Timing and Spacing

Last Thursday, a couple of AM classmates and I went down from Seattle to Oakland to visit the AnimationMentor headquarters and Pixar.

First we went to AM. These are my two partners in crime standing at the main entrance to AnimationMentor.


Despite dropping in without any advance notice, everybody was very friendly. We got to look around and see the AM offices in Berkeley. Everybody took time to say hello. Bobby Beck (CEO of AM and former Pixar animator) took a break from his meetings and came out and chatted with us. Bobby is as animated (so to speak) in person as he is in the AM lectures. He definitely has a passion for animation.

Then we headed off to lunch at Pixar with one of the AnimationMentor mentors who works at Pixar as an animator.


We immediately marked ourselves as visitors by standing in the middle of the road taking pictures of the "Cars" logo in the driveway.


At least one car of Pixar employees (Pixarians? Pixarites?) were amused at the antics. We went into the main building.


You've probably seen the standard picture of the atrium.

We had lunch in the cafeteria. Pixar has free drinks and free cereal. I got to see the free cereal room, but didn't have a chance to sample it's contents. I had a sizeable turkey sandwich with the hottest Dijon mustard I've had in quite a while along with a big pile of greens. The food was pretty good.

The building was designed by Bohlin-Cywinski-Jackson, which was also the architecture firm that designed Bill Gates' house in Medina (along with James Cutler Architects). It has the look and feeling of a rennovated loft or warehouse. As you come into the main entrance, the art side is on one side of the atrium and the technical side is on the other. We took a short tour through both sides. The artistic side is like one of the "Art of..." books that you can walkthrough. Human-sized statues of characters. Artwork everywhere. I really tried not to stare into the offices as we walked past, but it was very difficult. After the artistic side, the technical side felt a little depressing in contrast. It felt very much like walking through the corridors of Microsoft. The building was smaller than I thought from other pictures I've seen. Things I would have thought would be across the building are really just down the hall from each other. I couldn't take any pictures in the art section of the building, but you can see some here as well as some better pictures from the atrium.

"The Incredibles" displays are no longer in the center of the atrium, and they didn't have too much setup from "Cars". They had a little car next to the reception desk.



and then a set of cardboard cutouts standing up behind the reception desk.

Brad Bird rode by on a scooter probably half a dozen times. I tried to get a picture of him, but he was just too quick. He's a speed demon on those scooters. All I would have been able to get is his back receeding in the distance.

Everybody we talked to there was super friendly and really passionate and excited about animation.

Afterwards, we killed some time at a used bookstore in Berkeley, Black Oak Books. We saw a 1st edition slipcased version of "The Illusion of Life" signed by Frank and Ollie along with a section of film in the front from "Pinocchio". It's thicker than the current printings (by maybe as much as 150 pages). The only thing we could see that seemed new was some background images that are full-page in the earlier edition are reduced and shown several per page in the later editions. Unfortunately, it was a little out of our price range. It was in awesome condition.

Then back on the plane to Seattle. A nineteen hour day for me, but definitely worth it.

Posted by David at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've seen Ed Hooks talk about "Acting for Animators" twice, once at GDC in 2004 and once at Siggraph in 2005. These are the notes I took at GDC. Ed didn't provide these, but they're as complete a record of what he said as I could enter. They are skewed towards adding emotion to games, but there is tons of stuff for character animators not involved in games as well. You'll find all this and much more in his book of the same title "Acting for Animators." I highly recommend it.

I must admit, there're bits of this I haven't internalized yet. "Thinking leads to conclusions; emotions leads to actions." Don't conclusions lead to actions as well? If I think about the check I just wrote and realize it will overdraw my account, won't that thought lead to action?

I've come to accept that it's not the conclusion, but the associated emotion that causes the action. Fear of being overdrawn, or having your phone shutoff is what drives the action, not the conclusion itself. Don't most all conclusions have some emotional association? So, doesn't thinking lead to conclusions, which cause emotions, which lead to actions? Doesn't this mean that thinking leads to actions? I guess I haven't quite divined why the subtlety is useful.

One bit I really like is the analogy of character analysis to icebergs. I think this ties back to the "Audition" post I did earlier. That 85% contains the moment before and all the characters history. It's those things that define who he is today and shapes his actions.

