I am posting this despite the fact that I haven't actually yet seen it myself! but as a somewhat biased suggestion, I recommend you go and see it. I am taking my boys next week and I am really excited to see how it turned out.
Its funny how little you really see of the "final" thing when you're working on a show. The whole crew really only experiences it properly on that first screening, which is a truly electrifying and incredibly rewarding experience, even if it does only last 90 minutes! I wasn't able to get back to the bay area for the crew screening this time, and with hindsight I actually regret that a lot.
I was lucky enough to work on this show as the animation lead for the new 'Gia' character. I can tell you now she was a real challenge. Madagascar 3 is without doubt the hardest animation project I have ever been a part of for multiple reasons and on multiple levels, but my memories of it remain untarnished. I learned a lot about what it takes to animate a female character, especially with a particularly challenging design, and challenging character! I actually wish I had got chance to do more shots with her, but luckily enough, as you would expect, some absolutely wonderful work was done with her by other animators of the Mad3 crew, particularly by those of the DW India studio in Bangalore.
I remember being heavily inspired by the first Madagascar film, so it was a real treat to work on the show, and if any of you are reading this, the pleasure was all mine in working with you guys to bring this one to the screen.
So.. my colleagues tell me it turned out very well... the best Madagascar yet by far, so I cannot wait to see it!
So if my plan goes as I expect, I should have a bunch more time pretty soon to get back into writing and talking about animation... so that basically means more time for watering the blog, more time for personal work, and more chances to create stuff for the educational community.
I have been thinking for a long time now about creating an instructional DVD
training course for intermediate/advanced level animators. I have watched a whole bunch of these kinds of DVDs over the years, on different topics, and I have a good understanding of what makes these things useful... but most importantly I just know I could create a really good one for animation!
My main goal would be to clarify a number of issues that many training DVDs seem to gloss over; most importantly the process of how you actually generate ideas that play well on screen, and how to actually turn those ideas into structured animation. I would also like to explain a properly detailed insight into how to actually take a shot through blocking, with some different approaches and methodologies behind blocking techniques. The blocking aspect is a key thing for me, as I found it one of the hardest things to learn how to do, but once you master it, improves your ability as an animator in immeasurable ways.
I would love to animate a medium length shot, but record the whole process in its entirety from start to final, with no "so earlier I finished up this part" sections. Its always those edited out parts that seem to contain all the secrets! I want to show the real blood and guts of how a shot gets finished, including all the "that looks horrible" bits and how a professional animator would actually work through and solve those exact kind of problems.
Please comment below with the kind of things you would like to see covered in a training DVD set. Ask yourself these kind of things:
"If I could get an animator to just sit down and explain something to me, what would it be?"
"What seems like a stupid question, but I just can't figure it out myself?"
"What was really annoying last time I did some animation training, because the instructor just didn't explain it properly, or just glossed right over it?"
"What kind of format would be good to watch and learn from on a DVD?"
If I don't get many comments I'll just have to figure it all out myself, but I would really appreciate input from you.
So I finally got around to doing the first video review. It was very interesting for me to do this, and it served as a good test to prove that I can easily do more of these in the future and hope to make it a regular part of the blog.
Remember that this is funded 100% by love and rainbows, and these reviews will be free if you're interested in sending something in to me. Click here to find out more, and to see the guidelines for submitting an animation for review.
My thinking about all this is that watching a video review of an artists work is a very efficient way to learn about animation. As usual, I would appreciate any comments, particularly those that suggest ways I could improve upon this idea.
The animation discussed in the video is in the "stepped" blocking stage, and was kindly provided by Asemta Bhattad who can be reached at asemtab@gmail.com
I have been thinking for a long time now about doing a regular post to Flip of recorded feedback of individual animated shots. So simply put, somebody who might want the chance to get input on their work from an industry professional, could, in theory, send me a link to their video and I could post back a video review session here on Flip, for the animator and other visitors to watch.
I'm imagining short animation tests, could be just blocking or final animation, but something I can discuss in about 10 or 20 minutes.
I want to do this for a few reasons:
I want a bit more 'regularity' to the site, one or two of these a week could be cool.
This kind of thing helps me filter all the crap that spins around in my head constantly.
There is an army of animators who would destroy me in a talent fight, but I reckon I`ve worked pretty hard and my opinion is valid.
It seems like people who are teaching themselves (like I did) could benefit from it especially.
The thing is... I think I have the setup to make this work on my laptop, but I could do with someone sending me a test so I could do a sample review and just see if it will actually work how I imagine it to. It would be good to use that as the example when I officially start this idea.
If you like this idea, drop a quick comment so I can gauge this a bit, and if you think you have something I could do the test run with, send me an email with a link to a .mov file.
Update: Thanks so much to everyone that expressed interest and took the time to send me a shot for the test run. I really appreciate that. Due to a somewhat overwhelming amount of requests, I would like to kindly ask people to no longer send clips for the test run. If I can get this going as I plan, I will setup a proper way for you to submit a shot for review through the blog.
Not too long ago I started using 'drawings' at work to figure out timing beats for certain animated shots, and it was one of those great moments when you discover something that you instantly use over and over again, so I thought it best to post the process here on Flip.
I found myself looking for a fast way to record a timing reference for certain shots, I wanted a way to quickly get an idea of the timing of certain actions or beats without having to go into blocking and actually start posing stuff out, but also without having to go to the reference room and go through the motions of recording myself, converting video to Linux and basically taking a load of time from my schedule. For me, when I'm figuring out a shot early on, I pretty much use the basic building blocks of story, posing ( with staging ) and timing to construct my blocking. I really enjoy posingcharacters, in fact its my favourite part of animation, but I find that having some kind of 'map' of the timing in a shot early on can be a tremendous help, because then you can really take the time to construct those poses with care.
So to cut a long story short, we have the option to draw over our shots in the camera view, and do very basic animation this way, and I found a way to mirror this specific process in maya one to one using fCheck. Instead of drawing the animation however in the traditional way with sketches, I simply move my mouse around to record the 'timing' of the shot, or particular beats or actions in the shot and it records that timing in the form of a little dot moving around on the screen. I`m not thinking about shape or anything like that here. After deleting the drawing and doing a bunch of takes, I usually get a decent feel for the timing of an action and I start using the specific frames the dot hits extremes on to time my poses in stepped blocking.
To make this clearer I made a few examples using maya and fCheck to illustrate what I mean, this is pretty much exactly what I see doing a similar thing at work:
This shows a timing idea for the wingbeats of a large flying creature like a dragon or something similar. In the above example, I can get an idea pretty much instantly of the timing of those wingbeats without having to do any posing in the shot at all. All I am doing is drawing with the mouse. I can make the timing as even or as varied and complex as I like. Once I have some timing that I like, I can use the movement of the dot as a guide for what frames I need to start posing my extremes, for example, the up, the down, and a very good indication of the ease-in and outs that I need to get the feel that I'm going for.
To 'record' your timing using fCheck in maya, you do this; Set your playblast output as fCheck and playblast a blank screen with as many frames as you think you'll need ( usually the exact length of your shot ). Press play when fCheck loads, and as soon as you press and hold the right mouse in windows, it will start printing a small dot or line depending on how fast you move the mouse per frame.. this results in the perceived capture of your mouse motion. Luckily enough when you choose 'save animation' from the fCheck menu, it saves these drawings into the frame renders so you have it for good.
Agreed, the application of this idea is limited to certain actions, but let your imagination help you here... I have used this for very obvious and easy things like jumping and bouncing, but its also fantastic for subtle things like eye darts and weight shifts. You will start to find that the little moving dot often makes no sense to anyone but you as you start to use it to map more abstract actions.
