How Do You Go About Creating a Really Cool Action That Changes the Director’s Original Idea for the Shot?

Great question! That's a tricky one, because there is a really fine line between offering up what you think is a cool new idea, versus the director feeling like you aren't delivering what was asked.

The best tactic to take would be to pitch your idea to the Director (or maybe first to your Lead Animator or Animation Supervisor, depending on your hierarchy at work) to see if other people can get excited about the idea. Most studios do not want to think that you're animating Idea A only to find out you've spent all day working on your own Idea B -- that could land you in some hot water, so at least get permission to flesh out your ideas before spending any company time on them.

If your supervisors like the idea, or if you're working directly with a client but maybe don't have the opportunity to pitch your idea before the Director will be expecting to see the work at least blocked in, then my advice would be to do two versions. I know it's extra work, but if you keep them both rough, you can often find time to put together a version that the client asked for as well as your own proposal of how you envision the scene.

What you DON'T want to do is ignore the Director's request completely and instead only work on your own version. There's a chance they might love it, and you'll be hailed as a hero, but there is an equally great chance that they might be angry. I've seen this myself, and Directors are never happy when they start to feel like the crew is making their own version of the movie behind his or her back.

So, I guess my advice is to put together the coolest proposal you have time to do, but to have the "real" version of the scene in your back pocket in case the Director isn't on board with your idea. A little insurance never hurt, and even if they don't like your proposal, they'll probably really appreciate the extra effort, and may even start to see you and your studio as more of a creative partner they can look to for other ideas!

Good luck!

Shawn :)

Do you Have a Set Way on How You Go about Lip Synching? Is There Any Method You Have Found the Most Effective?

Lip synch is one of my favourite parts of animation, along with hand animation. I find that those two elements really 'plus' the expression and finesse great animation. There are some shows that the lip synch is my favourite part…like Southpark!

Anyway, there are several things I can share about how I go about lip synching that might be helpful to other animators out there. One is, I have a trick that I use to help me work out how much the jaw is moving. That's the first thing I tackle when I'm starting to block out the dialogue, and I find that the hardest thing to do is to NOT make the jaw move *too much*. The jaw actually moves a LOT less than one might think - which can be particularly deceiving when you're dealing with fast-talkin' dialogue.

What I do is I hold the back of my hand up underneath the bottom of my chin, and repeat the dialogue that I'm blocking out. The trick is to repeat it out loud, with the exact same inflections, volume levels, and even the same accents as the voice actor. Yes, people might look at you funny, but we must suffer for our art! :)

So as I'm repeating the dialogue (the more I repeat it, the less I have to think about what word or inflection is coming up, so I can concentrate on the movement), I start to pay attention to how often, when, and how much my jaw opens up. It is this movement that I use for reference for blocking the jaw action initially, and I find it creates a great base for the lip synch animation. It's much the same as blocking in the hip action for body animation... it's that base that can make or break the rest of the action that is layered on top of it.

Something else that I find is true for me is that once I've got all of the jaw, lip and tongue movement working (mostly polished), I always grab ALL of the keys and shift them down the timeline by two frames. I find that when I get the lip synch working with the maya file, and I can hear and see exactly when the sounds are formed on the timeline when you scrub through it, it *always* appears to be a touch early when I playblast and watch it back at full speed. What crazy phenomenon causes this? Could it be that the speed of sound is slower than the speed of light, and so I'm hearing the sound ever-so-slightly after I'm seeing the lip shapes formed?

Well, whatever the reason, when I shift the keys two frames later, it appears correct. I've found that most people have a pattern like this in their lip synch animation, but not everyone's is the same. For example, one animator might only have to shift it one frame, or even one or two frames *earlier* instead of later. But if you find you're having trouble with getting your lip synch to synch... then this might be the answer for you!

Guest Blogger Dana Boadway

Can You Provide Some Tips for Good Pantomime?

Hi there! Thanks for the great question!

Pantomime for animators is, essentially, the art of telling a story with the body, generally without relying on any dialogue. It's all about communicating as effectively as possible using the body language, timing, and face.
So, I'd say some of the most important things to keep in mind when diving into a pantomime shot may be:

1) CLARITY. This is SO number one that they should invent a number that comes before 1! This is your top priority, and every decision you make should be one that makes your actions and emotions ever more clear. That's not to say that every acting decision needs to be obvious or cliche, of course, but even within the complex subtlety of your performance, clarity should always be your primary concern, because if the audience misses an important action or misreads your character's emotion, then the performance is a failure and nothing else really matters!

