Review of The Mist over at James Hull's StoryFanatic
"
When you only show one side of the argument and leave other parts out, you are essentially engaging in propaganda. Audiences will have a hard time buying it.
It’s easier to convince someone if you show both sides of an issue
By showing both the positive and negative aspects of an issue you build up in the audience a sum total of where the author stands. You show good, then you show some bad, and then maybe some more bad, and then maybe another touch of good, and then end with a big heaping pile of bad. In this way the audience themselves are responsible for the final step in appreciating the meaning of a story by adding all the negatives and positives together and arriving at a conclusion. You have then effectively communicated your message without beating them over the head. It’s far more easier to convince someone of your argument when you present them both sides of the issue. "
Of course you're the writer, nothing to stop you from using a straw man.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The Other Blog
Hey to anyone who reads this blog :)
I've been invited to be a contributer over at the Animation Resource Center which is very flattering since I still feel pretty wet behind the ears (but of course I'll probably always feel like that)
So if you're curious about what thoughts I have on improving your animation, I'll be posting over there occasionally.
And I'll continue to use this blog to collect notes and ideas I run across as I continue on this lifelong learning path.
Keep on keyframin'
I've been invited to be a contributer over at the Animation Resource Center which is very flattering since I still feel pretty wet behind the ears (but of course I'll probably always feel like that)
So if you're curious about what thoughts I have on improving your animation, I'll be posting over there occasionally.
And I'll continue to use this blog to collect notes and ideas I run across as I continue on this lifelong learning path.
Keep on keyframin'
Monday, April 27, 2009
Kenny Roy acting dialogue
Kenny Roy has a nice breakdown of animating dialogue (come to think of it, I think I learned these ideas from him in the first place) decent read.
never ‘give away’ a spontaneous idea with a motion, and to never miss foreshadowing a complete thought with an anticipated gesture.
never ‘give away’ a spontaneous idea with a motion, and to never miss foreshadowing a complete thought with an anticipated gesture.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Damnation: level design through concept art
Damnation game, supposed to be Prince of Persia married to Gears of War. It's interesting they talk about wanting a lot of verticality in their level design and so they found the best way to design the levels was taking the concept art and drawing the path on top of it of where they would want the player to go and how they would want the player to get there.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Htichcock film techniques
tracked down someone's summary of Hitchcock's techniques.
Film Techniques of Hitchcock
STEP 1: Change everything in your screenplay so that it is done for the audience.
Nothing is more important than how each scene is going to affect the viewer.
STEP 2: Frame for Emotion
Emotion (in the form of fear, laughter, surprise, sadness, anger, boredom, etc.) is the ultimate goal of each scene. The first consideration of where to place the camera should involve knowing what emotion you want the audience to experience at that particular time. Emotion comes directly from the actor's eyes. You can control the intensity of that emotion by placing the camera close or far away from those eyes. A close-up will fill the screen with emotion, and pulling away to a wide angle shot will dissipate that emotion. A sudden cut from wide to close-up will give the audience a sudden surprise.Hitchcock used this theory of proximity to plan out each scene. These varations are a way of controlling when the audience feels intensity, or relaxation.
STEP 3: Camera should act like a human looking
This goes back to Hitchcock's beginnings in silent film. Without sound, filmmakers had to create ways to tell the story visually in a succession of images and ideas.
STEP 4: Dialogue Means Nothing
The focus of the scene should never be on what the characters are actually saying. {more on what they are NOT saying} Have something else going on. Resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise.
STEP 5: Point of View Editing
Putting an idea into the mind of the character without explaining it in dialogue is done by using a point-of-view shot sequence. This is subjective cinema.
STEP 6: Montage Gives You Control
STEP 7: Keep the Story Simple!
Each scene should include only those essential ingredients that make things gripping for the audience. As Hitchcock says, “what is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out…”
STEP 8: Characters Must Break Cliché
Make all of your characters the exact opposite of what the audience expects in a movie. They should have unexpected personalities, making decisions on a whim rather than what previous buildup would suggest. These sort of ironic characters make them more realistic to the audience, and much more ripe for something to happen to them.
STEP 9: Use Humor to Add Tension
STEP 10: Two Things Happening at Once
The 2nd thing is just to get in the way and build tension on the main business. The end result is - the audience pays more attention to what's happening.
STEP 11: Suspense is Information
STEP 12: Surprise and Twist
Once you've built your audience into gripping suspense it must never end the way they expect.
STEP 13: Warning: May Cause MacGuffin
When scenes are built around dramatic tension, it doesn’t really matter what the story is about.
How to use Hitchcock's humor
1. Exploit trivial character traits
“I’ve always found that, in a moment of crisis a person invariably does something trivial," said Hitchcock, "like making a cup of tea or lighting up a cigarette. A small detail of this sort adds considerably to the dramatic tension of the situation.” The more awkward and drawn out these details are, the better.
2. Create situations of irony
He built his stories around ironic situations. He liked to play practical jokes on the characters, putting them through the worst possible things that could go wrong.
3. Surround drama with a happy setting
Hitchcock believed that in order for drama to be strong it must be surrounded by a light and humorous environment.
4. Include a burlesque character
5. Balance laugh and tension
Hitchcock used a delicate combination of tension and relief in his suspense sequences. Often a laugh was inserted at a key point to release some tension. "...when you have comic relief, it's important that the hero as well as the audience be relieved," said Hitchcock. This assures that the audience maintains sympathy for the character.