Basically, anything that can help us "see" our animation quicker before we labour over posing and spacing is gold.
Here are a few more examples I did quickly for different timing beats:
( a samurai style decapitation! - the timing is clear for the antic, the swing and the head drop/bounce. Of course, the beauty of this method is trying many different variations really quickly until you have one you like. There is an indication of the arc on the sword and the spacing with regards to how far the sword/head moves, but this is really not important... its the timing I'm looking for. )
( Basic up/down timing for a really proud horse as he trots along )
( Angry guy picks up his pint, necks it, and slams it down again )
( A couple of different head turns )
Its possible to visualize a variety of different timing beats using this technique, so give it a try and see if it lets you experiment a little more.
I was thinking recently how it might be a good idea to talk about a few subjects that discuss actually being an animator as opposed to just animation itself, which is what I usually do. There are so many things that get discovered along the way, that I kind of take for granted now, but I would never have even thought about when I was just starting out in this profession.
I get a lot of emails asking me how I made the transition from video games to movies, which is a great subject, but I think there is a much undisclosed side of this that covers how animators actually manage to move to different countries and end up being able to work in the big studios from a legal, financial and social standpoint as well as an artistic one... basically, professional ability be it artistic or whatever, is only one part of a big puzzle when trying to get yourself here, and there are so many things I wish I'd known before. Especially now with online animation schools like AM, there are students from literally every corner of the world all scrambling to work in the central feature animation hub based predominantly in North America.
I want to write a post about how I got from England, to California. I don't want to write a "life journey" post, which is useless to anyone except my mum, instead I would like to try and use my experience to offer some advice to those of you thinking about doing this yourselves.
I wish there was something like Animation Mentor when I was a student... I am a self taught animator, and have no formal training other than a story supervised 3 minute short film I completed in my final year of a graphic design Degree. I made it in 3D Studio Max. The animation quality was not the film's strong point at all...
I started animating professionally for a small game developer in Manchester around Sept 2001. I was offered a few jobs after I sent out my short film as a demo reel to a bunch of places in London, Manchester and a few other places. I didn't jump at the first chance I was given... I remember the first place was a good TV studio in London, that offered me a "runner" position. You never really know of course, but it scares me to think of where I would be now if I had started my career getting coffee and sandwiches for other staff, whilst working unpaid after-hours on the Softimage workstations they had ( this was their suggestion ). I looked at a few other places in London, and a great little place that was a little too far out of the city. Finally, I ended up in Manchester.
I think there are a number of things I took from my first job in the industry; Firstly, it really was good that I waited it out and took the job that felt right to me, and not any of the first few jobs I was offered. The Manchester studio was good for a number of reasons; mainly they were working on Animaniacs and Looney Tunes games that I knew would be great practice for me and great for my demo reel. They were also willing to accept my request for a higher salary... its always a negotiation, and I found that extra money helped a lot at that stage of my life. Lastly, the management at the company really looked after me, and encouraged me to grow into a lead/senior role.
With regards to what I had to move forward when I left, I had a pretty good demo reel with well known cartoon characters, and experience as an animation lead for my resume. I also taught myself Maya's mel scripting language, which gave me a huge technical advantage. I think above all else, even more important than the quality of my reel, was that I could move forward with a much broader skill set than when I first started at the company.
Despite the fact I didn't really know it at the time, leaving this small studio was probably the biggest step I took towards moving to California because that was the point where I decided to leave the United Kingdom and work overseas in Canada. I was about 25 at that time, and I honestly believe that if I had moved to another UK based company, and got settled in another city, its unlikely I would have ever left England.
When you make the choice to leave your home country and work overseas doing animation, there are a few things I thought about that helped me a lot. There are a few things too that I didn't think about! I'm going to put these in a list as I think about them, but these are not really in any order or importance:
If you leave your home country to pursue a career in animation, you are doing this because it is likely that your own country does not have the studios or facilities to support your long term career aspirations. This basically means, that it is very likely that you will never return to your home country to work again. Of course this isn't always the case, but you will find this sneaks up on you when you least expect it, and its worth thinking about. Your old friends, family, culture and almost everything familiar to you will remain in your home country.
You'll need your overseas employer to organize your legal right to work in that country. You can't just show up and start working. Sometimes this can be really complex ( like when you move to the U.S ) and sometimes not so bad. When I moved to Canada all I needed was a letter of employment confirmation that I used in the airport to get a work permit. At the time however, I was very naive about this and I should have asked my employer more questions... I didn't even know if my spouse would be able to work legally. Its really worth asking questions like "how long does the permit last" "how many times can it be renewed" "what do I need to do to renew it" ( for a U.S visa, the renewing process requires you and your family to leave the country and pass back through immigration at the border! ). Most of the time the company will hire separate immigration attorneys to help you with this if its necessary. Don't get crazy worried about this, but understand the terms of your permit / visa to avoid surprises. When it comes to working in the U.S, this can be really quite complex, and I'll talk a bit more about that later.
Make sure you try and find out if there is anything official you need to do before leaving your home country for a sustained period of time. There are usually things associated with taxes, residency and state benefits that require you to "tell them" you're leaving for a while. When I left the UK, I didn't really do this, and whilst its not a real problem, I wish I had thought about it a little more. You can usually find out what you need to do by going to your governments tax or benefits websites and looking around there.
Moving costs you money. Even if you change jobs in the same city, its going to cost you at least some amount of cash. When you move overseas, the cost can get very large, very fast. A good employer understands this, and most companies offer a "relocation package" as part of your initial employment agreement. Its crucial you understand the relocation package and negotiate it higher if you feel its inadequate. From my experience, the company will usually kindly offer to pay for your plane tickets ( and any family traveling with you ) and 1 month temporary accommodation ready for you when you arrive. Sometimes a flat dollar amount is offered as a starting bonus instead. A few things that are worth asking for are contents shipping ( to get your stuff from home to the new city) and professional help with your first year's tax return can prove invaluable. Its important to understand your tax liability when it comes to relocation, as you can sometimes be required to pay income tax on the total monetary amount that was used for your relocation expenses, which can be very high! so for example, if your employer paid $3000 for your plane tickets, you may later have to pay anywhere up to 50% of this cost as part of your tax liability. Know how the taxes work by asking your employer, and a know that a good employer will usually cover the cost of these taxes for you.
Consider the fact that you'll always have ties to your home country, mostly in the form of your family and close friends. You'll need to take trips back, and your parents will start to miss you! It can get expensive when you start thinking about this for the long term future, especially if you have a family of your own. I frequently find myself wishing I could just drive to London and go for a pint with my dad, instead of having to fly four people almost 5000 miles over the Atlantic ocean.
I am really fortunate to have the companionship of my wife, particularly in those early days when we first left the UK. It was a real adventure and so much better to be able to share it with someone. I can imagine moving on your own is just as exciting, but will raise other challenges that I have not experienced.
I don't think I really started to think seriously about getting a job in a feature studio until I moved to Canada. Living in England, these places seemed very far away, and despite the fact there are some great studios in London, it would never be my first choice for a city to live, work and raise my children in. After about 18 months at Ubisoft in Montreal, I decided it was time to move on to another part of Canada, Vancouver, and this time I had a specific goal in mind which was to animate some realistic creature type animations with the intent of eventually applying to VFX studios in Canada or the US. When I left Montreal, these were a few of the things I had learned:
I needed a variety of types of animation on my demo reel, if I was to have any chance of getting a feature or vfx job. I had spent almost 5 years by this point basically animating the same things - cartoony physical actions. I had spent some time in the evenings, building and rigging a "chicken" character, that I used to animate my first acting test with dialog and facial animation. I really wanted to do more of this, but for now I was really excited about the new job at Propaganda Games that would allow me to animate creatures, humans and dinosaurs in a much more realistic way. This was the first time I was thinking about specifically tailoring my demo reel, and this is something we all have to eventually do.
