Tired Eyes

The process of working through a shot is a tough one. Much of the creative stuff occurs just after launch. It is here that acting choices, filming reference, thumbnailing and key-posing are hammered out, leaving the rest of the time allocated for revision, detail and polish, and it is here that familiarity comes with a set of blinkers. Once you've got them on it makes it hard to see things that would once have been obvious, like pops, spacing issues, even some acting choices not working so well!

Given that an animator has probably looked at one shot thousands of times when they reach those final stages, it's good to have some tricks to help see the work with fresh eyes. Here are some:

- Look at the shot at half speed -
Spacing and weight issues really show up when slowed. This way brain has time to pay attention to all of those little details you put in!

- Flip the shot horizontally -
If your movie playback doesn't support this, you can always go all old school and simply hold up a mirror to the screen, for the result is the same. Looking at the shot this way is cool for personally I find that I uncover balance issues with my poses in this way? Have I been posing with my head tilted to one side? I don't know, but this helps fix it.

- Turn off bits of the character -
Arms and legs can be be and flappy and gesture-y, distracting you from the movement of the core parts like bodies and heads. Turn them off! Now you can track the important bits free from all that gesticulation!

- Take a break -
I always find that a five minute break does wonders for my ability to see what's not working. I will sit back down and my desk and wonder what I was thinking of, just 10 minutes ago! Whee!

- Someone else's opinion -
Probably pretty obvious, but this is absolutely the best thing you can do to improve your work! Animation is a collaborative thing, and your work will be all the better for having some new eyes on the work...


Woo!

New Ringling Shorts

I haven't had a chance to see them all yet, but I really like "Emily in the Clouds" and "Siku and Tuku". They are (1,2) and (2,3) in the grid...

HERE THEY ARE!

Congrats to all the new graduates!

Cool Pixar

I like hearing stories about Amelie-style altruism. Now you can read one too...

Crying Wall-E youTube lady...

: D

A Panda who does Kung Fu

DWA had the Friends and Family screening for KFP in San Francisco last weekend. I left with a warm and happy feeling inside. I am not going to say lots about it, for there are plenty of places to find such discourse on these 'ere opinionated internets, but I really feel that people who enjoy a good film should go and see it, for it is one. A good film, that is. Actually that's wrong - it's an amazing film! Yay!

Maybe we'll talk later about it, when you have all seen it.
: )

WELL DONE, KFP CREW!

Animation Mentor

Hello Blog!

It's tough to post these days. Life is hectic at the moment, both outside of work and in. I do have some fun news I wanted to share though, and that is that this past week I started as a Community Mentor for the Animation Mentor online school! The online campus is truly incredible, and the students are an enthusiastic and helpful bunch. Yay!

The role of the community mentor is to lurk around places and then swoop down like a ninja and offer advice/notes to students, outside of their regular contact with their assigned class mentor. I am wearing black at this moment for this very purpose. It allows me to make super stealthy ninja crits. Silk is better than my current cotton due to the reduced noise from friction, but my silk ninja outfit is in the wash. It isn't really. I don't have such an outfit. But I want one.

Anyway, I hope to do a decent enough job. Let's see how it goes.

Ninja vanish!

==-\| W H O O O O S H |/-==

The Dying Art of Cinema-going

The big worry in Hollywood right now is one of theatre attendance. The Bigs are worried that people are eschewing the multiplex in favour of watching films at home on ever expanding screens. To some extent the home theatre market is encroaching on the box office dollar, but from the takings of the larger releases in the last couple of years it seems clear to me that the market is still there, it just needs to be coaxed back out again.

As someone who falls into this group I am definitely going to need to see change before I start handing over notes of real money for tickets again. I used to visit the cinema on a regular basis, but now I can't even remember what the last film I saw there was as it has been so long. There are a number of reasons I now favour simply waiting for Netflix, and I wonder how much of this resonates with other people, or whether I'm just a miserable, anti-social git:

Mobile Telecommunications - In spite of the little advertisements at the start of every film people still insist on chatting, text messaging and the occasional game of snake, casting a brilliant blueish-white light into the dark to acompany their own brand of noise pollution. Now, technology exists to effectively block the carrier signal to individual phones, and I believe this should be standard in all cinemas, (allowing emergency calls, of course). Once you enter into a theatre you are agreeing to be incommunicado for the duration of the screening, or have the option to move into the lobby to make a call. Sounds fair enough to me.

Seating - like it is where I come from, all seating for popular shows should be assigned. You can plan in advance and book, or choose from what is available when you reach the box office. I don't know why it's not all like that everywhere, but it should be! It would make everyone more relaxed when trying to find a good seat. Ushers should take groups to their seats to make things easier, and which has the secondary bonus for the cinema in that sneaks can't get away with seeing multiple shows on the cost on a single ticket.

People - with the lines blurring between home theatre and the cinema, it seems that people are bringing the same mentality to the movies with them as they would adopt at home. Most of the time this is fine, but not always. Maybe I'm just a prudey Brit but I don't like others pulling me out of the main attraction. For me, cinema is all about immersion, concentration and the experience. I can't imagine you all would disagree with me, but feel free to tell me otherwise.

The strength of going to the cinema is that when the audience is all invested in the film, laughing together, crying together; acting as a single entity, then it is one of the best experiences you can have. The trouble lies in its fragility - it doesn't take much to ruin the whole night for everyone. I would really like to see the resurgence in the popularity of the cinema as it is good for all concerned, and steps are being made to modernise it and make it distinct from viewing at home, but I worry that the root of the problem does not lie in the infrastructure, and more to do with a change in social climate.

So. There we are.
You can turn your phones on again now.

The Big Knights

Hello Blog. Somewhere way back in the mists of time I think I mentioned "The Big Knights" - an animated C-BBC series by Neville Astley and Mark Baker. It is still one of my favourite animated series' and I was delighted to find that some of the episodes have been put up on youTube!

All the characters are so unique and appealing! I also really like that the plotlines are clever and fun, whilst being sophisticated at the same time. There is no dumbing down of the story at all, and yet it is always super clear what is happening. This is masterful stuff hiding in the guise of mid-afternoon children's entertainment.

Please take the time to watch one.... or eight. They're not available on DVD - the BBC sat on the rights and never released them but for half of the episodes on lame-o VHS. What a terrible shame.

Anyway. Enjoy, blog!