animation 2

cinemetrics

2012-01-12T13:42:00.001-08:00

cinemetrics from fb on Vimeo.

Thanks to Dan Ross for the link.

Wheatley VGA Award spots

2011-12-22T10:51:00.000-08:00

Kyle Balda walk cycle demo

2011-12-13T12:54:00.001-08:00

#animtip tuesday is chock full of great material today

and...the blog is back

2011-12-13T12:52:00.000-08:00

It's reference day

Slow Motion sprinter. Amazing ref for mechanics.

Jason Schleifer TED talk

looney toons rigging

2011-10-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

Head over to cgjosh to have your minds blown

Some stupendous rigging on Wile E. Coyote. Stupendous, I say.

the Lorax, work in progress trailer

2011-09-28T14:46:00.001-07:00

Love what I"m seeing here

Great little short

2011-09-26T10:58:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Matt Ornstein for the link. Very charming and well timed short.

timelapse

2011-09-07T11:52:00.001-07:00

Tchaikovsky Timelapse from joe clarke on Vimeo.

transformer snail

2011-09-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

credit to Thai Nguyen for finding this one.

mocap vs animation, really, the debate is still going on.

2011-09-01T10:21:00.000-07:00

Great post by 'Strongman" animator, Tim Borelli on another incendiary comment by the talented Andy Serkis. It's a very articulate post on what a mocap animator actually does.

want

2011-08-30T10:05:00.001-07:00

Wacom Inkling

quantum conundrum

2011-08-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

New game by former Portal designer, Kim Swift

everything involving the cookie monster = funny

2011-08-18T15:52:00.001-07:00

the dude still abides

2011-08-17T10:08:00.001-07:00

Terry Gilliam animation demo

2011-08-05T09:33:00.001-07:00

dreamworks animators on physics

2011-08-03T15:13:00.000-07:00

Shamelessly lifted from Rebecca Perez's blog

Game of Thrones Compositing

2011-08-01T17:30:00.001-07:00

Travis, on life balance

2011-08-01T11:05:00.000-07:00

Former colleague, Travis Howe - who knew he was such an insightful guy? Some great tips on work/life balance.

breaking bad - acting reference

2011-07-31T13:06:00.000-07:00

I put up this clip from Breaking Bad, the show I'm currently obsessed with. I love Aaron Paul's character in this, as, like most of the characters on the show, he struggles with being a criminal and being the person he started out as. I love the shift from pysching himself while clearly being afraid, to the conversation with the postal worker. The rest of the episode seemed to really be informed by this one scene, as well as the basic conflict of his character.

Bryant Wilsons' Thesis

2011-07-20T15:17:00.000-07:00

Your Basic Cable Weatherman from Bryant Wilson on Vimeo.

Brian did a fantastic job on this - great to see it evolve into a great short!

amazing spider man trailer

2011-07-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

Really enjoyed this trailer and am amused by the Mirror's Edge parallel

We love the Aardman.

2011-07-14T14:11:00.001-07:00

back in the day

2011-07-06T10:06:00.001-07:00

CG-History Episode 002 SGI from andy probst on Vimeo.

Lou Romano - color studies from up

2011-07-05T17:29:00.001-07:00

[link]

commencement address from Jim Steen

2011-06-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

[link]

Jim Steen, swim coach of Kenyon College (my alma mater) has the reputation of someone that really intuits how people think and what motivates them. This commencement address is full of some amazing insights on teaching, coaching as well as how to strive for success.

I particularly like some of the Scott Adams quotes

Adams further discusses the idea of "failing forward," which, in my mind, is not only invaluable from a career perspective, but also absolutely essential from a performance perspective. According to the author, "If you're taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90 percent of the time. The trick (and, parents, you'll love this!) is to get paid while you're doing the failing, and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later. I failed at my first career in banking. I failed at my second career with the phone company. But you'd be surprised at how many of the skills I learned in those careers can be applied to almost any field, including cartooning. Students should be taught that failure is a process, not an obstacle."

Best of all is the lesson Adams offers on "attracting luck", a point on which I believe I've built an entire career. Adams suggests, "You can't manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you. To succeed, first you must do something. And if that doesn't work, which can be 90 percent of the time, do something else.Luck finds the doers."

history of the internet in pictograms

2011-06-07T12:27:00.001-07:00

History of the Internet from Melih Bilgil on Vimeo.

because I'm obsessed with pictograms

6 traits

2011-06-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.paper-leaf.com/blog/2009/09/6-characteristics-of-the-successful-designer/

I stumbled upon this the other day and thought it relevant to a career in animation, or probably any commercial art field.

the return of jay clay

2011-05-31T11:21:00.001-07:00

The Quiet Life from Timothy Hittle on Vimeo.

found through Morgan Loomis...love Jay Clay...still have my coveted Jay Clay vhs tape from back in the day (and nothing to play it on)

spring show aau reel

2011-05-31T11:13:00.000-07:00

Spring Show 2011 - School of Animation & VFX - 3D Animation from AAU ANM + VFX on Vimeo.

congrats to former students Meghana Gupte, Kamil Khan, In Ho Beak and Chutinart Warunyuwong

Love seeing the amazing progress everyone has made. Found these through this link

Would love to link to more work - send in links if you know of any.

impersonations

2011-05-31T10:14:00.000-07:00

Thought it might be good to put up some footage of impersonations. It's fantastic acting reference, as the impersonator usually studies and seizes the most important/telling aspects of a character.

characters

2011-05-31T09:39:00.000-07:00

Can't remember where I stumbled upon this link...most likely from an animation blog, but it's a complilation of memorable characters of the last decade.. lots of great acting/inspiration and seemed to merit a repost.

