Jason Ryan ~ Webinars with a major studio Supervising Animator

Jason Ryan is a supervising animator at major feature film studios. His resume includes working at Disney and Dreamworks.

Australian animators have the opportunity to discuss animation topics and solve animation problems in a series of live webinars.

Second year students at SBIT, just think about it... What a great way to continue building your show reel / demo reel after graduation. Each month potentially having an improved animation piece to replace student stumblings.

Other Jason Ryan posts on the ARC (find out why this bunch of Brisbane animation students are so excited*). Find out more about Jason Ryan.

*Ian said (previously), "I’m chuffed that there is a way we can teach 3D and keep drawing central to the process. Thankyou Jason Ryan. :)"

Jason Ryan Has The Answer

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?

Click HERE for more . . .

Video Referencing - add it to your toolkit

"Each animator finds his/her groove when it comes to tools such as video planning. Some shoot their own video reference, and some gather video reference from all sorts of different sources. Video planning is as unique as the animator using it. However, there are some things to keep in mind when it comes to video planning and reference material," says the quote from the AnimationMentor Tips & Tricks blog.

Video referencing links nicely with the Jason Ryan techniques being learnt by the current 2nd years to create and ENJOY better 3D animation.

Ian even went down to the physical movement faculty gym with some second years (Steve and Cassie) to film walks on a treadmill for video reference material. Combining video reference with traditional 2D planning is an empowering (for the student animator) and powerful method (for the animation teacher) to create appealing 3D animation. What do you think of using live action reference?


And just to bounce your brain another way: "...you can learn more about line-of-action and dynamic posing by spending ten minutes in a good comic book than you can by watching hours of movie reference." Who said this? No, it wasn't Terry Oberg.

So what do you use for your animation reference material?
ARC InDepth post: Ian uses video references in a jumping ramble.
p.s. Read the chapter on "Reference Material" in the Tips & Tricks eBook.
p.p.s Remember Eaduard Muybridge? Some great movement reference here. Ref: "The Human Figure in Motion"
p.p.p.s Dr. Harold Edgerton. Ref: "Stopping Time".

Richard Williams On DVD

I was lucky enough to see the Richard Williams Master Class in person back in my Disney days, and many of his lessons feature in my teachings now. He talked for 3 days and it cost about $3000 from memory (I could be wrong, I've been to bed since then).

Now he has released a recording of his master class with animated examples on DVD. Its $999 US, and I'm afraid I can't imagine many of my students having that kind of spare cash. For students at our level I would probably recommend some of Jason Ryan's or Kieth Lango's tutorials first anyway (if for any reason you felt the need to seek an alternative perspective to that offered in our course). But the promo is interesting to watch and for me brought back some nice memories.

Entertainment...maybe Educational.....NOT!

OK so watch this short clip of a guy drawing at his lightbox and then we will talk.

Seems like a nice friendly guy and he can draw pretty good hey? But there is an issue here that as a teacher I am constantly at war with. This clip is a piece of entertainment, its function is to promote the product. As such its a great idea, and is replicated in many of the making of "doco's" that are standard fair with any DVD releases these days. Its fun to watch and we get to see how amazing the artist is, wondering at their mind blowing "illustration" skills.

The problem is that this bears absolutely no similarity to how traditional animators actually work. An animation drawing has to...... Click HERE to continue reading.:

Student addendum: by Frank: 'Caught red handed!'

and check out the banner illustration

of the linked blog':

Related post: Walter Lantz can be educational!