Mr. Blake's Art Diary - Part 1

I've found this site a while ago but it had so much good stuff on it that I procrastinated a post about it. Well enough is enough (plus it's slow at work right now), so here we go. This is just a best-of that I found interesting (goes back till 2006), ranging from animation tips and tools to just cool stuff. There is obviously much much more, so I encourage you to go through the posts yourself since I will only post animation (kinda) related posts.

(There is a lot of stuff worth mentioning, so this will be part 1. On Monday I'll post part 2.)

- First off a piece of artwork by Mr. Blake which I really like (street scene)


- Next up is "Graph Editor Redux 1.1.0". Follow the link and download it from highend3d. The download comes with a handy PDF for instructions.


- "Frenzied Fauna: From A to Z" has really funny and cute creatures by Michel Gagne. His site also displays his work on/for "Ratatouille", "The Iron Giant", etc.



- If you want to have your animation controls invisible while you work but still be able to select them, then check out "Keith Lango's trick for invisible viewport selections in maya".

- Here's a huge collections of character animation scripts by Aaron Koressel. ackNewGraphEditor sounds good (any tool that improves the graph editor is worth a look), then ackSliceCurves sounds awesome. It "inserts a key at the current time into the currently selected curves while preserving tangents". Good to have. Much more there, go check out the list.
There's tons of good stuff out there, so stay tuned.

- Check out Deter Brown's Animation Mentor Demo Reel, with some cool animation and nice renders.

- Storyboarding tool as well as many other production related tools.

- ShapeShifter is a web based animation program. Very simple but a lot of fun.


- Gesture Drawing for Animation by Walt Stanchfield. There used to be a pdf collection online, but since an official book is coming, it got pulled. Check the site for an update on when the book will be released.

- Feng Zhu Design. Go to the gallery section and check out the beautiful artwork. There are also workshop DVDs and much more.




- "Pencil" is a free Windows/Mac/Linux animation program (2D)


- "Maya Tutorial Muscle Rigging" by Fahrenheit Digital

- Veerapatra Jinanavin's Animation site - you might recognize his older work, very cool though!



- "Supercrumbly" collection of MEL scripts (auto rigging script, bookmark your curves, etc.)

- "PoseLib" lets you set up a library for your poses. (direct link)


Don't stop there though. "SeithCG" has a great post to his "Flushed-Away" Animation Process, with a clip showing initial blocking to final animation.


- "ShotView for Maya" - This is a tool by Cameron Fielding for a clean maya viewport. I think I linked to it before on this site, but it's always worth linking to it again


- "sparth - by Nicolas Bouvier" is an awesome blog with fantastic artwork

This one was done on the Nintendo DS using "colors".

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Framing your shot

Make it a habit to visit Jeff's Academy site. One of the posts mentions the Movie Screenshot gallery blog, which looks to become a fantastic resource. Go through the posts and study the framing of the actors or the general composition of the shots. Think about how you can make your own shots more interesting, how you can use specific staging to advance the story point in your clip.

I also recommend the DVD "Visions of Light" as well as the following books (click here).

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Acting Reference - The Quiet

Yes, I do rent all kinds of movies. You have to see the good and the bad and in this case, it was pretty bad. What I want to highlight though is the character Michelle, played by Katy Mixon.

Take her acting, place it into an animated movie and she'd be perfect. Since animation is a stylized and exaggerated form of reality, she would fit right in. :)

Just watch and marvel. Although it speaks for Katy Mixon and her ability to make that character really annoying.

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Video clip(s) are for educational purposes only
© 2006 Sony Pictures Classics
All Rights Reserved.

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Acting Reference - We Own The Night

I hadn't heard too much about this movie so when I finally saw it I was actually pleasantly surprised. I really liked it. Unfortunately going through reviews afterwards it seems that half of the general audience really liked it and the other half really didn't. Either way, there is a fantastic car chase in it and (to me at least) very good performances by Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg (poor guy is still fighting the Marky Mark stigma). The drug lords, Robert Duvall, even Eva Mendez were good. It was one of those movies where the evolving character arcs sucked you in. The performances were overall great, which gave me a hard time to pick out something isolated that would help you guys in your shots.

My goal of posting these acting references is to showcase single acting moments that add texture to a character, a defining gesture or attitude that gets you inspired for your shots. Saying that Marlon Brando is a great actor and telling you guys to watch "On the Waterfront" isn't bad, but will it help you right now with your single shots? I have my doubts (but you should still watch the movie). You don't have the benefit of a full length movie (or multiple movies), in which the audience gets to know your character or where you can surprise an audience with a new role. You're stuck (right now) with single shots or a sequence at most which has to showcase creative and unique acting choices. And one thing to remember is that animation (at least in feature animation) is an exageration of character, a stylized version of reality. An animated feature mimicking real life is boring. Why not shoot it life-action instead? So don't get sucked into live-action movies and trying to emulate scenes that you like or that I recommend. I'm recommending the essence of a particular scene or acting choice.

"We Own the Night" is a tragedy and the overall feel of the movie isn't exactly a cheerful one (not exactly key ingredients of animated movies in the U.S.), but here's a scene that cracked me up because of Joaquin's face and body acting.

Context: Joseph, played by Mark Wahlberg, and Bobby, played by Joaquin Phoenix are having a fight (obviously...) because Joseph just raided his brother's nightclub. One brother is a cop, the other is circulating in more shady territories, so conflict is a given. The scuffle ends with them insulting each other's wife and girlfriend. This is the end of that as they are being separate by Joseph's cop buddies.

