What made this film appeal to animators? There are some that are putting KFP in the same league as "The Incredibles" (That's just a bear scratch below "The Iron Giant"!).
Here's a few knowledgeable comments: Read more
So what did you knowledgeable animators reading this blog think of Kung Fu Panda? What impressed, what grated? If you found the animation, story or design appealing, why?
You know what I love about animation perhaps even more than any of the art involved ?........
Its a place where the passionate prevail.
Leave a comment and tell me why you love animation
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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.
Check out the cool example show reel from RMIT graduate Avner Engel who I met at the 11 Second Club.
There's been much discussion on this blog and amongst the 2nd years about show reels and narrative films as methods to show off a student's skills as an animator to potential employers.
Read more in depth, including 10 top tips for your successful show reel and the chance to win chocolate (Mmm chocolate).
At the risk of sounding condecending (but what the hell I am a teacher) I really feel sorry for the students not making time to come by the ARC these days, its exciting times. So many great discussions and new things to learn, I'm loving it.
Which brings me to the next exciting developement. What if there is a way we can make it so that drawing is still at the core of the 3D process we use at Southbank? Sound good?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
Chances are you grew up watching the animation of James Baxter. Recently he gave a lecture at Dreamworks, and lucky for us the mysterious Seward Street blogger was there to take some notes. He was also interviewed recently for the Animation Podcast, and I found this printed interview on Animated Buzz.
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.
Read this now, as it is likely to be edited the more I think on it.
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 ...........
Click here or the image to see the full post.
The 2nd Year students are working on two comic book projects this semester, and have thus far endured weeks of me blabbing about related theory. They've also had plenty of reading time, and have had access to some of the best print comics in the history of the medium (in my opinion - they're my comics, after all!). But one aspect we haven't really looked at yet is online comics. Here are links to some that I am aware of. Be sure to check out PUP (pictured to the left)... it's a great little strip.
As you look, pay close attention to how the creators have (or perhaps haven't!) adapted the traditional print format into a screen-friendly read.
Pup
Buck Godot - Zap Gun for Hire
Girl Genius
PVP
You'll Never Die
Blastwave
Sam and Fuzzy
Dr McNinja
Lastly, Web Comics Nation is a great resource for finding more web comics.
So... anybody want to share their own favourites?
I found this blog that goes behind the scenes on the award winning animated film, Your Friend the Rat.
So I suggest that it might be worth ratting around in Jim Capobianco's Leonardo blog, that has the intriguing byline, "adventure and absurdity in making an animated short" (Grade 2's take note). 
A while back at the end of a post about short stories I linked to an article on the awesome Syncrolux Blog (run by Dreamworks Animator Kevin Koch) about the importance of Shot Flow. Now he has followed it up with an analysis of a sequence from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I have never seen this principle so clearly communicated before, it is of particular relevance for the current Southbank 2nd year students who are starting to put together the storyboards for their major projects. Gobble it up!
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.
Stop motion animator Barry Purves amazing , 11 minute film is called Screen Play (1992). How much time would it have taken to craft such an intricate film? It's hard to find on the WWW but a version can be seen here.
Grade 2's are starting a short 'stop mo' project. That means NOT 11 minutes. How do we do it? The ARC Blog has some good posts on the subject worth reviewing. Particularly the links from the Fool Hardy Films post that show the process of animating.
Another resource page can be found at Animateclay.com
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.
