What’s the Importance of Clean Blocking? Can You Provide Some Tips on Clean Blocking?

The importance of clean blocking comes back to why we block in the first place. To present a clear direction or intent, to the supervisors and directors. If you have done your job in your blocking, anyone who views your shot should be able to tell exactly what is happening. Should anyone ask “yeah so...what's he doing riiiiiight...THERE!” Well, then you probably weren't clear enough, pack up your desk and get out.....

No, no it happens. You thumbnailed, you shot reference, your blocking is clear to you, but we must be sure it reads to everyone else as well. That's why its important to show your blocking to fellow animators while your working; don't work in a vacuum...not that you could fit in a vacuum, unless it was one of those giant industrial kinds.

A question I will get a lot from my students is: How far do we go with the blocking...how much is too much? Again it's important that the blocking reads clearly. Sometimes two poses can tell the whole story. Other times you may need several breakdowns to make a particular pose change clear. Basically, you want to put in as much as you need to get the idea across, while at the same time, keeping it simple.

Often times student's dirty up their blocking by including too many ideas. So a scene that may only have two ideas...two beats, will be blocked with four or five ideas. It's important to make sure that the key poses are working with the key beats or phrases of the shot. Don't get all crazy with trying to cram in too many ideas. Some questions to ask when planning your scene: what is the purpose of the shot? ...what do I need to say to the audience?

When I block out a scene I will work in stepped keys, this way when I view my animation I am flipping through the poses. I key everything on the character for each one of my key poses, which keeps everything neat in my timeline. This way, if I receive notes from the supervisor or director, I can implement the changes quickly and easily.
Keep it clear and keep it simple.

Guest blogger Ray Chase

How Do You Find Reference for an Unusual Four-Legged Creature?

I got a great question from Sergio, who wrote in to ask: "How do you find your reference for an unusual four-legged character and how do you do your planning for the movements?"

Hi Sergio! First off, thanks for the great question!

I know that's a tough thing that a lot of newer animators struggle with. You have to animate a dragon or a dinosaur or a centaur, but for some reason, there just aren't any centaurs to be found at the zoo.

Well, this is one of those times that you're going to have to put your animation imagination into overdrive, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't study any reference!

What you want to do is look for animals that have a similar physical makeup to the creature you will be animating. Sometimes this means studying multiple creatures.

An example that comes to mind was Eragon. When we were animating Saphira the dragon, we noticed that her body was very similar in proportion and design to that of a lion, and her wings were designed very similar to eagle wings.

We got right to work amassing a lot of great footage of lions and eagles and started studying the heck out of them, looking for concepts we should be using in our work, and studying how their body mechanics worked. When Saphira was on the ground, we tried to take inspiration from the movement of the lions, and in the air we animated her wings in an eagle-like pattern and fashion.

So just take a long look at your character, and see what it reminds you of, and start investigating the animals out there that might be similar. You can find great reference on Animal Motion Show (Rhinohouse Dvds), youtube, documentaries, movies, BBC motion gallery, etc.

The important thing is to base the movement (and acting) of your creature on REAL LIFE ANIMALS so it will have believable body mechanics that an audience can relate to and accept easily.

Hope that helps! Good luck!

Shawn :)

How Have You Learned to Match the Style of a Film?

Concerning style, how have you learned to match the style of a film? In other words, how have you approached animating so that the film appears as if it was animated by one person?

Consistency is a big issue at Pixar, because we don't have Character Leads, in the traditional Disney sense. Pixar animators are assigned scenes, not characters, so any animator may animate any character at a given time in the film. This is one of the reasons that dailies are so important. We can all sit down in a room with the Director and Supervisors and see what's being done with the characters. The Director can decide what works and what doesn't, and further define how the character behaves. This helps us to all get on the same page and understand who the character is. Usually one or two animators will demonstrate a knack for a certain character, and their work will become a touchstone for the other animators to reference. These animators will occasionally give lectures to discuss what we've learned and give tips on how to approach a particular character.

We'll also develop model sheets (collections of images of the character in poses that are considered in-character on and on-model) as well as libraries of facial expressions that other animators can use as a starting point. Ultimately it's up to all the animators, Supervisors and the Director to police each other and work towards a consistent portrayal of the character.

