Observations: "The Runaway"

A while back I was sitting in a doctor's office, waiting for the doctor to return to my exam room. Naturally I was doing what we all tend to do while waiting for doctors to return: I was glancing at the collection of Norman Rockwell artwork hung on the walls. I'd seen most of the pieces before, but seeing that the doctor was keeping me away from animating, I decided to study the prints to see what could help me as an animator.

One favorite on display was Rockwell's classic, "The Runaway." It's such a deceptively simple image, and yet it's clear that Rockwell took great care to construct the image in such a way that your eye can't help but go where he wants it to go, which is to the facial exchange between the kid and the cop. Some of these guiding elements are related to the tonal values chosen for the setting and the characters, but there are also a number of things in the characters' poses that are good to study from an animation standpoint:

• One of the biggest pose "guides" is the angle of the cop's right leg. Follow that up and it'll take you directly to the kid's face. Notice how the cop's gun is angled to nearly match the leg angle. Also notice the nice negative-space triangle formed by the right leg, the stool post, and the seat. That also helps the right leg to draw our eye.
• To contrast that, notice the cop's left leg. Even though it's angled in the opposite direction, it has been posed in such a way that it doesn't lead the eye nearly as clearly as the right leg. There's no negative space associated with that leg, either, so that also helps put more focus on the right leg and where it's leading us.
• The cop's right arm is angled similarly to the right leg. While it doesn't point directly to the kid's face, it does aim at the well-crafted negative space between the two lead characters' faces. Looking at the left arm, the forearm angle blends with the edge of the countertop so it doesn't really stand out, while the upper arm guides the eye up and over the cop's left shoulder toward his face.
• Working with that upper left arm is the radio on the back wall. The cord coming up on the left, the shelf upon which the radio sits, and the little extra dangly bit of cord on the right all work to subtly emphasize that shape of the cop's upper left arm and shoulder, and guide your eye where it needs to go. In case that wasn't clear enough, that little dangly loop of cord to the right of the radio is pointing at the cop's head.
• While the cop's eyes are clearly looking at the kid, the brim of his hat adds an extra bit of emphasis. It looks like it's pointing right toward the kid's eyes.
• Check out the notebook in the cop's back pocket. The bright white silhouette of the pages points directly toward the kid.
• Even the face of the counter man has some guides. The angle of his smile leads you to his cigarette, which is pointing directly at the kid's face. The very trianglar shape of his head also leads you into the heart of the action.
• From a more broad perspective, compare the poses between the kid and the cop. While there is a little countering between the kid's hips and shoulders, his pose is essentially vertical, whereas the cop is arcing to the right. Combine that with the cop's bulk compared to the kid, and your eye goes to the pinnacle of the two poses, right to their faces. The angled bulk of the cop feels like a towering mass toppling in the direction of the kid, which further emphasizes the emotion of the scene.
• While checking out the background info about this image on the site linked above, I was clued in to another guide: the stick on the kid's hobo sack. The site points out how the stick's diagonal angle guides your eye toward the stools, and from there up to the characters, but it doesn't mention exactly why the stick works so well. I believe it works because the right end of the stick was carefully placed out of frame. That only leaves the left end to act as a pointer into the scene.

Such carefully crafted poses that show you exactly where to look, and yet it feels so comfortable and natural...so "un-posed". Awesome stuff!

Artists and doubt, revisited

Just got word that my buddy Bill Jacoby has started a blog, and his opening entry touches upon a subject that I briefly mentioned a while back: art and fear. Bill is quite the insightful guy, and his comments really hit home as I read them. Definitely keep an eye on this dude!

While I'm at it, it's way past time I updated the blog list on the sidebar. I've found a host of interesting and inspiring blogs since I started this thing earlier this year, and I apologize for not sharing them sooner. More fun stuff to come as I find it!

Relationships, emotions, and animation

I've had this kooky little theory floating around in my head for quite a while now. I've mentioned it on occasion to different folks, but have never taken the time to write it down in any detail (well, actually I have, but that's another story). Without getting to fancy-schmancy about it all, here's the gist of it...

