Pushing Poses

this blog and others

2010-12-06T09:03:00.004-07:00

Teaching is one of the best ways I've found for learning... that, and being under pressure in a production environment. If you have done one or the other you know what I mean. If you done both you know that each is as challenging as the other.

I originally started this blog years ago essentially as a release valve for all the thoughts, ideas, sketches and discoveries I was making. A public journal of what I have been learning and thinking while also teaching the subject at the college level. As a byproduct the site has gotten attention for some of the tutorials I created for students and various acquaintances.

Its a lot better than getting attention for mouthing off about some odd looking double pose found in an animation short film. There have been a few other surprises along the way including the positive attention received for my approach to web design for a portfolio website and interest from students of Ravensbourne in the UK. I've been too busy to return the positive attention from previous blog posts.

Blogging here will continue sometime in the future when I am only working one full-time job instead of two.

In the meantime I've been putting together examples of work completed by our students which I will continue to post here and video tutorials for those getting started in Maya. Those tutorials are being added to a new blog site called Animation Process. I invite anyone reading to check out this new instructional blog, the Vimeo page for our Animation Department and a nice college news and events blog managed by Emmett Hamilton.

The video tutorials found at this new site are extremely rudimentary and created in most cases to be less than 5-minutes in length. There is an art to brevity. Currently I have a few videos describing UV mapping, texturing, and working with lights in Maya.

Check back for more examples of student work before I return to my original purpose for this site. A special thanks to the followers of this blog.

More Student Work

2010-03-21T21:52:00.022-07:00

Created by Dara Elerath

New Mexico Symphony Guild Ball - Dara Elerath from The Art Center Design College on Vimeo. Dara is a Senior at the Art Center Design College in Albuquerque majoring in Visual Communications.

Our branch campus in Albuquerque, NM was contacted with a request for help on behalf of a non-profit client, New Mexico Symphony Guild. Above is one of the two winning submissions created by our students pro-bono.

Animation instructor Aaron Barreras turned loose both sections of his AN307 Motion Graphics class on this project allowing each of his students to create a version of this promotion for the New Mexico Symphony Guild. With 21 individual commercials to choose from thanks to all of our talented students, the New Mexico Symphony Guild Ball organizers had a difficult time choosing a single spot to run. So much so, they ended up choosing 2 spots to run. The winning students, Dara Elerath and Ryan Salway, will have their commercials (shown above) aired on all Comcast channels in New Mexico.

There is no learning experience like that of working for real clients. The pro-bono Membership promotional project completed here in Tucson for The Loft Cinema last January was a very eye-opening and inspiring experience for the students involved. Another project for The Loft here in Tucson is underway, as well as other community-based creative projects moving forward in Albuqueruqe, NM. Reaching out to the community has been a real boon for our students, and I can't count the number of blessings that have rolled back to us in response.

In case anyone is wondering, as a policy, The Art Center Design College only accepts requests for pro-bono projects from community-based, charitable/non-profit clients. We don't want our students undercutting professionals in the field, many of whom teach at our school. That would be both ethically wrong and stupid beyond belief. After all, we are training professionals. -e

Student Work

2010-02-10T23:26:00.010-07:00

Loft Membership Pro-bono from The Art Center Design College on Vimeo.

This is a 1-minute promotional animation encouraging patrons to join as members of the non-profit, community art-house theater called The Loft Cinema located in Tucson, AZ. This animation was created by Junior level students enrolled at The Art Center Design College. The work was completed as pro-bono. The mission of The Art Center Design College includes a priority to be a contributing member of the surrounding community and to model this mission for the growth and development of our students as citizens. The Loft Cinema is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The client is very pleased with what was created and is happily screening this membership promotional animation in front of every feature film.

The group of students who created this are now working on a second pro-bono project for The Loft Cinema, and the client is excited for how this new project will turn out. You can watch the progress of this project as well as the personal films these students create as they blog their production process. Credits for the Loft membership include: Charles Rorke, Eva Alcazar, Auston Klezcka, Brenda Rodriguez, Benjamin Gray, and Arman Jornoush. This team of artists has grown stronger by one, being joined by Christian Suarez, and once again are directed by comic artist, writer and Art Center Animation Instructor Max Cannon.

We are happily anticipating what the new collaborative and independent films will be developed by this talented and committed group of artists.

-e

Essential Acting Principles

2009-09-22T00:27:00.031-07:00

As defined specifically for animators by Ed Hooks.

1) A scene is a negotiation

"In any negotiation, there must be a way you can win and a way you can lose." -Ed Hooks. This is another way of saying every scene must involve conflict, or opposing concerns. Example: I want to sit in a chair and you want to sit in a chair, we are both standing there in a room together and we have only one chair between us. Now what?! This is where the negotiation begins. A scene is a negotiation.

2) Thinking leads to conclusions; emotions lead to action

Having a thinking character is great but a thinking character can just sit like a lump in his chair while thinking thoughts all day. Now what?! Well, if he has strong feelings regarding one of his thoughts, he is likely to get up out of that chair and get busy. If he hates the noise coming in from the street outside, he jumps up and closes the window. If he loves the girl in the photograph on the table, he reaches over, picks up the picture, and kisses it as if he is kissing her. If he desires a tasty sandwich for lunch, he gets up and heads out the door for the local restaurant to get a meal. And so on. Emotion leads to Action.

3) Play an action until something happens to make you play a different action

Actions are based on motivation. If something motivates a character to take action, then the character must have a change in motivation in order to change their action.

Example: I want to deliver a package to a neighbor. First, I head out the door to walk over to the neighbors house. When I arrive at the house I stop walking. Why? Because it would be stupid and robotic to keep walking once I arrive. Imagine me smashing endlessly into the closed front door of my neighbor's house. Funny? Maybe. But there is not much of a story there. Ok, now that I have arrived, and stopped, I knock at the door. Now, again, if I were a stupid robot I would keep knocking, endlessly. I'm not stupid, nor a robot so I knock a few times and then wait. Ok, I'm waiting. Waiting more. Still waiting. Nothing has happened. If I keep waiting I'm probably pretty dumb so I think it is time to knock again... I raise my hand and suddenly the door opens. If I were to follow through with my intention to knock again, I'd probably hit my neighbor in the face with my fist. At this point I'll leave it to you if this is a good thing since I have made my point about playing an action. You can always switch it up for comedic effect. Just know what your character is doing and why. This begins with setting him or her on a course and staying the course until there is good reason to change... or not.

4) Theatrical reality is not the same thing as day‐to‐day reality

"Theatrical reality has form and is compressed in time and space." -Ed Hooks. Ok back to me, the package, and my neighbor. If you animated me in "real time" walking from my house to that of my neighbor, knocking, waiting and so on, you would have one, terrifically dull story. Not only would the amount of screen time watching me head out the door and across the street be boring for the audience, it would also ruin the comedic effect of me waiting and waiting after knocking. The audience would spend a lot of time watching me walk, and not so much time watching me wait after knocking. Not very entertaining. Practically speaking it would be a terrible waste of time to produce as animation with little benefit for the audience. Live action filmmakers don't waste that kind of time and effort on simple and obvious story mechanics so neither should animators. Put your story into theatrical time, both for the sake of the story and for the sake of the effort needed to produce it.

5) Empathy is the key to effective performance animation

"Humans empathize with emotion, not with thinking." -Ed Hooks. Remember that part in item number 4 about the audience? Well, the audience is why we do this stuff. Without them, what is the use of so much time and effort? We need the audience... not want, but need the audience to identify with our characters. What can we as animators use as a basis for connecting with the audience? What the character does. Ok, that's easy. Why is the character doing what he is doing? Emotion. Refer back to item number 2 listed above regarding the source of action.

So, what we are communicating to the audience is the character's emotional reality, and we communicate this essential reality through action. And best of all we do this to get the audience to empathize with the character.

6) In acting, an obstacle is the same thing as conflict

"In life, we generally try to avoid conflict, but in acting, it is our friend." -Ed Hooks. Delve into your character and find motivations, concerns, interests, and intentions. With these intentions you have a rich assortment of possible obstacles and conflicts. If you are having trouble finding potential obstacles and conflicts then you probably don't have a character, yet. If so, then focus on developing a living character. After developing your character, you may want to define the circumstances in which the character is surrounded. By this I mean the nature, environment, or situation that surrounds the character.

7) There are only three kinds of conflicts or obstacles:

Conflict with Self
Conflict with a Situation or Environment
Conflict with Another Character

These three types of conflict are listed in a typical order of interest for good story telling. The best is a character conflicted with himself. A character suffering conflict with himself is going to have a lot of interesting problems.

For instance think of a boy, who likes a girl, but is also afraid to talk to that girl. This poses a problem, how to let a certain girl he likes in on the fact that he likes her. Hmmmm... internal conflict.

That is fairly generic so lets make it even more interesting. What if the boy has to dress-up and pretend he is a girl in order to hide from threatening and dangerous characters, then he meets the girl that he desires. Now he has two internal conflicts... avoid danger from bad people by pretending to be something he is not, and interact effectively with his desired girl even though he is in the impossible situation of being a girl, liker her.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag. Some Like It Hot, United Artists 1959.

Think this is a ridiculous story? Check out the classic movie, Some Like It Hot starring Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon. In fact, both male characters are going through the conflict of hiding as women while being attracted to an ideal woman. And because each has a chance to be alone with her they encounter one additional issue, now they have a rivalry for her affection. And they each identify with her in their 'female' roles differently which changes how others, including this ideal woman, respond to the two men posing as women.

What a mess!

Billy Wilder obviously understood that heightened and powerful storytelling involves more than one conflict or obstacle encountered by the main character simultaneously. Storytelling and acting cannot be separated from each other.

Ok, that's pretty complex. So, let's start off in a place that is much more simple. Who is your character, and what does your character want?

For those who are interested in digging deeper check out these books by Ed Hooks. The first is linked to at the top of this post; just click on the image. Another good reference to acting for animation as it applies to storytelling is Acting in Animation: A Look at 12 Films.

Blogs of note

2009-03-16T11:20:00.048-07:00

Just want to point out a few blogs. I found out about the blog illustrated above thanks to referral clicks registered at sitemeter. A character animator located in Savannah, GA named John Paul Rhinemiller has started a very nice blog for animators who are interested in valuable resources. I've already found some interesting links that are new to me. Anyone who knows me knows that I am the collector of links to online resources. He has very nicely pointed me in the right direction regarding his blog which I unfortunately credited to someone else by mistake. So, thanks JP.

