How Much Reference Do Studios Usually Provide to Animators?

Animators are usually provided with some reference of the actors reading their lines, which is extremely useful.

You can pull little facial nuances or body movements that can help make each character unique. Most of the time, we film our own reference or enlist the help of someone else in order to explore and refine ideas for our shots, the whole time trying to keep character traits in mind to make our reference as close to the character as possible.

When we're unable to film our own reference, for example, of a big cat running, there are so many resources out there. YouTube and BBC motion Gallery have been useful, but with the internet available to us, there are many resources out there, so there's no excuse to not have good reference.

Guest Blogger Rich Fournier

What Tangents in the Graph Editor Do You Primarily Use in Your Workflow — Clamp, Splined, Linear or Plateau?

The answer to this question is that it depends on what I am animating.

If I am animating for film, I start in stepped mode and stay in stepped until I get to the polishing phase. This helps me to stay focused on the drawings themselves and not let the in-betweens distract me from focusing on my keys and breakdowns. Once I am done with stepped, I change my curves to linear, then to spline. I pretty much touch every frame and really limit the amount of work I let the computer do because the result it gives me is rarely what I want. I don't touch the graph editor until pretty late in the game. This may mean extra work for me, but I would rather have that level of control if things change late in the process. It's easier for me to go back and make changes without worrying about how the software is interpolating the in-betweens.

If I am animating for games, time is of the essence due to the sheer amount of animation required and for the rapid prototyping of game play. Game engines will also play subframes, so you have to make sure that the rotations won't get into a state of gimbal between frames. In this case you want the computer (software) to do as much as possible. So in this case I start with spline right out of the gate.

Guest Blogger Joe Mandia

How Often Do You Work on Colleagues' Work, and What Are Your Tips for Doing So?

This is something that thankfully only happens occasionally. Although when I worked in vfx it was more frequent. At Blue Sky, sometimes a supervisor would get too busy and have to hand a shot off, or someone would leave or get sick for a long while and the shot needed to be finished. Taking over someone else's shot is challenging because people animate in different methods and often with different movers. What you do will depend on the state the shot is in. If it is rough blocking, you can clean up the poses a bit and just use it as your own file, or if you prefer, make a playblast, and pose out your own file using the playblast as reference. If the shot is in splining then you have to use what is there, figure out what movers they used and work with it.

It can be a nightmare deconstructing how somebody else’s animation mind works but the supervisors will understand this and give you some extra time to figure those things out.

I had to do this once on Horton Hears a Who with a shot of Vlad climbing up a tree.
The supervisor had great blocking in, but his methods seemed messy to me and I ended up just making a playblast and using that as reference. Of course, he put extra pressure on me to make it good because it was his shot originally.

On Iron Man 2, I got a shot of Iron Man being tossed into a car. The animator had put keys on all sorts of movers I never used, so I couldn’t figure out where some movement was coming from until I spoke with him. In another shot on the film, an animator had done a pass and they changed directions with it. I ended up re-working the shot, and basically starting over from scratch, after trying and failing to use the data.

The best tip I can give is to speak with the animator who was working on it right away. Ask them how they went about it, what movers they used, and ask the supervisor what he wants to do differently than what is currently there. Just don’t get easily frustrated if someone takes your shot, or feel too bad when you have to finish a fellow animators’ shot. It is not something that anyone wants to do. But it is part of the job.

Guest Blogger Jason Martinsen

How Important Is Networking in the Animation Industry?

Networking is EXTREMELY important in the animation industry! It’s not more important than your animation and work ethics, but it’s probably next in line!

Keep in mind that networking with nothing to show for yourself won't get you anywhere. But good networking with a solid demo reel to back it up is a good way to get your foot in the door and also stay employed.

A lot of people think that networking stops after you get your first job. No way! Networking is an ongoing thing to keep your face and work known. This is a small industry, but that doesn’t mean everyone will know you. So go shake some hands and make some new friends!

Guest Blogger Jess Morris