Animation Acting Advice

treasure planet arms are shields for the shy, so keep them close to the body. What mannerisms do you have that someone immitating you would use. canceling a gesture Disney Singing deep diaphragm breaths for control, short tenser shoulder upper chest based gasps for intensity

Sony Animation Approach - Allesandro Camporota

Polish

Lecture Clip - Spline to Polish Comparative Analysis from mike safianoff on Vimeo.

Awesome Jason Ryan Polishing

notes when close the mouth, raise it a tiny bit, flare nostrils a bit, raise cheeks a bit, and opposite when mouth opens, so gives the impression of the squetchy Disney muzzle, the fleshy feel. to do this, makes a locked on face cam, does a whole pass on the cheeks, going through the whole scene, up and out, down and in. also nose raising lowering a bit. Thinking of the whole muzzle as a whole unit. Same thing with the brows, rough in the expressions you want, pushing poses so they're always alive. even if you can't see it from render view, you'll feel it. think in arcs, and don't have to stay centered. subtle amounts of changes, not trying to go off model. nothing hits a wall. (like mouth corners, or eyebrows)

Frank Thomas

any attitdue or expression should not be limited to the face, the whole body should support your statement, just as much care should go into the shoulders and wrists and everything as the eyes (or something like that, Hyrum Osmond quoted it here

Spa Studios Cleans up Student Work

Stumbled onto this, Sergio Pablos studio for some reason is doing vid crit's of student work. (maybe through Ianimate). Reason I put this is because they've thrown down an overdrawing on top, so it's interesting to see the different choices the pro made then the student. All in spanish. Frame by framing through the main thing I notice is that the pro's are pushing for cleaner and stronger silhouette's. (clean negative space, clean lines and angles (ie turn an arm out to get an obvious elbow bend), make a limb stand on it's own or hide it, more designed shapes (instead of amorphous body shapes))



Segundo Puesto Concurso de Animación from Arte y Animación on Vimeo.

Ganador Concurso de Animación from Arte y Animación on Vimeo.

Jamaal Bradley Progression Shot

awesome progression reel from Jamaal Bradley
Progression of an Animated Shot: Gothel & Rapunzel Disney's Tangled from Jamaal Bradley on Vimeo.

he's blocking down to 2's or 4's at the longest, ignoring mouths til spline pass. But everything else is in the blocking. 

Jamaal Bradley Polish List

Jamaal Bradley

AnimSchool EyeBlink

seems that plasticity and meat in the face is one of the things that seperates the pro's from the rest of us

2 Animation Tricks from me

I have two new tricks (for me) to help myself animate.

1. write down what my next move is for when I get back to the computer. It can take a long time to get what's going on in a scene uploaded to my brain's ram, so at the end of a session when my brain is humming and keeping track of all the spinning plates making a note of which plates needs a respin next for when I get back seems to be helping me get faster to the doing part of animation.

2. having the steps of my workflow labeled helps me troubleshoot (if I'm having lots of problems may need to step back a step, if I'm not sure what to do next it's time to move to the next level) and stay on target. Newest addition for me is splitting up rough blocking into ruff block poses and ruff block timing.

my stages (often blur together):
prep:
listen to audio on repeat, try to tease out the true meaning and emotions,
think about the point of the scene (try and put the scene in a totally different context then source audio that still fits the emotions) thumbnail ideas
vid ref a lot 20 minutes at least, then cut together a short vid with the most interesting parts
layout build the scene and props, put characters in their spots, set camera

rough blocking: getting the meat of the scene down
block goldens the essential story telling poses of the scene, the ones that would be drawn if it were a comic strip instead (ignore timing, focus on flow between poses) key whole body
block timing shuffle the golden poses around until the timing works, copied pairs

blocking 1st pass: contacts and extremes, all the poses that describe the bounds of the movement key whole body

blocking 2nd pass: breakdowns, all the poses that describes the kind of movement, eases and arcs and stuff key whole body

polishing the two parts go together, whatever it takes to make it look right
partials blocking: frame by framing through on each body part and putting keys to smooth out arcs and eases (just keying parts, no longer whole body keys)
curve polishing: smooth curves, make sure there's no weirdness, then just go down heirarchy making sure it looks right (setting keys or tweaking curves)(I try not to tweak tangents anymore, if the curve overshoots I lock it with a key so that a global tangent change won't kill it)

review: on loop, walk across room and watch it big, shrink it tiny, flip it horizontally ,watch it over and over and make notes of everything needing fixing

fix it: fix all the things on the list

repeat last two steps until done

Jason Schleifer - Animation efficiency

Jason Schleifer (name corrected ;) put up a couple of posts about being more efficient with your animation. He doesn't have me convinced yet, but I'm linking them anyway because it's probably just going over my head right now.

