to try new suggestions, new methods, new styles. Use common sense of course, you don't have to try EVERY suggestion that comes your way, but if there is a decent reason for it - just be open to giving it a shot. Embrace failure, it will always lead to you becoming a stronger animator. Don't let fear cheat you out of the learning process.

Put a Lid on that Iris

Last week I learned a very fascinating fact about eyes and I haven't been able to stop looking at eyelids since.

When looking at eyes, generally the upper eyelid will keep in contact with the iris. Unless you're going for a specific expression; frightened, crazy, disgusted, dopey and hopeful etc. Something where the eyes are locked to a target (usually angled down) and the brows are pulling up, taking the lids for a ride.



Otherwise, in most cases you won't likely see any white of the eyes above the iris.



Now this might seem trivial, but it's just an extra step in giving the audience something they can relate to... even if they don't know they're relating to it. A step towards believability. Personally though I find this a very important aspect to be aware of, since the viewer pays attention to and connects with the eyes the most. Even more so at AM since we're dealing with a character that has such huge eyes.

Kevin Koch's Article on Saccades / Fixations

Check out the video at the top of this page and see the eyelid moving in sync with the eye darts (actually everyone should read all of Kevin's stuff about eyes, he's got a few articles that focuses just on eye movements). One interesting bit is that when the eye moves at the very end, the eyelid reacts pretty accurately to maintain it's relationship to the iris. There's sometimes a frame of drag or overshoot, but they're pretty spot on.

I've never taken that close a look at this before and when I heard about it (source being my Class 1 mentor David Weatherly, relayed by my study mate Michael Amos), I went around looking at AM assignments and animation at the 11 second club, the white bug eyes are rampant. So go study some eyes, read Kevin's articles, and infuse that gold into your animation!