2) Strong and dynamic poses. Particularly for action scenes, this couldn't be more important. You want the actions to not only be clear and read quickly to the audience, but you want them to be fun to watch! Dynamic poses point the way towards more dynamic and exciting actions, and the more exciting the action, the more fun it probably will be to watch it. This extent to which you can exaggerate this concept will obviously be determined by the overall style of the project (realistic vs. cartoony), but the definition of "what is dynamic" within that project is *also* determined by the style. In a more cartoony piece, you'll have to REALLY push the poses in order for a particular action to feel dynamic, whereas animated characters in a "realistic" film will feel dynamic for "half the price."

Either way, the point is to consider the most exciting, fun, and entertaining way to approach your pantomime shot, and particularly when dealing with strong actions (fighting, sports, etc), dynamic poses can often be your best friend.

3) Relatable acting choice! This is a part of clarity, but it bears emphasizing that you should make acting choices that will be recognized by the audience. While many gestures are culturally specific, many (if not most) are universal, so choose your gestures very carefully. The same thing applies to your facial expression work -- most facial expressions tend to be universal, so be sure not to get so caught up in "not doing anything cliche" that you end up choosing bizarre facial expressions that don't properly convey the emotions of the character.

4) Eyes. The eyes can help SO much in a pantomime shot, and without any dialogue, you should pay them extra special attention. The audience will look at the eyes FIRST for cues, so take that opportunity to grab the audience's attention and lead them through your shot. Let the eyes help convey the emotions. Let the eyes help your audience know where to look in the scene. The eyes can help you sell the joke, tell the story, or help us not miss an important action. Eyes are key! Film yourself *really* acting the scene out, and study what your own eyes do before caricaturing them in your scene.

5) Body Mechanics. In a shot with dialogue, the audio can really help you in so many ways. You have audio cues to tell you when and how to move the character. The words and subtext dictate the gestures. The spoken words can help you tell the story. In many ways, you can rely less on the body animation, and the audience may not notice some wonky mechanics here and there. If the character tells a funny joke, they may not notice or care that the weight is a bit off, for example.

But in a pantomime shot, every single pair of eyes is going to see that weight shift in the wrong spot, and while they may not know how to fix it, or even what feels "weird" or "fake" about the scene, they will feel the mistakes in their gut. In light of that, spend some extra time studying and planning the body mechanics of any pantomime shot so that you really nail the weight shifts, timing, lead and follow through the body, anticipations, etc. That stuff is KEY to selling a good pantomime shot.

6) Subtext. My last piece of advice would be to actually imagine that there are lines in the scene. Imagine the subtext. What is your character thinking? What is he feeling? You can even write some lines of dialogue and record yourself performing them, if you like. This may be very helpful if you feel like the "blank slate" of an audio-less shot is intimidating and holding you back from coming up with strong ideas. If you make up some lines that the character is THINKING as they are doing their performance, it can be a huge help in coming up with timing, facial expressions, gestures, etc.

Hope that helps someone! Thanks for swinging by the blog!

Shawn :)

How Do You Get a Proper Delay in Overlapping Action?

The amount of delay in an overlapping action has to directly correspond with the weight, speed, and emotion of the main move that it's working with. If the main body move is fast and snappy, then I will give other parts of the body that are overlapping less frames of delay before they execute. If the move is slow and heavy, there will be more of a delay. The amount of frames to delay is always directly relative to the size and speed of the move it is following. This definitely is a skill that comes with observation and lots of practice. You have to learn how to 'feel' the weight of the things you're animating.

Guest blogger Dana Boadway

What Does It Mean to Avoid Tangents in Animation?

This is a good question, since tangents have several meanings in the world of animation, and particularly in computer animation. Tangents typically refer to an aspect of a key frame, in that they define how the computer should ‘in-between’ the frames that are not specifically defined by keys (known as “key frames”). Since computer animators do not draw each frame, tangents help keep animation control of the frames in between these special key frames. If something needs to ‘ease in’ to a key (imaging the height of a bouncing ball at the top of it’s arc), then the tangent may be flat. If the motion does an abrupt ‘about face’ (such as the height of the same ball when it strikes the ground and is sent back upward), then the tangent might be much sharper.

