Monday, December 6, 2010

this blog and others


























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.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

More Student Work

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

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Student Work

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

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Essential Acting Principles























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.



Monday, March 16, 2009

Blogs of note



















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.