I hope you enjoy the notes; I typed like a fiend to get them entered into the computer. Ed is quite the character; very funny in person and well worth seeing if you get the chance. See him at GDC or Siggraph or whereever if you can, or if you're control your companies training budget, bring him out for a day or two. I have no association with Ed other than as someone who thinks he's got come interesing things to say. I you attend one of his sessions, be on-time and plan to stay for the entire session. Trust me on this.

Posted by David at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, I saw "The Wild" tonight. In short, I liked it. It's not a knock-it-out-of-the-park homerun, but it's a good solid film.

I had read all the talk about how it was a cross between "Madagascar" and "Finding Nemo", so I wasn't sure what I was going to get. I had also seen some screen shots and wasn't too impressed with the character design and rendering. It seemed like it was venturing into Uncanny Valley territory.

I liked the story. It wasn't like "Mad" or "Nemo" at all. There were some superficial similarities, but the movie quickly veered into different territory. It was much more about being true to yourself and your nature. This theme was shown in several different ways by different characters. It also didn't feel like it was riding on pop culture references or celebrity voices. They used top-flight vocal talent, but not those that were instantly recognizeable (except for Eddie Izzard, who I think I recognized instantly because I'm such a fan).

I must say I found the art direction a bit uneven. The main characters were realistically rendered, but then would have cartoony squashing and stretching. I think I would have preferred a different, less-realistic artistic choices.

Still, an enjoyable movie. Except the other guy in the theater kept talking. The one other guy kept talking. To himself. During the movie. Loud enough for me to hear half a theater away.

"The Wild" is a good movie; the folks at C.O.R.E. should be congratulated. I hope it's box office picks up or at least doesn't fade quickly, though I don't hold much hope. Go see it; take the kids.

Posted by David at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been reading "Audition" by Michael Shurtleff. It's technically a book for actors who have to prepare for an audition in a short period of time. The techniques he describes helps the actor give a rich non-obvious performance. I'm finding this book extremely useful in doing my animation exercises.

Shurtleff lists 12 Guideposts that you should work through to understand your character and the scene. The one I'm finding most useful right now is "The Moment Before". Every scene starts in the middle, and what happened to your character in the moments before your scene took place. You may have to go back years in the character's life to recreate the moment before.

When picking the moment before and what leads up to it, most people tend to stay too general. As Shurtleff says, "The more specific, the more focused the moment before, the better the entire scene will be."

Specificity drives better acting choices. If you're doing an exercise to lift a heavy weight, you can have a dry exercise of a character lifting a box, or you can have him struggling to lift a box off his foot or from in front of a door he desperately neeeds to open. The second is far more interesting to watch and turns a simple exercise into a performance.

Right now I have to do a short exercise that shows two contrasting emotions. I've picked a scene where someone goes from despondent to happy. My character is despondent, finds a large amount of money on the ground and is happy. That's pretty general. Of course, everybody likes finding money, but making some more specific choices can give a richer foundation to build the acting on.

He's not just despondent because he's broke, he's actually on his way home from a failed job interview, and his landlady has said if he doesn't bring the rent money, he's out on his ass. That's more specific and gives me more to work with. The money is the difference between him sleeping in bed that night and sleeping on a park bench. I also need to flesh out his character more. Why is he broke? Was he fired from his job? Was it a long fall from grace? Or has he always struggled for money?

"The moment before must be strong, meaty and full." It needs to propel an entire scene.

This may seem like a lot of preparation for a fifteen second pantomime exercise, but I think this type of preparation will show in the performance. That makes it all worthwhile.

Posted by David at 09:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome to my blog.

Let me introduce myself. My name is David, and I've been working as a software engineer for about 20 years. I'm now training for a job in the field of animation. My long term goal is to work in feature animation, but I find games and visual effects work interesting as well.

I'm currently finishing up an animated student production at the University of Washington where I did character setup, some effects, and general scripting in Perl and MEL. I'm also a third quarter student at Animation Mentor.

What will you find here? I'll probably post on animation (from a viewers perspective), some technical bits on animation, MEL, Maya, and movies in general. Hopefully it will be interesting enough to be worth your time. I should be posting twice a week or so.

As for the name of the blog? It's from a quote of Grim Natwick in "Animator's Survival Kit". "It's all in the spacing and in the timing." How true.

Posted by David at 07:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)