Tangents in this sense are absolutely critical... so I’m guessing that the question at hand doesn’t actually pertain to this sort of tangent.

What I think the question is referring to is something having to do with the arcs of motion. Arcs are a very important principle of animation, since many natural or organic movements are defined in terms of an arc. Very rarely do we move from point A to point B in a direct, straight line – it’s just not natural. Robots may move this way, but humans, or dogs, or blades of grass actually are much more likely to move in a fluid, arcing sort of way.

The term “tangents” in this area may be referring to an invisible line that something moving sort of ‘bumps’ into. Sometimes called “walls,” these imaginary boundaries can be seen in animation that may need with it’s arcs. I recall a shot I was working on in which a character swung his hands up over his head. Other animators pointed out that half way up the arc, the hand seemed to ‘bounce’ off a wall that wasn’t there. It turned out that my arc was actually move like a sideways “V” and once I noticed it, it was quite obvious, and quite distracting. Fixing it wasn’t exactly simple (sometimes the successive breaking of joints means that tracking down the source of the problem is tricky) but in the end I was able to clean up the arc, which improved the shot immensely.

Cleaning up arcs is a very important step of the final polish pass when animating, and it’s one of the things that can distinguish really really excellent animation from animation that is just ‘really good.’

Happy Animating!
Animation Mentor Staff

Could You Provide Some Tips on Staging and Composition?

I learned some great tips from my former teacher Shawn Jeffery at Sheridan College. We would analyze the layout of masterpieces like Mulan, and talk about staging and composition. He told us the importance of staging a scene as not to distract the viewer from the story being told. Layout artists do this by combining foreground, mid-ground and background objects and letting perspective and depth cues lead the eye towards the focal point in the shot. He taught us about screen axis, the invisible line that keeps characters on opposing sides of one another during a scene to avoid confusion. And when to break the axis line, like in a fight scene or dramatic moment when you want the audience off balance. These tools are important for all storytellers but often animators don't think about.

But animators DO need to understand how to compose and stage shots because the characters themselves should be positioned properly. Obviously when you are working in a studio and get a shot from layout much of this has been worked out, but it still can be improved on (sometimes greatly) with some simple rules.

The things I think about when staging a shot:

1. Always mind the format of the project you are working on, letterbox, 4:3, etc. Try to work with the action and title cut off marks on screen so not much important stuff happens outside of these regions.

2. Avoid staging characters straight front or sideways, have your character angled in more in 3/4 for more depth and appeal.

3. Avoid cutting off character with the camera plane at joints; the ankles, the knees, the neck or the elbows. This avoids a disembodied feel. Always cut off the body in mid shin, leg, upper arm or neck if possible.

4. If there are two characters in a shot, when you position one higher then another they will be more dominant, and vice versa. Even slight shifts really make a difference.

5. Always try to follow 'The rule of thirds' Place the focal point of the character, or the character himself in a wide shot, in one of the magic 'thirds' of the screen. To find these spots, divide the camera plane with two lines horizontal and two vertical, thus separating the plane into three equal parts:

The four points -- upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right -- are the best locations to place the element of interest. Having a character dead center or far left or right is difficult for the eye to track. If you place your character (or its face for example) in one of these locations it will enable you to view it naturally. Studies have shown that when viewing images that people's eyes usually go to one of the intersection points most naturally rather than the center of the frame.

More info on the rule of thirds:

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/rule-of-thirds/

http://photoinf.com/Golden_Mean/John_Longenecker/Rule_of_Thirds.htm

http://understandingfilm.wetpaint.com/page/2.+Compostion+and+Designt=anon

http://pblmm.k12.ca.us/TechHelp/VideoHelp/aGoodStuffToKnow/ShotComposition.html

There are many good books on subject of composition, from photography to film to animation. And you can watch great movies. Most have really good composition you can steal or use as reference for your shot. There are examples for almost every situation out there.

Lastly, this isn't really a composition tip, but when animating try not to have much of movement too far away from the shots focus point. For example, if a character is standing and talking in a mid shot, and his face is in the upper right third or the screen, you don't want his hand down by his side making lots of movement taking the viewers attention far from the face, where all the important stuff is going on. Hope that helps a bit!