I believe that every aspect of life, down to the tiniest detail, can be described in terms of two things: relationships and emotions. I believe that everything is involved in some sort of relationship -- whether it's social, physical, chemical, audible, visual, spatial, chronological, etc. -- and that the nature of the relationships that we're involved in affect us emotionally to varying degrees. It can be a bit of a deep concept if you really start to break things down, but for the purpose of this entry, I want to focus on relationships and emotions with regard to animation.

Animation is definitely an emotional art form.* We don't talk about its power to convey great logical concepts. We talk about is power to move us emotionally. Why are character and story always touted as being so important to quality animation? Because without carefully crafting those elements, the audience won't feel anything. If the audience doesn't feel anything, they'll move on in search of something else.

The emotions in an animated story are controlled through a wide variety of relationships. While we most often use terms that don't include the word "relationship," there's a relationship to be found at the heart of each concept. Here are just a few examples:

• Pose: the spatial relationships between the different parts of a character's body


• Staging: the relationship between the camera and the things the camera is viewing


• Squash and stretch: modifying the relationship between the height and width of an object to change its shape


• Timing: a chronological relationship between poses


• Spacing: the relationship between the positions of an object in space over a given period of time

It can be difficult to find words to describe the relationships that are present in some animation principles (I gave up on "arcs"). They're definitely there, though, and here's the key thing to remember: By altering the various relationships over which we have control as animators, we consequently alter the emotional tone of the result.

When it comes down to it, an animator is just a specialized relationship counselor. My job is to understand the emotion(s) that the director wants to create in the story at any given moment, and then craft all the relationships at my disposal to create that emotional impact. All those relationships have to work in harmony -- or in other words, the relationship between all those individual relationships needs to work properly -- or else the resulting emotion won't be the right one for the moment.

So how can I use this kooky little theory when I'm working? Well, I personally find it a LOT easier to think about animation using the more traditional terms most of the time, rather than using the relationship-based breakdowns of those concepts. However, what this theory has helped me to do is to hone in on the emotions present in everything I do as an animator. As I'm planning out a scene, I make sure that I identify the desired emotions, and then make sure that everything I do -- poses, timing, spacing, etc. -- helps to feed that desired emotional tone. As I'm posing a character, I'm aware that the slightest adjustment to a head tilt or an eyelid level will change how that pose feels. When I'm reviewing a shot, whether it's my own or someone else's, it can be especially helpful. If there's something that's "just not working," and I can't easily put my finger on it at first, I'll break down the emotional impact that comes from each component; i.e. how do the poses feel? How does the timing feel? Spacing? Breakdowns? etc. This breakdown often helps me to isolate the part that's not contributing appropriately to the emotion that's required for the shot or scene.

An example of this kind of troubleshooting happened fairly recently as I was looking at an acting test that someone asked me to critique. At first I was tempted to comment on some of the technical issues that I saw with the animation. However, the more I watched the clip, the more I felt that the main problem was something deeper and more basic. The moment I started looking at some of the core relationships in the clip, the problem jumped up and started waving at me like Molt from A Bug's Life. "Oh! Pick me! Pick me! Oh! Oh!" I felt a little silly that I hadn't seen it sooner, but what was jumping and waving was simply the relationship between the dialog and the animation.

The animator had used a short line spoken by Kip from Napoleon Dynamite. If you've seen the film, you know how Kip talks...fairly mellow and soft, with a slight lisp, and a touch of a sing-song delivery to his lines. If you've never seen the film, you can still tell what kind of guy he is by the way he talks. He's a wimpy, soft-spoken, ever-so-slightly-arrogant nerd. The problem was that the animator didn't animate the character to be a wimpy, soft-spoken, ever-so-slightly-arrogant nerd. They pushed the confidence level a bit too high in the physical performance. There was a small moment that almost worked, though, and I think that's what threw me. It was off just enough to feel off, but not enough for the problem to draw attention to itself right away. It wasn't until I started picking apart the individual relationships that I found the culprit.