After I responded to JP's recent request for animated shorts worth knowing about he was nice enough to post Sean Coleman's Scratch, Sean's portfolio website, and Sean's blog. Sean graduated from The Art Center Design College, where I teach and chair the Animation Department at our Tucson, AZ campus. He participated in FJORG! 2008 on a team with two animators from Animation Mentor, sharing a second place position with one other team. These days Sean animates for Insomniac Games in Burbank, CA. Sean's film Scratch has made the festival circuit winning awards including a Gold ADDY award for Student Best of Show here in Tucson and has moved on to the regional ADDY Awards with the collaborative Siggy intro completed with Mike Munoz and Brad Wright.

Mike Munoz is another recent graduate from The Art Center and is an extremely multi-faceted artist with numerous strengths. He has been working at a modeler for a colleague of mine named Gav Gnatovich, who teaches here at The Art Center. In addition to his 3D modeling abilities Mike is an highly skilled character setup artist. He came to The Art Center with an engineering background, developed a strong art and animation portfolio, and then fused the two areas of art and engineering together. Since graduation Mike created a very sophisticated and almost entirely automated character setup toolkit for Maya using Python. Check out Mike's blog to get a hint of the number and quality of tools he has created so far.

Brad Wright worked with Sean and Mike on the animated Siggy intro we currently use for The Art Center's animation demo reel. Brad has focused his portfolio on organic modeling while continuing to develop his Character Animation skills in 2D and 3D. He is still taking classes but already has professional modeling and animation work to his credit.

Last but not least is the Art Center Animation Club blog just created by Auston Kleczka and Eva Alcazar, two animation students here in Tucson who have taken the reigns of this club and seem to have a very clear and positive goal of creating a community of animators supporting other animators... not unlike what JP Rhinemiller is doing. I think this completes a nice circle for this post.

More Life Drawing

2009-02-19T01:06:00.009-07:00

About one year ago my busy life got a lot busier. In between then and now I wrote two parts of an intended 5 part tutorial on walk cycles which became quite popular at this site, got promoted to the lead position in my department, and held down my old job while simultaneously working my new job.

I am not about to claim that all of this has all been accomplished in top form. I will claim that I am still standing.

Something that I have managed to do is continue with life drawing studies thanks to the Fine Arts department at my school.

5-Minute Walk Cycle

2008-04-04T12:36:00.009-07:00

Behold the power of the black Sharpie marker.

I needed to demo capturing into Flipbook for a student yesterday. It was an opportunity to show how fast and easy Flipbook is at timing out your work. One problem, I didn't have any hand drawn animation with me, and worse, no punched paper.

So, in about one minute, I improvised an alternative registration system and five minutes after that I had a sequence of drawings created with a black, fine point Sharpie on scrap paper. I think that's the shortest amount of time I've ever used to create a walk cycle.

-e

Perception is Reality

2008-03-21T12:38:00.000-07:00

Joshua Tree California © Rick Chapman 1999.

I would like to quote an author named Robin Williams, (no not that famous actor and comedian, but a woman living in Santa Fe, NM who happens to share the same name).

-- quote --

The Joshua Tree Epiphany
by Robin Williams

Once upon a time, Robin received a tree identifying book where you could match a tree up with its name by looking at its picture. Robin decided to go out and identify the trees in the neighborhood. Before she went out, she read through part of the book.The first tree in the book was the Joshua tree because it only took two clues to identify it.

Now the Joshua tree is a really weird-looking tree and she looked at that picture and said to herself, "Oh, we don’t have that kind of tree in Northern California. That is a weird-looking tree. I would know if I saw that tree, and I’ve never seen one before."

So she took the book and went outside. Her parents lived in a cul-de-sac of six homes. Four of those homes had Joshua trees in the front yard. She had lived in that house for thirteen years, and she had never seen a Joshua tree.

She took a walk around the block - at least 80 percent of the homes had Joshua trees in the front yards. And she had sworn she had never seen one before!

The moral of the story? Once Robin was conscious of the tree, once she could name it, she saw could see it everywhere. Which is exactly my point. Once you can name something, you’re conscious of it. You have power over it. You own it. You’re in control.

-- end quote ---

So, why am I including this quote from graphic design and typography author Robin Williams? Because her little story about suddenly discovering the joshua trees in her neighborhood as a young girl is relevant to anyone learning something new about the world that has already been seen, and lived in, for one's entire life.

All artists have to rediscover what seems like the obvious, and each one of us has our own approach. No one way is THE right way.

-e

Quick Pencil Test

2008-03-21T02:59:00.007-07:00

Just playing around with various 2D capture setups at home. I decided to animate something, and unlike what I have been preaching for a while, I decided to just improvise and see what came up.

A little improvised waiting sequence with change of focus at the end.

I have a little reversal here. I'm playing with how to keep a simple pose alive while making sure that the small repetitive head scratch has a little texture.

I know its only a quick, rough pencil test but boy do I need to get back into life drawing sessions.

-e

Basic Walk Cycle, part 2

2008-03-19T13:25:00.006-07:00

<- go to Part 1: Creating Extremes

This is the second installment on applying information found in The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams to creating a 3D (CG) character walk cycle. The first installment covered creating the first poses or extremes using a pose to pose method. That tutorial touched on the subject of process but mostly concentrated on how to craft visually appealing contact poses or extremes albeit with a not so pretty character. This installment will cover a little more on process while describing how to approach a second pass in the animation process in which I create the primary breakdowns for this walk cycle. Like Richard Williams' we will call these breakdowns the passing positions.

Pass 1 Complete: Timing Poses

Contact (or the timing) poses. Frames 1 -3 from left to right. I spaced these out to demonstrate a dynamic or progressive walk cycle can be made from this static, treadmill, "on-the-spot" walk cycle.

The first pass in this animation process establishes the extreme poses. Think of the extremes as primary timing poses. Once the walk cycle is complete, the number of frames between these poses will establish the tempo. The second pass will establish the primary spacing poses, or the positions that define how the character moves from one extreme to the next. As stated in part 1, if you alter the contact pose at either the beginning or end of the cycle, make sure to update its complimentary pose at the opposite end of the cycle. First and last poses have to be identical.

Part 1 involved only three frames in the time line, no less, no more. (click to enlarge)

One part of the process that I glossed over in the last tutorial involved having only 3 frames viewable in my time line. I was creating 3 extreme poses and so only needed three frames in the time line. Frame 1 = first contact pose (left foot forward), frame 2 = second contact pose (right foot forward), frame 3 = exact copy of first contact pose (left foot forward). This approach to the time line causes Maya to show you only the poses you have created and nothing more. I learned this approach from Keith La ngo who has a wonderful, and very affordable, monthly video tutorial service. I subscribe to Keith's VTS and recommend it to anyone interested in accelerating their growth and understanding of animation. This method of only showing what poses (or drawings) you have created works just as well for mechanical exercises, such as walk cycles, and as well as for acting performances.

Beginning Pass 2: Spacing Poses

Spacing of a ball bounce into and out of the contact point. Richard Williams © 2001

The above image is a section of page 94 demonstrating how the path of a bouncing ball requires a series of drawings that define the arc of its movement and spacing into and out of its contact point. The first drawing to define this arc and spacing is called the breakdown. So, how does this information relate to a walk cycle? During pass 2 of this walk cycle we will create the middle 'drawing' between the contact poses that starts to define the arc and spacing of the movement.

A variety of Passing Poses between identical and generic Contact Poses. Richard Williams © 2001

The breakdown, also called the passing pose for a walk cycle, provides an opportunity to add unique flavor or style in movement. Shown above are pages 112-113 from The Animator's Survival Kit. Richard Williams is demonstrating what opportunities the animator has while creating the primary breakdowns. Log that information away for future use, this tutorial will focus on a generic passing pose (as seen in the upper left page above) for this basic walk. But first, a little more about software.

Software Inbetweens

Largely symbolic this illustration shows how the computer can precisely split the difference between to extremes. Though undesirable as a final position this can be a useful starting point when creating breakdowns.

If you are new to animating in Maya, change away from Maya's default method for interpolating inbetweens: Clamped Tangents. Do it now! I tell students if I can't explain, at least to myself, the math that creates a curve from a Clamped Tangent then don't use it. I don't have an intuitive understanding of Clamped Tangents so I don't use them. In fact, I have yet to meet anyone who can explain Clamped Tangents without first reading Maya's help files. As animators we don't want anything between our intuition and what we create.

First lets take control of the Maya workspace. Other 3D packages have ways of doing what follows, but this tutorial is only covering how to approach this in Maya.

Animation and Timeline Preferences
Switching your environment settings on the fly is a valuable way to work while animating. Maya gives you a fast get to the preferences in the timeline.

You can find a quick link to your Timeline preferences in the lower right corner of Maya.

Setting up your interface to match your work flow is a good habit to get into. The illustration above shows an easy way to get to your time line preferences while you are working in Maya.

Maya allows you to override the default settings for playback speed in the timeline work space. (click to enlarge)

Here you see a custom setting of only 2 frames for playback speed. That setting allows you to see the timing of the contact poses... click, click, click, click... two clicks per second. Adjusting your playback speed to show you what poses you have created at the proper tempo can help when working in a pose to pose method. For pass 2 you can change the play back speed to 4 frames per second.

Creating keys with Stepped Tangents for default out tangent will avoid software inbetweening. (click to enlarge)

In the Maya preferences click on the subcategory of Animation to change how the software is set to interpolate (calculate) transitions between keyframes. Two types of tangent settings useful for early stages of animating in Maya: Linear Tangents and Stepped Tangents. This series of tutorials will explain the value of switching back and forth while using both. Changing the settings in the preferences only changes how new keys get created but keys made with prior settings have to be selected and changed manually.

Dope Sheet Editor
Here is when keying all attributes of you character becomes critical. First you can find the Dope Sheet Editor with the menu command Window > Animation Editors > Dope Sheet... . You will probably want to store a short cut icon to the Dope Sheet Editor on you Custom shelf with other often used commands... just use the menu command while holding down the Control and Shift keys simultaneously. If you have not locked your extremes in place by keying all attributes do it now before you attempt to change the timing of your work.