Guest blogger jmart (Jason Martinsen)

Animation as an Art Form

Hello Animators,

Animation Mentor has written an article called “Animation as an Art Form,” for 3D Creative Magazine. The article looks at where animation is heading and concepts in animation art.

The article was based on our special report: Behind the Animators. We talked to a panel of experts to get their take on the animation trends including Jill Smolin, Computer Animation Festival Director at SIGGRAPH 2008; Frank Gladstone, a 35-year animation veteran, consultant and educator; and Kathy Smith, USC professor and chair of the Animation and Digital Arts school. The article features several images from our 2008 Summer Student Showcase!

Some trends include:
• A theme that animators have found a way to use animation to tell a powerful story in a way that live action cannot.
• Animation as a tool that can help us make sense of our place in the world.
• There is a resurgence of old technologies such as stop frame and 2D animation

If you want to check out the full article, click here!

Happy Animating!
Animation Mentor Staff

How Can You Prevent Action From Overpowering Important Dialogue?

This is something I see happening often in student work. I see a lot of over animating on the head and arms. As an animator, we all have a tendency to want to make everything move all the time. To try and accent every little line with an eyebrow move or a head nod or tilt, or add as much hand gestures and shoulder shrugs and weight shifts as possible. This ends up making everything too busy, and makes it impossible to read the most important poses or expressions because they are gone in a few frames. The shot will feel very confused.

I tell my students to find the two or three storytelling poses in the shot. The poses that you could use if you had to boil down the entire animation to just a few moments, and hold them, and still feel the emotion of the character. And build off those poses with much smaller movements and subtle expression changes that don't change the main points too much. Calm down, only make the moves when it really needs it. Less is usually more with important dialogue. The main thing is to find a great expression and pose. Basically the key is to try not to do too much at once. There are some great shots of Hopper in A Bugs Life of him threatening his bumbling brother as an example of moving within a pose.

That's not to say your character can't be walking and talking while delivering an important line. However, if he is walking, stopping, turning, making large gestures and the camera is moving during a key moment you will run into trouble in pixel land. You need to simplify when something is getting in the way of reading character's face and emotions. Find the main key pose in the shot that sells what the character is trying to say and make that read. Make sure there are not too many other things going on. If action is required for the shot then try to allow the action to happen before or after the most important phrase of the line. If you are forced to have a lot of action during the exact moment of the important dialogue, try to find ways to calm the action down to its simplest form, and lessen the contrasts of it so the main pose or expression can be read more clearly.

It's hard to know what will work in on a shot general, since there are so many variations of what kind of action is making it hard to read. But there are several tricks you can use if there needs to be action going on. You can use counter animation to stabilize the head and torso, and even the arms, if a character is running. Having the legs flying around like crazy isn't a problem if the head is fairly calm. Hang time is a good secret weapon for getting the main poses to read if a characters is jumping around a lot during dialogue. Right when a big accent is coming up, have the character jump up quickly to accent it, use hang time during your main acting pose and you should be able to read what the mouth and face is doing before he zips back down to the ground again. Think big action right before the accent, moving hold on the accent, then big action again.

Good luck!

Guest blogger jmart (Jason Martinsen)

Do Animator Enthusiasts Need to Attend Animation School?

This is a very good question, but it is a question that can only be answered by the person asking it. Students are students for a myriad of reasons, and each reason is as unique as they are themselves. Animation students are often in school to get a job, which is the reason that Animation Mentor exists, to get people their dream job. But students are also in school because they have always been fascinated by animation, or just really love doing it, or perhaps this ‘magical mystery’ has always intrigued them.

So the answer to this not defined, but what is certain is the fact that there is no reason you should NOT attend animation school, if you have the means to do so. Animation school is not only a place to animate, but also a place to really study the world around you. Animators are interested in many little things all around them that other people may not see. Perhaps it is the circling of a fly as it struggles against a draft, or perhaps it’s the rapid fire glances of a twelve week old puppy as she discovers the world around her. Animation school will get you to actively observe these things, and to study them, for you never know when you may need to refer back to this experience when it comes time to animate 101 young Dalmatian puppies, each discovering the world.

Our advice to you would be to try it out, and see what you think. Once you have attended a few classes, then ask yourself that question again. Do I, as an animation enthusiast, need to attend animation school? We're confident that you will be able to answer your own question.

Animation Mentor Staff