[link]

letterpress

2011-05-16T12:07:00.001-07:00

Letterpress from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.

the slow mo guys

2011-05-06T10:25:00.001-07:00

inspirational blog of the day

2011-03-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

dailymation

pretty much daily rough 2d animation. Very inspiring!

tech artists. the unsung heroes

2011-03-24T16:10:00.001-07:00

youtube channel with tech artist interviews.

follow the link to hear lots of smart people talking.

a brief history of title design

2011-03-17T09:47:00.000-07:00

A Brief History of Title Design from Ian Albinson on Vimeo.

linked from Ron Pucherelli

useful site on quadrapeds

2011-03-13T21:57:00.000-07:00

I'm getting obsessed with quadraped animation again and found this useful site on the mechanics of it all

Tidbits like: The characteristic of this gait is that the leading leg bears the weight of the body over longer periods of time that any other leg, and is more prone to fatique and injury

workflow

2011-03-11T10:42:00.001-08:00

Workflow is one of the hardest and most vital things to get down, especially in the learning stages. In the end, you never stop working and refining your workflow. Now that I’m in motionbuilder most of the time, I have to really rethink a lot of my tricks and methodology, but these links should get you going..

Kenny Roy Workflow Lecture

Chris Williams Workflow Notes

Kyle Balda ‘root out’ method

animation physics

2011-03-08T14:55:00.001-08:00

wonderful resource

from falling objects and beyond..

character design

2011-03-08T11:38:00.000-08:00

well written post

Disney lecture

2011-03-02T19:19:00.001-08:00

An interesting week so far, between GDC and animation lectures.

Last night, I went to a recruiting meeting/Tangled presentation for the Academy of Art, which was hugely inspiring. I’m always impressed by speakers that make animation seem like a grand adventure you’re on for your lifetime. Clay Kaytis spoke, and having listened to his podcasts for years, I was really impressed with how down to earth and open in his approach to working with others. He did an amazing sell job for the studio, because he portrayed it as a place where you go into dailies with the intent of helping your colleagues rise to new heights.

I really enjoy and admire that approach to collaboration. I’ve been in environments where you’re ‘cast’ on your strengths, which happens, but the idea of being helped to grow beyond your current capabilities is the one thing that really makes animation worth it to me…being on that journey. It also stressed how important it is to work with people better than you are. For the students out there, pay heed! Keep getting critique from the best animators you can find. He showed some Glen Keane pencil tests in which a bunch of squiggles felt like weighty, solid hair. He also showed some of Glen’s sketchover frames onto shots, and it was amazing to see how even in some quick transitions, he really pushed the breakdowns. Apparently there was a Glen Keane drop folder to put your shots into to have him sketch onto. I want that drop folder!

The other thing I took from it was that they didn’t have a character lead on Rapunzel, but let her evolve through collaboration. Of course they had early tests and a solid start, but it was clear that they embraced the idea of animators riffing off of each other, something that when I’ve been in environments like that, I’ve really got a lot out of.

Thumbs up all around. It made me really think whatever setbacks Disney Feature animation has had over the years, they’ve evolved past them into something pretty great, certainly in attitude and approach. When a talk has me going home and sketching and animating until 2 am, you know they’re on to something.

weeks 5/6 gain or loss of momentum

2011-02-22T14:49:00.000-08:00

I'll give a demo tonight on workflow, but in looking for reference, I found this to be pretty fascinating

invisible ink

2011-02-15T11:00:00.000-08:00

great post @ synchrolux
some great way of approaching the methodology behind what we do..

...when you say the word conflict, people often think you mean arguing. So students starting a dialog shot pick dialog of actors angrily yelling at each other. Or they’re confused when I ask them what internal conflict their character is experiencing at any given moment. The key point is that conflict doesn’t need to be obvious, overt, or loud to be powerful. It doesn’t even need to be between two people. And it can operate on multiple levels, so that two characters can be in conflict with each other, and each of those characters can be experiencing internal conflict.

Effective conflict does require is that your characters be real, and that they have distinct needs and goals. Needs and goals are not the same thing. Goals tend to be overt, while needs tend to be covert. Put another way, goals usually relate to plot, while needs relate to subplot.

Realism in 3d...

2011-02-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

Great link from Matt Garward on a Salon.com article with Shannon Tindle

I think the animators have gotten the short end of the stick. I read an interview where Gore Verbinski was talking about his new film, "Rango," and how he got all these actors in there and really relied on their performances. Well, animators are actors, plain and simple. They are a lot of scenes. I had friends who worked on "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," and Andy Serkis got a lot of credit, but that first shot where you see them climbing down the mountain, that's all animation. There's a magic that comes from a team of animators, while motion capture can, sometimes, look more like a tracing, or like you've drawn a photograph. You see the technological marvel of it, but it doesn't really grab you in any way because it seems to only be a technical exercise.

