In the last week of classes before the mid year break I gave the first year animation students at Southbank Institute of Technology a spray about taking their knowledge of timing to the next level. An intuative level. . . . . . read on.
No matter how ambitious or good you get at animation you always have to keep one eye on the fundamentals.....
OK so I sat in on an interesting conversation between two of my favourite second year students the other day and they were talking about the way that they had many tasks to do right now and found it all a bit overwhelming.
So I wanted to talk about this, and try to make it clear how you can get the most out of your study time.
The image of James Baxter in the previous post got me thinking, here is another one of him at a different desk. Apart from the obvious fact that his desk is a lot bigger than those we have at Southbank what other difference can you notice?
Look at all the stuff he has stuck all over his lightbox, this guy is trying to remember a ton of stuff all at once (welcome to animation) and to help him remember he has put notes and images all around his work space. When I started to think about it I was amazed at how many students I see sit down at the lightbox and . . . . .
Click HERE to read on
In this last week I delivered my patented “Never Do A Character Drawing or Pose Without A Line Of Action Again!” spiel to the first year Southbank students. There is a lot of information in that spiel, and its always a challenge to find the balance between delivering the information you all need to know and overwhelming you with too much new stuff at one time. There is always more to say, but sometimes you just have to let it go, and there is something to be said for self discovery, students who experiment with a concept and flesh it out in their minds by doing it instead of listening to me will learn so much more (hint hint).
That having been said, I couldn’t resist expanding a little further on the topic of line of action. I’ve been scouring the internet for some good examples of the principles I’m exploring.
Ckick the pick or HERE to read on.
1st year student Dana has asked a great question in the comments of a previous post, I think its worth an answer in a post of its own.
She asked, “I have a question for you Ian. My Dad really wants me to have degree in animation but how much difference does it make to have a diploma instead of a degree in the animation business?”
Click HERE to read on....
Creative Commons Flickr image by terren in Virginia
In any context where I have been around teachers and students of animation, whether it be as a student myself, working in the industry where senior staff are instructing junior or as a teacher, there has been this struggle. Over and over I’ve seen teachers roll their eyes at a students insistence at copying the Anime look and just as often I’ve seen students shoulders slump as they are discouraged from producing work in a style they dearly love. This year a large percentage of our new students at Southbank are obviously into Anime, so I thought it might be an issue worth visiting.
Before we go too far lets just take a moment to ...........
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Was that a groan I herd from all the Southbank second year animation students? The newer first years students haven't been subjected to it YET, but I talk about LOA a lot, often, repeatedly, even continuously. But its really important people!
So I thought I'd do a tutorial about one of the many ways you can use line of action to give yourself extra insight into how your character is posed. Specifically how you can control the level of tension in a pose by thinking about the relationship between the characters extremities and the LOA.
Using Line of Action to add or decrease tension in a pose from laceyi on Vimeo.
For our current first year students this can serve as a preview of what the weeks ahead hold for you.
Second year students may be tempted to think you have herd it all before, but maybe you could do with a reminder. You're working with new mediums a lot this year, the temptation can be to let the new way of animating be a distraction from the fundamentals. The obvious example is 3D, but as I wandered around the stop mo class the other day and I couldn't help but notice that many of the characters you were making and posing were kind of stiff and straight. Aardmans stop mo character Gromit is one of the best possible examples of how much emotion you can convey with the LOA, a simple slump of the shoulders with the head tipping forward and you can't help but get a lump in your throat. Its universal.
I continued on with the poses a bit after recording so you can hopefully see the kind of progression achievable if you keep refining a pose this way.
Recently I heard that one of the major animation courses in town (possibly THE major animation course in town) was dropping all drawing from its program. WHAAA!?!?! Man I am so glad I don’t work there. Now I sense an opportunity for the Southbank course.