Guest Blogger Victor Navone

Could You Please Explain the Animation Term Pendulum?

Hi Drhuv! Thanks for stopping by!

A pendulum isn't really a "term," it's an object. A pendulum is basically a weighted object hanging from some kind of base. If the base is moved, that weighted object is going to swing side to side. Many clocks are pendulum clocks (such as "grandfather clocks") which you'd recognize by the swinging pendulum beneath the clock face.

We use pendulums in our animation exercises because the idea of a pendulum clearly illustrates the concept of "successive breaking of joints" and overlapping animation.

Let's simplify the idea of a pendulum and imagine a base and a weighted object hanging from the base, with two joints connecting the weighted object to the base. Well, let's say someone kicks the base. What's the going to happen to the weighted object? Well, nothing at all, at first! First the base must move, which will move the first joint hanging down. Then the next joint will get moved. THEN the weighted object will get moved. The energy needs to travel down that chain of events to finally reach its destination at the heavy object, right?

This idea is something that we use throughout the body when animating. The spine is, in a way, in inverted pendulum rising up from a "base" (the hips). The arms can be thought of as pendulums hanging from the shoulder in certain circumstances. The tail of a critter is kind of a pendulum hanging from their backsides. The way a tree sways in the wind might be like an inverted pendulum connected to the ground.

The pendulum movement teaches us about a wave action that happens in any multi-jointed or organic object, and that's why you probably see it mentioned around animation sites.

Hope that answers your question! Thanks for writing in, Drhuv!

Shawn :)

Behind the Scenes Webinar at Animation Mentor

Dear Readers,

If you're interested in learning more about Animation Mentor, come learn what sets us apart from the rest! Hear CEO Bobby Beck talk to our Brazilian alum Ana Cunha and East Coast grad Kevin Worth about how this awesome online learning experience really works. You'll get a taste of what it’s like at Animation Mentor, and a chance to meet our staff and get some great tips on how to choose your animation school at this live webinar.


Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009
6-7 p.m. (PST)

Click here for more info on the webinar.

What Is Your Favorite Part of the Animation Process?

That's a hard one to answer. It may be easier if I start with my LEAST favorite part(s) of the process.

I really don't enjoy research and planning. This is a shame because generally I find that I do better work when I have researched and planned exhaustively. I find the process tedious, though, and I'd
much rather jump in and start animating! I liken it to broccoli: I
don't really enjoy the taste, but I know it's good for me and I'll be
glad I ate it when the meal is over. I'm sure you know the feeling.

Once my planning is done, I really enjoy blocking. Depending on what kind of scene and characters I'm working with, I block in different ways. If I'm doing an acting shot with humanoid characters, I'll probably block pose-to-pose with stepped keys. I like designing the poses and finding the best silhouette, as well as flipping between the poses to see how they flow together. I'm not worried about timing yet, just the sequence of ideas. I'm trying to hit the poses in my video reference or sketches with the 3D model, and adjusting as necessary to match the style of the film and the physiology of the character. If I'm going off video reference, then I'm probably pushing the poses further and simplifying them. If I'm going off of sketches, then I'm probably trying to push the 3D model to match the dynamic of the loose sketch. If I'm blocking in a layered fashion, such as with cars, fish, or robots, then I'm dropping keys on my root rotates and translates and pushing them around in the spline editor to find the timing and rhythm of the shot. Ideally I'm getting real-time playback from my models, and I enjoy fine-tuning the timing and arc patterns to suggest the attitudes and actions.

The other part of the animation process I don't really like is the transition from blocking with stepped poses into splines. Suddenly all my snappy timing looks like crap, and it almost feels like I'm starting over again. It takes so long to get the animation tied down to where the timing is right again. Luckily this doesn't last too long, and I have a pretty routine series of adjustments I can perform on the splines to get the shot in better shape. Mostly it involves adding more ease-in's to my holds, pushing my keys around to tighten or loosen timing, and adding in a few more breakdowns as needed. I don't start offsetting keys in time until later in my process, and I keep all my controls keyed on every pose.

After I've done my first pass on the splines, that's where the fun begins for me. I can put on some music and start massaging all my actions. I focus sweetening the timing by adding contrast, simplifying actions that are too complicated, adding little details that weren't in the blocking, and sculpting my arcs and spacing. This can be a very technical and procedural process, but I find it puts me in kind of a zen state, and the time just flies by.