A similar example from a few years ago also comes to mind. I was involved in some discussion on the 10 Second Club forums following the competition that featured Anthony Hopkins from Silence of the Lambs saying, "I do wish we could chat longer, but...I'm having an old friend for dinner." One forum member commented that he didn't create an entry for that round because he really enjoyed doing humorous animation, and he felt that Hopkins' serious delivery wouldn't allow him to do something humorous. I got the impression that he equated humorous animation with fast delivery of witty dialog, so in my reply, I pointed out how it would still be possible to create a humorous clip using that very mellow line. It's all in the management of relationships.

As illustrated above, one relationship that must work when animating to dialog is the one between the emotional tone of the vocal performance and the emotional tone of the physical performance. It generally doesn't work to have someone talking very calmly but moving very quickly. If you try to do it, your voice will still give subtle clues that you're not acting as calmly as you're trying to speak. With a mellow delivery, there must be an equally mellow performance. So how do we create comedy from this situation? By playing with the situation itself, or in other words, playing with the relationship between the mellow delivery/performance and the specifics of what the character is doing.

The example I provided for this 10SC animator was regarding another entry from that round that used Hopkins' dialog. The animator of this other clip had chosen to have the character picking his nose while talking on the telephone, and eating the boogers he pulled out of his nostrils. When the character went to eat the little booger ball on his finger, he reared back quickly, and quickly thrust his finger into his mouth. It gave a very typical "Look, I'm doing something funny" feeling to the performance, which contrasted with the very mellow and serious tone of Hopkins' vocal delivery, and caused the clip to be less successful. I believe this same situation would have been absolutely hilarious, however, if the animator had gone for a very serious performance, and let the humor lie in the contrasting relationship between that seriousness and the absurdity of what the character was actually doing.

Imagine the character treating the snot-ball as if it were a delicacy, something to be savored. Picture him gently inserting his finger into his open mouth. His lips softly close around the base of the finger, and he slowly closes his eyes. After a slight pause, he draws his finger out ever so slowly, eyes still closed, and he leans back, an expression of pure ecstacy on his face. By leaving the vocal/performance relationship intact, what would make it funny would be the relationship between this very serious performance and the absurdity of eating one's nasal nuggets.

Relationships and emotions are inseparably tied together, and play a huge role in animation. The more I understand how the various relationships in animation affect the emotion of the end product, the more effective I believe I'll be as an animator.

* This also applies to many other things, like photography, music, painting, filmmaking in general, etc. I'm simply focusing on animation for this entry, so please forgive the ommission of these other forms of expression.

Observation from voting

It's interesting the way our minds work, and how we often react to things out of habit rather than really paying attention to what's going on.

I went to vote the other evening. At the place of polling, there were three lines of people waiting to get their ballots, with the lines dividing folks alphabetically based on their last name. Occasionally someone would trek to the back of the line and make sure that people knew about the division, as the o' so helpful signs were out of view once you rounded a corner and left the main room. Now, if I were describing this scenario as part of a fictional story I was constructing, I would most likely have the exchange go something like this...

Poll person: "What letter does your last name start with?"
Voter: "M"

What was interesting to note is that in all the exchanges I heard, the majority of them didn't go that way. Instead, they went like this:

Poll person: "What letter does your last name start with?"
Voter: "McIntosh"

Interesting, eh? I have a hunch that most people focused on the "last name" portion out of pure habit. Most of the time when we're asked about our last name, it's usually not just the first letter that someone wants to know, so it becomes instinctive to just rattle off our full last name.

That takes me back to the whole idea of writing this scenario as part of a fictional work. If we are so conditioned to instictively answer with our full last name, it would seem more natural to craft the story that way. The trouble is that during the course of writing, an author might not think about something like that. Because he/she generally isn't in the natural moment, or observing someone else in such a moment, the response that they write to that question will likely be logical, like the first version, rather than instinctive and natural, like the second version.

In terms of animation, what this experience reinforced to me was the importance of observation. We often think we know how a character will do a certain action or react in a certain situation, but in doing so, we're in danger of creating something that feels more logical than natural. By taking time to research and observe as we plan an assignment, we will often find things that might not have come to us if we'd gone purely on our own thought process.

An example of this was shared by Bobby Beck at the presentation he made here in Dallas during the Industry Giants event this past summer. He asked the audience to think about a child doing a somersault, and picture how that motion would look. He even did a somersault for us on stage, demonstrating the gut reaction that most of us would have if asked to animate something like this...just a plain ol' somersault.