There are only two full time courses I am aware of in Brisbane that still use traditional animation to teach basic, fundamental and I believe essential animation principles, and out of those two our students utilise traditional techniques far more than the other. There is often a misunderstanding as to why we consider it important. Its not because we think hand drawn animation is better, that depends completely on the practitioner. Its because there is no more immediate way to form an intimate understanding of timing and posing. You are forced to start from nothing for each frame, you put it there on that frame and here on this frame and see the results. There is a direct connection between what the student created and what appears in the animation, its not some vague, arty farty thing about “feel”, or “intuition”, it’s a solid physical memory between what you created and the resulting movement.
Someone who has really understood how to control timing through drawing each frame by hand will never trust the software to space out the inbetweens, or create an arc in a movement, because they will always be able to remember the physical process they had to go through to create convincing human movement from nothing. Its not about being a great illustrator, you can achieve this intimate understanding with stick figures and blobs on the page. Its about that direct connection from your brain down through a pencil and onto the page , instead of adjusting a number that results in a rotation along a specific axis. All the commercial work I do these days is digital, but I believe down to my cotton socks that drawing is and will continue to be the absolute best way to introduce students to the world and possibilities of animation.
Few..
Anyway all this has left me hungry to share some more old school animation wisdom with the world. So I’ve made this tutorial about traditional FX animation, this is one area that is truly dominated by computers these days, even traditionally animated films have traded in their hand drawn effects for CG stuff in recent years. But I think anyone working in this field would benefit from the experience of having to draw the FX by hand, just so they understand what’s going on down to a micro level (graphically instead of mathematically). Anyhooo, enough of my babbling (written babbling anyway), I hope you enjoy and find this useful.
Demonstration/tutorial on Traditional FX Animation from laceyi on Vimeo.
I’m going to do my best to back up all of these posts with opinions and advice from other (perhaps more respected) folk. I cant imagine finding a more respected point of view than that of the great Ward Kimble, in this amazing letter he wrote to present day animator Will Finn back in the 70s.
Here is another one from the Temple Of The Seven Golden Camels blog, run by veteran storyboard artist Mark Kennedy. He has a two part post entitled Advice for Students on his Blog that is all gold (part 1, part 2).Ok so in case you haven’t been following the drama, after much deliberation the plan is to have all second year students in our course at Southbank making a narrative this year. Even if it’s just a very short one that makes up a larger show reel.
I’m anticipating a hand full of students who are going to be determined to make an epic, so I have been scouring the internet for information about keeping short films short. Its something I can anticipate because it is one of the ever predictable, guaranteed student short film flaws. There is always at least one student who is going to be convinced to the point of total conviction that more is better, or that the 15 minute long story they have come up with is so perfect in its design (after just a few drafts and with no feedback from anyone else? Amazing!) that not a single shot can be cut from it. I hate to sound cynical, but it always happens, and I can relate. I remember coming up with story ideas that were way to long when I was a student. At one stage I even started writing a series of 30 min long TV episodes, and the major student film I ended up making was way to long. I think there were probably two scenes (that’s camera shots for any new 1st year students reading…hi!) in it that I was actually proud of because it was so rushed. You should be proud of every scene in you film, its obvious when you think about it.
Anyway, following a link on Cartoon Brew I found the blog of Kevin Koch (animator at Dreamworks and Animation Mentor Teacher), and after some rummaging around found this great post about just how much information you can convey in a single scene, and how many students try too hard to convey a characters setting and background. He even goes so far as to suggest that MAYBE the great Brad Bird over cooked the character backgrounds in the Incredibles, or at least that the film was just as enjoyable without them.
Here is one of my favourite quotes from his article, “The time required to set up your characters and situations is often far less than you imagine you need. Again, think of being clear and specific. Expect to do some hard work here. Hammer away at your ideas to come up with something so specific and definite that the audience understands immediately. This is why we find bad storytelling so annoying. It takes the creator so long to clue us in on the situation and character, or they keep inadvertently misleading us with useless information, that we disengage.”
All of this information is of course window dressing, before coming around to the idea of narratives for all students I knew it was only worth doing if we were going to keep the films short. I’m just highlighting the information in the hope of getting some to come around of their own accord instead of colliding with me head on. I’m afraid I do not accept that a longer story is necessarily a better story .