Once I get to the final polish stage, I start to enjoy the process less again. Maybe it's because I'm getting tired of the shot and can't see it objectively anymore. Maybe it's because I'm ready to move on. Or maybe I just don't feel like overlapping any more pinkies! It's not such a problem on short shots, but lately on Toy Story 3 I've been getting whoppers – full-body human acting shots of 300 frames or more. These can really test my stamina, but I've enjoyed the challenge and can't wait to see them lit and rendered!

Guest Blogger Victor Navone

Blinks in Animation

I've been getting some questions about blinks, so I thought I'd reprint this ancient article, first carved into a cave wall way back in November of 2004 in one of our first newsletters, in case some of you hadn't had a chance to see it! Hope it's helpful!
=================

I feel like writing about blinks today. Why? I just saw a commercial on TV (name of product withheld to protect the innocent) starring a character who had a severe blinking problem.

Now, I don't mean the character blinked too much. I don't mean he blinked too fast. I don't mean the character's blinks were too far offset, too slow, or too few.

No, this character was plagued by a disease that has been running rampant through animation (particularly student work, though not AnimationMentor students, of course. Everything they do is perfect and wonderful in every conceivable way... Well, okay, that's not exactly true, but I haven't actually seen it as a problem in the school. Probably because we harp on stuff like this ad nauseum).

Where was I?

Oh yeah, the disease...

Let's call it "Randomblinkitis."

Many animated characters currently living out their lives on demo reels around the world suffer from this terrible disease, causing their blinks to feel random and meaningless. While some characters use their blinks to convey thought process and emotion, these poor Randomblinkitis victims are forced to slog through their daily existence unable to properly communicate their emotions and thoughts to each other, let alone to recruiters around the globe.

It's a tough life for them, folks, so let's do something about it!

See, the medicine for this heartbreaking disease is observation. It's easy to do, and it'll mean so much to your animated characters (and to the recruiters forced to have to try to communicate with your characters!) if you can just take a little time to observe the blinks of your friends, your family, your co-workers, your favorite movie star, and yourself before you start plowing ahead into acting scenes.

Listen, I know about the whole "I just discovered animation a month ago and must do an acting scene IMMEDIATELY!" thing. I know you all want to do acting scenes. I know you think they're the most fun. I know you think they're your ticket into Pixar. And I also know that for some of you, all the "honestly, spending six months practicing basic body mechanics and force will give you far stronger acting scenes than you'll ever be able to do without that foundation" advice in the world isn't going to keep you away from playing with some acting shots...

So, if you absolutely must do some acting shots (or, better yet, are advanced enough to do acting shots properly), then please, give some attention to the eyes of your character.

We've probably all heard people say "90% of acting is in the eyes" or something to that effect. Shoot, some of us have said that ourselves. And I actually think that's true, and is great advice (aside from the fact that if you don't sell the acting with the body first, all the facial stuff in the world isn't going to save your scene), but when you hear that "90% of the acting is in the eyes," I know most people immediately jump to "eye darts" and "eye direction," etc., completely skipping over one of the most essential acting tools you have - the blink.

When I was in school, I was told that "animated characters should always blink every two seconds."

Well, that's just about the worst advice I ever got, other than some advice I recently was given during a trip to Singapore, which was "giant fish eyeballs taste really GREAT," but animation-wise, I think the "blink every two seconds" is probably the worst. Actually, both of those pieces of advice are equally true (or rather, equally completely-and-utterly-untrue!).

Look around. Do you see anyone who is blinking every 2 seconds?! (If you do, please report them to your government, because chances are they are some kind of android spy from Mars or something.) People don't blink on any kind of set time schedule anymore than giant fish eyeballs taste "great" (and for all of you out there who maybe think fish eyeballs DO taste great, probably because you have some kind of steel-reinforced taste buds like the Singaporeans I was with at that restaurant -- which I do admire and am completely jealous of, by the way-- then that's fine to like your giant eyeballs, but just trust me on the blink thing anyway, okay?)

People blink for a reason.