Montreal was a fantastic city, and me and my wife were happy there. There were issues though that we would never have really thought about before we left the UK that made it difficult to stay. It was kind of hard with the French language barrier - everyone always spoke English around Anglo-phones, but all in all it would have been 1000% better if I could speak French, and my French is pretty bad. My wife had trouble finding work too. It was bloody freezing in the winter, -20c was pretty normal, and winter was pretty long. You can never really find out what you think you'll need to know before moving to a city, but its best to do at least some research... we did absolutely zero before moving to Montreal.
Ubisoft Montreal is a huge studio, and it was great experience to see the difference between small and large developers. Ultimately, the feature studios in the U.S are large studios, so you need to get a feel for how these places operate. There is a clear difference in the studio environment that you can only really understand if you experience it for yourself. You have to work and behave differently. Working at such a well known developer like Ubisoft would also help me later on when I needed to get legal permissions to work in the U.S ( though I didn't know this at the time ).
Moving again for the second time, I had more experience with negotiating salary and relocation. Propaganda Games took fantastic care of me and my wife, and made the transition from East to West coast almost completely painless. Whenever I think of the perfect relocation scenario, I think of that move to Vancouver. Its good that I have that experience as a benchmark against which to judge future relocation deals.
So Propaganda Games was the last game developer I worked for in Canada, and is a large part of why I was able to eventually come to the US and work on animated features. I worked very happily for about 3 years, but can honestly say that the last six months were fueled by a burning frustration to at least try the feature business and see how it was. When I left Vancouver to move to San Francisco, these are the things that Propaganda had helped me with:
I had been able to specialize in creature animation, and had a handful of "shots" that looked very different to my usual cycle style actions. They were ideal ammunition to send to a VFX company for potential work.
I had spent a lot of time expanding my technical knowledge by developing Maya tools for me and the animators and this had helped me greatly in getting a leadership role at the company, but also increasing the speed and quality of my animation. Despite the fact that entering the film industry for the first time will usually mean taking a step back from any leadership roles you may have now, it still bears very well on you as a professional and your ability to adapt for the better. I found that working leadership roles gave me a lot of confidence in myself, but also made me think carefully about how I treat others, and how others perceive me. Again, being a good animator is just a tiny part of the puzzle.
I still needed some "acting" on my demo reel and to do this I had to really work hard. I would get up at 4:50 am every week day, make some coffee, and work on a shot from 5am until 7am. Not only was it hard because it was early, but more so because it was only 2 hour sessions, and it was difficult to get "into the shot" and get a groove going. I did this for about 3 months and completed the "smoking girl" shot on my demo. The key thing here is that you usually have to go out of your way to do at least some kind of extra work in your own time that you need for your demo... 99% of the time you don't get everything you need at the day job. The sad truth is that people get screwed by this because they get stuck in a job where they can't animate what they need, and they don't do any work in their own time to remedy that... don't be a victim!
On leaving Canada, I realized how much I love it there. It is a strange but perfect mix between English and American cultures ( but still very much its own culture of course ). Its a nice feeling to make roots in a place that you otherwise would never have experienced. I plan to return to Vancouver one day and settle there when the time is right, its a beautiful city with amazing people. I miss it a lot.
The move to San Francisco to start at ILM was a very challenging time indeed. I had been contacted by them to work on Transformers 2 after they had seen my Turok work ( I still have many thanks For Jean Denis Haas for bringing it to their attention ). To summarize what I learned when moving to the US, I'll write a list again as I think of things, but they are in no particular order:
Its important to understand that often things hit you when you least expect them too. Despite the fact I was keen to move to the US and work on films, it really was bad timing for my personal circumstances. We literally had just had our second baby ( he was one month old ) and financially I had seen much better times. I had not directly applied to ILM, and was taken by surprise when they contacted me. Understand that you wont ever be totally prepared when you get that call.
Again, to highlight the fact that the "perfect scenario" to move to a new job rarely happens, there were a number of things that made accepting the job at ILM a huge risk for me and my family. Firstly, they were hiring me for a 2 month contract! I would have to be willing to uproot my life in Canada completely, and take my family to the U.S on the basis of a 2 month contract, in "hope" that I would be picked up for more work. I can't tell you how stressful that was. Secondly, I had to get a work visa to be able to obtain employment legally in the United States. The attorneys for ILM did an excellent job of helping me with this, but essentially I had to quit my job in Canada before I knew whether or not I could get this visa... again, a huge risk. Lastly, because my contract was so short, I had trouble negotiating a relocation deal that would cover the cost of most moving expenses for me. I ended up asking my parents for money, and god bless them, I would not be here now if it were not for that financial help they gave me at that time. Basically, I think it was one of the largest risks I ever took moving to the US, and I was literally scared out of my skin when I got on the plane to leave Canada.
It became very obvious to me just how difficult it can be to be able to work legally in the US. I did manage to get a visa in the end due to the vast amount of help I was given, but it was hard work. I had to spend many evenings gathering information about companies I had worked for, references, and a variety of public information about myself and previous projects that shed a good light on me and my professional abilities. My Degree qualification did help, but it was by no means enough by itself. Unfortunately, it is also common that spouses cannot work under your visa unless they obtain one themselves. To be honest, the immigration system in the U.S is so stringent, it is almost impossible to figure it out. With regards to long term residency, this can be even more complex and literally take many years to get. Like it or not, as an immigrant to the US, it becomes a part of your life, and often feels like a hurdle.
Strangely enough, the nerves about working at ILM were minimal. To be honest, it was the main thing that kept me looking forward, and stopped me taking the easy route of staying in my current job. Its important to remember not to lose sight of your goal when you get wrapped up in the technicalities of making big changes to your life.
What's kind of funny, is that as my worst fears expected, my time at ILM did not last. When I left to come to DreamWorks, I took the following experiences with me:
Despite thinking that "things will work out", they don't always materialize as you would like them to, or expect them to. For me to have continued at ILM and moved onto Avatar or Iron man, I would have had to support myself from May until August. Financially this was a huge problem of course, but more than that was the complications this could have caused with my visa/residency status in the US (i.e being unemployed). My time at ILM was incredibly rewarding and successful, but in the long run it was bad timing... they did as much as they could to try and keep me there, but I couldn't accommodate this gap in employment. The short term contract game, from my experience is tough, and not designed at all for the family man.
Having worked at ILM I had effectively achieved a personal dream of mine. This is a really bizzare feeling that gives you a lot of confidence going forward. I would definitely like to animate in the VFX field again when the time is right.
Luckily I had worked a load of overtime on Transformers and managed to save what could potentially be enough money to relocate to another part of the city, another state or even out of the country if worse came to worst. If you work short term contracts you have to save money to help carry you through to the next job if its necessary.
Before leaving Canada, I had been in very early discussions with DreamWorks about possible work at the studio. It turns out they had seen my Turok reel and were keen to hire me for How to Train your Dragon. The way these things unfold however is strange, and at the time ILM had approached me first, so I honored the agreement and mentioned to Dreamworks that I would potentially be looking for work around April/May of that year. They were very understanding about this, and were pleased to hear from me again when I eventually got back to them a few months later. Dreamworks were able to offer me the security that I needed, and an amazing opportunity animating for full CG features that is something I never really thought I would get to do. On the whole the move to DreamWorks was almost completely pain free and is one of the best career moves I think I have ever made.