He then showed us some video reference of that was shot while he was working at Pixar on Monsters Inc. In the clip, this little one- or two-year-old boy bent over and put his head and hands on the floor, ready to do a somersault. However, he had simply bent down from the waist, keeping his legs fairly straight, so he didn't have the leverage needed with his legs to push himself over. He shifted his feet from side to side numerous times in an attempt to finish the somersault, all the while balancing his upper body on his head and hands, and everybody in the audience just cracked up. It was hilarious to see, but more importantly, it was so much more natural because it was real.

It's entirely possible that someone could come up with the same idea if given enough time, but the point Bobby was making was that observation gets us to those instinctive, natural ideas much faster. And the sooner we can get to those great ideas, the sooner we can start putting those ideas into our work.

Observe, observe, observe!!!

More Escher and animation

I'm cleaning my desk (whew!) and found another one from a month ago that I should have posted. Great relevance for animation...

Whoever wants to portray something that does not exist has to obey certain rules. Those rules are more or less the same as for the teller of fairy tales; he has to apply the function of contrasts; he has to cause a shock.

More weekend thoughts from Escher

If this doesn't apply to animation, I don't know what does...

We hanker after the unnatural or supernatural, that which does not exist, a
miracle. As if ordinary reality isn't enigmatic enough!

The wierdest taste...

I swear, Taco Bell's pink lemonade has to be one-quarter Pepto Bismol. But I'm drinking it anyway.

That's all for now...

Rest in peace, Maggie

Today was one of the saddest days I've had in a long, long time. So why am I sharing this instead of something more inspiring? Hang on for a paragraph or two and you'll see...

We've been watching the declining health of our beloved feline, Maggie, for the past three months. At first we thought it might just be age, as she was approaching eleven years old by our calculations. However, the vet suspected that a lump he felt in her stomach was some form of cancer. We couldn't afford the operation to find out exactly what it was, and x-rays were inconclusive, so we just took care of her as best we could.

She still ate, but her condition reached a point where the food would go straight through her in a matter of minutes, so she continued to lose weight. She did nothing but lie on the floor all day, although she would occasionally spend some time sitting in my wife's lap, purring softly. Early on we got some medicine for her, and kept hoping she would get better. As time went on, we realized the medicine wasn't doing any good, so we stopped administering it a few days ago.

Last night we talked a good deal about what to do, and decided that it was time to end Maggie's suffering. I delayed my trip in to work, and we took her to the vet first thing this morning and had her put to sleep. When you don't have kids, you invest a lot more love in your pets, and I was devastated at the thought of letting her go. As we said our goodbyes while she slowly drifted into an eternal sleep, I cried like I haven't cried in ages.

The reason I'm sharing this here is because Maggie was inspiring to me. She has been such a joy in our lives since we got her roughly three-and-a-half years ago. She was a very vocal cat, and there were times when she meowed in the oddest way, causing my wife and I to nearly fall over with laughter. We also discovered shortly after getting her that she loved to play "fetch" with her toy mice. She would bring one to us with a happy trill in her voice when she wanted to start playing, and if we played the game at night before falling asleep, we would frequently awake the next morning to find that the toy had been faithfully returned, and had somehow made its way under the covers. There were times when she would wake up my wife or I by licking our closed eyelids, and we knew that it was either time to play, or time to eat. As an animator, it was fascinating to not only watch her physical movements on a daily basis, but to notice her particular personality traits, which are forever locked away in the back of my mind for the day when I get to animate a cat. Maggie was quite a joy, and quite an inspiration.

The picture below was taken just a couple days after getting my new camera this past summer, while Maggie sat in one of her favorite spots, which happened to be in front of a special piece of needlework we received as a gift. When I began thinking of a picture we could share with friends and family as we announced this sad news, this image immediately came to mind. Maggie was and always will be family, and we look forward to seeing her again after this life is over. As my wife so eloquently pointed out today, heaven just wouldn't be heaven without our pets. :)

Rest in peace, Mags...