What I liked about it was the moment after "Get out of here!", where Joaquin is being pushed away physically and verbally, yet he still defies his brother through that smile and body posture. It's just a "YEAH?! Whatever." attitude, trying to regain the upper hand in a way. I just love the face he makes. If you guys would animate a verbal fight between two characters and end it like that, it would be sooo cool! It's just a great character moment to me and one that works taken out of context. You don't need to have seen the whole movie in order to understand or appreciate that scene.

The next shot is definitely more context heavy. Joaquin and his girlfriend Amada, played by Eva Mendez, are under protective custody. Amada has a hard time with it because as the story unfolds Joaquin, his brother and their dad are forming a tighter and tighter relationship and Amada feels left out. So in this scene Joaquin is getting back to the hotel they are staying at in order to pack his things, but Amada has left already.

You see him being really in love with her at the beginning of the movie, so you would expect him to read the note she left him, but he's gradually accepting the fact that he won't get the support and love from her that he needs. Again, context heavy, but it's interesting to do things that play against people's expectations. So let's say this is your dialogue and you're animating to it, you could exchange the note with flowers and when the cop says " She said to give you this." have your character throw them away or discard them without emotion or something like that. The fact that your character would not care about pretty flowers (or whatever object you'd choose) says something about his emotional attachment to it. To me it's interesting to see acting choices outside the confinements of your audio clip. Not that this one is really limiting you to do something specific. But let's say you animate to an audio clip where someone is on the phone. You don't have to stick to that. You don't have to have your character act out the lines and emotions your hear in the audio clip. What if he/she is pretending? Have the character say/act out the line but during the pauses he/she could address someone who's with him/her and give him/her a look of "I can't believe I'm saying this!" or "Oh my god, he's totally believing what I'm saying!" or "How much longer do I need to be on this damn phone?!" while the audio line delivery is all polite, etc. I hope I make sense. Don't feel trapped by the audio clip, think outside the box and be creative with it.

On a more serious note I like how Joaquin pauses a bit (even freezes a bit) after hearing "...left about an hour ago.". It is a surprise/shock/disapointment to him, but yet he doesn't read the note. And when he's packing his clothes, I like how he's fighting against his emotions. He is disapointed and sad after all and even though no one else is in the room with him (which might force him to keep his composure), he doesn't want to cry and break down. I think it's a more powerful scene when you watch the whole movie, but I still wanted to include it in this clip.

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Video clip(s) are for educational purposes only
Copyright © 2007 by 2929 Productions, LLC.
All Rights Reserved.

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Critique - Conductor

I like it much better. The only thing that you need to look out for is the last part where he pulls the sheet towards him. I know it's blocking but don't forget to make it as sad/heart felt/loving/ as possible, so keep the movement more on the slow side.
Same with taking the phone off the ear and down needs to be slow as well, just like the paper pulling closer. You need to see that he gets lost in his own world of music.

And yes, too many poses gives it that cartoony, overacted look, much like Horton (obvious polite but true disclaimer, the animation was beautiful, but there was just too much of it). Less is more with a few well placed accents to give it a nice contrast.

Be careful about the pose change from x50 to 51. It's a big move so don't forget that it will take time to switch between poses. That's why I'm not a big fan of stepped blocking, unless it's like around x200+, where you have more breakdown poses as he sits down. That way you can judge how long a move will take.

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James Baxter Animation Lecture - Day One: Acting

Found @ Seward Street, this is a very interesting post about acting for animators. Some nuggets:

Actors do, while animators describe.

...

Milt has set it up so you only look at one thing at a time. He crafted the scene so that when Shere Khan pops open his claws, everyone is looking there. Nothing else is moving. (Waste of time to always be moving all the background characters).

...

Used Horton as an example of animation having too much to it. Loved the scenes with JoJo because you could actually focus on what he was doing.

Great notes, go read them as soon as you can!

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Zoomerator

As mentioned yesterday there is a link to zoomerator on Animation Buffet. Here the description:

Creates a small interface to manage zooming and traking in x y and z, using the overscan and offset values of a chosen camera.
It helps animators and trackers get in close, or back up far from objects independent of the actual tranlates and rotates for the camera.

Very useful, give it a try.

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How movies are meant to be seen.

I know this is not exactly animation related, but let me tell you. Once you've seen "Ratatouille" on this, you can't go back. "This" being the:

Mitsubishi HC1500 (for $699)

Holy smokes, I watched "2001" on Blu-ray yesterday on this projector as well and it look A-mazing. So far giant standouts have been "Ratatouille", "3:10 to Yuma" and "2001". Plus the projector is bright enough so you don't have to have a pitch black room. In full sunlight your blacks will vanish, granted, but darken the room a little bit and it's no problem. Of course the darker the better. But holy moly "2001" looked good. That movie is 40 years old. And it still holds up (unlike "Batman" - the Keaton version...).

2001 - A Space Odyssey [Blu-ray]

The special features are fantastic. Useless for some but great for me, there's even a German tack on it. :)

Do yourself a favor, don't buy a big TV for 2 or 3K, get his projector for $699 plus a PS3 and you're in movie heaven. And with the money you saved, go get Blu-ray movies. I know, total sales pitch, but animation nerds, hear me out! You HAVE to watch movies, it's part of your homework. You need to study the craft and what better way than on a big screen? :)

Images from DVDbeaver

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How do you animate really, really fast? - by Kevin Koch

You can’t animate it if you can’t see it, clearly, in your mind’s eye.

I wanted to add the second quote as well. It's great when you find someone who thinks the same way (not that I'm putting myself at the same level though!), but who's actually able to explain and articulate his thoughts in a way that makes sense. :)

"... knowing in great detail who your character is and exactly why they’re doing what they’re doing, and I’d push and push for specificity and clarity in their intentions..."

Great post about planning and speeding up your workflow by Kevin Koch, a must-read. You should print out his post and always carry it with you. - found @ Wong Loon's blog - pic source

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