Inside the Dope Sheet, the short cuts for Move and Scale tools work same as view ports. (click to enlarge)

Select all animated attributes on your character. Open the Dope Sheet Editor. Select all keys found in the Dope Sheet Summery (blue horizontal stripe). Type the r key, short cut for Scale Tool, same as for manipulator in the view ports. You will change timing by scaling the keys over time in the Dope Sheet.

Scaling keys in the Dope Sheet is an easy way to add time between multiple poses. (click to enlarge)

With the Scale Tool active, use the Middle Mouse Button (MMB) to click and hold on the right side of the selected keyframes.... then drag to the right until the 3 keys are spread out over 5 frames. Keyframe data can have decimal values (floating point data) so use the Dope Sheet menu command: Edit > Snap. This command forces all selected keys to whole number frame values.

Newly re-timed contact poses present blank spaces for new inbetweens to be created. (click to enlarge)

The new spaces between keys will allow for software to inbetween your poses if you allow it to. The inbetweens will be mathematically precise but will have little value as animation poses until edited by the animator... that means you.

Graph Editor
First you can find the Graph Editor with the menu command Window > Animation Editors > Graph Editor... . You will probably want to store a short cut icon to the Graph Editor on you Custom shelf with other useful commands.

Graph Editor showing three contact poses with Stepped interpolation. (click to enlarge)

With all animated attributes for the character selected you can frame all keys in the Graph Editor with the f key.

Dragging left the mouse button over the horizontal lines between keys will select all keys on the character. (click to enlarge)

Commands that changes in tangents will only effect selected keys. As with any graphics application, in Maya selection is critical to control and manipulation.

Clicking the button for Linear Tangents creates a linear interpolation between poses. (click to enlarge)

With all keys selected click on the Linear Tangents icon convert to linear tangents. You can also use the Graph Editor menu command: Tangents > Linear. Close editor, click play, watch the ugly inbetweens. Great math, terrible animation.

Using Maya's Inbetweens
So, what did all of that fussing with editors and preferences accomplish?

OMG! What a laugh! Character's feet floating in the air are a perfect illustration why computers can't be animators.

So what if Maya's inbetweens are ugly, they are still very useful. Maya is moving of a lot of details that you can then quickly adjust as needed. This approach will help create the proper (even) spacing along Translate-Z for a foot that remains on the ground. You will need to correct other elements so that they are not spaced in a boring, mechanical, and even manner.

A modest improvement is easy to make as are a number of other changes to this first and most important inbetween.

Keep track of which foot is staying on the ground for each frame. The new passing poses will be created on frame 2 and frame 4. Start by removing custom values from the foot control for the foot that needs to remain on the ground for frame 2, and likewise for the opposite foot on frame 4.

Adjusting the Center
In general passing poses, or breakdowns, should not occupy the space exactly in the middle of two keys.

Adjusting the mechanical passing pose to look natural can be a quick process. (click to enlarge)

Adjust the root or center of the character so that the standing leg is straight. Shift weight towards the standing leg. Tilt hips so that passing side is low. Counter tilt in the hips by tilting shoulders in the opposite direction. Tilt the head as if it is dragging behind the body's weight shift. As stated in the last installment, strive top build overlapping action and drag into your poses.

Checking Arcs
Breakdown poses are a great way to establish arcs in your animation. The Breakdown is usually not in the exact middle between two extremes. The more it is off center the more pronounced the arc.

IK setups don't create arcs quite as easily as do FK setups. (click to enlarge)

This example uses the IK controls for the hand/arm so the arc in movement must be established by the animator. Simply pull the hand control object down slightly on the passing pose.

Favoring
Favoring is a great way to show weight and momentum in animation. When the breakdown is closer to one extreme it is said to favor that extreme. When creating the passing pose, or breakdowns in general, some elements should favor the prior pose more than others. This is will show weight for that element, as it is taking more effort to move the that part or change the its direction.

Create a position for the rear foot as it passes the standing leg that favors the prior pose. (click to enlarge)

The image above shows how the position of passing foot has been retarded behind the rest of the pose. A common mistake made by many inexperienced animators (especially CG animators) is to allow the passing foot to pop forward from the rear position. The rear foot must take time and effort to changing direction in order to show weight. Refer to my diagram above when I first introduced the subject of software inbetweens versus more organic (human created) inbetweens. This asymmetrical approach to creating poses and movement is central to creating more life like animation.

Standing Leg is Straight

Straight standing leg also helps to maintain a sense of weight in the walk cycle.

Another important element is to create a straight knee for the standing leg. Lots of walk cycles (especially in CG) look soft and mushy because the standing leg is bent on the passing pose. Later stages in creating a walk cycle provide an opportunity to show how the knees will bend with the weight in the "recoil" and the "overshoot". These poses will be described in the next installment.

Creating Drag
Once again it is extremely useful to create shapes that will assist overlapping action in your sequence. The section above on favoring relates to the subject of creating overlapping action and drag. In general, the rule for creating drag is to have an extremely (such as head, hands, or toes) bend towards the prior position. Bend toes towards prior foot position on the ground. Bend the wrist so that hand and fingers point slightly towards the prior position. Tilt head towards middle position from prior Contact Pose.

Subtle changes in position to drag will add a lot of appeal and weight to your walk cycle. (click to enlarge)

Flip and Roll
There are two ways that traditional animators checked their work while animating: flipping drawings and rolling drawings. Richard Williams describes this on page 81 of The Animator's Survival Kit. One method is for simple changes between a few drawings... rolling, and the other is for testing longer sequences. You have a few options in Maya to do the same kinds of testing.

To "roll" in Maya you need to use a simple key combination to step forward and backward in your sequece. While holding down the Alt key (Option key for Mac OS X users) use the > key (same as "." key no Shift key needed) to move to the next frame, and the < key (same as "," key no Shift key needed) the move to the previous frame. Get use to this method for moving forwards and back... and for the love of God (and your wrists) stop scrubbing.

To Flip through longer sequences you have a few options. Creatinga Playbast (a quick and dirty real-time render) is one option. Or just play back your sequence with the proper 'real-time' playback settings. For that you need the same number of frames in your time-line as poses in your sequence. For this second pass you should have five frames for five poses. With playback settings set to 4 fps click play and view your work from many different angles.... something you can't do so quickly with rendered Playbasts.

Incremental Saving
By saving your work incrementally you are providing yourself with lots of options. First, you are giving yourself a valuable archive of your progress. You are applying one of the most important principles of safety in file management: redundancy. Lastly, you are saving your progress in a manner that is very useful for working under a director. If a director needs you to change your performance you have earlier versions to go back to without having to start over from scratch.

Conclusion to Part 2
Below is an example of the poses created in the first two passes of animation. Unlike the prior animation example in part 1 this example below actually looks like a walk cycle.

Basic Walk Cycle: Part 2 from Erik Westlund on Vimeo.

It's amazing how easy to read this movement is with only contact poses (extremes) and passing poses (breakdowns). The next installment will cover how to create secondary breakdowns that will help to define overlapping action and weight and will spend time on movement of spine and arms.

part 3 is in the works. stay tuned.

-e
<- go to Part 1: Creating Extremes

Basic Walk Cycle, part 1

2008-03-15T14:00:00.036-07:00

Introduction
part 2 is also available ->

(Note: skip to Creating Extremes if you hate blog verbiage)

I have been hanging around on the 11 Second Club animation forums for the past couple of months. I genuinely enjoy the vibe of that site. The folks responsible for putting the site together have faithfully carried forward the goal of its predecessor, the 10 Second Club, only better.

One benefit has been reading the questions and requests of animation students who are wanting to learn and improve but feel lost when trying to develop skills an understanding. If like me you teach animation, hanging out in the 11 Second Club is a great way to take the pulse of a large community of animation students and prepare yourself for their needs.

One item that has come up in the forums at the 11 Second Club regularly is "how do I fix my walk cycle?"

As an artist it is very important to pay attention to craft. A walk cycle, whether created in 2D or in 3D (CGI) is just such a fundamental to master... including for animators who like to venture into more experimental approaches of the art form.

The cover of Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams

For anyone interested in the subject, check out the exhaustive description of walk cycles provided by Richard (hasn't he been knighted yet?) Williams. Don't let what looks like simple 2D drawings fool you. There is a ton of information for any animator in William's book. If you own a copy of that book, open it to page 102 and start reading. This post here is largely a rehash of what is included in that text filtered slightly to assist newer 3D animators.

A generic (vanilla) walk cycle broken down into its parts on page 108. © Richard Williams 2001

Above is an example of how Williams explains a walk cycle in basic poses on page 108 of his book. Strangely, the information is neither new, or revolutionary and yet for some reason lots of new animators who crave this information fail to recognized that it is laid out in complete detail in The Animator's Survival Kit. Perhaps the minimalist drawings make people think not much is there. Or maybe it is an example of the Joshua Tree Principle. Regardless of why it gets missed by so many, his book has all you need for a creating good looking walk cycles. Loads of it, and then some. If you are learning animation buy the book or check it out from a library.

I am going to outline some walk cycle construction here and follow up with more detailed information on the subject with subsequent posts. What I am attempting to describe is what to do if you are trying to translate Williams' information into 3D using a character rig available for Maya. For this series I am using a free rig called Geek, created by Kiel Figgins. Model was created by Adam Schuman.

Hopefully users of other software and/or animation mediums will find this helpful too.

Also, I will describe a work method as well as what NOT to do. This information is based creating countless walk cycles for demonstration and viewing a much greater number of walk cycles from first time animators. First, some basic terms and assumptions...

Timing and Spacing
Working in a pose to pose method allows you establish your timing early in the process of creating an animated sequence. After your timing has been established you can then create the poses that will define the spacing between your timing poses. The spacing poses will depend on your timing poses so you must nail down the timing poses first. Fussing with inbetweens comes much later in the process and is entirely dependent on the quality of poses you create first. We will start with the timing poses only.

So, what constitutes a timing pose? A timing pose defines an extreme in the movement that occurs at a specific moment. In this case, we will use the moment when the heel of the front foot first contacts the ground. We will call this pose the contact pose. We will not be using the term key pose for this because key poses are story telling poses and not necessarily extremes in movement. This distinction also comes form Richard Williams.