post one post two ah, he snuck two more in while I wasn't looking post three post four

basically, he's a supervisor now so he has less time to animate, and the time he does have is like 30 minute chunks, so he needed to learn a way to be able to jump right in (instead of "warming up" for 30 minutes) and make small steps of progress.

So I tried something different. As I was getting up from my desk to head to a meeting I would think about the very next thing I wanted to accomplish in the shot. If it was a pose, a simple movement, a rhythm, whatever it was I would decide on a small chunk of animation that I felt I could accomplish in about 20 minutes. and then think about that whenever he could until he could get back to animating.

small tasks let to small successes that kept him encouraged instead of overwhelmed.

The important thing here is not the time that I had to work on the shots.. it’s the planning I was doing before I started working so I knew exactly what my task was. By making this plan, I always felt like I was making progress.. and feeling like I was making progress caused me to make even more progress.
I know what some of you are thinking.. you’re thinking “that’s great if you know what to do, but what if you’re exploring? I don’t KNOW what kind of pose I want to do, or what my shot is supposed to be! ”

And that’s totally fine! Here’s the agreement you can make with yourself that will reduce your stress 10-fold. Agree that you will give yourself 3 hours at the start of every shot to explore ideas. Give yourself 10 minutes to write down the emotion that you want the character and the audience to feel. Give yourself 20 minutes to talk to another animator about it. Give yourself 1 hour to thumbnail (do you know how many thumbnails you can do in an hour?) . Give yourself 20 minutes to look at other shots of the character that other animators have done.

Those are incredibly small tasks that will really improve the quality of your shot because they will help you focus on what’s important.

About quality: first know your character inside and out so you'll know how they react in any situation.

Then:
By knowing what the shot is about[the purpose of it in the movie}, clearly and distinctly in your head, you can ask yourself right away “what is the clearest and most direct possible way I can get this point across?” Instead of thinking about the mechanics of what the shot is, you can think at a higher level of what does the shot need. Once you know what the shot needs, then you can layer in all the subtle things that make it unique for the character.

It’s the combination of these two things.. clarifying the intent and then making it character specific that gives you the ability to make the shot great.

...if you can solidify these things before you start animating you’ll be able to quickly get rid of any ideas that will lead you down the wrong path.

...The great thing to realize.. is that in most cases the director doesn’t really care how you reach the point of the shot, they will care more that you get the point across. If you don’t know the point you’re trying to make.. how do you make it?

Olivier Ladeuix - pixar face sync

Olivier has a great post on his blog framing through a quick pixar shot.

Breathing

Found this awesome post from Brendan Body where he breaks down physically how Al Pacino is delivering a line, how Pacino filling his lungs and expelling the air can be tracked, how it affects his muscle tension, and how you can use that kind of breaking down to help your subtlety in your acting.

I think breathing might be one of the secrets of believability, if you put a subtle breathing pass in it'll help make your characters alive. I think I first heard about it in an 11sec crit by Jason Schliefer

Malcon Pierce Polish notes

New AM showcase is out, awe inspiring as always. Tracked down the amazing Malcon Pierce has a blog. He had a great post on polishing that I rudely copy pasted here, then I kept reading and ran across another solid post. And then I figured I might find more, so I'll link you to the posts instead. Definitely go read the whole posts!

great post on polish

-Make sure I have asymmetry in the face. I treat the brows and mouth like the shoulders, and hips. I offset them to each other when I can to keep the expressions more dynamic.

-I’ll make sure all my mouth shapes are clear but interesting. I usually off-center the mouth shapes to give a little more asymmetry and organic-ness to the expression.