I hope this sheds some light on what is essentially just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this kind of stuff. Its hard to summarize, but a bullet point list might come as a welcome surprise after all the crap you just read through!
Be willing to take a risk even if it seems insane.
Expand your skill set outside of animation.
If you can't do it at work - you have to do it in your own time.
You can't decide if moving overseas is the right thing or not by sitting on the couch and thinking about it.... you only know by doing it.
Ask lots of questions and don't be afraid to ask for more.
I love animation that shows us something we recognize, and we all recognize imperfection.
I wanted to do a post on how it can be really great to add imperfection to your animation, and in this case specifically how sometimes things like a perfect ease-in or overshoot can add an element of falseness to your work when creating animation in a certain style. I say this because I was watching the shots of a particular animator here at DreamWorks who does a wonderful job of this, and wanted to understand this a little more and include it more frequently in my own work.
When I used to animated in Maya, I was never a curve editor animator. I would just look at everything in the shotCamera, and track arcs in 3D using my motionTrail script. Here at work, the software we have for manipulating curves is so good, I quickly started doing a lot of stuff in the curve editor and making a habit of smoothing stuff out cleanly and watching to make sure that everything was easing in and out nicely.
I really love using the curve editor, and probably wouldn't go back to doing it all in the viewport, but I recently noticed that my movements were becoming too smooth, too calculated and my animation was losing some of that naturalistic punch that I used to see in my older stuff.
I usually go back to live action to figure out how things really move and how it relates to animation, and below I've shared a few videos that show examples of where we may be tempted to oversimplify and oversmooth the movement. In reality there is a lot of "imperfection" that we see in the arcs of movement without really realizing it, but its part of constructing our perception concerning whether or not something is real.
You can see immediately that the arc and the spacing on the foot is not what you might expect if you just started animating this from scratch...
The arc above shows how the curve might turn out based on our assumptions, and what were used to implementing. Its pretty "perfect" and quite different to how the real foot travels through the air.This would probably result in a semi-decent looking animation, but with something looking not quite right or as if not enough detail existed in the movement.
Instead of going nice and smoothly over the top of the arc, the foot drops slightly before it rises up again at the peak. This is the natural arc as the lower leg swings forward.
Theres an interesting section here where the foot slows down before it begins to fall. If you click back on the video, we see this as a slight pause in the leg, and it illustrates thought in the characters mind... a moment of calculation as his brain thinks about the best place to land the foot.
Notice how the foot doesn't fall to the final contact pose with that perfectly accelerating downward motion, its spacing is almost linear after it starts to fall, then suddenly accelerated just before the contact. The foot is not an object freefalling through space - the leg above it can alter and "imperfect" the spacing as it falls.
As the woman gestures, she holds out her hand, and for a part of the gesture she appears to hold it relatively still as she moves it screen right...
When we track this "smooth" part, its clear how irregular the arc is. Despite the fact its not obvious when we watch the video above, its all going on under the hood, and adding to our perceptions of whether or not the character is real.
The movements of the head are a particularly ideal place to use this idea. When we start animating, we quickly learn about what can make head moves appealing - such as dipping the nose on a turn, a slight nod or twist in the opposite direction before a change etc. These are by all means valid, and used wisely can really add to head animation. Take a look at some of these videos below where I tracked the nose to see how the head is moving, and you quickly see how "wobbly" and unsmooth the curves are. I find this stuff really interesting to study.
Here's another curve we might normally be tempted to smooth out - reducing its subtle realism. I love the little bump at the top, and the small "glitch" in the deceleration at the bottom of the curve.
The guy in the blue shirt above shows how erratic the arcs on a head can really be. Whether or not your shot would call for this kind of detail depends on many things, but its just really interesting to me to see how crazy it can get, on a move that isn't really that extreme at all.
Without getting into the subject of overlap and inherited motion, you can see clearly how a more complex action like sitting down and adjusting weight and balance can increase the scale of these direction changes.
Even movements that are supposed to appear smooth and elegant may contain these irregularities, they are just smaller and less noticeable.
The arcs are almost "smooth" but not quite. I might be tempted to round out the tops of the curves and even out the spacing, but these subtle effects can increase the believability.
As far as how to implement these irregularities, it is definitely something I would recommend doing right at the last stages of polish. You can do this by just playing with the curves and adding little bumps and notches, but it can be very hard to get it to look right, and not like you just screwed up smoothing your shot...The reason for calling this post "perfect imperfections" is because nature will always do this exactly right! If your software supports it, I would even recommend doing this on another animation layer, that way its easy to experiment and scale things bigger and smaller without changing your main acting underneath.
Its important to mention that in animation we don't strive for "realism", we strive for communication of the idea. If the idea is ultra realism, then yes we animate as realistically as we can, but normally we are extracting the essence of movement and simplifying it to make the statement clear. So then, are all these imperfections necessary? no, I don't think they are absolutely needed, but they do add a layer of information to the idea you are communicating - audiences all know instinctively that natural motion is varied and irregular, and by including this in your animation you help make your characters appear more lifelike - which may make the audience more likely to believe what they have to say.
This one is kind of abstract, maybe makes no sense, but might work for some of you.
If I try and block a shot using "story poses", I usually find myself getting stuck. I find it easier to set my first pose, then work through the shot trying to set the minimum amount of poses as possible along the way, but still using rough breakdowns to figure out where the character is going ( imagine it like straight ahead, but with very few drawings ). If I just step through and put my "story" poses, they can sometimes be so far apart either in time or in screen space that how I actually get to them ( e.g, what my breakdowns look like ) can start to confuse me a lot.
So sometimes, when I do try and do just story poses, I occasionally think backwards from a pose that is causing me problems when I come to figure out the breakdowns. So say my keys and breakdowns are working nicely from frames 1 - 30, but then I have a pose on frame 50 that I can't easily figure out how to get to... I find it can help to think backwards from frame 50 to 30 and do the kind of straight ahead blocking towards the previous key.
I think this can sometimes make it easier because your transitions into frame 30 are figured out, so you understand where the motion is coming from, but everything after frame 5o is still blank space so understanding where its is going is harder.
This is going to be fast. It's all I get time for these days!
A little trick I started using recently that helps me to evaluate my work is to trim how much of my shot I playback when I set it to loop and sit there watching it.
I find it hard to "evaluate" motion unless its complete to a certain level. Sometimes I find myself changing bits of animation that are really working just fine, and its the motion after that I haven't started working into yet that is changing my perception of it ( I tend to start refining from start to finish in sections, as opposed to passes across the whole shot ).
So its quite simple... if you just want to get a feel for how stuff is going, try setting your playblast to not include the last 10 frames, or however many frames you feel are not "figured out" yet.. and just get a feel for what youre up to... kind of like thinking "if my shot just ended here, is that motion working?"
I was sitting around at home the other night and I realized something pretty cool. Something I wish I'd know before... I don't want to get melodramatic, but if anyone else can relate to this post maybe it might help out...
If you're an artist, you've probably been through the highs and lows. You have times when you really feel good about a piece of work you did, or an animation turned out really cool and everyone loved it. There's also the times that feel crappy... the ones where you just can't get something right, or you just don't know what to work on, or you feel like you're lacking the drive to be an artist, like you're losing interest in what used to be so much fun! but is now so bloody difficult....
I've come to believe, that despite the anxiousness and doubts, the truth is we are actually at our best during these down times.