A couple bits of inspiration

Been really busy at work lately, but some fun inspiring stuff has come across that I gotta share:

Fancy Footwork
This guy's good! I hope I never get burdened with the task of animating something that complex, but if so, this'll be my first piece of reference material.

Funny Faces
The music isn't my favorite, but some of the faces these guys make are just KILLER! Live squash and stretch at it's best!

And then there's the Halloween costume of one Jason Schleifer. Wow...just....like..........wow! Rock on, Jason!

"The Disney Touch"

Just got turned on to the blog of Hans Bacher, an amazingly talented Disney alum. Upon backtracking through the recent posts collected for me by Bloglines, I ran into a very interesting piece describing how Disney "works" the stories that they turn into films. Quite an eye opener...

Killer card stacker!

Just saw this over on Boing Boing. I've tried here and there to stack cards, but usually with horrible results. The shot of Bryan Berg next to a 25-foot stack of cards just blew me away. Quite a clever method he has for stacking them, but it's to be expected from an architect (although he claims he doesn't rely much on his architecture knowledge when "cardstacking").

And get this...this is his full-time job! Sweet! Then again, that's the kind of reaction most animators get. "You mean you get to make cartoons and movies for a living!? Cool!" Yeah, it is pretty cool. It's still hard work, but the "cool" part can't be denied. :)

Along the lines of my earlier "Find what you love and don't settle" post, here's my favorite part from his FAQ:

If there ever comes an opportunity for you in your life to take something
you love and turn it into your job, DO IT!!

Kudos, Bryan! :D

"Change Myself"

When I was first learning about 3D animation, I was using Lightwave on a Video Toaster system at the community college in the town where I grew up. I became a big Lightwave geek, and while I didn't do a lot of stellar stuff myself, I got caught up in all the cool stuff that other people were creating with Lightwave. One such piece was a music video made by Todd Rundgren for his song, "Change Myself." For some funky reason, this thing really inspired me. The song was cool, the animation was cool (or so I thought at the time), and it just all came together really well. I have a very different view of the thing looking at it now, but I openly and freely admit that it still holds a place in the nostalgic corner of my heart.

Anyway, while I was searching online for anything more I could find about the song and video, I discovered that Rhino Entertainment offers a streaming video of "Change Myself" on their site! Sweet!! Now I just gotta find Rundgren's "The Desktop Collection" on DVD and I'll be all set...

Wallace and Gromit clips!

Just got a note from a co-worker about several clips from Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were Rabbit that Dreamworks posted online. Sweet lookin' stuff from the folks at Aardman!! I'm partial to Quicktime, so here are links for the 640x346 QT clips (note: if you "save as," you'll just get a 1KB shortcut that opens Quicktime and starts to download the video). If you want other viewing sizes or formats, the article I was pointed to on AICN has several. Enjoy!

1: Launch and Activate
2: Bun-Vac 6000
3: To Pay or Toupee?
4: The Mind-Manipulation-O-Matic
5: A Bit More Alluring
6: Gromit Chases Were-Rabbit
7: Dog Fight

Frank and Ollie

I just love having a DVD player in my work machine. :)

I recently picked up the DVD Frank and Ollie, the documentary of legendary Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. I'd seen the presentation several years ago, but only recently got off my kiester to buy it. Having packed my lunch today, I sat at my machine and nibbled away while watching this new treasure. It was so inspiring to see these two in action...to see their continued passion for animation...to see animators like Glen Keane and Andreas Deja rifling through stacks of original drawings and talking about how Frank and Ollie's work inspires them...to see Ollie scooting around his property on a couple killer trains that he assembled himself...

...and that's just from the bonus features! I haven't even watched the main film yet! Dude!!!

Animation Dance!

Just caught sight of a post on the CG-Char forum about a new site: Animation Dance! The goal, according to site creator Katy Hargrove: "to provide an outlet for everyone interested in animation to get their groove on." :) Sounds like a sweet deal! It remains to be seen if I'll have the time/oomph to submit anything, but I'll certainly keep an eye on it. Kudos, Katy!

The power of editing

There's a contest called "Trailer Park" in which editors are challenged to take footage from any movie and re-edit it into a new movie trailer. The trick is to spin the movie in a different direction than the original. The picture cannot be modified, but the audio track can be edited at will.