Yes!!

superman classic

2011-02-07T15:50:00.001-08:00

cool style..like Kim Possible meets Fleischer

vw commercial - kid vader

2011-02-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

What I love about this is how the poses really capture a sense of believability in what a kid that age might be thinking. Love the end reaction.

art museums from google

2011-02-01T16:43:00.001-08:00

http://www.googleartproject.com/

Tim Johnson on how to tame a dragon 2

2011-01-24T11:56:00.001-08:00

walk cycles

2011-01-17T13:16:00.001-08:00

relink from David Martinez

neil parkinson showreel

2011-01-13T09:55:00.001-08:00

living lines library

2011-01-11T11:01:00.001-08:00

like the pencil test blog, another amazing resource

with inspirational goodness like

Frank Thomas (Lady and the Tramp) from Victor Ens on Vimeo.

Brad Bird on fostering innovation

2011-01-04T10:22:00.001-08:00

Innovation lessons from Pixar Director Brad Bird - Strategy - Innovation

If there’s one thing successful innovators have shown over the years, it’s that great ideas come from unexpected places. Who could have predicted that bicycle mechanics would develop the airplane or that the US Department of Defense would give rise to a freewheeling communications platform like the Internet?

Senior executives looking for ideas about how to make their companies more innovative can also seek inspiration in surprising sources. Exhibit One: Brad Bird, Pixar’s two-time Oscar-winning director. Bird’s hands-on approach to fostering creativity among animators holds powerful lessons for any executive hoping to nurture innovation in teams and organizations.

Bird joined Pixar in 2000, when the company was riding high following its release of the world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and the subsequent hits A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2. Concerned about complacency, senior executives Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter asked Bird, whose body of work included The Iron Giant and The Simpsons, to join the company and shake things up. The veteran of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and FOX delivered—winning Academy Awards (best animated feature) for two groundbreaking movies, The Incredibles andRatatouille.

Ten days before Ratatouille won its Oscar, we sat down with Bird at the Emeryville, California, campus of Pixar, which is now a subsidiary of Disney.¹ Bird discussed the importance, in his work, of pushing teams beyond their comfort zones, encouraging dissent, and building morale. He also explained the value of “black sheep”—restless contributors with unconventional ideas. Although stimulating the creativity of animators might seem very different from developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs, Bird’s anecdotes should stir the imagination of innovation-minded executives in any industry.

The Quarterly: What attracted you to Pixar?

Brad Bird: One thing that was unbelievably different about this company was that they were worried about becoming complacent. When I came here, they had made three movies—Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2—that had all been big hits. I was coming off a film called The Iron Giant that was a highly regarded financial failure.

Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter said, in effect, “The only thing we’re afraid of is complacency—feeling like we have it all figured out. We want you to come shake things up. We will give you a good argument if we think what you’re doing doesn’t make sense, but if you can convince us, we’ll do things a different way.” For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, “Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up”—when do you run into that?

The Quarterly: How did your first project at Pixar—The Incredibles—shake things up?

Brad Bird: The Incredibles was everything that computer-generated animation had trouble doing. It had human characters, it had hair, it had water, it had fire, it had a massive number of sets. The creative heads were excited about the idea of the film, but once I showed story reels of exactly what I wanted, the technical teams turned white. They took one look and thought, “This will take ten years and cost $500 million. How are we possibly going to do this?”

So I said, “Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door.” A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things, but there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well.

We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here. For less money per minute than was spent on the previous film, Finding Nemo, we did a movie that had three times the number of sets and had everything that was hard to do. All this because the heads of Pixar gave us leave to try crazy ideas.

The Quarterly: What sorts of things did you do differently?

Brad Bird: There are purists in computer graphics who are brilliant but don’t have the urgency about budgets and scheduling that responsible filmmakers do. I had to shake the purist out of them—essentially frighten them into realizing I was ready to use quick and dirty “cheats” to get something on screen if they took too long to achieve it in the computer. I’d say, “Look, I don’t have to do the water through a computer simulation program. If we can’t get a program to work, I’m perfectly content to film a splash in a swimming pool and just composite the water in.” This absolutely horrified them. Or I’d say, “You can build a flying saucer, or you can take a pie plate and fling it across the screen. If the audience only sees the pie plate very briefly and you throw it just right, they will buy it as a flying saucer.”

I never did film the pool splash or throw the pie plate, but talking this way helped everyone understand that we didn’t have to make something that would work from every angle. Not all shots are created equal. Certain shots need to be perfect, others need to be very good, and there are some that only need to be good enough to not break the spell.

We also made superelaborate storyboards. We even emulated camera movement in them, so everyone knew that “We only need to make things work between here and there.” Once I was able to commit to the camera angles, we could be very specific about how we built things. Something would look beautiful from one position, but if you moved five feet to the right, the image would disintegrate. I gave up the flexibility to move within a set, but in exchange I bought size and scope.

Inside the interview with Pixar’s Brad Bird

An interactive feature including a brief biography, audio clips from the interview, and stills from several of Bird’s projects

The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation? Can you be innovative and also happy?

Brad Bird: I would say that involved people make for better innovation. Passionate involvement can make you happy, sometimes, and miserable other times. You want people to be involved and engaged. Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.

The Quarterly: How important is team dynamics to innovation and creativity?