Hitchcock as an Auteur
From his beginnings in silent films, Hitchcock believed that a story must be told in visuals. Dialogue must only be used when necessary. Many of his scenes begin by showing objects in the room, panning to each one in sequence. The story is revealed without dialogue. Even though he is known for odd camera shots, the majority of the time in his films is composed of normal camera techniques. He begins with this predictable style of edits so the audience won’t notice the camera, and then he waits for the right moment to add an odd visual technique to heighten that moment for the audience.
Film Techniques of Hitchcock
STEP 1: Change everything in your screenplay so that it is done for the audience.
Nothing is more important than how each scene is going to affect the viewer.
STEP 2: Frame for Emotion
Emotion (in the form of fear, laughter, surprise, sadness, anger, boredom, etc.) is the ultimate goal of each scene. The first consideration of where to place the camera should involve knowing what emotion you want the audience to experience at that particular time. Emotion comes directly from the actor's eyes. You can control the intensity of that emotion by placing the camera close or far away from those eyes. A close-up will fill the screen with emotion, and pulling away to a wide angle shot will dissipate that emotion. A sudden cut from wide to close-up will give the audience a sudden surprise.Hitchcock used this theory of proximity to plan out each scene. These varations are a way of controlling when the audience feels intensity, or relaxation.
STEP 3: Camera should act like a human looking
This goes back to Hitchcock's beginnings in silent film. Without sound, filmmakers had to create ways to tell the story visually in a succession of images and ideas.
STEP 4: Dialogue Means Nothing
The focus of the scene should never be on what the characters are actually saying. {more on what they are NOT saying} Have something else going on. Resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise.
STEP 5: Point of View Editing
Putting an idea into the mind of the character without explaining it in dialogue is done by using a point-of-view shot sequence. This is subjective cinema.
STEP 6: Montage Gives You Control
STEP 7: Keep the Story Simple!
Each scene should include only those essential ingredients that make things gripping for the audience. As Hitchcock says, “what is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out…”
STEP 8: Characters Must Break Cliché
Make all of your characters the exact opposite of what the audience expects in a movie. They should have unexpected personalities, making decisions on a whim rather than what previous buildup would suggest. These sort of ironic characters make them more realistic to the audience, and much more ripe for something to happen to them.
STEP 9: Use Humor to Add Tension
STEP 10: Two Things Happening at Once
The 2nd thing is just to get in the way and build tension on the main business. The end result is - the audience pays more attention to what's happening.
STEP 11: Suspense is Information
STEP 12: Surprise and Twist
Once you've built your audience into gripping suspense it must never end the way they expect.
STEP 13: Warning: May Cause MacGuffin
When scenes are built around dramatic tension, it doesn’t really matter what the story is about.
How to use Hitchcock's humor
1. Exploit trivial character traits
“I’ve always found that, in a moment of crisis a person invariably does something trivial," said Hitchcock, "like making a cup of tea or lighting up a cigarette. A small detail of this sort adds considerably to the dramatic tension of the situation.” The more awkward and drawn out these details are, the better.
2. Create situations of irony
He built his stories around ironic situations. He liked to play practical jokes on the characters, putting them through the worst possible things that could go wrong.
3. Surround drama with a happy setting
Hitchcock believed that in order for drama to be strong it must be surrounded by a light and humorous environment.
4. Include a burlesque character
5. Balance laugh and tension
Hitchcock used a delicate combination of tension and relief in his suspense sequences. Often a laugh was inserted at a key point to release some tension. "...when you have comic relief, it's important that the hero as well as the audience be relieved," said Hitchcock. This assures that the audience maintains sympathy for the character.
Hitchcock as an Auteur
From his beginnings in silent films, Hitchcock believed that a story must be told in visuals. Dialogue must only be used when necessary. Many of his scenes begin by showing objects in the room, panning to each one in sequence. The story is revealed without dialogue. Even though he is known for odd camera shots, the majority of the time in his films is composed of normal camera techniques. He begins with this predictable style of edits so the audience won’t notice the camera, and then he waits for the right moment to add an odd visual technique to heighten that moment for the audience.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Caricature Tutorial
Tom Richard artist for Mad magazine, posted tutorials on caricaturing
The five shapes
relating the features
head shapes
drawing eyes
found by Cartoon Retro
The five shapes
relating the features
head shapes
drawing eyes
found by Cartoon Retro
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
11sec Feb & March
Watched the crits for Feb and March winners at 11 sec club. Good stuff as always, but not much that's easily distillable. The usual stuff of savoring poses longer, working within them, choosing motions and acting that matches the dialogue, etc.
In the March one, Jason Martinson mentions a trick he learned from his supervisor at BlueSky. In Matt's animation the character drops down from standing. Jason suggests that invisible antic's (1 frame long) where maybe only part of the body moves in the antic direction while other parts move in the movements direction can help to loosen it up, and help to cut frames out to make the motion snappier. So in the dropping down example hunching the shoulders up and bringing an arm up right before the drop. Interesting since it's coming from Bluesky who was so super snappy in Horton.
A 2nd trick was the character came to a point where he was staring off into nothing while he's talking, monologuing basicly, Jason recommends shifting the gaze slightly up or down to make it more clear that the character's in his own mind.
In the March one, Jason Martinson mentions a trick he learned from his supervisor at BlueSky. In Matt's animation the character drops down from standing. Jason suggests that invisible antic's (1 frame long) where maybe only part of the body moves in the antic direction while other parts move in the movements direction can help to loosen it up, and help to cut frames out to make the motion snappier. So in the dropping down example hunching the shoulders up and bringing an arm up right before the drop. Interesting since it's coming from Bluesky who was so super snappy in Horton.
