Describe your workflow when you start animating a shot. Is there a right or wrong way?

First, let me start by saying that no one should ever criticize your workflow if it works for you and if you are successful in getting your shots animated and approved. Everyone's workflow varies in certain ways. Do you block in spline or stepped? Do you offset your keys to get overlap or use breakdowns to achieve the same result? Do you animate straight ahead or key pose from start to finish? Do you rely heavily on reference or ignore it entirely? Are you a sketcher or an actor? Do you pick the brains of your colleagues before moving forward on certain ideas or do you like to stay in your bubble?

Whatever your technique may be, there is only one fundamental principle that really matters above everything else. Do you give your bosses what they need to move the shot forward on time and in a creative fashion? This entails many things, of course. You can't hit your deadlines if you can't adapt to the notes. This is probably the biggest obstacle that affects the success of animators. One, are you able to comprehend the notes being given to you, and two, are you able to execute those notes in a creative and timely manner? Animation is an iterative process, so being able to turnover notes quickly and efficiently is critical to receiving more challenging shots from your superiors in the future.

An animator can never be too organized. Strong planning and a firm understanding of how to build your animation the right way is an important skill that enables you to adapt easily and efficiently to the needs of the production process. For me, it took many years to become comfortable with my workflow. How you plan your animation before you start is critical for many reasons. Most importantly, you need to make sure you are on the same page creatively as everyone else involved so that you can share the vision of the shot with your animation supervisor. This will also allow you to have a dialogue with them about what is expected of the character's performance. You should know the edit and be familiar with the script and whatever major narrative points are in the sequence you are working on. Having a “ground floor” mentality is essential so that you can surround yourself with the fundamental points of the shot before you sit down at the computer. Once you are comfortable with what is expected of you, most animators will then do some form of actual planning.

For some, thumbnails or sketching are good starting points. Other animators like to immerse themselves in reference, analyzing physical mechanics, or particular character performances that feed directly into the shot. Some like to get right into the shot and start roughing in key poses for their first blocking pass.

My preferred method is to study lots of reference and do a little body acting if the type of character permits. I also like to have a lot of dialogue with my supervisor and my peers so that I can really get myself into the mindset of the shot. I never animate stepped. Personally, I've always had trouble working this way when doing realistic creature performances where there is a strong concentration on mass and weight at the blocking phase. I just find it much harder to visualize the naturalism of the character this way. I have a close friend here at Weta who works stepped and comes from a more classical background than me. It's interesting, because in the end you probably couldn't tell our final animations apart, but our styles are very different in the early stage of the creation process. I also rarely ever block straight ahead. If the direction I'm getting is clear, I try to rough in all my keys and breakdowns in my first pass with a basic sense of proper timing. I keep everything super clean, and only occasionally refine motion between some of my keys if there is a major beat or performance point I want to clarify.

The art of good blocking is knowing how to blow your stuff away properly. Many animators have trouble adapting to new notes that come in after presenting each iteration. Your keys start to get messy, you begin to get confused. Blowing away motion, as painful as it might be, is the best thing you can do when adapting to new blocking notes that have a major effect on your latest pass. If you can’t blow it away without a second thought, emotionless, and you always try to incorporate new notes that might conflict with the old blocking, you risk getting this kind of “square peg in a round hole” feel to your animation. Things start to look wonky, out of synch, poppy, etc.

Also, many animators who stay attached to old elements of their performance will create an unconscious resistance with their Lead or Supervisor. Your superiors will sense your attachment to the old blocking and it will eventually get in the way in future dailies and can even affect the shots you get in the future. New notes will create more and more conflict with those elements of the performance that should have been eliminated. I am always ready to blow massive chunks of the performance away in a heartbeat if I think it will achieve the notes more effectively. There is an art to destroying your work efficiently. Anyone can blow away keys, but I think the more experience you have rebuilding sections of animation quickly and creatively, the better you become at adapting to new notes.

The only things I am really concerned about during the blocking process are the following:

Have I hit the choreography notes I was given and do my poses roughly convey the meaning of the performance?