The winning trailer in the New York division of this competition was created by Robert Ryang, who effectively turned Stanley Kubrick's horror classic "The Shining" into a fun family film. The NY Times has an interesting article that includes a link to the trailer, but my original source pointed to a blog entry on The Tattered Coat.

There's a little more to this story, at least on my side. After finding the link in an online forum, I passed it to folks at work. Later in the day I heard back from a couple guys in the studio who know Robert Ryang. They had just been reviewing the re-edited trailer that morning after getting a note from Robert about it, and had no idea that it was suddenly a major subject of blog discussion.

The power of editing meets the power of the Internet. Gotta love it! :)

"Find what you love. Don't settle."

Someone just bumped a thread on the Animation Mentor forum where Bobby Beck had posted a link to a speech given by Steve Jobs, which was delivered at the Stanford University commencement ceremony earlier this year (also available elsewhere in audio form). It's a great read/listen, as the speech has application for pretty much everyone, not just folks graduating from college.

Several points from his address rang true for me, especially when looking back and "connecting the dots" through various experiences I've had in the past. As I've gone through hard times, it's been difficult to see how those experiences could be of any real benefit down the road, aside from the standard "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" mentality. But in retrospect, it's often very clear to see how I flat-out couldn't have achieved Success X without suffering through Hardship Y.

I also appreciated Jobs' counsel to find what you love and don't settle for anything less. This especially hit home when looking back on my initial job search after graduating from school.

I had my heart set on getting a job as a character animator, and I recall several conversations I had with the school's alumni counselor about the types of job leads he was feeding me. One lead that sticks out pretty strongly was with a small company that took GPS data of golf courses, modeled and textured the courses in 3D, and used the results in booklets that golfers would carry with them around the course. I had a lengthy chat with this counselor about how this job was not even close to the direction I wanted to go, and he pushed back with the standard "You have to start somewhere" argument. I finally relented and agreed to go for an interview, which I arranged over the phone with someone at the company.

On the surface, the interview went pretty well. I got to see what the company did, I had a fine chat with one of their leads, and for a moment I felt like I could actually take the job if it was offered to me. But then, at the end of our time together, we watched my demo reel, which my interviewer hadn't seen yet. After viewing it, he commented about the fact that my reel was nothing but character animation. With that comment, my passion for character animation came to the surface, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

After hearing my comments, the interviewer asked me, "So why are you interviewing for this job?" Obviously there was no way I truthfully say that I had a passion for playing with GPS data for golf courses. The only other answer that came to mind was the one my alumni counselor gave me: "I suppose I have to start somewhere." Considering the way that came out, I think it was pretty clear to him that I wasn't really interested in the job, and it was pretty clear to me that I wasn't getting the job. Despite that, we managed to end the interview on a positive note, and I headed for home.

There were a few other similar experiences with other companies, and every time I couldn't hold back from telling people about my passion for telling stories through character animation. Despite the alumni counselor's insistence that I would most likely have to settle for something lower to start out with, I stuck to my guns. I refused to settle, and within a year of graduation I got my first job at Big Idea Productions.

I can even see how I refused to settle when it came to my initial dealings with folks at Big Idea. I had sent in my demo reel and expressed a desire to join the team producing their new 3-2-1 Penguins! series. I got some great feedback on my reel from the animators, including the suggestion to "Send it again in a year." That got me pumped, so over the next few months I worked out a plan that would carry me to the end of the year when I could apply again.

Just three months after that counsel, I saw that they had another opening for the Penguins! team. Looking back, I can see how I could easily have "settled" and continued to follow my one-year plan. Instead, I jumped on the opportunity and contacted them again about re-reviewing my reel. That led to a couple of animation tests, which led to an interview, which led to my first job. By not settling, I effectively whittled my one year plan down to five months.