A 2nd trick was the character came to a point where he was staring off into nothing while he's talking, monologuing basicly, Jason recommends shifting the gaze slightly up or down to make it more clear that the character's in his own mind.
Botox Playdough vs Clamshells
Watched Monsters Vs Aliens recently. I don't know why, but something about the main character is very unappealing to me. And even worse, now I can't go back and watch other CG humans like Ratatouille or Incredibles. Something about the sub-surface scattering and the bulbous shapes is just turning me off. Maybe it's because they're modeled to looks soft but then the skin never deforms when it touches things (unless they're really paying attention.) They look like playdough, or dolls, Susan especially looks like a Bratz doll.
(look at her hands resting on her pants, looks like plastic, real life the flesh would smoosh on the meat of the palm as it rests, etc.)
Not to dis the artists, it's all technical feats, brilliants modelers, textureres, riggers, animators, all that. But what's the point? Even subtle exaggeration like this is chasing reality, but if we achieve it, enough controls to mimic every muscle fiber pulling every pore fighting gravity pulling on layers of fat, it's gonna take prohibitive amount of time to animate it.
The characters that I did really like, relooking at all of these, where the more exaggerated ones, the ones more extreme, they could push the faces further and just more extreme overall. If we respond to people more the more we can read emotions in their face (which is why people seem like jerks once they get botoxed) then these exaggeratted faces are like anti botox.
(that middle one is from Escape of the Gingerbread Man made by Tod Polson and Monk Studios)
and then, why even go that realistic. (for us little guys doing it on our own) we can get appealing characters and with enough control to create emotional connection with simpler designs. Clam shell eyes. Like Keith Lango talks about (in his fool's errand posts), there's just not enough hours available to you working on your own, you may have the skills, but there's just not the time to create at the level of the big studios. So prioritize what's important to you (to me, it's more important to have a character you can believe is thinking then to have fancy sub surface scattering)
(check out Vitor Vilela's reel, pretty sweet!)
(look at her hands resting on her pants, looks like plastic, real life the flesh would smoosh on the meat of the palm as it rests, etc.)
Not to dis the artists, it's all technical feats, brilliants modelers, textureres, riggers, animators, all that. But what's the point? Even subtle exaggeration like this is chasing reality, but if we achieve it, enough controls to mimic every muscle fiber pulling every pore fighting gravity pulling on layers of fat, it's gonna take prohibitive amount of time to animate it.
The characters that I did really like, relooking at all of these, where the more exaggerated ones, the ones more extreme, they could push the faces further and just more extreme overall. If we respond to people more the more we can read emotions in their face (which is why people seem like jerks once they get botoxed) then these exaggeratted faces are like anti botox.
(that middle one is from Escape of the Gingerbread Man made by Tod Polson and Monk Studios)
and then, why even go that realistic. (for us little guys doing it on our own) we can get appealing characters and with enough control to create emotional connection with simpler designs. Clam shell eyes. Like Keith Lango talks about (in his fool's errand posts), there's just not enough hours available to you working on your own, you may have the skills, but there's just not the time to create at the level of the big studios. So prioritize what's important to you (to me, it's more important to have a character you can believe is thinking then to have fancy sub surface scattering)
(check out Vitor Vilela's reel, pretty sweet!)
Friday, April 17, 2009
Tom Jech
Animator, you know him from that Fjorg demo, got an internship at Pixar, has some good posts on his blog
Being Original be more specific
Subtext show your thoughts with your body language
Cake or Death a choice between good or evil is obvious, a choice between honest and kind is less so
Review of Anatomy of a Story think I already linked to this before
Being Original be more specific
Subtext show your thoughts with your body language
Cake or Death a choice between good or evil is obvious, a choice between honest and kind is less so
Review of Anatomy of a Story think I already linked to this before
Sita sings the Blues
(sorry this is not the most thought out post, but everytime I try to think things out they just sit as drafts and never get published.)
Just watched Sita Sings the Blues (which you can too)
If you don't know, this is the deal. This woman, Nina Paley, followed her husband to India, got dumped, saw her situation reflected in the Hindu sacred text the Ramayana and in the 1920's American blues jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, and made a movie weaving those elements together as part of her healing process. Annette Hanshaw's music was recorded over 80 years ago (so it almost got into public domain but that got changed a few years back) and should be up for public use, but the arrangement of the music is owned by some huge corporation. So Nina thought it was cool to use the songs until the corporation said "you gotta pay us for the arrangment". So Nina says fine I won't sell it I'll give it away.
Anyway this is interesting because Annette Hanshaw is dead, and no one knows her music because it's all wrapped up in red tape. Nina wants to make new art responding to someone else's art, but legally she can't afford to. It'd be different if Annette's family or children would get the money, but it's just going into a giant bank for some company that won't even notice it. On the one hand you need to make it possible for people to make something and be compensated for it, on the other if things are so wrapped up then you can't make anything knew because you don't have room to move and think and expand on ideas.
as Nina says:
anyway, it's a super complicated issue with good points on both sides. To me it feels like the older a system gets the more ossified with beauracracy it gets so that nothing can happen and you need some kind of big shake up to make things moveable again. I think we just need a new paradigm for human interaction and organization. The times they are a changing.
other interesting thoughts of Nina's:
Just watched Sita Sings the Blues (which you can too)
If you don't know, this is the deal. This woman, Nina Paley, followed her husband to India, got dumped, saw her situation reflected in the Hindu sacred text the Ramayana and in the 1920's American blues jazz singer Annette Hanshaw, and made a movie weaving those elements together as part of her healing process. Annette Hanshaw's music was recorded over 80 years ago (so it almost got into public domain but that got changed a few years back) and should be up for public use, but the arrangement of the music is owned by some huge corporation. So Nina thought it was cool to use the songs until the corporation said "you gotta pay us for the arrangment". So Nina says fine I won't sell it I'll give it away.