I can say 100% that I recently went through a pretty heavy down time. I've worked in video games my whole career, and I've never developed a proper approach to animation other than just kind of "doing it" and "pushing and pulling stuff around until it works" and this is because video game animation often has a very loose and sometimes non-existent direction process for individual animations. My methods became very "organic" and to be honest it was almost impossible for me to get constructive feedback on my animation work as I created it, or in fact, to even really properly evaluate it until it was finished. I'm sure this is not an uncommon problem amongst animators who are self-taught.
So I started researching and investigating different ways of animating. I looked at workflows, breakdown reels, sent emails to animators, looked at demo reels, student work, AM blogs... the whole nine yards. I also started looking more and more at 2D animation and appreciating it muchmore than I had before. To tell you the truth, I quickly became near obsessed with the process of blocking animation, treating each pose like a drawing, and thinking more and more in a 2D way. I could see the benefits that people were finding in working this way.. using the 'stepped key' method, and more importantly just how easy it was for them to show their ideas and get feedback in a way that was constructive. Its this approach that lends itself to feature animation, or at least to acting animation... and I really wanted to understand it and to work that way.
Oh man... I just couldn't do it though. Honestly.. it was like learning to animate all over again.. and I just found it so difficult to think about animation in this way. I practiced it at work, and at home. I threw away acting shots that frustrated me, and I started to get annoyed with animation and feel shitty that I wasn't animating the way I wanted to. I started thinking "I don't even want to animate the acting shots.. I'm good at the physical stuff"... it got a bit crazy for a while... in fact this doubt came on and off constantly for about 2.5 years. My wife could tell you how much I used to ramble on about it.
The truth is though... now I've sweated and struggled with it over and over... I now get it! I really feel like I get what blocking is about. I get when to use it and not to use it, and I understand what's important about it and what's not. I also have the best of both worlds now, because I'm confident I can take my knowledge of straight-ahead and layering, and mix it up with blocking. I have a shot at home that I'm animating in the stepped key approach and its helping me get better results than my old method would ever have got for me. I'm new to this technique so I know I still have a bucket load more stuff to learn, but the key thing is that I have my confidence back, and I'm starting to enjoy the process rather than fight it.
So what I'm trying to say is... its during these times when we really struggle with something, and doubt our abilities or even doubt our passions, that we are actually learning the most and developing ourselves more than ever as animators.
The trouble is, its super hard to see whats happening until you come out of it the other side...
When I finish this little acting shot at home, I'm hoping to post something up about the processes, the details of blocking...the kind of post I wish I'd found when I was trying to figure this stuff out.
As artists, we are easily influenced by our environment and the people who surround us. It's a large part of what makes us expressive. On the train to work this morning I read a small article in the paper called "who's your mentor?" and this made me realize something blindingly obvious. We all need one.
When you discover how today's great animators became "great" you see them mentioning the same thing... they learned a whole bunch of what they know from someone they worked with, under, or even supervised. Glen Keane was lucky enough to work with some of Disney's old masters, so was Richard Williams, and James Baxter was lucky enough to work under him. Brad Bird was mentored by Milt Kahl ! I recently attended a fantastic two day Pixar masterclass with Andrew Gordon, and he consistently mentioned the work of Doug Sweetland.
We are all students.
Of course we are not all fortunate enough to work in amazing studios with animators like Frank and Ollie just sitting around, but we do need to ask ourselves "who is my mentor?". It is a crucial relationship that you need as an artist to help you blossom. This individual may not even be aware that you see them as a mentor, or you may have a number of people from which you learn a great deal. What is important is to identify in your own mind that these people influence you ... and try to understand why. Its also important to realize that you may be seen by someone as a mentor yourself, and to make efforts to facilitate this relationship.
Think why it is that you look to your mentor for guidance. Is it the way they animate? is it the way they plan their shots? Is it their high level of polish? is it the way they articulate their ideas? is it the approach they take to giving criticism to somebody's work? Is it they way they inspire confidence? is it they way they make the extra effort? is it the way they talk to other artists? Is it they way they take criticism? is it the way they talk about animation?
Those of you who are not working professionally, in a studio environment, don't panic. Ask yourself - where are you finding your information? Who is delivering it to you? If you visit lots of blogs or read lots of books (like the professionals do too) then ask why is the author discussing certain topics? rather than questioning the topics themselves... where are they looking for their ideas? Don't be afraid to e-mail professionals and ask for help. Ask your mum or your wife what she thinks of your shot... I guarantee their advice will be accurate and telling.
If you're a lead or a supervisor, look to the people who work under you for mentorship. energy and passion is at its freshest early on ... and this is probably the hardest thing to have to keep alive all by yourself. I remember a great quote from Ed Catmull where he mentioned something that really stuck out to me... "only hire somebody who can do something that you can't". Brilliant.
I recently made a weird little maya script ( I have a habit of doing that unfortunately ) and I'm finding it super useful so its time to share...
Like most of you out there, I like to scout around the net looking for tips tricks and general advice on animating. From time to time you find some really great stuff, and it can be very beneficial just to take your lunch break or whatever, and read these things soaking up the info.
Its got to be said however, I find it hard to remember everything!
Over the last few weeks or so at work, I've been building a little tool that will just throw me random quotes, ideas, little nuggets of info, tips tricks, checks etc right there in a little maya window. So when I'm animating, particularly on the acting shot I'm doing at home, I have this little thing open and I click it once in a while and get some pure gold advice to keep me thinking, give me new ideas, or just inspire me to think about what I'm doing in a different way.
So the stuff in there is condensed from a number of sources, from a variety of different people just to mention a few:
Frank & Ollie, Brad Bird, Ed Hooks, Carlos Baena, Bobby Beck, Glen Keane, Walt Stanchfield John Lasseter, Jason Ryan,
and a whole bunch of other people, including a few of my own. Currently there are near on 300 separate entries to keep you going!
I will be updating the entry file for this tool as often as I can, so there is a link in the GUI where you can check to see if you have all the latest entries.
Whenever I find myself on the net looking for animation "stuff"... I'm always looking for two things
Inspiration
workflow techniques
To be honest, its not hard to find inspiration on the web these days. There are so many amazing animators posting stuff up. Sometimes I see stuff that almost makes me shake in fear... how will I ever be that good?
On the other hand, its hard to find decent workflow explanations. I think this is mainly because of the following reasons
It takes time to document it well. Good animators usually don't have much of that.
Its hard to describe a workflow. much of it is almost cerebral, and difficult to fit into a structured system that can be written down. Its a very organic process that depends on a lot of varying factors.
The validity of the explanation depends on who looks at it. Everyone is looking for different answers.
Anyway... I just wanted to link up here to a great little page I found by Blue Sky animator Mike Walling. He has a nice page that describes very simply his approach to feature shots. I like his ideas. Blocking is my nemesis right now... and I'm looking for any good information on how animators who do this well... do it well!
Mike is obviously very talented, and you can tell by how he describes his technique. He doesn't sweat it or over complicate it. Its supposed to be fun after all! This is why I like his page.
If you know of any other good ones, please comment, and hopefully I can combine something together for all of us.
So as a bit of an extension to the Turok: Creature Reel post, I thought it might be helpful to some to put a bit of info on how I went about creating these animations...
I'm not sure really how to make this a short post, but I will try my best. I feel its important with workflow posts to try and be detailed and not wash over stuff.... animation is hard!
As a kind of "disclaimer"I want to make it clear at this point that I am constantly striving to improve my planning/workflow techniques and I am confident that there are more constructive, creative, and time saving processes for producing this kind of work. My own methods usually produce results I am pleased with, but I admit that I have much to learn about streamlining my approach. If you are interested in how I created these sequences, then this post will try and outline in as much detail as possible how I went about it, but please don't take my examples as a definitive way of working... what works for some may seem ludicrous to others.