I may not have had Jobs' speech to inspire me as I was going through these various experiences, but I'd heard similar counsel from other sources, both secular and religious. I knew what I loved, and I knew I would kick myself later by settling for anything less. I'm so thankful that I didn't settle, and continue to be thankful every day for the blessings I've received because I haven't settled. If you need a boost of enthusiasm -- or heck, even if you don't -- go check out Jobs' speech. Great stuff in there. :)

BOZ online

I heard at work the other day that the BOZ web site was going to go up soon, and found that it went live at midnight last night (I found this after finishing my first Animation Mentor Q&A...nearly two hours...what a rush!). The site has a good mix of things for both parents and kids, and for those who can't wait 'til next March to see some animation, you can order a teaser DVD from the site. I also learned something interesting from browsing through the site: BOZ is supposed to be in all caps (although they didn't explain why), so I'm trying to mend my ways and promote him/it properly. Go BOZ!

The two-hour shot

A couple months back, we wrapped up production on "Aunt Fanny's Tour of Booty," a short film that's included on the soon-to-be-released DVD for Robots. The folks at Blue Sky Studios were neck deep in production on Ice Age 2, so they asked us to produce the short under their direction. It was quite a challenge cranking out so much animation in such a short time, and we all learned a lot in the process. One of the things that was reinforced to me was the importance of planning.

Planning has been a hot topic for animation bloggers these days, and it's also a hot topic over at Animation Mentor as so many folks are just starting to get their feet wet with character animation. While a lot of the talk is about taking the time to plan in sufficient detail through a variety of techniques, I feel it's important to mention that even when there appears to be no time to plan, it becomes that much more important to take what little time there is and plan anyway.

This point was most strongly driven home on the very last day of animation production for the Robots short. It was a Friday morning, and we got ready for our final video conference call with the Blue Sky team, full of confidence that the last shots were done, and looking forward to nothing but approvals. When the Blue Sky folks got on the line, there were the usual greetings and connection-checkings and such...and then things got interesting.

They announced that they wanted to add another shot.

This is the kind of thing that makes animation supervisors (not to mention producers) cringe a little bit, and I must admit I did my share of cringing when I initially heard this proposal. The key concern was that the shot had to be done that day. We had another conference call scheduled later that afternoon, which meant that there would only be about two hours for someone to animate the new shot so we could get it up in front of them for review. Despite the uber-tight timeline, we committed to it, and pushed ahead to look at the animatic for the shot. As we watched it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the action and staging was constructed in such a way that it might actually be do-able in such a short time frame, even though the shot was four seconds long.

Because I was in the room for the initial presentation and had my eyes on the thing already, I decided to animate the shot myself. I knew that I wouldn't have time for thumbnails or video reference, but I also knew that I had to be really organized with how I tackled it or I'd spend two hours floundering around in Maya. So I began planning it out the only way I could at the time: in my head.

I peppered the Blue Sky folks with questions so I could get a really clear idea of what they wanted. As the animatic looped, I pictured the motion of the 3D characters through the frame. I even pictured (to some extent) how the motion curves would look in the graph editor. I tried to get the clearest possible vision of how the shot should look and what I would need to do to construct that look. When the meeting was over, we had a final quick bit of internal discussion about it, and I went to work.

Two hours later, the shot was done. We posted it for Blue Sky to review in our afternoon conference call, and thankfully there were only a few minor changes to make to take it to final. Those were done in short order, and the shot was approved and sent off to start lighting before the day was out.

Looking back, I know that planning made all the difference. Even though I was limited to asking questions and rehearsing the shot in my mind for maybe 15 minutes, that still helped a TON when I finally sat down and started setting keys on the computer. Without that little bit of planning, I would have been sunk.

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

(For the morbidly curious, the shot in question is the very last shot in the short, after the credits...)

Introducing Boz!

The clamps have been loosened just a touch on one of our core projects at Reel FX, so I can start spreading the news just a little. For at least the past year (and probably longer), we've been developing a new childrens' video property centered around a big green bear named Boz. The animation team got involved in Boz rig testing and look development early this year, and we went from there into production on some of the musical bits that will be incorporated into the videos. Just recently I've shifted into an animation supervisor role on the project, helping to take some of the load off the main anim sup, Tim Lannon.

The first videos in the series won't be released until the spring of 2006, but we're already starting to prepare some advance marketing materials which should be available soon. More details will be posted here as I'm allowed to share them.