Anyway this is interesting because Annette Hanshaw is dead, and no one knows her music because it's all wrapped up in red tape. Nina wants to make new art responding to someone else's art, but legally she can't afford to. It'd be different if Annette's family or children would get the money, but it's just going into a giant bank for some company that won't even notice it. On the one hand you need to make it possible for people to make something and be compensated for it, on the other if things are so wrapped up then you can't make anything knew because you don't have room to move and think and expand on ideas.
as Nina says:
"Well, there's a good answer to that. The corporations that hold these copyrights are media companies that also control most of the new media that comes out. Estimates vary, but it's said that 98 percent of all culture is unavailable right now because of copyrights. So the reason they hold the copyrights isn't because they want to get paid, it's because they don't want all the old stuff competing with the media stream that they control now. ... I don't think any of this is conscious, or that it's a conspiracy theory. All these rules were developed before we had the internet. The times are just changing so fast, business law isn't coping very well."
anyway, it's a super complicated issue with good points on both sides. To me it feels like the older a system gets the more ossified with beauracracy it gets so that nothing can happen and you need some kind of big shake up to make things moveable again. I think we just need a new paradigm for human interaction and organization. The times they are a changing.
other interesting thoughts of Nina's:
Q: What is your philosophy regarding your responsibility as an artist?
A: Some critics have said that making my movie "as a white, American woman" I have a "responsibility" to locate the work within a history of colonialist oppression account for my white privilege bla bla bla zzzzz. Yes, it's White Man's Burden all over again. So I'd like to get clear on what an artist's responsibility is:
An artist's responsibility is to be true to her/his own vision.
In other words, to be honest. That's it.
Ironically, but not surprisingly, similarly well-intentioned guardians of culture are also trying to dictate Indian artists' responsibility. I recently received a very nice email from an artist studying in Mumbai, who wrote
There is a great deal of emphasis here of being true to our Indian roots and integrating that Indian-ness into our work here. Honestly I'm a little tired of it.
I saw the same thing when I taught animation in Nairobi. UNESCO, who sponsored the program, wanted the participants to create animation that was "authentically African." My feeling was that anything they made would be authentically African, because they were authentic Africans. But UNESCO wanted their work to "look African", be based on traditional folklore, set in rural villages, etc. All this in 2004, in a big city, working on computers - many of the participants were understandably looking away from rural villages and towards the rest of the world. That's what artists do, and it's just as authentic as looking at your roots.
It's great when an artist's vision dovetails with an honorable social cause, and is naturally politically correct. I'm as eager to see homegrown Indian animation about Indian history and folklore as anyone. I'm also eager to see Indian, African, rest-of-the-world-ian animation about every other conceiveable subject - as long as it's honest. My Mumbai penpal articulated it well:
I share your opinion about the integration of identity in our work through honesty of thought. It also ensures the fact that the end result is truer to the context than the other more contrived one.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Assassin's Creed
*okay, it's bad blogger etiquitte but I'm gonna just copy paste Christopher Evan's post with his notes about Assassin's Creed animation
Under the Hood: The Inner Workings of Animation on Assassin’s Creed
Sylvain Bernard, Animation Director, Ubisoft
Animation:
* All animation was done in 3dsMax with Biped
o ‘Our animators do not like MotionBuilder for creating animation’
o Would have meant porting all their tools to MotionBuilder
* MotionBuilder was only used to clean mocap
* They decided to ignore foot sliding in order to concentrate on a better performance and gameplay experience
* They stressed the importance of Technical Animators
* Up to 15 animators worked on Assassin’s Creed
* 40% of all animation was hand keyed
* There is no procedural animation(not counting blending)
* They showed the entire move tree
o sprint, run, walk, jog, slow walk, banking, strafe, 4 idles
o 168 ground animations for altair locomotion group
o 122 anims in climbing group
Production:
* 90% of work was integrating animation into the environment
* The key was pairing animators with programmers
o Sit them together
* Before they started one main goal of the project was ‘to do as much animation as we could’
o They saw Next Gen as an animation showcase
* They prototype gameplay in max to show programmers how the game should look/feel
o How AI should react
o How a character should interact with the environment
* ‘In the beginning designers were given free reign to make anything they wanted, in the end we had to make a 20 page document telling them how to create levels’
o Too much freedom leads to chaos
* Stressed the need to involve animators in animation system development
Pipeline/Rigging:
* All characters share the same skeleton (male/female npc, altair)
o ‘the art director wanted characters of different heights, we said ‘no”
o made mocking things up easy
* They call their movement locator the ‘magic bug’
o Locators ‘joined together’ when two characters interacted
* NPCs use simple hinge constraints for ponytails and things
* They had ‘no working AI for almost the first two years‘ of the project
* They do edge detection on the collision mesh
* Auto nav mesh generation
* Auto ‘animation object’ placement
found by Matt Ornstein (another pimp animator)
Under the Hood: The Inner Workings of Animation on Assassin’s Creed
Sylvain Bernard, Animation Director, Ubisoft
Animation:
* All animation was done in 3dsMax with Biped
o ‘Our animators do not like MotionBuilder for creating animation’
o Would have meant porting all their tools to MotionBuilder
* MotionBuilder was only used to clean mocap
* They decided to ignore foot sliding in order to concentrate on a better performance and gameplay experience
* They stressed the importance of Technical Animators