-Animation wise, I track the corners of the mouth to make sure they’re traveling in arcs, and not hitting walls etc. This makes a huge difference in the readability in the lip sync.
-eye darts! Usually this is the last thing I’ll do. I’ll add eye darts when I feel they should be. I usually do eye darts on two frames. The first frame favoring the end position about 60-80% or so. This keeps them from feeling to clicky. I’ll also add the lower and upper lids following the eye dart. I usually do this in three frames. I really make sure the lids follow the eye dart so the eye ball feels connected with the lids.

On his 11sec club entry

1. Keep things simple. This doesn’t mean the character cant move and act. but more so, keep the main idea of the shot clear, and supported. Dont add to much fluff.

2. Make sure your animation complaments itselt. For example. the facial animation isnt competing with the body animation. Its like watching tv and listening to the radio at the same time.. you’ll loose focus on one or the other.

3. Keep your Lip Sync moving some place. think of the lip-synch sort of like phrasing. you dont want the shapes and movment to be the same all the way through. Have it lead to an accent, or into a pause etc.

Cameron Fielding Dirty Curves

Like JHD before, Cameron Fielding has a great post about dirtying up your curves to make them more realistic.

non weighted tangents

Ran across a tip from Ken Music on his blog.

Since you might be asked at any time to make changes, if you use keys to make all changes to a curve, then it's easier to edit because it will stay consistent. If you have edited the curve using tangents and weights then if you add or scale or anything all your changes will be unexpectedly changed.

Squishy handdrawn flow in CG

Daniel Martinez Lara has been on the scene for a long time. Just ran across this vid of his where he pulls an animation out of Maya into Blender,(since Maya can export vertex animation now) vertex deforms it all up, then brings it back into Maya. Skim through this vid and marvel


AniSculpt -- Maya Connection Script from pepeland on Vimeo.


Here's where to download the script he wrote to get it out and into Maya. And a step by step walkthru. Apparently Blender's sculpting tools are very nice and easy to use, with a smart application of a grease pencil too it makes his Anisculpt technique (watch his demo of it.)


my coworkers think this might be possible all in Maya using a soft mod tool, but not as clean and easy.


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what got me looking at this stuff was a vid he posted with super easy changing of the geometry, something I've wanted to make but haven't had the td skills, a CG everyman that's easy to quickly change into a new character.  He's rolling with some of the ideas Lango explored.

 * as a side note, it's interesting to watch the assymetry in Lara's face as he speaks 

Pixar Research Library

Daniel Caylor found this link to Pixar Research Library which is I think their research papers, mostly fancy TD programmy stuff, but the article on Making Rats Appealing I felt was useful to animator's/ character designers.

My Summary:
1. low center of gravity/ flour sack shape & simple silhouette for old school classic Disney soft friendly character shape
2. made mouth muzzle really malleable so it can tie in with eye deformations, making the whole head feel connected and maintaining a sense of movement of the mouth even if the nose hides it (nose kept hardish to preserve skeleton) (look at the picture how the mouth points to the eye)
3. teeth lip controls to control composition of teeth "cradled in lips" or " sticking out ratlike"
4. deformable controls to allow animator to nail nice compositional silhouette's

11 second club 2009 October & November

Watching the 11second club winning critiques for October and November has me thinking about Hand Drawn and CG. I was reminded that somewhere I read the suggestion for hand drawn work to always be squashing and stretching a little, always be changing the shape, to give it the feel that it's organic and alive and a flesh sack filled with liquidy stuff, so always a bit of the feel of a water baloon. Watching Mike Walling in October gave me the impression that the CG equivalent is everything a little bit overlapping, nothing ever settling or starting at the same time (which I think is harder in hand drawn because you try and keep your charts simple so your inbetweeners can follow.)  Kind of like the juice box is the CG equivalent of the flour sack. Food for thought. (wish 11 second club would update their archives with links to the critiques faster, it's always a few months slow.)

David Anthony Gibson - Meatballs

Not that it's news, but I keep thinking about this post by David Anthony Gibson talking about the shots he animated for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. And that's the rule, if I go looking for it more then once or keep thinking about it, slap it up on my blog so I can track it down at some later date, if I need to.

"we always tried to have quick transitions that had really long settles. One way I remember our animation director always saying it was: do your move and get 97% of the way to your final pose and then feather out that last 3% of the move over 10-15 frames."


*makes me think of that SplineDr.'s post about people needing to know more then just animating


Oh, he has a new post