Brad Bird: Making a film, you have all these different departments, and what you’re trying to do is find a way to get them to put forth their creativity in a harmonious way. Otherwise, it’s like you have an orchestra where everybody’s playing their own music. Each individual piece might be beautiful, but together they’re crazy.

The Quarterly: How do you build and lead a team that collaborates in the way you’re describing?

Brad Bird: When I directed The Iron Giant, I inherited a team that was totally broken—a bunch of miserable people who had just gone through a horrific experience on a previous film that had bombed. When the time came for animators to start showing me their work, I got everybody in a room. This was different from what the previous guy had done; he had reviewed the work in private, generated notes, and sent them to the person.

For my reviews, I got a video projector and had an animator’s scenes projected onto a dry-erase board. I could freeze a frame and take a marker and show where I thought things should be versus where they were. I said, “Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together. If there is a solution, I want everyone to hear the solution, so everyone adds it to their tool kit. I’m going to take my shot at what I think will improve a scene, but if you see something different, go ahead and disagree. I don’t know all the answers.”

So I started in: “I think the elbow needs to come up higher here so that we feel the thrust of this action.” “I’m not seeing the thought process on the character here.” “Does anybody disagree? Come on, speak up.” The room was silent because with the previous director, anyone who dared to say anything got their head chopped off.

For two months, I pushed and analyzed each person’s work in front of everybody. And they didn’t speak up. One day, I did my thing, and one of the guys sighed. I shouted, “What was that?” And he said, “Nothing man, it’s OK.” And I said, “No, you sighed. Clearly, you disagree with something I did there. Show me what you’re thinking. I might not have it right. You might. Show me.” So he came up, and I handed him the dry-erase marker. He erased what I did. Then he did something different and explained why he thought it ought to be that way. I said, “That’s better than what I did. Great.” Everybody saw that he didn’t get his head chopped off. And our learning curve went straight up. By the end of the film, that animation team was much stronger than at the beginning, because we had all learned from each other’s strengths. But it took two months for people to feel safe enough to speak up.

The Quarterly: How does your experience with that team compare with your work leading creative teams at Pixar?

Brad Bird: When Pixar asked me to take over Ratatouille, the project had been in development for five years but was not in any shape to produce as a movie. There was a moment, at the very beginning of my involvement, when I was in a room full of about 30 people. At this stage, the rats in the movie had been articulated. Articulation is where they design how the muscles and controls work on the characters. Because people were worried about the audience’s reaction to rats, all of them were designed to walk on two legs.

I thought that was a mistake. I knew it would be an expensive use of resources, at that point in the process, to rearticulate the rats, but I said, “We have to get them so that they walk on all fours. And Remy, the protagonist rat, has to be able to walk not only on all fours but up on two legs.” Everybody said, “Ugh!” because they had spent a year making the rats look good walking on two legs. If you simply took those models, bent them over, and put them on all fours, their hips didn’t work and things just looked wrong. They were designed to be upright.

One of the guys challenged me. He said, “I want to know why you’re doing this.” Now, I had gone into this film reluctantly. It’s not what I was looking to do after The Incredibles. And there was a part of me that wanted to say, “Because I’m the director, that’s why. Do youwant to take this problematic thing over?”

But I stopped and thought for a second. I thought, these guys have been sent down blind alleys for a couple of years. They want to know that I’m not doing anything lightly and that if I’m going to make them do a bunch more work, it’s for a reason. So I said, “This movie is about a rat who wants to enter the human world. We have to make that a visual choice for the character. If you have all of the rats walking on two legs, there’s no separation between him and the other rats. If we have this separation as a visual device, we can see the character make his transformation and choose to be on two legs, and he can become more or less ratty, depending on his emotional state. That brings the audience into the character’s mind.”

I spent six minutes saying all this and the guy was initially scowling. But gradually the scowl went away, and he said, “OK.” Once I gave that answer, everyone felt, “OK, we’re on this ship and we’re going toward a definite destination.”

The Quarterly: It sounds like you spend a fair amount of time thinking about the morale of your teams.

Brad Bird: In my experience, the thing that has the most significant impact on a movie’s budget—but never shows up in a budget—is morale. If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

Before I got the chance to make films myself, I worked on a number of badly run productions and learned how not to make a film. I saw directors systematically restricting people’s input and ignoring any effort to bring up problems. As a result, people didn’t feel invested in their work, and their productivity went down. As their productivity fell, the number of hours of overtime would increase, and the film became a money pit.

The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?

Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. There was a point during the making of The Incredibles where we had a company meeting. We have them about twice a year, and anybody can bring up concerns. Somebody raised their hand and said, “Is The Incredibles too ambitious?” Ed Catmull said, “I don’t know” and looked over at me. I just said, “No! If there’s one studio that needs to be doing stuff that is ‘too ambitious,’ it’s this one. You guys have had nothing but success. What do you do with it? You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

The Quarterly: If you ask most companies how they innovate, they’ll say, “Know your customer. Find out what your customer really wants you to do.” It sounds like you think about innovation differently.

Brad Bird: Our goal is different because if you say you’re making a movie for “them,” that automatically puts you on an unsteady footing. The implication is, you’re making it for a group that you are not a member of—and there is something very insincere in that. If you’re dealing with a storytelling medium, which is a mechanized means of producing and presenting a dream that you’re inviting people to share, you’d better believe your dream or else it’s going to come off as patronizing.