Do my timings roughly work?

Have I utilized the space in the scene properly?

Is the performance appealing and have I executed the requirements creatively?

If I've answered yes to those questions, then I should feel confident that I can present the shot as blocking. I am well on my way to beginning the first of many iterative steps towards completing the shot. From that point on, it becomes about adaptation until you reach the “blocking approved” stage. After that, it becomes more about execution as you bring the shots to a level of finalization.

Now there is something to be said about doing things the “wrong way.” I started this article by saying that if your workflow works for you and is successful in achieving the goals of the pipeline, then no one should criticize your methods. But please don't try to animate legs in FK, unless the character is swimming or falling or something. And don't animate a character's extremities before you've worked on the center of mass. Oh, and don't swear at your boss after he gives you notes....that is definitely bad workflow.

Guest Blogger Aaron Gilman

Can You Provide Some Tips For Good Pantomime?

The biggest challenge of pantomime is clarity. It isn't too hard for an audience to understand that a character is lifting a box without the use of dialogue. It is a bit more challenging to have them understand why the character is lifting the box and what emotions it is feeling while doing it. If a viewer can't understand what is going on in the character's head in the first viewing, then the animation is not quite working yet.

Great posing is the biggest component in giving a shot clarity. A good pose will immediately communicate what is happening to the viewer. A great pose will do it in an entertaining way. Entertaining doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be cartoony or insanely over the top. It does mean that the pose should be dynamic and interesting to look at. Comic books are a great resource for seeing clear, dynamic poses... and yes, I am a super dork. A comic book artist has to communicate both the external actions and internal motivations of a character in a single drawing. So basically, if your key poses could work well as a comic book panel then you are in good shape. If not, then you might need to tweak them some more.

A good technique for judging how clear your poses are is to look at them in silhouette. An audience can read the silhouette of a character much faster then they can overlapping body parts. Any actions that take place inside the silhouette have a much higher chance of becoming muddy and unclear.

Pantomime shots have a huge amount of freedom in them because of the lack of dialogue. It is a blank canvas. However, this can also be a challenge because you no longer have that audio to anchor your timing to. Sometimes creative restrictions can actually be helpful. The challenge in pantomime is making sure that your character doesn't feel like they are going through a set of meaningless actions. Try to imagine that there is an inner monologue going on so that it feels like they are thinking and then acting. The pacing of your shot can determine whether your character is simply doing some things, or doing some things in reaction to what is happening around them.

Acting choices are another huge factor in pantomime. I think some people treat a pantomime shot differently than a dialogue shot. With dialogue, they will relish in the nuances and detail, and try to get every bit of realism into it that they can. Then they will do a pantomime shot and feel that it has to be a super cartoony Charlie Chaplin piece. Don't get me wrong-- I love Charlie, but pantomime should still feel real to an audience. Sometimes going big is absolutely necessary, but there is a difference between that and overacting. You don't want your character to look like they are "playing" sad. You want them to actually be sad. Just because there is no dialogue doesn't mean that every idea has to be expressed with extreme antics. Viewers will respond to something that feels real and honest. The ultimate goal is to have them forget that the character was ever animated. Watch any great live action drama and pay attention to the shots that have no words. You will see that some of the most powerful performances from actors often happen without dialogue. If a person can do it in front of a camera, then I don't see any reason why an animator shouldn't strive to achieve the same thing.

Speaking of cameras, I can't emphasize the use of video reference enough. I always like to start my planning process in front of a camera, because you can get some surprising results from just getting up and doing it. It is the quickest way to explore ideas, and it will very often give you the idea that otherwise wouldn't have occurred to you. Also, video reference is incredibly useful as a tool for good body mechanics. There is no dialogue to distract the audience from what is happening in the body, so they will notice every little movement that is slightly off or awkward. Pantomime is very unforgiving in that way, because the animation is all they have to focus on. The video reference will give you a great foundation to base your animation on.