* Up to 15 animators worked on Assassin’s Creed
* 40% of all animation was hand keyed
* There is no procedural animation(not counting blending)
* They showed the entire move tree
o sprint, run, walk, jog, slow walk, banking, strafe, 4 idles
o 168 ground animations for altair locomotion group
o 122 anims in climbing group
Production:
* 90% of work was integrating animation into the environment
* The key was pairing animators with programmers
o Sit them together
* Before they started one main goal of the project was ‘to do as much animation as we could’
o They saw Next Gen as an animation showcase
* They prototype gameplay in max to show programmers how the game should look/feel
o How AI should react
o How a character should interact with the environment
* ‘In the beginning designers were given free reign to make anything they wanted, in the end we had to make a 20 page document telling them how to create levels’
o Too much freedom leads to chaos
* Stressed the need to involve animators in animation system development
Pipeline/Rigging:
* All characters share the same skeleton (male/female npc, altair)
o ‘the art director wanted characters of different heights, we said ‘no”
o made mocking things up easy
* They call their movement locator the ‘magic bug’
o Locators ‘joined together’ when two characters interacted
* NPCs use simple hinge constraints for ponytails and things
* They had ‘no working AI for almost the first two years‘ of the project
* They do edge detection on the collision mesh
* Auto nav mesh generation
* Auto ‘animation object’ placement
found by Matt Ornstein (another pimp animator)
Mayerson
Mayerson finally clicked for me, couldn't get into him before now. But now I am so I'm spelunking over there.
On conflict in story:
"The genius of Ratatouille is that the basic situation -- a rat who wants to prepare human food -- immediately puts Remy in conflict with everybody around him. For Remy to succeed, he literally has to change the world, changing the rat perspective on people and the human perspective on rats. The weakness of Surf's Up is that for Cody to succeed, he only has to change himself. The external conflicts he faces are mild and the stakes are low."
High stakes, it's entertainment push it to the extremes, make it bigger then life, make the stakes higher. Kenny Roy often talks about acting needing to be "regular people in high stakes situations."
probably be editing this post with more finds *yep
on having the audience have sympathy for your lead
I can think of only three ways to make a character sympathetic. If a character obviously does not have the ability to protect himself or herself, if the character is treated unfairly for any reason, or if the character is attempting to help another, more needy, character. A character who is defenseless, the victim of injustice or altruistic will automatically gain audience sympathy.
The only case I can think of where possibly selfish behavior gains sympathy is a character attempting to be with someone he or she loves. My guess is that love and companionship are seen as necessities of life like food, clothing and shelter. Anyone who is deprived of these is seen as the victim of injustice and not someone who is striving selfishly.
Another of the cliches of screenwriting is that the audience needs a character to root for. All well and good, but the reason the audience will root for a character is because the character is sympathetic. From what I can see the only way to establish this is to make the character defenseless, the victim of injustice or engaged in an altruistic act.
Irving Thalberg made the Marx Brothers altruists specifically because he felt that the audience (and especially women) didn't care about them unless their antics had a point that the audience was sympathetic to.
(not sure if I agree, you need the audience to care about your characters, but is sympathy or empathy the way to make it happen? but perhaps here's his answer)
As we're all selfish to a degree and might be willing to trample anyone standing in the way of our desires, we automatically empathize with villains because we identify with that attitude. But I don't think that we automatically sympathize with them.
On subtext (check the comments)
The fact that each of these characters {in the Godfather}has to wrestle with conflicting goals makes them more complex than the Alan Rickman villain in Die Hard. ... In The Godfather, there is tension within the characters in addition to the tension in the plot. In Die Hard, there's only the tension in the plot. That's what I mean by complexity of character. The Corleones have an inner life and the Rickman character does not.
This either has to be written or (in live action) an actor has to supply it. Because so many different people touch an animated character under the current production paradigm, for animation it must be written. (And I'm considering words or pictures to be writing. Script or board, it doesn't matter but it has to be in the story before the animators get it.)
Backstory is simply what's happened to the character before the film starts. We're all products of our histories, so childhood, education, family, etc. all figure into who we are.
Subtext means what's under the text. The dialogue says things explicitly, but there can be emotions or thoughts that are unspoken but are still communicated to the audience by the surrounding story material or by the performance.
On conflict in story:
"The genius of Ratatouille is that the basic situation -- a rat who wants to prepare human food -- immediately puts Remy in conflict with everybody around him. For Remy to succeed, he literally has to change the world, changing the rat perspective on people and the human perspective on rats. The weakness of Surf's Up is that for Cody to succeed, he only has to change himself. The external conflicts he faces are mild and the stakes are low."
High stakes, it's entertainment push it to the extremes, make it bigger then life, make the stakes higher. Kenny Roy often talks about acting needing to be "regular people in high stakes situations."
probably be editing this post with more finds *yep
on having the audience have sympathy for your lead
I can think of only three ways to make a character sympathetic. If a character obviously does not have the ability to protect himself or herself, if the character is treated unfairly for any reason, or if the character is attempting to help another, more needy, character. A character who is defenseless, the victim of injustice or altruistic will automatically gain audience sympathy.