The bottom line is I won’t be letting second year students animate stories longer than 1 and a half minutes, and that’s that. I mean it, no excuse will make me budge. I wish someone had told me to slow down and make the best animation I could when I was a student and I think I owe it to my students to address the issue when I see it.
One of the comments posted by an anonymous student that helped to kick off the whole films V’s show reels discussion featured a quote about the student film being a “once in a lifetime opportunity”, well I can tell you that in my 12 or so years of commercial experience I have never again experience such a luxury of time to hone and finish a scene as is afforded to students. Once you’re in the industry you will have ample opportunities to have to rush through your scenes in order to get something finish on budget (on time), the “once in a lifetime opportunity” is to do the best possible animation you can achieve right now. I’m not going to let my students miss it.
Here is another point of view from Temple Of The Seven Golden Camels blog, run by veteran storyboard artist Mark Kennedy. He has a two part post entitled Advice for Students on his Blog that is all gold (part 1, part 2).
"Many students seem to want to make some sort of grand, epic statement and so they try to make a longer film with a lot of scale and heft to it. Every medium has it's own inherent strengths and weaknesses and a short student film is not the best form to make an epic sweeping drama. The most successful student films of all time are, for the most part, short and simple. "
Another post on Kevin’s blog that I just loved and had to highlight was this one about leading the eye from cut to cut. Great advice and also related to efficient story telling.
Well I herd today that yet another old friend and coworker of mine Andrew has joined there Krome fold. They are still advertising positions for senior animators and I must admit to feeling a little pear pressure. snu?!?!
That aside the great thing is that the reel Andy used to get the job is up on youtube so you can see exactly what it takes to get a job with Krome.
Things to note include:
This is all done with free download rigs and models I think, which is a bit different to what I suggest a graduate should do. Andrew has years of impressive animation experience behind him, he is obviously a specialist. If you're fresh out of collage I think it would be good to include at least one character that you made yourself.
I want to put down in writing something that I think about often as a teacher. Its this idea of animation being a single event, something that happens in a moment and is finished. Its funny how many people assume that's how it works at first, whats not so funny is when people just don't get it when they are told otherwise, or even worse they get it but think that for some reason it doesn't apply to them.
I guess that a lot of art is more like an event, if you get most of a paining done then decide you want the characters changed then you might as well start again. The same thing go's for a piece of pottery, if you decide you want the pot bigger or smaller then you will probably have to do it over. Its even more so with performing arts, its not like you can stop half way through a play and say, "Oh I'm sorry, I meant to stand like this when I said my line. Can we do it over?" You just have to do it better the next time you do it. In short most of the art we see, and have done before we started animating was the result of a single attempt, then it was revealed for all to see upon completion. Taa Daaaa!
I'm teaching my first 100% online class at the moment which is interesting, and means that the issue of teaching timing has come around again a bit sooner than usual. Also first year students are animating a character dancing and 1 or 2 second year students have started moving things around in 3D.
The thing I have been musing about is the idea of pushing the timing to see what you can get away with. Its funny but most students have a tendency to be conservative when it comes to timing. Id like to try and introduce the idea of BREAKING THE SCENE.
As a student you're in a unique position where its OK to fail (at first anyway). Some big budget studios manage a work place where you're encouraged to experiment, but the sad truth is that in most commercial situations people will just want what you know will work straight away. So why not push the timing in the scene to breaking point while its OK to do so, make it faster in the fast bits and slower in the slow bits and see how far you can go before the scene won't read any more. Then just come back a little and find that line.
Get outside of your comfort zone, go where its scary (or where you are scared what people will think when they see the test). Here is the great thing, the same principle can be applied to all aspects of the animation process, push that pose, that expression, that line of action, PUSH IT ALLL!
I dare ya!
By way of an example I offer this frame by frame breakdown of Hammy from Over The Hedge, and he just happens to be running around on a big grid patters so we can track his movement from frame to frame. Weather you liked the movie or not, you would have to admit Hammy was a pretty entertaining character, the extreme way he moved was a big part of that. I bet when they were animating him there were lots of discussions about how fast they could get away with moving him. Its a perfect example