Setting the Scene:
So to summarize a little about the setting/context in which these animations were to be seen, I will outline briefly a few ideas that help give an understanding of what these animations are about:
The player of the video game is stranded on an unknown planet, inhabited by ferocious creatures, deadly human opponents and a group of allies that are afraid and have little trust for each other. Creatures are deadly and bloodthirsty, and an immense threat without the proper firepower. The player is a hero character of Native Indian desent, fearful of the creatures around him, but willing to use bravery and force to dispose of them in violent ways... often at close range using only a knife.
Starting an Animation:
We are pretty lucky here at Propaganda in that we don't have rigid quota on our animations. Almost all in-game animations are scheduled 'per animation' and not based on any relevance to screen time. The Turok Creature Reel shows a few different kinds of tasks - the less intensive variety ( such as the TRex eating the small dino ) and the more involved type ( like the Lurker attacking the human player ). As a general 'window time' we based an estimate of 2 days for the simpler animations, and 5 days for the more complex ones. We were lucky in that we could usually extend the window by a few days if it needed that time to add the extra polish that we felt was important to our game... we knew that for a compelling dinosaur experience the creatures had to not only move convincingly, but appear menacing and vicious ( even if they were injured or being killed ) ... we were willing to spend the time to do this well.
As an average I would say that I probably spent the allocated 2 days on the simpler animations, but usually the reasonable maximum of 7 or 8 days on the complex sequences.
Thinking High-Level:
Before starting anything, I like to just spend a while thinking very globally about what I should be showing and what I would like to show. As an example I will discuss the animation where the Lurker is attacking and killing the human player for the most part, but I will refer to other animations to make certain points as I go along.
These are the areas and kinds of things I like to think about first ( and usually in this kind of order )
What will make this sequence entertaining ?
If I was playing this game for the first time, what would I like to see happen ?
What are the technical constraints ? ( e.g ground coverage, camera placements etc )
How can I make the Lurker move in a violent, aggressive and dominating way ?
How can I make the human seem doomed and terrified, yet still seem heroic ?
How will the two characters actually come into contact ?
How will the Lurker overpower the human ?
What will be the killing blow or move that finishes the human ?
Will the human have a fighting chance ?
What angle do I want to shoot this from ?
Will the camera be animated ?
How can I get as much movement as possible in the sequence ?
Who is the focus of the sequence ? the human or the Lurker ?
How can I work some decent contrast and shape change into the action ?
How can I get some cool poses on the Lurker and the human ?
What similar sequences have already been animated, and how will this one be different ?
What will make someone want to watch this again and again ?
What are the best things to draw out first, and what do I need to shoot for reference ?
Do I have the tools to do what I need to do ?
Am I good enough to animate this ?
And to give a little background info on the Lurker creature for context:
Its a fictional cross between a big cat and a lizard
It moves like a big cat, but can also traverse trees and surfaces like a lizard
It is vicious and aggressive, like a cornered pit bull, or threatened grizzly bear
It hates everyone!
Talking High-Level:
I have some great colleagues at work that love to talk about stabbing dinosaurs in the head and wrestling down the odd bigger one. After pondering through the list above, I would usually throw an idea or two at these guys, act them out a bit in the studio, and get some feedback from them. Often I would get new and better ideas, or at least some decent expansion on the ideas I originally had. If they thought it sounded cool, and so did I, then it couldn't be far off.
I am not a good at drawing, so I much prefer to talk early on about an initial idea than show drawings / poses or even blocked out 3D sketches that take time to make. I would also show any video reference at this point, if I had recorded any, or had any on the internet that helped illustrate my ideas.
Bringing Ideas Together
So for the Lurker kill human animation, there were a few things I knew for certain ( technical constraints )
There had to be a "struggle" at some point for gameplay reasons
The whole thing couldn't be too long
It couldn't cover too much ground, and had to take place on a flat surface
The camera needed to feel like a hand-held, and could not make big broad movements
It all had to be in one shot - no cuts
And these were the things I decided I wanted to do in the sequence, following my initial ideas and seeing what my colleagues thought would be cool
The Lurker pounces on the human slamming him to the ground with great force
There is a shape change as the Lurker adjusts himself to a good position to start tearing flesh
The human is seen to have a last heroic effort to hold off the inevitable death by trying to struggle out of the Lurker's clutches
In response to the human's effort, the Lurker decides to just shake him violently and break his back in a broad contrasting action
My inspiration for these ideas was basically from thinking how a lion or leopard would pounce on it's prey and pin it down, but then instead of the almost surgical way big cats kill their victims by biting down on the neck, I wanted the more brutal way that a grizzly bear might maul and tear at its enemy. So I mixed the two.
Staging and Broad Action
To be honest I really like this part of the process. After I've got a pretty fleshed out idea of what I think will happen in the animation, I try and figure out the very global movements or high level staging that will be seen in the sequence, imagining the characters as single shapes moving the the screen, and how the camera will move. This stage is all about very high level contrast and variety, but also thinking about what angles the characters will look good from ( e.g, you would want to see a good view of the Lurkers face as he bites in )
I didn't do this prior to animation, I drew this up for the post to explain my thinking - I mostly just figure this out in my head. The reason I like this stage so much is because it can really help you get ideas for what you want your characters to do... you can almost think of the high level staging contrasts first, and then think of suitable actions to make them happen... its fun, and helps go a long way towards a decent animation if you get this stage right. You're trying to keep the screen alive too as well as the characters within it. .
These are the main staging ideas for the sequence where human wrestles the large injured Dilophosaurus ( beginning of reel ). There is contrast in the broad action and camera movements.
Drawing
This is probably the point at which I should mention the overall way in which I work. I am very much a straight ahead and layered approach animator. I don't yet know how to properly plan and block out animations... I am working hard on this. I like to animate things by getting a strong idea in my mind of what I know will look good, then I figure out how to animate it by concentrating on what are the primary driving forces, and the most important motions or actions that I need to do first in order to make everything else fall into place. I animate these things first, then I animate everything else afterwards. I do not animate everything at once, knowing exactly where things are coming from and where they are going ( like our old pal Milt Khal ) ... I am way off being that good or that organised. I really love the progressive control and feedback that blocking offers, but I love the spontaneity and immersion that comes from working the way I do.
But I do plan. Its just my planning isn't always in the form of thumbnail drawings or 2D flipbooks. Sometimes I draw thumbnails, sometimes I act things out and record it. Sometimes I just go with the flow and start in 3D ( but not often ).
For the Lurker attack, I pretty much could see in my head what I wanted to happen. I wanted the camera nice and close to the ground to emphasise the threat from the creature, and I wanted there to be a strong sense of physical connection between the two characters by using a good overall pose that kept them feeling entangled and brawlish.. almost like the lurker was 'hugging' the human... and biting into his chest and stomach. For this section of the animation I only did one small drawing that helped me summarize the kind of thing I was going for and mostly posed the two characters together in 3D until I had something I was happy with. The main problem I wanted to solve in thumbnails was the shape change and follow-through of the two characters when the human is violently dragged at the end, so I drew some stuff for that before I went to 3D:
As far as thumbnails go, I never really try and figure out too much at this stage. To be honest, this has a lot to do with my inability to draw the real details of what I can imagine in my mind.. I can usually draw the broad shapes, but then I hit a roadblock because I cannot draw out the subtle shape changes or poses that I want. Basically what this means is that I only ever really work out the main "story poses" that describe the most basic elements of what happens.... rarely any breakdowns. At this point I'm really just thinking about the kind of shapes I want to see, and from what angle. The drawing top left ( with a zero above it ) was the entanglement feeling I wanted, and the rest are just figuring out how the drag would work.
