Richard Williams Lecture

So Asifa-Sf brought Richard Williams of Animator's Survival Kit fame in to do a talk, and I just got back. Basically it was clips from his new DVD and Q&A's. Here's my notes
(the DVD looks like it's really just his book in video form for people who learn better from video then reading, looks like it's his seminar, and every drawing in his book animated out)

Someone asked what will it take to get animated films out of the children's movie ghetto:
First the moderator mentioned Bill Plympton, Persepolis, and Waltz with Bashir as examples of animated films that are already there.
Dick said that you just have to do it. The golden rule being "he who has the gold makes the rules" so the big companies are just going to keep pumping out the kids movies because they know that's what's going to sell. So you have to do it yourself if you want animation to approach another genre. Which is what Dick is doing himself, right now, working on a project that he has wanted to do for 50 years but never felt like he had the skill to accomplish until now (this is why he's released the DVD set, to fund his film)
(this all reminds me of the Ralph Bakshi talk at comic con this year, that spawned 2 threads on CGTalk about being an independent movie maker.)

On lip synch:
Be sure that you get flexibility in the face
Pop the vowels
Think of your phrasing, don't articulate every sound, basically choose a few key poses for the words hold them longest and transition quick between them.
The secret from Milt Kahl (just like in the book p314) "That muppet man, he's a genius, because he has realized what no other puppeteer has realized before him. He is progressing the action, when that frog is talking he is going somewhere, he's going forwards, back, sideways, up, down, in, out whatever, he's going somewhere. And he does better then our god damn lazy bastards with all our knowledge and ability, he understands progression. "(this had always confused me (Alonso) in the book, and talking with animator's everyone had always had a different theory of what he meant, but hearing him tonight I'm pretty sure that Dick just means moving the speaker around, physically moving the character from one spot to a new spot of ground, as opposed to just having a talking head staying still on the screen just saying the lines. Going a step beyond Dick, I think the real secret is just having the character doing something, so rarely in real life do we just stand still, look directly at someone, and make pronouncements (only when the stakes are really emotionally high) usually we're doing something else (fixing a bike while we talk, doodling, or just looking around the cafe and sipping a drink while darting glances back at our listener) or the animation classic (getting ready for bed and removing false eye lashes)

Dick told a story about Dick Huemer (I think) a top man at Fleischer studios, the New York studio that was king of cartoons, Disney kept trying to get Huemer to come over to his studio, but Huemer was the best at the best, but he noticed how Disney's stuff was getting better and better, as if Disney had a secret weapon. Eventually when Huemer did go over he discovered Disney Studio's secret weapon was attention to detail.

The brief for Roger Rabbit was to design the characters to look like Warner Brothers characters, move with Disney articulation, and have the humor of Tex Avery (though not as cruel)

If you are researching other animator's (as Dick was researching for Roger Rabbit) it's very easy to be ruthless with what you like and what you don't. When you're working on your own stuff, when you're being creative, it's very hard to "kill your babies". So in a way it's easier when you're working for a client and their brief. When Chuck Jones worked on his own stuff, he would make a brief, and then he would hold to it as if it were the bible, to give himself boundaries and trick himself into being ruthless with his own stuff.

Dick talked about how Disney had tried rotoscoping for Snow White. If you film a woman walking across the stage, and have a top illustrator trace it perfectly, the result will float (or have very little weight). So the animator has to add a little invention, push it a little further, exaggerate, to make it feel right. If Rembrandt were to do a drawing of you, it would be better then a photograph due to the invention he adds to it. We're not just duplicating reality, we're editing it, improving it (otherwise, just take a photograph).

Dick was asked where he thinks CG should go. He said if he were working CG he would be interested in exploring how far you could push things so that you feel them but don't see them. This was one of the things he went over tonight, the invisible inbetween, the 1 or 2 frames of anticipation that goes in the opposite direction, just enough to give the feeling of snap to the motion but not enough to be visually seen. (p283-284 stuff)

Dick was asked about using video reference. He said that live action reference and mirror's are useful but he tends not to use them because he doesn't want to use himself, he wants to emphasize the difference in the character, he doesn't want all the character's to move like he does. The master's of our art observed everything, crib notes from everywhere, observe all day long and file things away in your mind to use in some future scene. He said that once Milt Kahl finished 101 Dalmatians he said that he regretted studying Dalmatians because he could have done it better himself (been more inventive before having absorbed the reference) but that's because Milt Kahl had studied live action reference for the past 30 years, so just because Milt says don't use reference doesn't mean to not study it, DO study it, just don't let it become a crutch or a barrier.