The only case I can think of where possibly selfish behavior gains sympathy is a character attempting to be with someone he or she loves. My guess is that love and companionship are seen as necessities of life like food, clothing and shelter. Anyone who is deprived of these is seen as the victim of injustice and not someone who is striving selfishly.
Another of the cliches of screenwriting is that the audience needs a character to root for. All well and good, but the reason the audience will root for a character is because the character is sympathetic. From what I can see the only way to establish this is to make the character defenseless, the victim of injustice or engaged in an altruistic act.
Irving Thalberg made the Marx Brothers altruists specifically because he felt that the audience (and especially women) didn't care about them unless their antics had a point that the audience was sympathetic to.
(not sure if I agree, you need the audience to care about your characters, but is sympathy or empathy the way to make it happen? but perhaps here's his answer)
As we're all selfish to a degree and might be willing to trample anyone standing in the way of our desires, we automatically empathize with villains because we identify with that attitude. But I don't think that we automatically sympathize with them.
On subtext (check the comments)
The fact that each of these characters {in the Godfather}has to wrestle with conflicting goals makes them more complex than the Alan Rickman villain in Die Hard. ... In The Godfather, there is tension within the characters in addition to the tension in the plot. In Die Hard, there's only the tension in the plot. That's what I mean by complexity of character. The Corleones have an inner life and the Rickman character does not.
This either has to be written or (in live action) an actor has to supply it. Because so many different people touch an animated character under the current production paradigm, for animation it must be written. (And I'm considering words or pictures to be writing. Script or board, it doesn't matter but it has to be in the story before the animators get it.)
Backstory is simply what's happened to the character before the film starts. We're all products of our histories, so childhood, education, family, etc. all figure into who we are.
Subtext means what's under the text. The dialogue says things explicitly, but there can be emotions or thoughts that are unspoken but are still communicated to the audience by the surrounding story material or by the performance.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Cube
Cube I think is a french boutique shop. They've got some great projects and short films but unfortunately I can't embed it. These aren't new, but they still rock. Check out Dionysis (CG)clockwork puppets, Kaeloo, A quoi ca sert l'amour, Peril sur Akryls
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Huge list of artists
Spungella found this thread with a super huge list of artists and animators and things. This'll take up a few weeks of time.
John K. on Change
The result of the philosophy of "never change" is to actually degrade consistently year by year, because it is physically impossible to stay the same. You have to move in one way or the other - forwards or backwards. -John K
Monday, April 13, 2009
Cinematography resources
A nice breakdown of film language with example pictures. Yale film analysis class
And the Wiki on Cinematography
finally I've found answers to why worry about depth and lenses and what you can do with them.
And some screen capturing sights Frame Filter, Image par Image, Hitchcock, anime, Mononoke, Leave me the White
found on Frame Filtering via the Arc
And the Wiki on Cinematography
finally I've found answers to why worry about depth and lenses and what you can do with them.
And some screen capturing sights Frame Filter, Image par Image, Hitchcock, anime, Mononoke, Leave me the White
found on Frame Filtering via the Arc
Friday, April 10, 2009
Mupeteer Mo-cap
Look what Keith Lango found. I knew they were working on this, looks like they've come a long way since I last heard anything. Looks decentish, which is scary for keyframers :O
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Brad Bird on storyboarding (mostly)
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.8/3.8pages/3.8birdmacromedia.html
Simply put, the Disney method is to develop the "business" of the story (gags, situations, emotions, etc.) completely before dealing with how the business is to be presented. To consider the staging of a scene at this early point was seen as a straight jacket; a restriction of possibilities and a liability to the healthy growth of a story.
While I believed in the effectiveness of the Disney method (it's hard to argue with Walt's results), my insatiable appetite for well-directed movies had begun to have an effect on my own thought process. It became increasingly harder for me to have an idea without simultaneously imagining how the idea was staged. "Why separate it?" I challenged. "If someone comes up with a better way to do a scene, you can always change it!"
While staging is no substitute for story, I felt then, as I do now, that the camera is an unseen character, the eyes of the audience. It can assume a million different natures: a restless child, a cold killer, a fly on the wall...
With a production schedule a year shorter and a budget less than half the size of our friends at either of the two D's (Disney and DreamWorks), our margin for error is minuscule. (they have these limits in exchange for Warner Bros not breathing down their necks with a bunch of comitees trying to market test and merchandise the film before it's done)
One of our most useful tools has been the use of After Effects (because it allowed him to plot out camera moves, which could never really be plotted out in animatic before, thus figuring out the "character" of the camera)
once they got it down (aftereffects), it was actually less work for them than conventional storyboards
Because it allowed us to introduce much more movement into our story reels, which can become almost painfully static, it enabled us to get a much better approximation of the finished film at a much earlier point, particularly when combined with a non-linear editing machine like an AVID, which can easily speed up or slow down moves, lengthen holds or pluck out frames.
Working with Jeff, who was part of that early Simpsons storyboard team, and his stellar crew, we solved many timing and staging problems before the scenes even started layout. This new process also occasionally influenced my editing decisions, where the kinetics of certain shots suggested their marriage, the way it often does in live-action films.
Did this process save us tremendous amounts of money?
No, but it gave us a chance to try things that were more ambitious than our schedule and budget really allowed. We could imagine the pace and the unfolding of our film accurately with a relatively small expenditure of resources. We were free to make the big mistakes in the cheap part of the process. (it didn't save money, but it allowed them to be bold and risky without risking a lot of money, so they were able to take the risks necessary to find the golden parts)
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue4.05/4.05pages/millerbird.php3
How did Bird reduce costs? For one thing, he reduced the bureaucracy. "Bureaucracy is quite an expensive thing," he says. "We didn't have that. We simplified certain things. We spent a lot of extra effort on the planning. A lot of the shot planning was being very elaborate in our animatics.
