Hi everyone! I just wanted to give a big shout-out to all my friends (old and new!) up in Montreal. Carlos Baena and I were up there last week where we were honored to have been invited to speak at ADAPT conference. We had a blast!Carlos and I gave a presentation about eye animation and blinks, and someone had a good question about whether or not the character design might affect the way the eyes are animated. It seemed like something worth posting on the blog, so I thought I'd throw it on here in case anyone is interested.
I would say that generally, a particular character design probably wouldn't affect the way I would animate the overall eye movements, as far as eye darts (saccades, if you want to get fancy), timing of the eye looks, etc. However, the audience member did have a really good point that the character design can sometimes affect the eye animation in larger, more global ways.
For example, a character may have an injured eye, or the design may simply call for one eye to be larger than the other. In these cases, the design will definitely dictate the way you shape the overall eyes, and will also affect how you relate them to the brows.
That said, though, I think I'd say that the main thing always needs to be that the eyes should communicate clearly to the audience, and in order to do that, the audience needs to be able to relate to the eye animation you've created. They need to recognize themselves in your work, and recognize the way we all use our eyes to communicate. Our eyes are our most communicative visual feature, and overdone or overly unique eye animation will jump out to us and just feel strange, at least on a subconscious level.
Don't get me wrong, it's always great to add a little special something into your work - something that makes that character unique, but there is a fine line between stylized caricature and overanimated confusion.
So, I guess I'd say that it's important to take the design into consideration, but as always, your primary focus needs to remain attempting to create a performance that is not only believable and entertaining, but is clear and communicative.
Thanks to everyone in Montreal for coming out to see us! We had a blast meeting all of you, and look forward to hopefully hanging out with you guys again next time!
Shawn :)
5 comments:
Cool, cool.
Hey I have a question - nothing you have to dedicate a whole new post to or anything, but still a question:
For your younger readers, how important would you say it is to learn animation programs like Maya and animation principles (squash/stretch, anticipation, yadda yadda, ect.) in general BEFORE you get into college to study it as a major?
Sorry if that's an obscure question.
I guess my question could be simplified: Where should I be at animation-wise by the time I study it in college?
Thanks! And if Mr. Kelly can't answer, I'll accept the wisdom of other people as well!
Something that I heard that has stuck with me for a while now is that the eyes are the gateway to the characters soul, and thus should never be overlooked as a last minute thing. I think the eyes can put a great animation over the edge into amazing, if done well.
Hey copper, like many things, the best thing to do is start ASAP. People go into college to study engineering, only to switch careers and become extremely successful in animation years after college is all said and done. What can be learned is that if you really want to be successful, I mean REALLY, you can work/do wherever/whatever the hell you want. I mean that quite literally. I don't care who you are, if you want to work for PIXAR, it's within your grasp. It's really just a mental leap (and a load of hard work and study), and once over that, anything can be accomplished. Anyhow man, get to work :)
Hey! Thx for your awesome conference at ADAPT! I was there and it was amazing! I feel thats the only conference where I really learned something! I wanted to say hello Shawn after the conference, I was waiting on the left side of the stage (your left), but a lot of people wanted to talk with you and Carlos was waiting for you to go lunch so, I went to eat to hehe. But that was me, the girl with the striped shirt (and the girl who made the chameleon short ;) ). So hello! :)
And again, your conference was awesome! I really enjoyed it!
Hey Shawn! Great post as always.
I wanted to pose a question that I didn't get to ask in your Q&A the other night.
Richard Williams' "Animator's Survival Kit" talks a lot about the topic of "breaking the joints." I'm wondering if this is a technique that is exclusive to 2D animation or if it is used in 3D animation as well?
If so, can you elaborate on how it is used and maybe provide some specific examples?
Thanks so much for this great resource! =D
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"Jasson
Richard Williams' "Animator's Survival Kit" talks a lot about the topic of "breaking the joints." I'm wondering if this is a technique that is exclusive to 2D animation or if it is used in 3D animation as well?"
this is something i have also been wanting to know for a long time now and no one i have ask including all my lecturers at University can't answer it so if you can that would be great.
thanks Shaun for another fantastic post.
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