Ryan Woodward Animating from the Heart

 This is an old talk Ryan did about his short film. I was thinking about how if you resist your inspirations everything will just feel frustrating and ash like.

Animating from the Heart – Logic vs Inspiration Animator and Filmmaker Ryan Woodward from Creative Talent Network on Vimeo.


notes:
after I finish drawing the boards, I go into aftereffects, add some sound fx, some flare, some fake animation, you can have a lot of fun with it, you really feel like a film maker

The first instance when I clued in that I wanted to do stuff on the side

When I worked on Osmosis Jones I remember doing this scene that I was really excited and passionate about, it was perfect just the way I wanted and I passed it on, and when I saw it in dailies (after all the other departments had added their stuff) it had totally changed. When I saw it I was so upset and angry inside that they had touched my child and manipulated it into something I couldn't identify with anymore, it hurt. And my office partner said "you've got to chill out, you've got to go do something on the side, your own little project that you do on your own and invest all your passion into that so that when you're working on your day job you're not so emotionally invested in your drawings"

So if you have something on the side (even if it's small) it satisfies that creative monster inside you. Sometimes on a job you  don't feel like a creator you feel like a production guy. When you've been there long enough you start to forget what it's like to be a creator on your own, it just becomes a job. I noticed that my own personal aesthetic about what I think is cool in art all reflected on the movies I had worked on. I felt a bit like a slave that the studio is dictating what I like and not like. So I had to reassess what I actually like.

I loved modern dance, and figure drawing, but the idea of doing a film that way sounds like torture. Then the idea hit me, and the idea trumps all obstacles. When the idea hits you you think "either I do this, or I die inside"

Why are you making it?
I'm making it because I have to. I have to feel like I'm creating something


The one thing I really learned, I don't force inspiritation, I just try to prepare myself with a level of sensitivity that when inspiration does come it floors me like a train.

I just wait for those moments, where the heavens part and "aha". They don't happen very often, but when they happen, do something, otherwise youll be frustrated inside and you won't know why and everything will be grrrrr, and you won't know why. But if you really think about it you know what you want to do, you know inspiration hit you and you chose not to do it, that creates misery. But if you do it, even if you fail at it, that fact that you're doing it makes you feel alive and living some kind of purpose, you feel like you're being someone you were born to be, if it doesn't make a dime who gives a crap You did it. Just the fact that you did it you can lay back and breathe a sigh and you feel human.

the film: 
Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.