"We solved a lot of our problems in that part of the process. What that helped us do, is when it came time to do the actual scene, most of our questions had been answered. So we didn't waffle a lot. We knew where we were heading. Even though we were changing the film all the time, we weren't waiting until a later stage of the process to answer certain questions.
"We simplified the lighting on the characters as well. The relationship between the boy and the Giant is the core of the movie. The key to us was to make them seem like they're inhabiting the same world."
One plot point the movie doesn't address is, why is the Iron Giant on Earth? It's a subject that Bird is reluctant to discuss in detail.
"The people at Warner Bros. asked that question very early on," he says. "I didn't want to answer it because once you start to answer it, it becomes a Pandora's Box and the whole movie becomes about the Iron Giant's back story. The minute you start to talk about it, you explain a little and it begs more questions which beg more answers which beg more questions. Pretty soon it becomes a movie about a warrior race of robots and not a movie about a boy and a giant metal man.
(this makes me think of the Indian Jones brainstorming sessions, or the Notes on a frog (what execs would do today to One Froggy Night). Consistency of world, and tying all the threads up is not essential to telling a satisfying story)
"A lot of times you can be more profound when you suggest things and you don't say them. Our intention was to make it bigger by leaving more to the imagination."
http://www.avclub.com/articles/brad-bird,13899/
When I first got into it, the visual language of television animation was very, very rudimentary. There was a standard way of handling things, and that had gotten into the art form itself, to where people were doing this stuff by rote. The rule was, whenever you go to a new location, you do an establishing shot, whenever somebody's moving, you have a medium shot, and whenever anybody's talking, you cut to whoever's talking. It's all done at eye level. You never have high angles or low angles or anything like that.
Any time you think you're making a film for them, not you, that's a dangerous direction to head, because there's something patronizing about it.
Any time you think you can press a certain button and get a laugh, you're probably not pushing yourself. It's like when you go to a comedy club, and the less experienced comics get up and start pulling out the lewd jokes. It's like, "Yeah, you can get a laugh, but you're not gonna make history with that." Then you get the great guys, the guys we're still listening to. Have you ever heard a Nichols & May routine? I mean, that stuff is as contemporary as ever, and it's, what, 40 years old? My jaw still drops at how cool Nichols & May are. I think that's what I would like, to do something that's cool a hundred years from now.
I love the graphic quality and the imperfection of 2D, and that it's very tactile in a way that CG hasn't quite got yet.At the same time, CG allows freedom with camera movement and lighting that I wish we had in 2D. It allows you a degree of control, too, with tiny facial changes that are very difficult or impossible in hand-drawn animation. Once you get down to less than the width of a pencil line between frames, it's difficult for somebody to control that. Whereas in CG, because you can get it down to one pixel, you can do really subtle stuff with the eyes, and the audience can detect it.
----------
In the Incredibles DVD one of the storyboard artist says you board until you start wanting to put in details, details are for animation so you don't go that far.
hey anyone have any books or links to learn more about imbuing the camera with character?
Simply put, the Disney method is to develop the "business" of the story (gags, situations, emotions, etc.) completely before dealing with how the business is to be presented. To consider the staging of a scene at this early point was seen as a straight jacket; a restriction of possibilities and a liability to the healthy growth of a story.
While I believed in the effectiveness of the Disney method (it's hard to argue with Walt's results), my insatiable appetite for well-directed movies had begun to have an effect on my own thought process. It became increasingly harder for me to have an idea without simultaneously imagining how the idea was staged. "Why separate it?" I challenged. "If someone comes up with a better way to do a scene, you can always change it!"
While staging is no substitute for story, I felt then, as I do now, that the camera is an unseen character, the eyes of the audience. It can assume a million different natures: a restless child, a cold killer, a fly on the wall...
With a production schedule a year shorter and a budget less than half the size of our friends at either of the two D's (Disney and DreamWorks), our margin for error is minuscule. (they have these limits in exchange for Warner Bros not breathing down their necks with a bunch of comitees trying to market test and merchandise the film before it's done)
One of our most useful tools has been the use of After Effects (because it allowed him to plot out camera moves, which could never really be plotted out in animatic before, thus figuring out the "character" of the camera)
once they got it down (aftereffects), it was actually less work for them than conventional storyboards
Because it allowed us to introduce much more movement into our story reels, which can become almost painfully static, it enabled us to get a much better approximation of the finished film at a much earlier point, particularly when combined with a non-linear editing machine like an AVID, which can easily speed up or slow down moves, lengthen holds or pluck out frames.
Working with Jeff, who was part of that early Simpsons storyboard team, and his stellar crew, we solved many timing and staging problems before the scenes even started layout. This new process also occasionally influenced my editing decisions, where the kinetics of certain shots suggested their marriage, the way it often does in live-action films.
Did this process save us tremendous amounts of money?
No, but it gave us a chance to try things that were more ambitious than our schedule and budget really allowed. We could imagine the pace and the unfolding of our film accurately with a relatively small expenditure of resources. We were free to make the big mistakes in the cheap part of the process. (it didn't save money, but it allowed them to be bold and risky without risking a lot of money, so they were able to take the risks necessary to find the golden parts)
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue4.05/4.05pages/millerbird.php3
How did Bird reduce costs? For one thing, he reduced the bureaucracy. "Bureaucracy is quite an expensive thing," he says. "We didn't have that. We simplified certain things. We spent a lot of extra effort on the planning. A lot of the shot planning was being very elaborate in our animatics.