One additional note, this will be a stationary (treadmill style) walk cycle. Most 3D animators start with this type of walk cycle, most traditional 2D animators don't. Different mediums sometimes require different approaches to the same goal.

Animating in Passes
This work method allows you to start with the most important elements first, leaving less important details until later. For a great description of animating in passes check out notes on how Shawn Kelly organizes his work flow. This post is a description how I create my first pass for a normal 3D walk cycle exercise. Later posts will cover later animation passes in my process.

Creating Extremes
Although animating for 24 frames per second, I start by limiting my work environment to only three frames in the time line. This is an easy way to make sure my animation only contains poses that I create and nothing more. Ultimately, the cycle will be 24 frames in length (from frame 1 to frame 25) and will include two steps. First, create a contact pose, then an opposing contact pose, and also create a copy of the original contact pose.

For a seamless loop first and last poses in the cycle must be identical. Any changes made to the first pose must also be made to the last since they are in fact the same.

A generic contact pose demonstrating a modest gait for the character.

Start with the feet and hips of your character. For all walk cycles, keep the angle of the legs, and distance between the feet modest. A giant gait in a walk is unnatural and will look awkward. In general, if it is difficult for you to move or hold yourself like your character is posed, then the pose is wrong and should be adjusted. A natural walk, or even a unique walk, will have a modest gait... to do otherwise will create poses more appropriate for a run cycle.

Creating a good contact pose requires balancing the feet positions with the hip position.

Using a 3D rig with IK (inverse kinematic) legs means that the knees are controlled by where you place the feet relative to the hips. If you move a foot, you will have to adjust the hips as well. If you adjust a custom foot control that lifts the toes, bends the ball, or lifts the heel, the knee will change angle accordingly. You have to balance all of these elements by watching the shape created by the different parts in combination.

Changing small details such as the angle of feet will improve you contact poses.

To avoid giving your character a robotic look turn the feet outward for the default positions.

Front leg must be straight at the contact pose.

Shape change is a hugely important subject in animation, and yet for some odd reason it rarely gets discussed. Your initial pose, the contact pose, will set up a shape of your character that will change, giving the necessary perception of weight and solid forms. What you are setting up in the contact pose is stretch of the front leg. This will be followed by squash of the font leg with a later part of the process with a down pose.

Create a Unified Whole, Not Separate Pieces
It is extremely important to remember that this is supposed to be a living being, not an assembly of parts and pieces. You have to pay close attention to how the connected elements influence each other.

While hips twist only a little, they are not locked in one spot while the feet move forwards and back.

For instance, if the left foot is forward then the left hip will also be forward.

A small amount of counter movement will ad a lot of flexibility to the torso.

If the left hip is tilted up slightly, then the left shoulder will have counter balance this by tilting down. In general the shoulders will move in opposition to the hips.

Start General, Work Towards Details
Line of action (some animators call it path of action) is a central line the moves through the character and defines the direction, attitude, and speed of movement.

It is important to establish a clearly defined line of action on your first pose and craft the details of your pose to match that line. A forward tilt in the line with create a sense of forward movement.

Creating a line of action that has a slight arc or bend helps to give your character pose more life-like appeal. In most cases, and especially for this type of exercise you should avoid putting a sharp bend in the line of action.

Touch Everything, Key Every Attribute
While creating your initial extremes you should key all attributes of your character. If you don't later in the process the software will inbetween some elements differently than others giving you very unpredictable results. Keying all attributes establishes what position you want all elements of you character to have relative to each other for that one pose.

The default position for most hands on 3D rigs is usually flat, like a pancake. Its unappealing and leaving such details untouched on the first pass doesn't save you any time in the animation process.

You should define the pose of your character down to the finger tips.

Create a relaxed pose for the hand early in the process.

Posing the hands and fingers into to something that resembles a natural pose will speed up the process of creating such details for pose created later.

Your process in 3D animation has to eliminate opportunities for the software to create movement or poses without you. Learn how your rig is setup and use its structure to key all elements simultaneously. The Geek rig for instance is setup to have a single node called "Geek_CTRL" that drives virtually every other attribute on the rig. Keying all requires that you pay attention to what position exists for each element, lest you allow the rigs default (stiff/rigid) positions to define your work.

Build Overlapping Action into Your Poses
You will want all forms in your character to appear flexible. Flexibility can be a challenge to create in animation and especially in 3D. An important element of overlapping action in a walk cycle is the difference between the arms and legs. While the legs reach an extreme at the contact pose, the arms don't. They will reach an extreme in their swing on the down pose which we will create later.

Fingers and hands should drag behind the movement of the arms.

One primary way to make a character appear flexible is through overlapping action and "drag".

A very small amount of change in finger positions can ad life to your walk.

Drag is a term used to describe how some smaller elements resist, or stay behind the larger movement... they get dragged along, so speak.

Feet can demonstrate drag as well.

Most often drag shows up in the extremities of the character: hands, toes, and head, etc. although it can also influence the center or core of the character as well. Later installments on this subject will demonstrate some of this.

Things to Avoid in Your First Pass
1. Front knee bent on the contact pose.
2. Large, awkward, and unnatural gait.
3. Perfectly vertical line of action.
4. Stiff and lifeless torso.
5. Straight arms, flat feet, and toes.
6. Default, stiff, and flat pose for hands and fingers.
7. Extremes for arms on same frame as for feet.
8. Rushing this first pass.

Conclusion to Part 1

Basic Walk Cycle: Part 1 from Erik Westlund on Vimeo.

Here is a simple example of the contact poses from several angles after they were timed out for 2 steps per second which is an average, "business-like" walk.

If you actually read Richard Williams' book you will learn a lot more than walk cycles. He explains how such fundamental concepts as timing and spacing affect everything. He also explains priorities, as in what to start working on now, what to leave until later. If you want to get going in animation, read his book. I tell students to sleep with it under a pillow. It gets a laugh, but also makes the point that there is a lot of information to absorb from his text.

Oh, and like a skilled musician, practice your "scales". I tell them than too.

If you are just curious about this subject and want more right now, check out some excellent alternative explanations for creating walk cycles:

Dermot O' Connor

Mike Brown

Larry Lauria

Greg Kyle by way of Shawn Hull

Andrew Jaremko

UPDATE [03.01.10]: Or purchase the newly revised edition of Richard Williams' manual at Amazon. For those who truly love geeking out on this stuff Richard Williams has animated the entire text. Check out this nifty little line test of the cover art being brought to life.

Part 2 is now available. Jump to part 2 in this series ->

-e

Suspended Animation

2008-02-24T15:44:00.014-07:00

The Fall, Claire Burbridge © 2005 (date?)

Ok, so the ice has broken and I am finally back to blogging again. When I last posted I was living in Raleigh, North Carolina and only a few days away from driving cross country in a whirl wind single weekend of change in both work and living environs. Now, I'm living and working in Tucson, Arizona. In all the furious effort involved in jumping into my current role here in Arizona I allowed this blog to simply languish.

Strange thing is my readership and blog traffic appears to have grown nearly five-fold since August 2007 and now. All I can say is wow! Between Kate, Sean, and some very insistent curiosity originating somewhere in Portland, Oregon I have been shamed out of my intransigence and am now back to typing about my thoughts, observations, the work of others, and the occasional example or two of my own work. I have plans to start showcasing some student here work as well. Good stuff so, stay tuned.

For now I present the work of the British born artist Claire Burbridge who creates in South London where she lives and with her husband and their son. I don't know Burbridge personally but found her sculptures intriguing. I discovered them by google-ing the words that make the title of this post. I back tracked to her portfolio website and found her bio interesting and appropriate in parts to the subject of animation. My original online query lead me to the image below which is of her work Suspended Animation, currently represented at Davis & Cline Gallery located in Ashland, Oregon. hummm... Oregon.

Suspended Animation, Claire Burbridge © 2001 A nice run cycle cast into sculpture.

I thought it was starting to make a nice circle, or maybe a spiral, posting art work found in the same state where so much recent interest in this blog has blossomed. This circle also includes google which is largely responsible for so much increased traffic at this blog.

Lesson: if you blog and want some traffic, or maybe a lot, post on a variety of subjects and then link like crazy to related sources on your topics. It works really well! Just look at my ClustrMaps on the right.

Ok, for whoever cares, I'm back at it. More to come soon. No more ridiculously long lapses. Oh, and thank you everyone who has stopped by repeatedly over the past six months.

-e

For Your Consideration

2007-08-24T15:26:00.001-07:00

promotional poster for No Time for Nuts © Blue Sky

Damn this is good, but is it the pinnacle of animation? Oh boy, here I go again, stirring up trouble on the subject of animated shorts from big, successful studios. At least I am back to talking about poses and how they can be pushed.

Well? Really! I must say! I post my thoughts about a double pose found in a still from an animated short from Blur and I get three times as many replies... and that's if you don't count the personal emails, online chat, and phone conversations. What is it with my readers? Apparently, you people only like controversy. ;) Ok, so I posted a critique of A Gentleman's Duel that wasn't written from the vantage point of a geeky, devoted, 'fan-boy' in that it was actually... um.... critical. Oh my. Just consider the source and get over it!

Still image from No Time for Nuts © Blue Sky (click to enlarge)

Ok, everybody likes a little drama now and then. That's a lot of what is behind good stories... drama. Or comedy, for that matter. In fact, in traditional Greek theater comedy meant a happy outcome and tragedy meant a sad outcome. By that standard, No Time For Nuts would be a tragedy. I'm going to go out on a limb here and call this animated short a comedy. A superbly crafted, entertaining, and beautifully executed comedy. If you have watched the original Ice Age movie, then you know the motivations of the main character of No Time For Nuts. Based on prior history watching Scrat struggle through the challenges of an 'Ice Age' planet you can identify with him in a big way.

That is a valuable starting point for any story teller. Scrat is a memorable character outside of any particular story that focuses on him.

On a similar note, Chuck Jones was responsible for creating many memorable characters during his career. We enjoy the many, many animated shorts he directed because we know who the various characters are over the history of these Warner Brothers animated shorts. The reality of Jones' characters: Pepe le Pew, Road Runner & Wile E. Coyote, Tasmanian Devil not to mention how other pre-existing characters such as Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fud, and Daffy Duck all found an individual voice, unique to each, under the direction of Chuck Jones. Audience expectations play a critical part in how these Warner Brothers characters entertain and how the stories created with them have a life outside of any particular animated short.

