Work at Night

Looking out of the fourth floor window near my cube. Here you can see the gym and the port of Redwood City behind it. Pretty lights!

Emilio's Last Day

Today is a sad one, and no mistake. After two and a half years, my cube mate Emilio is leaving for pastures new back in his homeland of Canada. Apparently he likes the cold or something. Weird.

Emilio was one of the first people I met when I turned up at the building all wide-eyed eyed and um... well, terrified, actually, so things will seem very quiet around here without him.

Moo.

JB's Website

My friend JB has recently updated his website with his latest artwork, puppets and sculpture. Go and have a look if you get a free five minutes. I really like this hyena.

Cassidy's Response...

...to that whole CB thing is great. Read it here!

Brewery

On Cartoon Brew today Jerry Beck posted this:

The saddest part about the slow demise of hand drawn (2-D) animation over the past 30 years, is the loss of the animator's individualistic personality in studio produced feature films, shorts and TV animation. Part of the fun of watching classic cartoons is the recognition of certain artists' unique—sometimes eccentric—drawing style which stand out in bits and sequences: Irv Spence, Jim Tyer, Rod Scribner, Bobe Cannon, and Fred Moore's loose limbed look pop to mind. Where are all the Bill Tytla's and Ken Harris's in today's CG animation? Heck, where are they in anime or TV cartoons in general? Animated films and television shows today are so slick that this individual element has been eradicated in the final product. One of the reasons the "Making of/Art of" books (especially Pixar's) are so fun is we get to see the individual styles of the artists behind the scenes. Rarely does this fun make it to the finished film. Andreas Deja, Glen Keane, Eric Goldberg and John Kricfalusi are among the few today whose animation style makes it through the process, and they carry on this tradition in projects they are involved with. It's a significant element of what make their films so good, and what made the old cartoons so great.

I thought you might be interested in reading my email reply.

Sent: Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:34:40 +0000
Subject: Animator Analysis

Hi Jerry,

Just wanted to comment on your recent cartoon brew post. To a certain extent the loss of individual animator characteristics is true in modern feature animation, simply because most of them are not hand drawn anymore. However, I would argue that a seamless integration of work from disparate artists was actually a goal of the pioneers in the field, (ie, if it were feasible for the work of one animator to make "Bambi", for example, then I'm sure Disney would have jumped at the chance!).

I pride myself on creating work that is able to integrate with that of others, for nothing is more important than continuity of character to creating the suspension of disbelief needed to motivate these personalities in a believable way.

That said, if you give me a shot animated by one of my peers, I could make a very good stab at who created it, just by how the shot was approached. We all have unique characteristics that mark a shot as our own, even without putting pencil to paper.

With the arrival of digital content, there have never been more ways to create aesthetically unique animated films, particularly short form pieces. This may not be at the shot level, but the rich variety of our medium goes from strength to strength with each new generation.

Just my take on the idea.
All the best,

Kevan

Have we ever been more spoiled with cool things to look at? It's ace!

Emilio on CGTalk!

My cube chum is the featured artist on CGTalk this week!

Here...

Doodle

Blockage

I want to be better at blocking out my shots.

For me, roughing in the animation is by far the most important part of the shot process, and completely sets up the shot for success or... well, not failure as such, but definitely something not as good as success. If I can get this working consistently then I think I'll be doing OK.

I have my ideas and my drawings and childlike enthusiasm, so that's a good start. I just need to plop them into my shot in a meaningful way that conveys my intent to the creative leads. In fact, putting the keys in is usually fine too (given my job and all), but how much further to go to sell the idea and win people over to my way of thinking? It is this balance that is a tricky sucker to grab hold of. On one hand you can rough in very little and risk not getting your idea across, and on the other putting too much detail would really hurt you if it's not quite the right idea and changes are required - you have wasted all that time!

With good blocking the rest of the animation process can proceed very smoothly, and the shot should be done in no time. As a computer animation student, myself and everyone else I know didn't block, and relied on layering things up. While this is a perfectly valid way of working, looking back now I found it harder to get the intent of the performance over quickly, for I would change one thing and then have to redo some work that I had already thought was complete. Unlearning this and going all "Old School" has certainly helped me to think about things in a new and better way. There is a reason why this is an established convention in traditional animation!

I definitely play blocking a little more cautiously than many, I would wager. I'm a pretty slow animator, as the species goes, so having to change things is a time drain that I really don't want to have to deal with. Hopefully with practice I will be able to hit the balance every time, and help me make the whole process faster and smoother.