"We solved a lot of our problems in that part of the process. What that helped us do, is when it came time to do the actual scene, most of our questions had been answered. So we didn't waffle a lot. We knew where we were heading. Even though we were changing the film all the time, we weren't waiting until a later stage of the process to answer certain questions.
"We simplified the lighting on the characters as well. The relationship between the boy and the Giant is the core of the movie. The key to us was to make them seem like they're inhabiting the same world."
One plot point the movie doesn't address is, why is the Iron Giant on Earth? It's a subject that Bird is reluctant to discuss in detail.
"The people at Warner Bros. asked that question very early on," he says. "I didn't want to answer it because once you start to answer it, it becomes a Pandora's Box and the whole movie becomes about the Iron Giant's back story. The minute you start to talk about it, you explain a little and it begs more questions which beg more answers which beg more questions. Pretty soon it becomes a movie about a warrior race of robots and not a movie about a boy and a giant metal man.
(this makes me think of the Indian Jones brainstorming sessions, or the Notes on a frog (what execs would do today to One Froggy Night). Consistency of world, and tying all the threads up is not essential to telling a satisfying story)
"A lot of times you can be more profound when you suggest things and you don't say them. Our intention was to make it bigger by leaving more to the imagination."
http://www.avclub.com/articles/brad-bird,13899/
When I first got into it, the visual language of television animation was very, very rudimentary. There was a standard way of handling things, and that had gotten into the art form itself, to where people were doing this stuff by rote. The rule was, whenever you go to a new location, you do an establishing shot, whenever somebody's moving, you have a medium shot, and whenever anybody's talking, you cut to whoever's talking. It's all done at eye level. You never have high angles or low angles or anything like that.
Any time you think you're making a film for them, not you, that's a dangerous direction to head, because there's something patronizing about it.
Any time you think you can press a certain button and get a laugh, you're probably not pushing yourself. It's like when you go to a comedy club, and the less experienced comics get up and start pulling out the lewd jokes. It's like, "Yeah, you can get a laugh, but you're not gonna make history with that." Then you get the great guys, the guys we're still listening to. Have you ever heard a Nichols & May routine? I mean, that stuff is as contemporary as ever, and it's, what, 40 years old? My jaw still drops at how cool Nichols & May are. I think that's what I would like, to do something that's cool a hundred years from now.
I love the graphic quality and the imperfection of 2D, and that it's very tactile in a way that CG hasn't quite got yet.At the same time, CG allows freedom with camera movement and lighting that I wish we had in 2D. It allows you a degree of control, too, with tiny facial changes that are very difficult or impossible in hand-drawn animation. Once you get down to less than the width of a pencil line between frames, it's difficult for somebody to control that. Whereas in CG, because you can get it down to one pixel, you can do really subtle stuff with the eyes, and the audience can detect it.
----------
In the Incredibles DVD one of the storyboard artist says you board until you start wanting to put in details, details are for animation so you don't go that far.
hey anyone have any books or links to learn more about imbuing the camera with character?
Indiana Jones - Lucas Spielberg brainstorming
George, Steven, and Lawrence Kasden (script writer, his first draft here) sat down and brainstormed out Raiders of the Lost Ark in a week. There's a link to the transcipt of that week on this blogpost
as well as 10 lessons on story that blogger took away from reading it. (hee hee Character wins, score a point for me) anyway, grab it quick who knows how long it'll last.
found thanks to Mark Kennedy's Temple of the 7 golden camels
as well as 10 lessons on story that blogger took away from reading it. (hee hee Character wins, score a point for me) anyway, grab it quick who knows how long it'll last.
found thanks to Mark Kennedy's Temple of the 7 golden camels
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Flower - game
Just heard about this game. Looks really interesting in the fact that it's not about blowing up space marines. A totally new sounding concept and play style. Really refreshing to see some variety in the world of video games
Flower by ThatGameCompany
Flower by ThatGameCompany
Friday, April 3, 2009
Acting coach analyzes a Politician
Found by Ed Hooks, an acting coach (Howard Fine) analyzes a politician's speach
What is a common mistake? It is focusing on The How. The actor or orator in this case is thinking about How to make the speech effective. If you supply the Why, The How takes care of itself. What Jindal did is focus on How he wanted to come across. In acting I call this a General Attitudinal Choice. He thought of the effect he wanted to have on the audience. He wanted to come across as likable and friendly. He wanted the audience to think that he is a good guy, so he adopted a general demeanor of kind and empathetic. This is why he came off as condescending. No matter what he talked about the the pose was the same. He was trying to project his idea of a warm and friendly guy. Therefore he came off as patronizing.
True emotions travel. This is reflected in body language and in the voice. Manufactured emotions remain static. If you look at Jindal's eyes and listen to his voice in the prepared speech, you can sense the hollowness. His pitch did not vary. His expression barely changed. He tried to have variety in his manner but it was predetermined for emphasis and to give the impression of a real expression. He chose was and/or coached on where to pause and what words to stress. None of this happened organically and he therefore came across as insincere.
ratatouille blocking
Okay, So I know Cooked Art should be on my daily checks, but I've never gotten into it. Anyway, their youtube channel has some nice stuff, like this Pixar clip that shows their blocking looking like everyone elses.
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