From a marketing stand point, they are a highly valuable properties outside of any particular animated production. The same is true for Scrat. We know his motivations and state of mind and he exists as a character in spite of any particular production or story. This is meaty stuff for any good writer and the creators of No Time for Nuts take full advantage of the story potential provided by Scrat. Watching the short you see a masterful use of tempo as the main character is rapidly zapped from one reality to another, each setting up a gag of positioning Scrat at the pinnacle of impending doom. In each case, his only way out is the same way he got there in the first place... by randomly hitting buttons on the time machine found in 20,000 B.C.

The gags work on many levels making each more enjoyable than the last. Not only is Scrat whipped through a series of dangerous scenarios, each more deadly than the last, but the first half dozen or so are references to other films including one blatant plug for the original Ice Age film. You can get the inside jokes or not, either way its funny. Which brings me to the next image...

Still image from No Time for Nuts © Blue Sky (click to *ehem*, enlarge)

Its a pretty funny gag, particularly when you see it as originally edited in sequence. The transportation of Scrat through time and location reaches a furious pace pausing only at this moment seen above in the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence Italy [thanks to Kate for the correction]. The exasperated Scrat exhales emphasizing the hilarity of the double entendre. You can get the joke... or not. The joke is not critical to the story, nor does the joke distract from the story. The creative people who crafted this juxtaposition can claim that they are only showing the main character in a location that is easy to identify historically. Any baser meanings perceived by viewers are simply in their own dirty, little heads. (*wink wink*)

This is the kind of adult entertainment found in movies prior to the toppling of the Production Code in 1967, and that is sorely lacking just about everywhere else today.

So, is this high art deserving of the highest honors? Apparently the Academy thinks not, instead giving Torill Kove top honors in 2006 for The Danish Poet. Extremely well written, directed, and produced, No Time for Nuts did receive a 2006 Annie Award for "best animated short subject." Directed by Chris Renaud and Michael Thurmeier, No Time for Nuts may not be the pinnacle of animation today, but it is up there, honoring the Termite Terrace shorts from which it draws so much inspiration.

Here is a link to the official site for No Time For Nuts at Blue Sky.

-e

Crack Spiders and Such

2007-08-18T05:04:00.000-07:00

Warning: At the risk spoilage, there is some colorful use of "street language" towards the end, so don't watch if easily offended. Brought to you courtesy of Tonymation.

I'm sorry but this was/is just too funny not to post. I love the hammock and the restraining order... especially the restraining order.

I promise to get back on topic soon.

-e

I/O Brush redux

2007-08-17T20:57:00.000-07:00

Well, my last post was a little off topic so I thought bring it back to character animation gradually. So, lets first lest get things back on the ground by revisiting the I/O Brush. My prior post on this was kindly provided by a friend Marx Myth. This time I don't know who to thank for this link... other than the creators of this concept.

This kind of crazy ''technology-meets-wouldn't-it-be-cool-if' thinking is what I have come expect from The Media Lab at MIT. Its nice to find out a little regarding who is behind the project. Trust me when I say that not every Media Lab project gets off the ground, but this one could have legs if they can figure out what the killer app for it will be.

As always, enjoy.

-e

Visual Effects

2007-08-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, more than just a little off-topic from character animation but I have to say, this just looks too good to be true. Supposedly video taped in Haiti on August 6, 2007 this clip popped up on You Tube and has gotten a lot of attention.

Approaching this as a creative project there is some nice work with color correction, lighting, and things going out of focus and then back in again. I like the design of the craft, very atypical for this kind of thing. The original camera work provides a good foundation. Camera shake is a great way to sell this kind of effect because with proper tracking it locks elements together in the frame while making the footage seem gritty and real. Trace this back to You Tube and you will find a lot of mediocre to poor attempts at faking unidentified flying objects. This clip and the one embedded below stand out from the bunch.

Not only is the image quality great but the sound is almost perfect. And that's just it. This is the key element that makes me suspicious as to the authenticity of this video is (well, ok other than the subject, but really) the sound. What every film maker should know is that sound can absolutely sell the reality/believability of animation and film. The fly-over has a wonderfully subtle Doppler effect. The sound of a woman gasping in the beginning creates a lot of value towards its authenticity. But where is the rattle and scuffle of that comes from a microphone that is embedded in or connected to the camera. There is a little of this but it just seems too clean to me.

Or, is someone going to tell me that the image and sound quality is about right for consumer hand-held digital video equipment?

Whoever is responsible for this did a nice job with the concept. For instance, I like the orchestrated pattern of craft at the very end... as if the flight pattern and arrangement is some kind of visual message to us earthlings. It reminds me of the pattern in a swimming pool waves make after they bounce off the sides and meet in the middle. Creatively, its a very nice touch.

It would seem that someone in the neighboring country of the Dominican Republic had the same equipment for capturing this kind of event, apparently on the same date, at the same time of day, on the same kind of shore-line, and facing the same compass direction as the first example. Here is the same craft as "seen" with others, supposedly on the same date in a different location.

Strange coincidence, ay? Beautiful visual effects.

Then again, you never know.

-e

Dry Erase Power

2007-08-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

The pen is mightier that what? Oh.

Whatever.

I'm just having too much fun watching this playful stream of consciousness go to work. Thought others might too.

Thanks goes out to David Walden for having this You Tube link hanging around on his blog.

I like to find out about the people who create things that I enjoy, so I found it a little frustrating when trying track down the source of this work. The artwork was created by someone who's other cool works are to be found at the vaguely identified blog of ljudbilden & piloten. I guess thats first initial followed by last name. Who knows? No profile is available as far as I can tell. Don't ask me why some artists want to stay semi-anonymous by positioning themselves behind handles, cryptic ids, and/or pseudonyms.

Whatever.

The animation was created as a music video for minilogue. That would be Sebastian Mullaert and Marcus Henriksson.

Follow the links for ljudbilden & piloten if you like the visuals. Follow the links to minilogue if you like the sounds. Enjoy.

-e

Poses Pushed A Little Too Far

2007-08-05T05:59:00.005-07:00

A Gentlemen's Duel image © Blur (click to enlarge)

(Warning: a sexually suggestive image is at the bottom of this post)

NOTE: August 21, 2007... Compared to other items found on this blog, there has been a lot of reaction to this post. Some I care to speak of... some I don't. Everything in this post is intended to be thoughts and opinions expressed for constructive purposes. As with any opinion expressed publicly, not everyone agrees. All I can offer before anyone gets bent out of shape is to consider the source. I have made a few minor adjustments to the original post because of source files no longer being available, and to fix two little typos. The gist of this article is essentially the same as originally posted.

When teaching animation I tell my students to observe the work of others and learn. I show them stills from various animations, great and small, and I point out all the tools being used by skilled artists who know how to create inspiring, appealing, and life-like performances on screen. As with all things that I teach, I tell my students to do what I do as well. Which brings me to the images you see in this post... and the name of this blog.

Poses are fundamentally important to how I understand character animation. The performance is in the pose. No amount of fancy pants spline tweaking, blur frames, or what-have-you can make up for poses that fail to communicate who a character is and what that character is driven to do internally by intentions, attitudes, and emotions. We understand the inside of the character by what we can read on the outside... the pose. To push a pose (as I understand the phrase) is to find the essence of a character performance by exaggerating those qualities of the pose that communicate what the performance is all about. Getting at the essence of what I understand about animation is partly why I came up with the name for this blog.

A Gentlemen's Duel image © Blur

As with anything in art, you can take something too far.

The expertly staged, nicely composed, and beautifully lit stills you see in this post are from A Gentlemen's Duel which was recently created by Blur. Blur Studio is very unique production house with some fantastic work to their credits. Like Pixar, Blur is one of the few CG shops that consistently puts out animated shorts. As is to be expected, A Gentlemen’s Duel is a beautiful production that is very well animated.

NOTE: August 21, 2007... the YouTube link originally found here was pulled (as it probably should have been.) You will not find it on Dailymotion either. To see the entire short check out Stash 32. Below is a still that matches the original YouTube rip. Click image to see Blur's trailer.

A Gentlemen's Duel image © Blur (click to jump to Blur's website)

Yesterday, I surfed over to Angie Jones' blog Thinking Animation and I noticed that one of her recent posts was both applauding and criticizing A Gentlemen's Duel. The negatives she summed it up as reasons for dissatisfaction and feeling insulted were probably a by-product of her not having a Y chromosome.

Well, I have that particular chromosome and I wasn't entirely thrilled with this latest Blur short either. To sum it up, I am not a fan of humor that requires the audience to turn off empathy towards a character. In general, I don't like jokes that are "funny" because a male character keeps getting nailed in the nuts... and I don't like jokes playing off a lack of concern for a female character's well being, so much so that she is beaten, punched, smacked, knocked over, and hit on the head with a broken stone planter. I also don't find a story funny just because ample bosoms giggle on female character who is generously endowed.

While well endowed women are a wonderful site to behold, and the way certain areas of their anatomies giggle can be a delightful experience for many of us humans - for me, it would help if a female character in a story where, oh... I don't know... in possession of a brain, some wit, and her own agenda that may happen to be separate from that of men. Some of us Y chromosome people find such qualities in women attractive, and dare I say it... appealing.

Good grief, the toy poodle has more personality than the female character around which so much of the plot revolves.

Angie Jone's post regarding this short reminded me of a rendered still of the production I found online in November of 2006. With this image I made a few discoveries that, atypical for me, I haven't bothered sharing with my students.

A Gentlemen's Duel image © Blur (click to enlarge)

One thing I try, desperately, to get across to my animation students is how all elements in the frame are connected. Which leads me to the still you see directly above this paragraph. If two characters are on the screen at the same time they have a relationship, and that relationship is communicated with all the tools great animators developed oh-so-many-decades in the past... staging, silhouette, line-of-action, contrast, asymmetry, eye-line, competing angles, flow-lines... flow-lines are big. Ask any of my students; I never shut up about flow-lines. With that in mind, what is with the male character's arms and hands in this image? He isn't just gesturing, and he isn't just positioning the chair for the female character to sit in... what is he doing with his hands?

His hands are all wrong. The flow is wrong. They have been pushed too far. But first lets look at his eyes and his crotch. Oh goodie.