- Blinks are so much more than any kind of physical dry-eye response.
- Blinks are the key to selling many emotions. Fire up some of your favorite films and study the eyes of good actors.
- When do they blink?
- Why?
- What does it feel like?
- How does it make you feel?

Right off the bat, the number of blinks can affect emotion in dramatic ways. Rapid blinks can make a character feel shy, nervous, uncomfortable, relieved, or like they are about to cry. Not blinking at all can feel angry, stoned, dead, or super intense.

Check out Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump when he's meeting his son for the first time. As soon as he realizes it's his son, he stops blinking completely. He's transfixed. Tom Hanks holds back his blinks to communicate the idea that his character is THAT intense about what he's realizing. Then a blink, and boom - he's on to his next emotion, which is guilt. He feels guilty. Shouldn't he have been there to raise his son? Did he do something wrong? The blinks are coming fast and furious now, to indicate his discomfort, his worry. Then a thought occurs to him: "is he slow, like me?" He doesn't say it right away, but you can feel the exact moment that crosses his mind, because suddenly his blinks stop again, and he's back to that intensity, and finally he works up the courage to ask Jenny his big question: "is he smart, or is he...?" Huge eyes, locked on, almost afraid to hear the answer. "He's the smartest in his class." And the blinks are fired back up again, which communicates his relief.

That whole scene is amazing for eye stuff. He even asks "can I go see him?" using only his eyes! Sure, his head moves barely as well, but it's 90% just his eyes, and you totally know exactly what he's saying. He delivers a line without ever opening his mouth. And it feels so real. To me, that's a great scene, and something we should all aspire to in our work.

So your first set of big blink questions is this: "what's my character's emotional state right now? What are they reacting to? How is that making them feel?" And your second set of questions, just as important (if not more so) is this: "well, how do I blink when I feel that way? How do my friends blink when they're in that situation? How did my favorite actor blink in that amazing scene I saw the other day?"

Figure out the emotional state of your character, go observe that emotional state in as true a form as you possible can, and then study the heck out of those eyelids. Better yet, act the scene out over and over and over until you aren't thinking at all about what the actual dialogue lines are anymore, and all you're thinking about is the emotion you are truly making yourself feel, and the context/subtext of the scene, and videotape it, and study it!

OK, so blink frequency (how many) have piles of meaning all on their own, but what about the spacing of when those blinks happen? That's probably kind of random, right?

No way!

A good general rule of thumb is to never animate anything without a reason. Never move ANYTHING on a character unless you know exactly why you're moving it. So if anyone ever tells you to animate something randomly, unless it's the tiniest subtle "add a little 'dirt' to this movement so it feels a little less smooth" type of thing, then you should probably say, "No way!" Unless he's your animation director. Then you probably shouldn't say, "No way." That might be a really bad idea. You should instead say "Right away, no problem!" while you silently think "man, I wish my animation director would take some Animation Mentor classes..."

Where was I? Oh yeah - nothing is random. Well, neither are blinks.

The most important use of a blink is to show thought process. We do blink sometimes just to wet our eyes, and we blink on a rapid head turn, we blink on a major change in eye direction, and all those other "blink rules," but in my opinion the most important time is when we have a change in our thought process. When we're having an idea, or when we're switching from one emotion to another, or when we're realizing something. Those are the gold-mines in terms of blinks - that's when a perfectly placed blink will take a scene from being merely "good" and make it "great."

There's a great book called "In the Blink of An Eye," by Walter Murch, who is an amazing film editor, and a part of that book is about his theory that we blink to edit the film of our lives. We blink throughout the day to cut from one scene to the next to the next to the next. And he uses that theory in his film editing. He looks for when the main character blinks, and often uses that as his cutting point, figuring that it's probably the most natural-feeling place to cut for the audience.

As animators, we can hijack his theory and apply it to our own work and our acting. We can study the same phenomenon that he noticed, and we will all find the same exact result - people blink when their brain shifts from one thing to another, whether it's an emotion or a thought.

Wow. That ended up about 5 times longer than I thought it would.
Sorry, I get all excited about this stuff and can talk about it forever! I'll try to be shorter in the future...
(I keep saying that, don't I?)

Let's see, to recap:

1. Blinks Have Meaning!
2. Skipping a strong foundation in the basics in order to get to acting scenes quicker shoots yourself in the foot.
3. Never animate anything without a reason.
4. Don't say "No way!" to an Animation Director.
5. We blink to cut the "film of our life."