So my goal is to make a movie I want to see. If I do it sincerely enough and well enough—if I’m hard on myself and not completely off base, not completely different from the rest of humanity—other people will also get engaged and find the film entertaining.

The Quarterly: What does Pixar do to stimulate a creative culture?

Brad Bird: If you walk around downstairs in the animation area, you’ll see that it is unhinged. People are allowed to create whatever front to their office they want. One guy might build a front that’s like a Western town. Someone else might do something that looks like Hawaii. Steve Jobs initially didn’t like this idea, but John Lasseter said, “We’ve got to let it go a little crazy where the animators are.” John believes that if you have a loose, free kind of atmosphere, it helps creativity.

Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. He realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the rest of the company.

The Quarterly: Is there anything else you’d highlight that contributes to creativity around here?

Brad Bird: One thing Pixar does—which is a knockoff of old-school, Walt-era 1940s Disney—is to have all kinds of optional classes. They call it “PU,” or Pixar University. If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. Sometimes, people even move from one area to another.

The Quarterly: On the one hand, you are a leader here. On the other hand, you sound like a bit of a subversive. How do you do both things?

Brad Bird: I think the best leaders are somewhat subversive, because they see something a different way. And I’m not leading by myself. My producer, John Walker, and I are famous for fighting openly, because he’s got to get it done and I’ve got to make it as good as it can be before it gets done. If you look at the extra materials on The Incredibles DVD, there’s a moment where we’re fighting about something, and John says, “Look, I’m just trying to get us across the line.” And I say, “I’m trying to get us across the line in first place.”

I don’t want him to tell me, “Whatever you want, Brad,” and then we run out of resources. I want him to tell me, “If you do X, we’re not going to be able to do Y.” I’ll fight, but I’ll have to make the choice. I love working with John because he’ll give me the bad news straight to my face. Ultimately, we both win. If you ask within Pixar, we are known as being efficient. Our movies aren’t cheap, but the money gets on the screen because we’re open in our conflict. Nothing is hidden.

The Quarterly: We’ve been talking a lot about how you promote innovation. What undermines it?

Brad Bird: Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.

The Quarterly: What kinds of leaders inhibit innovation?

Brad Bird: When I first started at Disney, the old master animators were slowly leaving, and there was an animator in his 40s starting to direct films there; management was sort of grooming him to take over animation at the studio. Anyway, he had taken over a film and had a bunch of us meet in his office. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “I’m here to teach you. I’m satisfied with what I do.” In that opening statement, he lost me because I had already worked with the old Disney masters—and they were never satisfied.

It’s surreal to think about now, but my first real, formal teachers in animation were the best animators in the world. I’d started a film when I was 11, and a friend of the family knew the composer of the Disney films, who took me into the studio. I met a lot of the great old master animators. Their worst animation was 1,000 times better than this new director’s best, yet they would get to the end of a film and say, “I just started to feel like I was understanding the character, and I want to go back and do the whole thing over. Can’t wait for next time!” They were masters of the form, but they had the attitude of a student. This guy taking over the studio had only done a few pieces of pretty good animation, and he was totally satisfied. Could not have been less inspiring.

The Quarterly: How would you compare the Disney of your early career with Pixar today?

Brad Bird: When I entered Disney, it was like a classic Cadillac Phaeton that had been left out in the rain. It was this amazing machine that was beautiful but old and getting a little decrepit. Still, they had the best system on earth at that time. They had the best talent. The movies were still well executed, if uninspired.

But Disney at this time was pared down. They were making one film every three years rather than a film every year or year and a half, as they had at Disney’s height. Walt had been gone for more than a decade, and the old guys were leaving. The company’s thought process was not, “We have all this amazing machinery—how do we use it to make exciting things? We could go to Mars in this rocket ship!” It was, “We don’t understand Walt Disney at all. We don’t understand what he did. Let’s not screw it up. Let’s just preservethis rocket ship; going somewhere new in it might damage it.”

Walt Disney’s mantra was, “I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.” That’s a good way to sum up the difference between Disney at its height and Disney when it was lost. It’s also true of Pixar and a lot of other companies. It seems counterintuitive, but for imagination-based companies to succeed in the long run, making money can’t be the focus.

Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don’t want to just collect more fuel.

Mike Stern - process and planning

2010-12-14T16:56:00.000-08:00

>sternio<

Sharp and insightful post from Mike Stern on the thought process behind research and planning out your shots.

this kid can move!

2010-12-14T14:10:00.001-08:00

rango trailer

2010-12-14T11:23:00.001-08:00

tangled crew vid

2010-12-13T16:36:00.001-08:00

once again, I reveal myself as a Valve fan

2010-12-13T10:39:00.001-08:00

Video Games | Portal 2 | VGA 10: Exclusive Aperture Friends Trailer HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

thought of you

2010-12-06T17:23:00.001-08:00

Thought of You from Ryan Woodward on Vimeo.

rule of thumb

2010-12-05T15:38:00.000-08:00

great post via david martinez

super insightful tips on professionalism as an artist...like the following

"Don't Put Down Other Artist's Work

It only makes you look (1) envious, (2) boorish, (3) stupid, and, in general, (4) bad. Or some combination of the four. Sure, when you're sitting with friends having beers, you can talk shop and express your honest opinions—but never forget that not everyone has the same taste in art (including your friends) and art you deem dreck others might truly love. Especially don't forget that you never know who knows who and who is likely to spread your comments"

high praise!

