Just a quick post about Rango, one of my all time favorites. I love it for being bold in a lot of ways, be it the looks and designs, the (somewhat weird named) emotion capture or it's refreshing ways to tell the story.
While watching a short making of I came across this quote by Director Gore Verbinski: "animation is not a genre, it's a technique for telling a story". This really resonated with me and I think it's something that gets lost in a lot big budget productions a tad too often. I really hope for more future animated features to approach their stories with this mindset.
After almost three years of working at Feinheit I quit my job to concentrate on my animation work. I have learned so much, worked on cool projects, and in the later stages was able to put my character animation skills to use on several projects.
I met some very fine folks there and many of them have become close friends over time. So that's the sad part about leaving the company.
On the other hand I'm really excited about taking the challenge to find my way into the animation industry and I'm looking forward to what the future may bring.
Right now I'm freelancing as a Character Animator, so my plans worked out quite nicely so far.
After years of working mostly on one man projects it's great to finally work within a team of 3D Artists and it's super rewarding to see your animated shots making their way through the production pipeline and come out a little shinier with each step.
I use my spare time to work on my reel, adding new shots and polishing the existing ones. For that purpose I'm taking an online workshop with ILM Animator JD Haas over at Spungella, and he has been great in giving me advice and pointing me in the right direction to improve my reel. I hope I'll be able to post an update in the near future.
And if I'm not animating, I'm working on a couple script ideas for potential animated shorts. Nothing fancy, but I am learning a lot about story structure, character arcs and all that stuff. It helps a lot in terms of animation and getting behind the motivations of my characters. You know subtext and all these fancy words. And who knows, maybe I'll get a Kickstarter going one day;)
"Long ago, when I went to school for traditional animation, it was expected you could/would spend 3 to 5 years either in the clean-up department, then work up to the breakdown inbetweener ranks, before become a fully fledged feature animator."
Take the time you need and stay determined!
Also, might be worth thinking about the equivalent of clean up and inbetweener in a 3D industry. How about aiming for a tv show as a starter?
Lots of work, working with the same characters throughout a show, high output rate... Sounds good to me.
Might not necessarily be all demoreel quality animation you'll be doing, but after a while you'll surely know how to animate quickly with a solid quality and have a bag full of tricks, plugins, are used to a studio environment and whatnot. I think this might be a possible way for a student or recent alumni for easing into the industry.
A little something I felt like sharing. After playing a lot of Sword & Sworcery lately, I thought it would be interesting to play around with minimalistic 3D Designs.
I find the results pretty interesting, and I'll make sure to play around with that style some more in the future.
I recently took part in the Light Your Shot Workshop at Animation Mentor. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate as much as I wanted, so it took me a while to catch up and get the vader scene to shine. I still think I learned a lot during the workshop and I can't wait to get to work on the lighting of the rest of the reel.
I can't stress enough how much a good workflow will help you in your animation. It will speed up your work, your scenes will be easier to manage, the animation's going to look better and you'll just have plain more fun during the process.
I found it one of the most difficult things to develop a workflow I can rely on. There's a ton of tips and tricks on the subject out there, it's kind of an overload. When I was starting out I had so much input from the Animation Mentor lectures, I didn't really know which pieces I should adapt in the first place.
In the end, your workflow it going to be your personal workflow. You'll design it after your needs and preferences and you'll be tweaking it depending on the kind of shot you work on. It will be an organic process and you'll keep adding new pieces and drop others on your way to become a animation ninja (or pirate, which ever you prefer). But it's hard to find a place to start.
With that said, let's take a look at what I would suggest for anyone starting out in animation.
It helped me when my mentor in class six, Kenny Roy, pointed out to me that I should be aware of the phrases in my shot. Take a look at the smokers shot:
If you take a look at the second part, the phrases are:
run in - come to stop - look at cigs - grab the box- grab a smoke - put it in mouth - hop on desk - grab the lighter - light the smoke - lean back - smoke..
That looks like quite a lot but in the end, breaking down a complex shot to manageable pieces is key to keep the process fun and smooth.
Once I'm clear about the phrases, I start making a checklist. Each phrase needs certain ingredients, so a typical phrase list would look like this:
(This is taken from another shot I worked on, so don't get confused by the naming of the phrases. It's just an example for the general approach)
I'm using Notebook for all my AM related business by the way, it's a great note taking app for the mac.
Every phrase needs it's own Anticipation, Action, Overshoot, Settle and depending on the shot a Hold. Sometimes and overshoot might blend into the anticipation of your next phrase, but it helps to keep your animation clean if you make separations as clear as possible
So once my planning is finished and I start blocking my scene, I simply have to follow this list and I can concentrate on creating great poses. It's hard enough to keep all the principles of animation in mind and the character under control when you're starting out in animation. With this workflow it might just get a little easier.
I should point out that I wouldn't have got to this point without the help of my former mentor Kenny Roy. He runs a website where he offers more information and lectures on workflow related stuff. Be sure to take a look around and get your workflow fix. Check it out HERE!
Gee, everytime I come back on my blogs site I feel kind of bad for being lazy with updating and posting...
But anyway, quick newsflash: I officially graduated! Went to beautiful San Francisco at the the end of January to receive my diploma and had an absolute blast over there meeting all my fellow AMers. And I fell in love with that city, what a beauty!
So my Animation Mentor journey has officially come to an end, but my journey as an animator is just beginning. As we speak I'm sending out tons of applications all over the world, got New Zealand, Canada, America and England on my list so far.
And here's another thing I'm really excited about: Recently I started picking up on Unity3d, a game engine that allows you to create your own video games. So after a bit of playing around with it I came up with the idea to create sort of an interactive music clip.
So this is a screenrecording of a test I've been working on for a while now. The idea is to move the passive music video format to an interactive experience and by enhancing the music's mood with a visual and interactive layer create a more immersive connection between music and audience.
Software used: Unity 3D, Cinema 4D and zBrush
Music: The XX, Fantasy. The music is only temporary for this test, final version will work with a different song.