Here are a few more thumbnail sheets I managed to find for some other animations I didn't put on the reel. I wish I had some that are more relevant, but I seem to have trouble keeping stuff like that around, but at least these give an idea of the kind of detail level I take these to. Below each one I have posted a video of how the animation finally came out so you have some context
Recording Reference
I found that for almost all the animations on the Turok reel, I needed to record reference, particularly to give a much better indication of how the human would move in a realistic way. I believe when shooting for realism this is an essential part of the process - there are too many subtle and even very broad actions that the human actor will do that you could never imagine or anticipate just through imagining or thumbnailing. I find that more than anything else it is a great generator of newideas, or it will at least prove or break an idea you already had on paper.
For the Lurker kill animation, despite what I just said, I didn't record any reference, so I can't show you anything for this. I think really I should have, particularly for the 'struggle' section, but I decided to figure this out in 3D mostly because the motion of the human would depend so much on the motion of the Lurker ( in fact, for the entire animation), but I think I could have got a better result if I had at least acted out some kind of struggle in a similar position and recorded it. Below is an animation I decided to not to render and include on the Creature Reel because I'm not that happy with it to be honest, but it does show how I used direct video reference of myself to create the motion of the human actor
and here's the reference I recorded:
As an indication, I probably spent a good 40 minutes acting this out over and over, trying different things ( some within the basis of the same idea, and some completley new ideas ) and doing a good 30 or so tries. It seems to me like you need a good 20 minutes to warm up to what you're doing and to really get into it, and usually I find the best take is always the last one, or very near to the end. I find it very weird as well that the ones you though were good when you did them often look crappy, and its the ones you don't remember so much that look great.
As far as using the reference, I pretty much used it as close as to what was recorded as possible, changing a few things ( mostly timing ) here and there to get the desired effect. If you're going to work this way its crucial that your reference is dead-on. I think part of the problem with this completed animation is that I think I made a bad decision on the reference I decided to use - I should have gone a lot more extreme with the idea of the human moving out of the way of the stumbling dinosaur and pushed it much more.
Blocking
I'm sure when some of you hear the word 'blocking' you instantly conjure up images of AM Mentor reels, Pixar bonus DVD features, and directors and supervisors all standing around a monitor looking happy. And so you should. I think blocking is great, I just personally find it very hard to work completely in this way ( because I need to practice more ). I can say pretty safely for a good 4 or so years of my career I would just animate straight ahead - not frame by frame, but I would block very loosely between two main poses at a time. I would then animate to almost final between those two poses, then move onto the next two poses until my animation was finished. To be honest I didn't even know about blocking, and seeing as I am entirely self-taught, I never really thought of doing it any other way. The problem with this method was that I never really had much control over what was happening on a high level, had a hard time making changes, and had no real indication of how my animation would look until it was finished. On the other hand, my work always felt spontaneous, organic and was a real blast to create. My current struggle is finding a balance between my methods and a more constructive blocking approach.
So coming back to what I was saying before, my approach to blocking is the same as my approach to animating...I like to animate by thinking about what is most important and doing that first. when I say most important I'm thinking in this way:
What action or pose NEEDS to happen at a certain point because it drives the story or the impact of the sequence ?
What movements are directly driving a lot of other movements ? ( like the Lurker driving the motion of the human being dragged )
what character is driving the execution of the staging and camera ? ( who is the primary focus of the sequence and where are they going in the frame ? )
With the Lurker kill animation, below is a set of images that are a rough indication of what I blocked out in 3D before going into animation. These are really just the story poses, and I didn't take the blocking to any more detail than this. I was just trying to lock down in 3D the high level staging, and thinking of the characters as broad shapes rather than complex ones.
I could not find any version history for this animation file, so the images above are simply screen grabs from the final animation. They represent more the points at which I set poses in the sequence, rather than the fidelity of the poses being set. The real ones would have been much much broader and less detailed than these. As an indication of "priority" of these poses, I felt that 1, 3, 5 and 12 were the most important for getting the staging across as needed ( i.e, these are all the poses i absolutley needed - and i spent the most time thinking about the fidelity of these poses in more detail ) all the other poses are loose indications of how I would go between these priority poses, and I would not worry too much about how these looked. I would also be setting these poses in stepped mode, and thinking about where I placed them in the timeline so they would represent a very rough indication of the timing.
I managed to find some version history of the Dilophosaurus animation, which gives a better indication of how I block things out. The scenes I recorded for the video were saved at random points throughout the time I was creating the sequence, so they don't represent exact "milestones" of the blocking I did, instead they just give an indication of the various stages.
Looking at the video above it illustrates pretty well some of the ideas behind my workflow
section 1 ) Here I'm starting to block out the motion of the human first ( I used video ref of myself for this ). The initial poses are set up to show the basic relationships of where the characters are in relation to each other at the start of the animation.
section 2) One of the main actions in the sequence is where the dino bites back at the human, who manages to dodge. At this point the the blocking I am roughing out the human up to this point, and also the biting action of the dino. By doing this I can properly verify where the characters need to be at the start of the animation so they end up in the right place at the point of the biting action, relative to how far the human moves forward and how far the dino head moves. I am also starting to think about how the dino will move his body forward in a lunging action that will add power to the bite ( but also affect where he ends up at the end of the action ) I am thinking more carefully about the human poses at this point but still not spending too much time on them. For the dino poses, I am still thinking of him mainly as just his broad shape, and where he is in relation to the human. The most important thing about the dino at this stage is what his head is doing.
section 3 ) Still working from my video reference, I am blocking the human duck and jump animation. The human is leading the staging throughout the whole animation, so I work on his actions first. I know that he needs to get back on his feet and force the dino's head down by jumping on it - so there is a key point where the dino's head needs to be in relation to how far the human jumps. This key contact point means that I need to know roughly where the dino will be when the human hits the ground, so I block out this pose too ( I also start to get a good idea of how far the dino is moving accross the floor, and the cool kinds of struggly actions I can animate to make his do this ). The white dots that floating in space are a motion trail that I always have attached to the human root bone, this is most useful in stepped mode, when you are blocking out poses, but cannot see directly the relationship between them in 3D space. Using the trail I have a direct indication if the motion of his root is doing anything weird or has odd spacing on it.
section 4 ) So this section is actually a good representation of how far I would take the blocking of this animation, before starting to work into it in detail. All the main actions are there, and technically everything works ( with regards to distances and contact poses particularly ). I also have a good indication of the staging, and can work a rough pass of the camera movement into the scene. I could also show the animation at this stage and get feedback on high level changes without too much effort.
Some things to notice that are not blocked out by section 4 - The blocking of the human is still very loose, I'm not overly concerned about exact poses, instead just the overall feel and technical aspects of the animation. The dino has very few poses that really say much at all, at this stage the blocking is just to make sure hes in the right place, and most of the attention on him is based around his head and its position to the human. The number of stabs and the timing for the stabbing sequence is very loose, but the sense of the stabbing action is there. There is also no fancy blocking of any of the erratic movements the dino makes in the final rendered shot.
I just want to point out here that I always try and animate as much as I can in full 3D. Game animators are generally used to thinking in this way because usually every animation we do can be seen from all angles by the audience who plays the game. When doing cinematic animation to a specific camera view, I always work primeraly to that shot as my "optimal viewpoint" but I try and make the animation work from all angles. This forces you to think more realistically about the space in which the action is taking place, and gives you a clearer understanding of where things are going and coming from. It also means that you have room to modify your camera angles and play around a bit with camera animation when you have the main character movement finished and polished up.