2010-11-18T11:13:00.001-08:00

guide to art schools

This was really complimentary...especially considering how infrequently I post these days. This term, I maintained a private blog from my classes in order to encourage students to post their work for critique. After the holidays, I'll start picking up with this blog again with a few tips and tricks type posts.

surf's up - character development

2010-11-12T16:23:00.001-08:00

so you want to be a game designer

2010-11-11T11:29:00.001-08:00

great link from Matt Garward

insanely fast goalie

2010-11-05T14:15:00.001-07:00

probably some compositing involved, but still fun!

don draper..what?

2010-11-04T14:01:00.001-07:00

reposted via Peter Tsaykel -->JD Haas

splatterhouse demo reels

2010-10-21T13:46:00.000-07:00

former students, kicking some ass! And great examples of game reels...really top notch work.

Jason

Seung

and former Sega coworker, the talented Lisa Hwang

build anything

2010-10-18T12:38:00.001-07:00

Build Anything from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

brendan body flight tutorial

2010-10-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.brendanbody.co.uk/flight_tutorial/index.html

Truly great breakdown of bird flight. Bookmark!

keanu reeves - awesomely bad sneeze acting

2010-10-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you've got to see why things don't work in order to figure out how to do things properly. This was forwarded to me this morning and a really great example of over/incorrect anticipation. A sneeze is essentially a reflex and sometimes there's this moment where it starts to kick in and you try to hold it at bay. Keanu, however does not...you can almost here him counting, one one thousand, two one thousand as looks from right to left, then sneeze!

team fortress 2 dance party

2010-09-29T09:49:00.001-07:00

love it!!!

portal 2

2010-09-12T08:28:00.001-07:00

from Keith Lango's blog...these 2 characters are a really amazing exercise in contrast and motion style. Love how antsy the skinny droid is and how much character they excude through the minor head tilts and blinks.

Nurbman

2010-09-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

www.coopdesign.org/aac/Nurbman_ACTOR.zip

dog running ref

2010-09-06T19:36:00.001-07:00

Dodger Slow Motion Running from D__E on Vimeo.

shamelessly lifted from another blog...really great ref!

linked from travis howe

2010-09-03T13:39:00.000-07:00

Because, really, there are few things better than the cookie monster

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cqz9ZXUoUcE

http://www.redlasso.com/ClipPlayer.aspx?id=5bfa378e-7c08-472f-8d45-df796c893799

newt concept art

2010-09-03T13:02:00.000-07:00

saw this posted through the magic of facebook...concept art for the now defunct Newt. Love this character study

portal 2 goodness

2010-09-03T10:46:00.001-07:00

parkour...2d

2010-08-25T09:25:00.001-07:00

parkour motion reel
Uploaded by Suchablog. - Independent web videos.

section 2

2010-08-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

Maintaining a blog can be tricky...while it can inspire you to be motivated to post and stay up with things, they sometimes feel like sketchbooks you get bored with, and as they near completion, draw less and less.

On that note, to get a bit of focus, I'm going to branch my academy teaching blog into

section 2

Don't worry..I'm not going to abandon this blog, and the split should make it a bit more focussed on general animation info.

camera notes from tj

2010-08-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

enjoy!

good tips like

"Add a bit of rotation for shakes as well. Rotates can last a little bit longer"
nger (just a little).

"Numan"

2010-08-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

download "Numan"

I'm putting out these rigs fairly quickly, so they aren't up to my usual fussy standard when it comes to rigging. Really, the goal has been to bang out some versions of Norman with the focus on cleaning up the rig to a small degree, and pay attention to proportion changes.

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the proportion of a character has a huge effect on motion style, and how a lot of free rigs lend themselves to stylized animation based on how they seem to want to be animated.

This Norman was revised based somewhat on more realistic human proportions, but diverged a bit into something a little more athletic and possibly heroic. It was actually a great learning exercise for me, since I was forced to really study proportion, analyse why his were off, and got about changing what was needed. Right off the bat, I scaled down 2 of the torso cons so his legs would be more in proportion to the body. Next, the head was shifted down to around 85%, making it more of an 7.5/8' head high character. I replaced the pelvis and leg joints, as it was the easiest way to get wider legs that fit into the pelvic area without making it seem like Norman was wearing a giant diaper.

Norman with minor tweaks

2010-08-02T13:00:00.000-07:00

download Norman here

After a few years of critiquing Norman animations, I suddenly feel compelled to pitch in and help facilitate in making Norman easier to animate with and mod, hence, Norman_ACTOR. I always get a lot of questions on how to tweak out Norman, and really, I've never felt compelled to do much until recently. I'm going to continue to mod a few Normans and start to generate a small library that hopefully people will find useful.

The reason is that at the AAU there are many Normans floating around and students who don't have the tech know how to fix them. Also, for beginning animators, the pole vectors are not very intuitive.

I didn't do all that much...just set him up for editing and fixed the stuff that wasn't to my taste.

created blend shape source mesh with all the blends set to on...just edit the topology on the orange guy and you're good to go.
added space switching to pole vectors
added a color channel to the main node.