Ok, so in part the joke behind this animated short is two "gentlemen" (who are nothing of the kind) are competing for the attention of the female character. The attitude and intension of this particular male character is pretty well summed up in how his eyes are positioned towards the female character's backside and how his crotch is protruding forward unnaturally. I'm no prude, I get the joke and I can find this kind of humor enjoyable if it is done well. What stood out to me when I first found this image in November was that all kinds of elements of his pose where pushed too far. Probably on purpose. But why?

When analyzing this image I noticed that the silhouettes of the two characters create an outline that is almost in the shape of a heart. Ok, kind of clever, but why? The male is only one of two rivals for the female character's affections. Her eye-line seems to match his and keeps the viewer moving back to the male character. But her arm, although natural, had a strange correspondence with the male characters left hand.

Then I noticed the strange posture of the male character's right hand seemed to have a strange correspondence with her neck, right shoulder, and breast. So, I pulled out my old image manipulation and compositing skills and did a little Photoshop work to test the theory that was developing. And sure enough...

(click to enlarge)

What the heck?! A subliminal suggestion? That is somewhat pornographic in nature? Again... why?

For the record, all I did in Photoshop was slide one character closer to the other and layer the male character's fingers appropriately. The "relationship" on screen between these two characters is no accident. I would not be surprised to find more cleverly disguised messages in the staging. In my opinion this type of artwork, and the ideas behind it, derives from the preoccupations of adolescent boys. I'm not so prudish as to be offended, but I am mature enough to wonder why Blur, a great creative production studio, would stoop down to this kind of juvenile silliness.

Maybe someone else can help me understand why this animated short is so contorted around sexual innuendo as if we haven't had that kind of thing before. Farce, sexual or otherwise, can be a wonderfully entertaining experience for the audience but only if it has been created by masters of the genre.

Sorry folks at Blur, in this particular case, I'm not seeing the brilliance of your previous animated short productions. There is brilliance in the lighting, character designs, models, the technical accomplishments for sure, and yes... the layout. But the brilliance on full display in all these areas isn't finding it's way into a story.

-e

Neglect

2007-08-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

image "borrowed" from this photo log created by someone named Jeff.

It's only been since Friday that I posted most recently and yet I feel as though I have neglected this blog. Strange.

I've been spending way too much time hanging out on other people's blogs, making a complete and utter nuisance of myself... opinionatedness all over the place. Soon there will be installment two of Beautiful Silhouettes and I have several other posts in the works.

In the meantime for you fellow history lovers check out:

Beautiful Silhouettes, part 1 regarding the early work of Lotte Reiniger.

Or check out the small but fascinating online archive of Ken Harris' work.

Or take a trip in the way-back-machine to watch a cool sample of Buster Keaton's work and read some thoughts on learning from this master of movement and performance.

For those of you curious about my work:

We have glacial movement in my acting performance work.

Some performance improvement through a good critique that forces the issue of timing and spacing.

Some animation tests geared towards what I teach.

And completion of my second animation test for the same.

Or just some life drawing examples from this spring.

And definitely check out this awesome "video" tutorial on the meaning of COPYRIGHT and fair use put together by Eric Faden.

All of my commenting on other peoples blogs seems to be driving more people to this location. I'm getting hits from places like Brazil, England, Germany, France, India, Romania, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Japan just to name a few. Thank you to everyone who bothers to stop by and check out this spot. Very flattering to think in what distant locations my musing are traveling. Stay tuned. I have plenty more to come including more samples of my own work current and past.

-e

A Mantra for Independent Animators

2007-07-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

I was in Tucson, AZ in June hanging out with one of my mentors and the chair of my graduate thesis committee... Becky Wible-Searles. Becky is an accomplished artist, poet, animator, and director. She had her own animation studio in NY city for some 14 years and has taught her subject for a number of years in New York, Savannah, GA and now, Tucson, AZ. She is also a lot of fun to hang out with, as is her husband Jimmy. During my visit she described a problem dealing with a talented student who was having difficulty getting his final project over the finish line. Becky is the absolute master of getting it done. She told this young student of hers an elegant mantra to chant...

SIMPLE. GOOD. DONE.

Powerful words for any self respecting animator and/or artist to live by.

So, I've been lurking around on Keith Lango's blo g a lot lately... doing my best to make a total nuisance of myself. One item that I mentioned in a comment to part 2 of Keith's The Fool's Errand series caught his attention. That item was Becky's mantra.

Later in part three of the series Keith mentioned that independent animated short production should probably be fast and fun. So, I just put the two ideas together and got SIMPLE, GOOD, FAST, FUN, DONE. It sounded okay, although not as good as the original... not as basic... but, it had flavor. FUN was the critical part that seemed to be improving the formula.

Well, I spent some time with the phrase today and decided to remove the "fast" part of the mantra. SIMPLE, GOOD, FUN, DONE. Seems to work better. Even more so if I put FUN before GOOD. Sounds good because it has a nice Rhythm.

Pulling from my print production and graphic design background I created a poster with this phase. I like the way my typographical layout makes FUN larger than the other words. Included with this post is a link to a PDF I created that gives you a tabloid (11in x 17in) poster of the image below.

Click the image or the link above to download the attached PDF. Print it and use it in good health. Credit Becky Wible-Searles and Keith Lango for its intellectual impact.

Credit me only for the graphical layout.

-e

Test Jump

2007-07-27T06:46:00.001-07:00

Well, I've done a little polishing on my test jump exercise using the 'aniBody' rig with which I've been tinkering. The movement is about as good as it is going to get considering that I'm using a bare-bones FK Spine setup. The arcs are working to my satisfaction and I have developed all the required elements of anticipation, action, reaction with a minimum of effort. It is no great achievement for the art of animation... just an exercise.

If I am proud of anything it is how quickly this came together and how well organized the work has been while it progressed. Accept of my students, I won't bother anyone with what the Dope Sheet editor or the Graph Editor look like for this example but it is something worth geeking out over for you Maya users. Very clean and organized.

Speaking of organized keyframe animation...

On the subject of process/technology versus art/animation there has been a great series of articles posted by Keith Lango. Check out The Fool's Errand, part 1, The Fool's Errand, part 2, The Fool's Errand, part 3. In this series Lango describes in heart breaking detail an ill-fated adventure he took into producing a personal animated short. Lots of great discussion in the comments as well.

Ok, that's it for now. Lot's of big, scary stuff to get started on.

-e

Beautiful Silhouettes, part 1

2007-07-22T08:18:00.000-07:00

Most animators understand the importance of a strong silhouette, but how many push this concept to the point of creating a beautiful silhouette? As the image above from the 1926 animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger demonstrates there is tremendous aesthetic potential in the silhouette. By the way, I did type that correctly, 1926, animated feature film, not by Walt Disney, but instead directed by a woman (*gasp*), some eleven years before Disney created the "first" feature length animation Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937.

I suggest that you sit for a moment and consider the cognitive dissonance in that last sentence... I'll wait.

Lotte Reiniger was inspired by the beauty of traditional Chinese and Balinese shadow plays. Just look at the beauty of these images from The Adventures of Prince Achmed or as it was originally titled in German Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed:

Her use of color which preceded technologies such as Technicolor is both simple an appealing. Notice the subtle details in the backgrounds of the images above. Animated in stop motion using paper cut-outs and captured in multiple planes, she managed to create a sense of depth throughout the film. Reiniger worked primarily with the help of her husband Carl Koch long before standard tools and techniques and were established.

For those who are interested here is a link to download an rather nicely constructed PDF press kit created by Carl R. Pidhagny, © 2001 Milestone Film & Video.

The PDF includes an essay titled "Scissors Make Films" by Lotte Reiniger herself explaining the making of the film, her synopsis of the story, as well as background history compiled by others on how Lotte and Carl invented the process necessary to make this production possible. For additional history about Lotte and Carl see this article at AWN written by William Moritz.

This beautiful film as well as a historical documentary about the director and her work are available on DVD. For those who believe in animation as an art form having rich aesthetic potential for telling stories, this is well worth the investment. Its also a fascinating slice of the history and development of animation.

The Adventures of Price Achmed DVD © 2001 Milestone Film & Video

Reiniger's work has inspired the animation of others who have followed her wake such as Michel Ocelot. Check back to see part 2 of this subject on animation aesthetics influenced by traditional Chinese and Balinese shadow plays, and the beauty of artful silhouettes.

-e

Ken Harris: Master Animator

2007-07-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

I just found this very aptly named website dedicated to the career and work of Ken Harris. The URL 'masteranimator' pretty much says it all. Best known for his work with Chuck Jones while at Warner Bros., Ken also worked on various projects for Hannah Barbera, MGM, and later worked with Chuck Jones again on the classic animated production of How the Grinch Stole Christmas! after Jones "left" Warner Bros.

In the middle there somewhere is time that Ken Harris spent working for Richard Williams on such projects as the title sequences for Return of the Pink Panther, Williams' animated production of Scrooge, and the mysterious and storied Williams feature production The Thief and the Cobbler. There are lots of little goodies to be found including cycles from Thief animated by Harris, and models sheets from various productions including some for the characters Pussyfoot and Marc Antony from the 1951 classic Feed the Kitty.

click to enlarge

I find his time working with Williams particularly meaningful since some of the the tutelage that Harris offered Williams and others at Williams' animation studio ended up inside the Williams' animation how-to The Animator's Survival Kit.

While the layout of the site is bare-bones and very basic, there are a lot of wonderful nuggets of animation greatness to be found. Special thanks to Animation Mentor student Jeff Weidner for having the link included on his blog. Also, while googling stuff for this post I came across Kevin Lanley's blog Cartoons, Models Sheets, & Stuff which has many, many samples of great stuff from the past, so check it out.

Wow this post is turning into a real link-o-rama so I'll just rap it up on a good, solid note...

The quote found on the front page of www.masteranimator.com much sums it up:

"He was a master animator, a virtuoso... Ken Harris did it all."
- Chuck Jones

And we are all the richer for his contribution.

-e

Cool? Yes. But, will it blend?

2007-07-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

Sure, the iPhone is sleek, beautiful, a cool to play with... but:

Who knew that the iPhone had such remarkable additional qualities. Wow, those boys and girls at Apple must think of every contingency. I have to say that blender is definitely up to the task. Frighteningly so. For those interested in seeing what else 'blends' there is an entire website devoted to the subject:

Will It Blend?