Starting to Refine
My approach to starting the real nitty gritty part of animating is to work in a straight ahead and layered way between the poses I have set in my blocking. I rarely go back and set any breakdowns to my blocking poses. Instead what I have are pretty solid "marker poses" that make sure my timing is basically on track, my characters are going where they need to go, and I can see ahead of time the overall picture of what will happen in the sequence... ultimately this means that I can work in the more spontaneous way that I am used to, but its much harder for me to go totally off track and end up making a mess or not quite hitting the mark as I imagined... because the framework is already there.
What I found interesting about these animations were the sheer amount of movement that affects other movement, which in turn affected the way I animated it. For example, when the Lurker is struggling with the human, the Lurker is the main driving force because hes so powerful, yet there is some force on the Lurker in the form of resistance to the human.
With the Dilophosaurus animation there were a number of these relationships:
The dodge and duck of the human affects where the dino needs to bite so the actions seem believable
When the human jumps and wrestles down the dino, its head is affected by when and how this jumping move takes place and how much force the human inflicts on it
Towards the end where the dino is shaking its head and reacting to the knife stabs, this affects how the human moves because he is hanging onto the dino's head
Because of these primary driving forces, I animated the Dilophosaurus animation in this structured order
I animated the human first, up until the point that he has finished his jump, and is in the pose where he has the dino head on the ground and is about to stab. I took the time to work detail into these movements, getting the human feeling good and not worrying too much about the dino's body or head. At this point when I am animating anything I am not worrying about keying all controllers on every frame, or in fact being that tidy with my key frames at all, I am working in auto-key and just posing things around and keying them wherever it feels right
I then animated just the dino's head, all the way from the beggining, through the bites, the scream, and all the way up to the point where the human is about to stab. I was concentrating on the big mass of the head because of its sheer size and importance in staging for the shot. I animated how it would react to the force of the human wrestling it down, and the initial impact with the floor. I still didnt worry too much about the animation of the dino's body, just making sure however that I didn't push the head too far beyond a pose that my rough blocking of the body could accommodate
Once the human has the dino on the ground, I started to block very roughly the timing of the stabs... so I just blocked out the extra stabbing motions from the rough blocking I did at the start, and got the timing feeling pretty good. I didn't concentrate too much even on the human animation, I just animated the arm stabbing and got the feel for it. I did this because each stab would affect the movement of the dino head in a small way, which would affect the human because he is holding on to it!
Now I had the timing of the stabs, I animated again just the dino's head struggling and roaring in reaction to the attack, all the way up to the point that the dino has died and the human starts to get back up again. I made sure I moved the head enough to get decent reaction from the human holding on, but also so I could get some driving body movement in the dino's body. For this stage I was loosley animating the human and the dino's body, but only loosely to get an idea of staging and broad movement
With the dino's head struggling animation pretty much done, I could animate the human reacting to the forces, and take the human to near completion, all the way up to where he stands back up and the animation finishes. I also made the stabs fit properly to the movement of the dino's head, but trying to keep to the same timing I blocked out for them. The human is now about 90% animated, with follow through and all the details included
Finally I did a straight ahead pass on the dino's body. I made the root move so that it kept up with the driving force of the head, and I animated the frantic motion of the legs in a way that they would also appear to push the dino to the places that it needed to be in its staging. I added reactions and squirms in the legs, root and arms to the section where the human wrestles its head down, and finally to the stabs and its eventual death. I just went with this pass by pass adding and changing as I worked through.
With the Lurker kill animation it was a similar process:
I animated the Lurker jumping all the way through the air and landing on the ground using poses 2, 3 and 4 as a rough guide ( see the poses image from before ). I took this motion pretty far getting the nice timing, arcs and overlap. I was loosley posing and adjusting the human but not thinking past the main contact poses when the the Lurker initially hits him in the air, and then when he finally hits the ground.
I then animated the Lurker jumping around and repositioning itself to get to pose 5
After I had the main attacking action of the Lurker feeling smooth and enjoyable, I animated the human reacting to the pounce, hitting the floor and struggling in reaction to the Lurker repositioning itself. I knew where I could flail the human's legs and where he could try and grab and push away because I already had the the animation of the Lurker there and working
I then animated just the Lurker's head biting into the human's stomach and moving around, up until the point that he just begins to drag him away. Again, not thinking too much about the movement of the Lurker's body or the human, but making sure that I moved the head enough to get some decent body movement in both characters
Using the head movement as the main focus of the staging, I pretty much did a straight ahead pass on the Lurker's body and the human's reactions to the bites in one go. I added the weight shifting and pulling that the Lurker does mainly as a result of the range of motion on the head animation. I animated this up until the point that the Lurker begins to drag the human away
I then animated the root and back legs of the Lurker performing the shaking and dragging. I very roughly blocked the chest and head of the Lurker, and some poses for the human just making sure that I wasn't straying too far from the main story poses, and technically that I was covering enough ground to drag the human far enough and keep the staging as planned
Once I had the main root and back leg motion for the Lurker in the dragging section, I animated the chest, front legs, and head of the Lurker reacting to this driving force
I then animated the human being dragged, using the head as the main point of force
Finally I did a straight ahead pass on the limpness of the human at the end, and the final lunge of the Lurker
During this stage of animation, I am usually trying to get visibility and feedback on what I'm doing to make sure anyone else that sees it is getting the entertainment factor I'm shooting for, and making any changes that are not too destructive or time consuming at this point.
For all elements of anything I animate I follow this same principle. So when I say "I animated the human" I am usually animating the root and foot plants together, then all the torso and arm movement that results from the main driving force of the root. I did a post that goes a bit more detailed into this idea here
Polishing and Taking It In
As a final pass on my animation I will go through and add motion trails to most objects and get the arcs feeling smooth and organic. This tends to make a huge difference, and you see improvement in areas you didn't even notice had any problems. I love motion trails.
I then spend a little while cleaning up curves. Nothing intense at all, just making sure there's no weird flat tangents or spiky sections. To be honest I only usually spend much time in the graph editor if I need to solve specific problems with acceleration or deceleration, or technical problems like locking down movement between duplicate poses by setting flat tangents etc... sometimes its impossible to get the kind of precise or complex movement you want without pulling around some curves.
I then play with the camera a little, changing the shot and framing a bit here and there to find the best way to shoot the action ( you get to do this if you work in full 3D as I mentioned before ). These are not vast changes at all, but can make dramatic improvements.
I then sit back and watch the animation over and over. I do this to look for 3 main things
Do I need to change and poses or timing in any way to make the sequence better ?
Where can I add subtle movements ( reactions in all animated objects to forces and actions smaller than the main driving forces) to make it more believable ?
Do I need to globally adjust or modify any poses or animation to get a better result ?
Does this entertain me ?
I usually use animation layers to add subtle movements and global changes. This way I can forget about trying to work within existing keyframes and just start fresh using additive keyframes over the top of underlying motion. Its best to do this at the end because our in-house animation layer tool locks off the underlying animation once you add layers over the top. You can get some great subtle movement doing this, and you can also blend in and out of broad changes over time ( for example I added a layer to the Lurker's root that bought him closer to the human during the struggle section and I blended this change from the point that he repositions himself after the pounce ). I love animation layers too! .... I could post this up along with a tutorial if I get any interest.
So... if you managed to hang in until the end, you have my congratulations, and I hope you found at least some of that interesting or useful. Please post any questions you might have or fire me an e-mail.
Its good for me to write this stuff because it helps me clarify things in my own mind too...