To come...prop joints with space switching to allow easy object interaction.

Cameron Fielding on dirt and noise in animation

2010-08-02T11:06:00.001-07:00

really shows you that blindly polishing your curves is not the recipe for compelling movement.

new norman variant - "Nohan"

2010-07-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

download

I really like TJ Phan's 'Rohan' rig and had meant to help him out with the facial some time ago, but as my time is limited, I came up with a cheap solution - reshape the face and rig him to Norman. I'm generally a big complainer when it comes to Norman, I think because the forearms and general proportions could be more appealing. But once you pimp him out, he turns out to be a pretty great rig (I'm pretty fussy when it comes to rigs)

For those that don't know TJ, he's a great concept artist as well as animator, and I really like the proportions of the Rohan rig.

Here's what I did for the beta.

Reshaped Norman's face to Rohan's proportions. Still need to work on the mouth and make sure lip changes propogate well with the facial deformations.
First pass skinning
redid the stock norman pole vectors with zooCST space switching and moved them away from the body a bit (dislike that in local mode they are parented to the hips, causing knee jitter during cycles)
added space switching to the cap
zeroed out the base rotations of the ik hands (now 0, not -90)

Let me know how he works - bug testers welcome! -...TJ was generous to build and create this great character for the animation community at large - this is just my lazy way of getting a bit of facial on him (TJs rig is a FANTASTIC animation rig, btw...elegant in its simplicity)

plastic animation paper..free

2010-07-29T16:43:00.001-07:00

FREE

really great 2d app! Download and start planning your shots!

norman modding tutorial..ref from david martinez

2010-07-29T13:32:00.000-07:00

For those of you that are animating with Norman rig, here are a few modding tutorials for it.
How to modify Norman
Modding Norman – Part 1

Modding Norman – Part 2

Modding Norman – Part 3
and HERE is a MEL Script for quick skin wrapping:

Pretty interesting...you'd think I'd have known about this before my first reskin attempt.

I should put an addendum to this, since you can get a faster rig without using wrap deformers..(my trick is to duplicate the geo (arms, torso, etc), move the dup off to the side, use skinAs.mel to dump the weighting onto the copy, unskin the object, tweak it, then skinAs again to reskin it, then delete the duplicate objects...fast and easy)

I did some fixes to Norman which I'll post soon (fixed the pole vectors so they aren't parented to the hips, zeroed out wrist ik..stuff like that)

Norman Mod...Valve tribute

2010-07-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

coopdesign.org/aac/Norman_SCOUT.zip

UPDATE...link fixed

I was tired of seeing the stock Norman proportions, and, Norman being a really flexible rig to tweak, thought I'd put up a quick Norman mod...(very beta right now and needs a bit of reshaping). Enjoy

Ton of Character Reference

2010-07-28T16:58:00.000-07:00

Stumbled on a great blog post with tons of embedded character focussed vid clips

animation layers to simplify keyframing

2010-07-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

I've used this trick when I've had to deal with mocap, but find it's really useful for trying out a new take in an animation, especially one that's a bit overworked. Once there's a lot of keys down, it can be hard to be courageous and really make strong decisions regarding posing and timing for fear that you'll lose the work you have. This can be counter to doing good animation, since poses and timing can ALWAYS be strengthened and improved.

I'm not sure how widely known this technique is, since I just stumbled upon it myself, but in case it's of use to someone, I thought I'd post it.

I had this mocap lying around (clips below).
This sea of data is counter to any kind of keyframing, and reducing it manually is very slow, however Maya now has animation layers.

Let's start by grabbing all our control objects (selection sets are good for this sort of thing) and clicking the anim radio button.

Still with me? With your controls selected, click that blue sphere with a cryptic yellow star. This allows you to key these objects on a new layer.

Turn the weight to ZERO, and in the layers drop down, set the layer mode to be OVERRIDE. What this does is overrides all animation in the layer below with the animation you currently are keying. Since we're at zero on the weight, the layer doesn't actually do anything until the weight is on. (1=on, 0=off, that is)

Now I'm going to go through the animation and stamp down the keys I want. In a way, reverse engineering keyframing over our mocap. When we're done, turn the weight back to 1. This kills a lot of detail in the animation, but if recorded in an artful manner, saves the right keys.

That's it in a nutshell. Now if you play the animation, it's more clear, easier to see the main beats, and easier to retime and alter key poses.

This is also useful for revising sections of your animation. Do the above setup, but set a zero key 1 frame before you begin altering the animation, then weight to 1, then grab frames, set a weight to 1 key, then a zero key and you're good to go.

clips to come.

Bernard - Sky Diving

2010-07-09T09:53:00.000-07:00

Bernard the Bear - Hang Gliding

2010-07-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Yosemite Sam - I Hates Rabbits

2010-07-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

Interview with Jan VanBuyten

2010-07-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

great interview from the peeps at Mixamo

love this tip

Any last tips for aspiring animators out there?
A: Draw every day. Work from pictures to photos and don’t underestimate quadruped animation. If you continue to draw even if it’s not good, you will learn more about the motion itself with drawing. Drawing forces you to think more about what you do – doesn’t matter if the drawing is good or bad, you’ll learn how to animate better in the long term.

great post on animating secondary characters

2010-07-06T14:44:00.000-07:00

from David Martinez, from Animation Mentor

some highlights:

Some directors have completely mastered the use of extras or background characters in their movies. I think of Robert Altman films like Nashville, or Stanley Kubrick's epic masterpiece Barry Lyndon, or Laurence of Arabia. These are examples of films with hundreds of extras performing in a way that enforces the narrative but never dominates or overshadows the principal characters unless otherwise intended (as we saw with Hitchcock).