Someone asked for advice on starting a studio:
Dick said: Don't do it :) He said that when his studio was small, 15-30 people, it was marvelous, there was collaboration and healthy competition, you could try stuff and experiment and improve. But when it got huge, the bigger it got the worse it got. He became a wage slave, he was the slave who had to pay the wages. The problem is is that Dick wants to be an artist but to run a studio you have to be the business man (so you don't get to do any art) or hire someone else to be the business man (who's going to hire idiot's and make dumb decisions) you can't do everything. The rabbit picture save him, when he got it, all the bad people fled when they saw it coming, and he knew that once it was done Disney and the other big studio was going to take all the good people, so Dick was free. The 9 old men said that Disney was an artist, the greatest actor of all of them, and that his brother was the business man. So best if you can get family you trust to be the business man so you can stay the artist.

What's his thoughts 2D vs 3D? Dick says that he thinks that 3D is a different thing, it is not an evolution/improvement from 2D, just different. Different animals.
2D is scribbling
3D is high tech marionettes

Dick said that he had to throw something about eyes into his book, because the Disney guys go on and on and on about them. So he made up a quick little page and ate up space with a border of eyes. (p. 326) In his new DVD's he animated them, changing from one pair to the next. On a blink you should move the pupil down with the lid, as if the lid where heavy and pushing it down. The pupil should distend the shape of the eye when it is near the edge (distend it subtly if it's meant to be realistic)

Dick was asked what he thought about mo-cap:
Gollum was the best thing in the whole picture, but it was astounding because it was surrounded by live action. Basically it was like Roger Rabbit.
And as for Polar Express (*audience laughter) ... I don't need to say anything, so I don't want to say anything ;)
(I have heard from a few animator's that the PR department played up the technology a lot trying to get another Oscar for the film, for Andy Serkis, but in fact the "mo-cap" was heavily tweaked (so much that often it was more of video reference then actual "performance capture" and that at least on the first film there was no mo-cap on the face, so all that brilliant acting was brought by the animator's, not just Serkis, and certainly not by the caterer's who appear 4 screens earlier then the animator's in the credits.
Just saying, I'd like to compare the live-action footage of the mo-cap to the mo-cap data and the final scene)

Asked what he does when frustrated:
He doesn't get frustrated because he does a lot of research.

The secret to animating dance is, if you can get the body going up and down on the beat, then you can do practically anything with the legs and it will work.

In his book he talks about getting more "acting within action, movement within movement, more change" which is basically the animated shape changing to a contrasting shape at the same spot on the screen (i.e. the long skinny falling ball contacting the ground and the next frame it's contrasting shape of it squashed flat in the same spot on the ground)so I asked him "why do we want this"
Dick says: Shows like the Simpson's are dialogue driven, talking to Matt Groening his biggest concern is where to put the characters on the screen. But the other kind of animation, the florid stuff, that's what the change is for, you can't help but watch that kind of animation, it grabs you by the throat, it's compulsive viewing (I think James Baxter's animation for Enchanted is probably an excellent example of this, it just flows and it's such a joy to watch.) Dick likes SouthPark, but he said that when they hire a Disney guy you can see them starting to get a little more flow-y, and suddenly it's not funny, it needs the crude animation to work. So if you can get the big Change then you are free to work in whatever style you want.

When would be the best time to be alive as an animator?
Right now. It's exploded everywhere and there's more money so you can actually raise a family on it. And with current technology you can do a scene and then shoot it and see if it works right away. So Now is the Time!

and here's some Youtube fun (I notice the page gets really slow when I embed them, so I'll just do links)

Documentary on him about Roger Rabbit

Thief and the Cobbler (his personal movie that Disney raped, theoretically this one was redone the way he intended

Christmas Carol Short (got an oscar on this one too)
another Documentary, this ones longer

And this is a blog by people who worked on the Thief and the Cobbler I think