I was surfing through blogs by way of Halcyon Realms when I came across the above YouTube link. It took a little surfing but I found Zero had a link to the geeky IT mag GameAxis. Yeah, that's how I found it. I need to get a life, or just start acting like I have one.

Halcyon Realms is a beautiful blog by-the-way. Vong Yungchow is quite the talented and accomplished artist who seems to attract attention from a lot of other interesting people. Here is a photographer I found thanks to posts and comments at Halcyon Realms:

Laurie Jackson:
Parallel Universe and Capture This

Enjoy.

-e

I/O brush

2007-07-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

Get a load of this.

Just load it up and go.

Watching this video I find it just as fun seeing how the various sources for the "paint" program react to being sampled.

A special thanks goes to Marx Myth for the YouTube link.

-e

Rigging Anybody?

2007-07-14T13:13:00.000-07:00

I have been working on a template character for teaching the fundamentals of rigging *and* the fundamentals of animation in a course I'm likely to be teaching this fall. I don't yet know how much I'm going to need to cover in terms of basics, although I'm pretty certain that these students know at least a little about animation. More on that later.

Here is the segmented version of the character. I call him/her/it aniBody.

aniBody borrows some important concepts from other rigs designed for teaching students the fundamentals of animation. Primarily, I am pulling from the folks at Animation Mentor who provide their students with 1) a bouncing ball w/tail rig named Taylor 2) a walking-ball rig, 3) a segmented character named Stewie, as well as 4) a high-res Stewie setup which is a complete single mesh character.

Animation Mentor is an 'animation only' online school that is pretty much kicking asses and taking names on the subject of teaching character animation. Any college program of animation instruction that does not pay close attention to what Animation Mentor teaches is most likely cheating their students and probably headed for folly. But, like I stated, they teach character animation only (which is a lot) but nothing else that relates to the subject of character animation.

In my personal opinion, the majority of college programs teaching in animation should not be 'animation only' in their curriculum. If they were, who would write stories? board said stories? design characters? model and texture said characters? rig said characters? model environments? texture and light said environments? create special effects? render? composite? and so on... ?

...you get my point. Animation Mentor absolutely depends on there being other types of schools out there that are more comprehensive in terms of curriculum. AM graduates would have nothing to animate if it weren't for the other animation programs out there.

But, getting back to the subject... aniBody.

The design of aniBody uses some of the ideas behind setups such as those provided by Animation Mentor with a few basic differences; 1) aniBody is intended to serve as a basic model for learning rigging as well 2) aniBody is intended to be rigged and animated in stages: first hips/legs as in walking ball, then add spine/head, and finally entire character including face arms and hands 3) aniBody does not have cartoony proportions exaggerated such as Stewie's scary, over sized eyeballs and 4) aniBody is designed so that students can swap out the original head with their own designs if they choose to do so at a later time.

Rigging can be very tedious and unrewarding process for students who are not inclined to pursue the subject further. This character rig-and-animate approach is intended to give all students quicker rewards by allowing them to animate between stages of rigging. It is also designed to introduce the complexities of animating in gradual increments. A full-on character animation class (or two, or three, or... ) should follow with no time spent on such technical matters.

I do what I teach pure-and-simple. If I teach others to rig, I rig. If I teach others to animate... its because I animate. Anyone pushing the idiotic thesis that those who can do, and those who can't teach is itching for a ugly encounter with me.

You can't teach others what you don't do... therefore, I do and I teach.

Below are a few of my resent test run-thrus for rigging *and* animating. First, the hips/legs setup with a generic walk-cycle:

click to play

It's basic and it works. And then after rigging the spine, neck, and head I created a simple jump exercise:

click to play

The animation above is only in a rough-blocking stage... currently this sequence is in linear tangents (for those who care) and has been animated primarily on '2s'. With only a few hours in creation it still needs work, but I'll polish this one later. Meanwhile something funny happened when preparing this for my blog.

For those who think people familiar with the complexities of 3D rigging are lacking in artistic sensibilities, here is something that spawned from the creation of this post. While rendering the stills above with a little After Effects trickery I noticed something familiar. The still for my generic walk-cycle looked like Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 by Marcel Duchamp.

And then I noticed that my jump exercise vaguely resembled the effect used by the masterful experimental animator Norman McLaren in his work Pas de Deux. Along with George Dunning and Grant Munro, the work of Norman McLaren has served as inspiration to me in the past so I decided to render out what I had. Its not brilliant, but it gives me ideas.

click to play

In the mean time, for those who mistake art for not knowing how to make things work, watch what a truly masterful command of technical matters can produce.

I know, it looks more like film making and compositing than it does animation. First of all, animation is film making; and second of all, there was a time before contemporary digital compositing techniques when this kind of work easily fit in the category of experimental animation. Besides, aren't contemporary, digital compositors working primarily in the animation industry?

Hope you find this as amazing as do I. Meanwhile I'm going to continue working on my rigging so that I have a complete version of aniBody for the next test animation.

-e

A How-To...

2007-07-13T15:36:00.001-07:00

by Keri Smith.

Boy, do I identify with #2. Yeah. Yep.

If you like that one - the how-to - then scoot on over to Keri Smiths illustration website and check out her "play" section. There is indeed some fun stuff to be found.

Enjoy.

-e

What the heck is...

2007-06-29T15:49:00.001-07:00

copyright?

Okay, this is just too cool for words. Others have linked to this in the past. I just think it needs to be celebrated as much as possible.

And for that matter... what the heck is fair use?

Good question.

Well... its not a right, but a legal defensible position.

Anyone (like me) who has had their creative work credited to another or who (like me) wants to share the creative work of others without harming the original author, will find this informative if not useful. More importantly, if (like me) you are concerned that the coercive influence of corporate America is eroding the foundation of creative copyright for reasons that have nothing to do with protecting the intellectual property of the inventive individual... then I present to you an argument crafted by Eric Faden. Enjoy.

-e

Punch, Steal, Death

2007-06-29T06:04:00.000-07:00

According to the website Mingle2, this rating was determined based on the presence of the following words found sprinkled throughout my blog:

punch (4x)
steal (3x)
death (1x)

While the rating seems about right the words that were found make me wonder what is up with me.

BTW: I found this thanks to Jean-Denis Haas at swench.blogspot.com Click on the image above if you would like to get one of your own.

-e

Holy Cow! 4012!

2007-06-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

Four-thousand and twelve. That's a nice set of flip books to have in one collection. I love it when people are inspired to collect and preserve a slice of the past for the rest of us to gawk at. Animation is typically an labor intensive, expensive, and time consuming art form. The closest thing to an exception to this rule is the flip book (or flick book). Take a look at this site on the subject:

http://www.flipbook.info/index_en.php

Predominantly written in French, above is a link to the English home page. More fun than a pile of books documenting the work of Eadweard Muybridge.

I've been touring one corner of the great south-western USA. Plenty more posts to come on that subject and many others.

-e

Stealing Time for Life Drawing

2007-06-02T14:29:00.000-07:00

In March of 2004 I had the distinct pleasure of attending a figure drawing seminar taught by Glenn Vilppu. My participation was a bit surreptitious since I wasn't on the list of students invited to attend, but then asking for forgiveness instead of permission has worked well for me in the past, and it did so on this occasion as well. At the time I had finished my graduate studies and was working full-time in computer support while completing my MFA thesis. With all the technical responsibilities I was under pressure to meet every day, having a little creative time while learning from one of the best seemed like an opportunity that shouldn't be missed. "Feel the flow... feel the flow," was the catch phrase throughout the seminar.

I've been drawing the human figure from life off and on since the beginning of my undergraduate studies in 1983, and that's if you don't count the clothed figure drawing my high-school instructor had us do. So, I was feeling quite in my element during these drawing sessions, except for when it comes to that extra critical eye walking around the room. But then, that's why I sneaked into these drawings sessions in the first place. When he finally got around to me during one session Glenn noticed that I seemed to 'feel the flow' but that my drawings all 'lacked form'.

He then proceeded to demonstrate what he meant by this on a page of my sketch pad. The two examples above that appear as if they were drawn by an old master, were. These are demonstrating "form" on the left and measurement and rhythm on the right. Each drawing took only a few minutes and flowed out with amazing ease as his hand moves in what appeared to be a very graceful slow motion. I realized from that moment, no matter how comfortable I felt about my drawing abilities, that I needed to learn to draw all over again. Since that time its been a struggle to find time for developing my skills in this area but I manage to keep trudging forward. Below are some more resent examples of my effort.

Above are some 3-minute poses from the first sessions I had been to in almost a year and a half. Some flow but not much form. Still working on building the figure from the inside out. I seem to struggle a bit when the poses are long since I have time to think about what I am doing instead of just doing it. Below I took one 20-minute pose and broke it up into three drawings. Keeping the amount of time I spend on a drawing to minimum seems to help me stay focused, and repetition never hurts either. The last one on the bottom seems to be the strongest of the three.

Below I seem to have flow and a little form but my lines are stiff and laboured.

These next pair of 10-minute poses show that I'm still focusing a lot on the outside, but some hints of construction are beginning to appear.

Below are two 20-minute poses. Seems I didn't get lost in the details as much as usual.

Ah, form. Not as fluid as I would like but I'm still learning this approach after many years of old habits.

Below is a figure who provides a chance to learn more about form with rounded lines and an opportunity to describe weight. The 3-minute pose on the left started nicely if somewhat unevenly. On the right you seen in the 10-minute pose I started to forget my main objective... using the flow of the figure, and to describe her form. At least it isn't as lost as earlier examples from 10-minute poses.

Below are the latest pair of 20-minute poses.

There is some form and some weight described as well.

Usually, after a 10 or 11 hour day I find it a bit difficult to drag myself down-town to the Tuesday life drawing sessions, but every time I manage to do so is well worth the effort. This post could have been labeled under the category of "examining my work" but it seemed more appropriate to file as "learning from others". I am still learning from Glen Vilppu who has been teaching this subject to animators for decades. Also, I learn from the brave people who stand, absent clothing, in the middle of a room full of strangers who stare intently at naked human bodies.