From an animation standpoint, background characters can often provide the animator with an enormous amount of creative freedom. Most often, background characters won’t be as rigidly directed as the principal characters. This means that the animator can experiment in many different ways. Quite often, early motion tests, either for rig development or as a means to understand the way the character moves and expresses itself, will find their way into the backgrounds of a scene. Because so little direction is often put into background performances, animators may go straight ahead in the creation process, animating as loose and creatively as possible. Background animation opens the animator up to the whole gambit of possible actions that character might perform in the scene. Going back to our crowded stadium example, you could animate a little girl eating a hotdog and the wiener pops out the back of the bun and lands on her dress. Or maybe you'll need to animate 10 different ways characters might clap their hands. Whatever the scene might be, background animation can be super detailed, refined, and creative.

Ken Music workflow tips

2010-07-02T10:06:00.001-07:00

link

toy story 3

2010-06-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

I usually don't do film reviews on this blog, but I wanted to throw in a glowing review to add to the other 99% on rotten tomatoes. Sequels are usually a pretty mixed concept to begin with, as they usually tend to mine nostalgia to drive a story forwards. I think the Shrek franchise has done it with mixed results. I think Toy Story 2 was one of the few sequels other than Aliens that really amplified the drama and storytelling. I don't even know what it is about the Toy Story movies that resonates on such a deep level with me - possibly how it captures the best of what it is to be a child; the innocence of imagination and ability to find wonder in the fiction kids naturally create for themselves. Maybe it's because seeing the first Toy Story cemented my desire to be an animator and really created that sense of wonder in my adult life, in wanting to breathe life into things. I think that's the greatest aspect of animating, finding that place of unfettered imagination when you're just capturing something for your own amusement.

That's really what amazed me about the film - it was a celebration of the imaginative process. The toys themselves, while they have distinct personalities, are fundamentally representative of parts of the creative process, and in a way, the best of what we have to offer. Bravery, nobility, loyalty are all part of who these toys are. Then again, pettiness, bravado, bluster, crankiness, fear of the unknown, of change, sibling rivalry - all these are also part of who the toys are. The conceit of the toys existing as a reflection of the owner was really beautifully done, and also on how they reflect back. The idea that Andy grew up to be a decent person, in part because of how the ideals of the toys reflected back onto him was incredibly touching.

I really wasn't expecting a film with that much emotion to it...from the trailers I really was expecting a lot of gags (and there were - it was definitely tailored more towards those who saw toy story earlier, and it was a little scary at times for my kids, sadly) but I was really surprised with how the themes of friendship, loss, becoming obsolete with the passage of time echoed past the closing credits.

Above all that, it was incredibly inspiring in terms of animation...some really broad physical stuff and humor coupled with some moments of extreme subtlety - loved the bits with the little girl acting like a 2.5 year old.

last class

2010-05-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

Great last class!

Everyone really brought their A game to the final project. I'll be sure to post a compilation soon.

spline doctors animation contest

2010-05-10T11:42:00.001-07:00

This month I thought it would be cool to run another contest. The walk is a difficult thing to animate well in animation. Getting the right attitude, making the character feel like they belong in the world you set them in. Weight, physicality and so on… They are all elements of a good walk. First prize is a signed poster of all the animators on Toy Story 3. Second prize is a set of steak knives, third prize is your fired (I had to make the Glen Gary reference.) Second and third prize are to be determined. There is also a possibility of the 3 walks being used for an article in a popular 3d magazine. Here are the ground rules:
Animate a one of the following walks: (in 2d or 3d)
A character with a physical limitation (ie a man with a ball and chain, or limp, etc… use of props ok)

A period character from the Victorian era (do your homework. Many to choose from)

An 8 year old kid on his way to or from school (think about subtext)

A confident character from the early 1970’s
Ok, there are the choices. Obviously you will need to show the cycle. Please include a rough and final pass. Its best if the character is in an environment. Obviously, no stock rigs. You will be judged on originality, execution, and entertainment value. Good Luck! Contest end May 14th. Email walks to splinedr@gmail.com

Happy mothers day

2010-05-09T09:58:00.001-07:00

I wish more animated shorts were like this...

can't stop laughing.

no laugh track

2010-05-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

someone forwarded this to me recently - a sitcom clip with the laugh track removed.

I thought it was interesting on how the pacing of the jokes rely on the laugh track to act almost as a third character in the scene.

blocking/purpose

2010-05-04T14:17:00.001-07:00

great blocking post from shawn kelly!

animation progression blog

2010-04-14T09:29:00.000-07:00

http://animationprogression.blogspot.com/

Great find JD, and incredibly applicable to what we're doing now. Dive on in and abosrb the great blocking

love the Jeff Gabor process videos...he makes it look effortless and probably the most effective use of building overlap into his poses. It's planned and built up so well that it looks like his blocking was derived by exporting his final animation at 4 frames a second.