That's five tips for the price of one. I better start being stingier or this'll be a short-lived column!

Hope you found it helpful. See you next time!

Shawn :)

What Is the Best Way to Approach Editing Splines When Animating?

What is the best way to approach editing splines when animating? Should we block-in and get overall motion for the whole body done THEN fix the splines, or should we add motion piece by piece and fix splines along the way?

There are as many different ways to block and animate as there are animators. There's no one right answer to this question; what's important is that you find a workflow that works for you. Something that is consistent, methodical, organized and clean. Once you have a predictable workflow that becomes second nature, animation is so much more enjoyable, because you can focus more on the performance and less on the technical issues of managing your shot.

I myself have different workflows, and my way of working is always evolving. I will block differently depending on the characters and action in my scene. For example, I'm currently working on some naturalistic human acting animation for Toy Story 3. I find that blocking pose to pose with stepped keys, and doing lots of breakdowns (down to 4’s and 2’s) helps me to sort out the complex body mechanics early, while finding some appealing poses. Once I'm done blocking, I will convert all my keys to flat-tangent splines, and begin smoothing the root controls manually. I do constant playblasts and revisions until I get the timing and patterns right for the root, then I move outward through the rest of the body. For WALL-E and Cars, which are simpler, more stylized characters, I would work in a more layered fashion, starting with just a few root controls and shaping the splines right away to get my timing and texture early on. Then I would layer on other parts of the body as needed, until I have a full performance. Sometimes I'll work in a hybrid method, where some parts of the model are splined, and others are stepped-key poses. And sometimes I'll work pose-to-pose with copied pairs!

No matter how I'm working, I'm always keeping an eye on my splines, even if they're in stepped mode. Splines help me to visualize my eases and overshoots, and to make sure that my rotational values are not going crazy in between keys. I've gotten accustomed to analyzing, diagnosing, and even creating animation right in the spline editor, as you know about me if you've ever seen one of my lectures! But not every animator relies on the spline editor like I do, and that's OK. The important thing is that you do visit all your splines at SOME point during your workflow (especially near the end) to make sure the polish is there. I find that the sooner I visit my splines, the easier my polish phase is and the faster my animation comes together.

It really helps with arcs and spacing, too. Your mileage may vary.

Guest Blogger Victor Navone

Could You Explain the Animation Terms Cushion and Settle?

Saral wrote in to ask: Could you please explain the animation terms cushion and settle?

Hi Saral!

These terms are used almost interchangeably, and mostly they just refer to how a character's movement is going to come to a stop.

Cushion is pretty much the same as "ease in" or "slow-in," animation terms used to describe the way a character will "ease" into a pose or "slow" into a pose. You could also say that a character should "cushion" into a pose - it's pretty much the same thing, as far as I know.

The point of those terms, by the way, is to help sell the organic nature of the character or object. Very few things in nature come to an instant stop on a dime, mostly things more in organic arcs and need time to "cushion" into the final position of their movement. For example, if you were walking quickly and came to a stop, no matter how hard you try to stop instantly, you simply cannot do it. Your body is going to have to recover from the movement and part of that is going to be easing into that final stopped pose (and probably going THROUGH that final pose into an overshoot, and then arcing and overlapping back into the final pose).

"Settle," to me, is very similar. I hear people use that term to describe all of those little overshoots and arcs that eventually run out of steam and lead to the character being still. Picture again someone coming to a stop. Well, their hips are going to keep going until their weight and angle of their body slows them down. The hips will probably sail right through that "stopped" pose and go a little too far before your body says "hey hips! Come back here!" The hips are then going to arc back and go into a bit of tiny spiral that will eventually get them into a stopped position.

Force and general body mechanics tell us exactly what will happen next, which will be a subtle wave action through the spine, causing overlap on the arms, successive breaking of joints going all the way down to the wrists, probably a bit of overlap on the head, etc. - all moving in related arcs in multiple axis, though offset from one another, and so forth.

To me, all of that "stuff" that is happening - all of that is the "settling" of the character.

Other folks might use these terms differently, but those are the ways I've heard them used around the studio. Hope that helps!

Thanks for writing in!

Shawn :)