There have been some nice posts about related subjects on various animation blogs I frequent. Spline Doctor Andrew Gordon talks about the importance of developing your eye, and PJ Leffleman posted some fabulous examples of eye movement in movies. Both of these discussions emphasise opening your eyes and learning through observation. For me, life drawing has been a primary source of developing my ability to see. What goes down on paper is only evidence of how well I spend my time observing. Having to steal every little minute to do so seems to focus the mind.

I strongly recommend the practice of life drawing to any visual artist, regardless of your particular creative focus.

-e

The Great Stone Face

2007-06-02T08:04:00.000-07:00

So nicknamed for a 'stone-like' expression seen on his face in movies and promotional head shots, Buster Keaton has a lot to teach animators such as myself. When animators talk about learning from silent era film stars they invariably mention Charlie Chaplain, and for good reason. It just seems to me that Keaton gets passed over with little consideration.

Originally a vaudeville performer of tremendous physical skill, Joseph Frank Keaton was supposedly given the handle 'Buster' by a fellow vaudeville performer named Harry Houdini, after said illusionist witnessed Keaton take a particularly spectacular tumble down a flight of stairs between two rows of seats without touching anyone in the audience. As the story goes Keaton injured himself but managed to immediately get up and continue his performance. After witnessing this Houdini was claimed to have said, "quite the little buster." Keaton was only a child at the time. This apocryphal story is most likely fiction, at least regarding Houdini's contribution, although the basis for it isn't.

Harry Houdini knew Keaton when he was a child performer taking fantastic spills in front of audiences. Another, now forgotten, vaudeville performer is probably responsible for giving Keaton this handle based on his physical talents. This being said, another apocryphal story regarding Keaton persists. As a result of his vaudeville experience, Keaton apparently knew a thing or two about acting as well. The fact that he used facial expressions in performances gets glossed over by historians, or worse, gets twisted into the falsehood of happening once in his entire career.

The name of this blog is pushing poses, and so I will forgo making arguments about how well Buster Keaton used facial expressions in acting for perhaps some another time. Instead, I want to talk about character posing and audience perception. Check out the image below:

That is the image created by someone who knows clarity of staging and posing for an audience. That is the image of someone who grew up performing successfully for vaudeville audiences. Look at that line-of-action. Check out the flow line of his left arm as it directs the audiences attention up through the face and down in the direction of the camera tripod. Notice how the the camera and tripod reinforces the eye line. This is great stuff! Did he look through the camera while developing this kind of pose? With the help of others posing, perhaps. Below is another example of good staging and good posing. Not only are the lines between characters working in this shot but so is the eye line. Notice how Keaton who is mostly in profile has his head turned to a 3/4 view so that we can read his face.

Buster Keaton understood audiences. Not long after arriving in Hollywood, he quickly moved from performer in keystone cop films with Fatty Arbuckle to independent silent film director. That shift was no accident. As a film director Buster Keaton was a lot more than a stage performer turned silent film actor and stunt man. Probably because he was an outsider to film, and stepping into a relatively new and yet to be defined medium, Keaton pushed the boundaries of film making of his time before control of his own work was taken away from him.

None-the-less his acting and physical stunts are also available for you to watch in this partial archive of his work. If you are into this you will want to purchase The Art of Buster Keaton DVD Box Set.

Keaton was famous for performing all of his own stunts for which he ended up in the hospital many times as a result. Later performers such as Jackie Chan would become known for this kind of risky business inspired largely by Keaton. BBC Channel 4 has a web page devoted to famous dare devils where both Buster Keaton and Harry Houdini are listed amongst others deserving... and less so. Probably the most famous of Buster Keaton's stunts was in his 1928 film Steamboat Bill Jr. when the front of a house falls around him and misses crushing him to death by mere inches. Talk about the power of a good hold. Sheesh!

This was later borrowed for a Walmart ad animated by all too groovy Kyle Dunlevy when he was still working a Red Rover. There are some nice notes on posing and process written by Dunlevy about these ads so check them out if you haven't already.

(click to jump to clip)

Regardless of your methods, as the sequence above demonstrates, if you are gonna steal you may as well steal from the best. Lots of great gags and some truly amazing stunts can be found in the prolific career of Buster Keaton. His awareness of the audience informed his performances and allowed him to create some genuinely unique ways to tell stories in film. He took full advantage of the medium in which he was working. The confinement of his talents by industry producers later in his life was tragic. Who knows what additional great things he may have done if the greed of a few had not run amok.

For those who are interested, there is a ridiculous assortment of links to articles about Buster Keaton that can be found at Juha's Buster Keaton page. There is also an American Master's episode by PBS about Keaton. I'm not saying that Charlie Chaplain (or other greats such as Harold Lloyd for that matter) aren't worth knowing about, I just want to spend a little time on Buster Keaton, one of my inspirations and sources of knowledge as an animator.

-e

Timing and Spacing

2007-05-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

"Animation, it's all in the timing and the spacing."

I read that passage in The Animator's Survival Kit years ago. Richard Williams was quoting Grim Natwick (pictured above), former Fleischer/Disney/Fleischer/UPA animator and "officially" uncredited designer of Betty Boop. It all seemed so clear when I read it years ago. I preach this approach to my students constantly because its what I strive to practice in my own work. After my Glacial Movement post I received a critique from Kate. She had a problem with my revised blocking example.

After playing it over and over she decided that the problem was about three and a half seconds in, during the transition between when the character finishes describing his body being a vehicle for his brain and what kind of ride that vehicle should provide. Its a setup for the punch line about his brain deserving a smooth, luxurious ride. According to Kate I have him moving too much (i. e. continuously) between the setup and the punch line and therefore watering down the effect of both. Instead she stated I should hold on the moment when he states, "...caries my brain around." This would help emphasise what quality of ride his brain deserves. Much texting back and forth ensued. She was on to something, and yet her advise was to change something I believed was communicating an essential quality in my character; the position of his hands and head as he has made his initial remark about the relationship of brain to body:

brain = a truly glorious thing

body = mere device towards which he doesn't feel connected

I spent a lot of time acting this piece out until I felt comfortable with the attitude behind the character's statements. I then constructed for myself this persons psychology/world view. I ask myself, 'what attitude justifies this kind of statement being made in this manner?' Thumb-nailing for me is an early stage of design that is partially based on my own movement and performance, and partially based on crafting a pleasing performance with animation technique; line-of-action, flow lines, staging, counter angles, arcs, overlapping action, squash and stretch, and the list goes on. Its a tricky balance. While I have a serious soft spot for experimental animation, I strive not to animate by accident. In my character work, things are where then are for a reason... usually a combination of reasons. This attitude about craft and creativity has been with me a long time and was partially honed while working in graphic design. Kate was now stopping around on my good efforts and telling me not to be so "mechanical" in my approach. The problem wasn't mechanics... the problem was balancing her legitimate observations with all the other things I figured out about this performance so far.

So, how do I preserve a single pose I believe is working when it is watering down my animation? In comes the Dope Sheet Editor to the rescue...

In my best attempts to use Kate's advise regrading a hold between the setup and the punch line, I found that a simple change in timing gave me a lot of what was needed. Then I noticed that my arcs were off, and so I started tweaking the spacing of the hand movements leading up to the pose in question (pictured above). I added a slight settle to help ease into the pose since I'm hitting it faster, while concentrating on the movement of the nose through the gesture, into the pose, and then the settle. And what do you know?... the settle adds more appropriate attitude. I then made another slight fix in timing by speeding up the flicking gesture he makes out of the top of his head on, "...and my brain". Previously, I had the accent on the vowel in "brain", now it happens before "brain" providing a stronger, 'felt' accent on the word. All of this came together very quickly and I feel much better about moving forward with this piece. And this is the first direct experience I've had with improving the emotional performance with small changes in timing and spacing. For comparison the newly re-timed version as opposed to the earlier version that lacked adequate separation between setup and punch line.

"Animation, it's all in the timing and the spacing."

Thanks Grim. Thanks Kate.

-e

PS. For more on Grim Natwick here he is interviewed by David Johnson.

Aardman!

2007-05-27T12:46:00.000-07:00

On his blog Keith Lango is gushing about the quality of lip-sync animation done at Aardman. I don't blame him one bit! That's Aardman who's name begins with a double letter 'Aa' for extra animation goodness. And as it turns out, all a shmutter!

In his post on the subject Keith Lango also ranks his favorite studios as Aardman first (in part because of Stefan Marjoram), Pixar second, and StudioAKA third (because of Marc Craste). I would also add a shout out to the work of Philip Hunt at StudioAKA, for his extraordinary weirdness and playful artistry, and to Jakob Schuh and Saschka Unseld of the StudioSoi for just being too damn cool for words.

Its funny, the number of times he posts opinions and I find he is saying the things I've been saying. Its weird, like we grew up drinking water from the same well or something.

In that vein I would like to follow Keith Lango's example by including a link to the Lip-Sync tutorial created by Stefan Marjoram a while back. It uses a little of the audio from his short Deadline linked to above and includes a very rudimentary rig to play with in Maya... for you Maya people.

-e

Glacial Movement

2007-05-21T04:09:00.000-07:00

I've returned to working my two current and unfinished animation projects lately. The first is a heavy lift that I needed some expert advice regarding the technical aspects of competitive power lifting. That project appears to be back on track. The other pictured above is a dialog (or rather monologue) piece that I started 6 months ago and then put aside.

I'm still at a very rough blocking stage with this one and I am working on adding a few more subtle movements, trying to add some counter movement, small timing fixes, and cleaning up my arcs. The gestures around "my body is just a vehicle..." are still too big and sloppy.

Audio is John Lithgow from 3rd Rock from the Sun and the character model/setup is called Alfred created by, or rather adapted by, Rodri Torres from the Lowman rig by Miguel G. Viñe.

Post a comment if you care to and tell me what it needs.

-e

Tinker, tinker

2007-05-17T17:41:00.000-07:00

Well, seems like this blog stuff has some apeal for me. I keep tinkering with the visual appearance of this blog as if anyone is reading it.

Yah, right!

Okay, my one, true reader... looks like I'm officially in the blogosphere. Damn you Marx Myth! Okay, now update your blog Mr. Fancy-Pants:

http://marxmyth-2dornot2d.blogspot.com/

-e

Oh Great! Another animator who blogs...

2007-05-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, does this make me a cool animator now that I have a blog? All I wanted to do was post a comment on Victor Navone's blog, and now look at me.

Oh well. Maybe I can make this useful.

Cheers.