Timing and Spacing

The student film I worked on (pretty much fulltime from Jan '05 though Sept '05 and then part-time until around June '06) is up on YouTube. I did most of the rigging, a lot of the scripting and a number or other random things (an effect here and there, a little bit of animation) for the film. A ton of other really talented people worked really hard on it as well.

Check it out:

This is just the temp score; Hummie Mann and his students will be doing the final score. I've heard August '07 is when it will be finished.

Posted by David at 02:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Well, I'm still alive. I imagine after all this time, I've probably lost all my readers (both of them).

Anyway, one of the several projects that's been keeping me busy for the last few months has been finishing up stuff for my demo reel.

Here are some links to a variety of sizes and versions:

Demo Reel - 640x480 Quicktime (19meg)
Demo Reel - 640x480 AVI (48meg) not sure why this is so huge
Demo Reel - 320x240 Quicktime (6.5meg)
Demo Reel - 320x240 AVI (6.5meg)

I'm starting to look for a position as a character rigger, a tools programmer (MEL and/or C++ or C#), or a pipeline engineer.

Feel free to leave any feedback in the comments section. If you'd like to e-mail me, you can reach me at my gmail address, which is w.david.lewis. If you can't get the address from that, leave a comment and I'll contact you.

I'm going to try and start blogging again. Try and make it at least a weekly habit. Maybe that'll be my New Year's resolution.

Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

Posted by David at 03:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I went to the course on "Open Season" at Siggraph this year. Before the course, I wasn't too excited about seeing the movie. Afterwards however, I was pretty eager to see it. It looks like it has all the right elements: a good story, a great look, and great animation. Hopefully no fart jokes, but that might be too much to ask.

And now we have a nice book showing even more of the artwork than we saw at Siggraph. The layout of the "Open Season" book is similar to the "Monster House" book. It's got a lot of little insert pieces (postcards, booklets, etc). However, the slipcase is much nicer and more heavy-duty than "Monster House". There are also a few foldout pages.

Initially, I thought the Disney Treasures books have influenced the designs of the "Monster House" book and this one, but it seems to be a trend that extends outside of animation books. Tonight I saw a book on Audrey Hepburn that was a similar format with reproductions of letters, pictures, etc.

I used to hate foldout pages, but once I started looking at art books, I realized how great they are; they allow you to look at a large piece of artwok without having the binding hide a large strip down the middle when the piece spans two pages. Unfortunately, this book didn't use them very effectively. There are some drawings and paintings that span two pages (particularly in the visual development section) that they didn't put onto foldout pages and there are foldout pages that just have a number of small pieces on them that don't utilize the larger size of the foldout. What were they thinking?

Here is the book out of the slipcase:

They have postcards for all the major characters (and many of the secondary ones as well). They come protected by bits of tissue paper. This is the one for Elliot:

This is a foldout with pictures of the props. It looks like a store catalog. Here it is in the book closed, and then with one flap opened up.

This is a foldout showing scales of the trees next to one of the characters (Beth). Here it is closed and then opened. These are attached to the book with a strip of glue. It's unclear to me whether you're supposed to be able to remove them or not. You can really see the Eyvind Earle influences at work on these tree studies by Mike Humphries.

This is a booklet with extra information on the characters.

The book also comes with a small poster (11"x20" maybe) folded in an envelope in the back of the book.

I have my usual complaints that the books aren't technical enough and don't go over the development process more, but that's to be expected. I'm still undecided whether I like this style of book (with all the little pieces) or a more standard book. However, I really don't want this trend extended to the point that we have paper dolls of the characters or little games and activities embedded in the books. I want these books to be all about the art and artists.

All in all, this is a great looking book with a bunch of nice art. I haven't seen the movie yet, but will be going this weekend.

Posted by David at 09:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Look at all the animation goodies that Amazon delivered to my door this week:

I've got a lot of reading to catch up on this week!

I'll do another post later today about the "Open Season" book.

Posted by David at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just saw "The Illusionist" tonight and really liked it. It wasn't perfect, and I have a few questions about what the directors intent was with one of the plot elements (sorry for being vague, but I hate it when someone ruins a movie for me and I don't want to do it for anybody else), but I really enjoyed it.

Jenny Lerew wrote a much better review than I ever could, plus she added some great stuff about Joe Ranft. After you finish here, go read her review.

My one additional comment is that I saw a trailer for a new animated movie "Renaissance". It looks like a beautiful film. It has a black and white (and I mean black and white, that's it) graphic novel look to it. I hope the story and the rest of it lives up the the look. Check out the trailer.

I'm pretty excited about this one.

Posted by David at 01:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I somehow missed this in the runup to Siggraph.

This article (which appears to be a section from a forthcoming book) is primarily about effects animation, but almost everything he says can be applied to character animation as well. His focus on doing your research and not just knowing how your subject moves, but internalizing it, so it's part of your subconscious is extremely important. Once it's in your subconscious, you can let go of it consciously and still have it translate into your animation. I particularly like this quote:

Remember that no matter how well you master your drawing technique, if you can’t feel the effects you are trying to animate, they will not sing with life.

If you watch Glenn Vilppu talk about drawing, he's constantly emphasizing how you need to "feel" the curve of the model, or "feel" the tension of the model's body in your hand as you draw the figure. When I can actually do this, my sketches come out so much better and look like they have life (or at least more life than the others).

I'm really looking forward to this book coming out.

Posted by David at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been really hot for the last few days here in Seattle, so going to movies has been a popular way to cool down. I wonder what the movie attendence spike has looked like? Anyway, I went to go see "The Lady in the Water" last night. Before the movie, I saw this awesome commercial for Coca Cola. This is a link to a decent quality Quicktime version. Below, I'm going to attempt to embed the lesser quality YouTube version (just to give it a whirl). Psyop did the work, and the QT page has some more credits on the 3D artists who did the work.

Oh, the movie? Meh. I was hoping for so much more. Not bad, but not up to my expectations. Maybe more about it later.

Posted by David at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night at our local Barnes & Noble, my wife found a copy of a British magazine called "Total Film". The current issue (#117 Summer 2006) comes in a cardboard folder and contains a 34 page booklet called "The Art of Pixar".

It's got artwork on every page. Most of it I've seen before, but some only in MOMA exhibit catalog. So, if you don't have that, with this you'll get to see a small percentage of it. The artwork covers the shorts and all the feature films including "Cars".

There's a page and a half Q&A with John Lasseter answering questions sent in by readers (presumably) and short interviews with many Pixar artists: Pete Docter, Andrew Stanton, Bob Petersen, Michael Kass and many others.

Here's a nice sketch of Buzz I haven't seen anywhere else. I like the different eye poses at the bottom.

This is what a lot of the smaller interviews look like. Short answers by Pixar artists and artwork.

Some of the MOMA art.

I don't know long this will be available, so you should grab your copy soon.

All images are © Disney.

Posted by David at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just saw this stickfigure animation. It's pretty funny and kind of reminds me of a short I saw at Siggraph called "Attack of the Note Sheep". You can find it here.

The first place I found "Attack of the Note Sheep" was a site called Zango. It looks to be full of spyware... To watch a video, you have to install their software. Never a good sign.

Posted by David at 09:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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

Continue reading "Trip to AnimationMentor and Pixar" »

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.

Continue reading "The Wild" »

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)