A huge part of creating believable, lifelike characters is the face, and more specifically, the eyes. Eye lid positions can tell you how alert someone is. How often a character blinks can convey intensity, or insecurity. Pupil dilation can show excitement or fear. Eye direction can reveal intent or help anticipate an action. Subtle shifts and saccades can hint at an internal thought process. Blinks can be used to show a change in thought or emotion. The list goes on and on. The eyes can communicate just about everything, and (assuming there is no nudity in the scene) the eyes are where most people will focus their attention. They are also one of the biggest areas of neglect in animation. Make sure that the eyes are moving like a real eye would, and not how you imagine an eye would move. Do some research on eye movements and you will probably be surprised at how complex it really is. I have some websites that I regularly use as a refresher on eye movement because there is a lot to remember. Everyone has heard the complaint that CG characters are "dead in the eyes". At times that may be partially due to how a character is lit or rendered, but I think a lot of it also comes from how they are animated. It is vitally important that the eyes not be an afterthought in your animation.

To sum it all up:

-Strive for clarity in your pantomime so that an audience can clearly understand both what the characters are doing and also what they are thinking and feeling.

-Focus on strong, clear poses that are both aesthetically pleasing and tell the story.

-Make sure that the timing in your shot helps the character feel like it is thinking as well as doing.

-Give the eyes plenty of attention in your animation, because they can totally sell your character's internal process.

-Make sure that your acting choices feel real and not contrived. Avoid the cliches when possible. Pantomime can be cartoony or realistic, but the character needs to be believable in either scenario.

-Use video reference as a tool for planning your shot and as a reference for body mechanics.

-Be sure to enjoy yourself. Shots always turn out better when you have fun working on them

Guest Blogger Travis Tohill

Can You Provide Some Tips on the Mechanics of Walking?

A walk is such an easy thing.

An easy thing to screw up.

Too much overlap on the swinging arms. Too much bobbling up and down. Too much head sway. Those are a lot of distractions!

Let’s focus on what is going on in the body. One leg is pushing off the earth and moving forward to make contact and propel the body forward. (Can you tell I took physics in college? I didn’t pass, but I took it.) What the foot does then is capture the weight of the body to make sure its owner doesn’t come crashing to the ground.

That’s essentially it – as far as the legs go. It’s a fall. Every single step. After that foot crosses the magical midpoint of the center of gravity, that big old body wants to fall. Mr. Foot connected to Mrs. Leg has to hurry up and make sure the body doesn’t fall, so it has to hurry up just a bit to get in front of the body and stop its fall.

So there’s the silly explanation for what happens. How can you put that into practice? Something I do all the time is observing people. I love to go to the airport (no, not to just hang out) but to watch people get from one place to another. What do their feet do? How do their hips rise and fall for each step. Just how much swing is in their arms? I study and learn.

Then I put it in the computer. A long time ago, I used to do mechanical exercises in the computer by using a layered approach to animating. This goes against all that’s in my fiber of being now, but I used it strictly as a learning technique to understand force, momentum and balance on a walk (it was actually a skip for Captain Hook). What I did was took his COG (center of gravity) and translated that in space. I made him feel like he was walking (I know I said skipping, but I’m stretching the truth to make a point). I would then add a little bit of rotation. Get that momentum going up and then have a nice overlap as the foot would hit (even though I didn’t animate that foot hitting yet).

Then I would go up the chain – mid body, upper body, neck, and head. I would add some twist on the body so it would go the opposite way the hips were going until the shoulders were completely the opposite of the hips.

Next would be the legs. At first, I would do ONLY the steps, no transitions. I would keep this in stepped mode too. It would look funky to the outsider but to us abnormal folk (animators), it looked fine. After I got this placement correct, I would add my spacing for the feet. It takes the foot longer to get to the transition (the passing pose) than it does to the impact.

Arms would follow and so on – you get the picture.

My point?

My point is, I got to feel how EACH part of the body FELT during the walk. What were the hips doing? How much opposite were the shoulders? Just how much x rotation was needed? All of this was answered by doing that little exercise. By doing that, I gained knowledge of what goes into a walk.

Sometimes you have to do the grunt work to get the good stuff…

Guest Blogger Mike Gasaway