From the eyes of a newbie: Gesture drawing and animation usage?

Took up the 45 second X 20 poses challenge at QuickPoses.com in the category "Athletes of  God".

Oh what an experience... very brief yet revealing. It was in many ways frustrating and very challenging, but at the same time it really gave me a lot of feedback on my own position towards observation and drawing, and compelled me to write about it straightaway.

Drawing certainly makes me feel like I get the fastest access to put down in a material form that feedback I get visually when trying to observe things, and in a personal level it gives me during the process...relief? A sense of autonomy and somehow "fun"is gained that otherwise in other more elaborate procedures of visual media might be lacking. I mostly speak in this case for something  like 3D computer animation (the medium I mostly work on), where I constantly feel like things can go wrong that are beyond your control but still affect your work and mindset drastically (mostly technical things like rigs, tools, pipeline, render look, etc etc...)... I cannot speak of other mediums like sculpting or stop motion animation, since I don´t know much, but somehow I feel drawing really helps me to tap into things faster somehow. Like a great way to just lay down the fundamentals of what you need to build later, and also a great way to quickly try out things and experiment. In a medium like animation, to be spontaneous is very, very hard!

On a very personal standpoint, after hearing a lot of people saying that nowadays drawing is not that neccessary to animate, I think I´d still disagree. If there is other equivalent ways to lay down and synthetise your observational experience in a material form then is all great and most likely I really don´t know about it (the other one I can think of is writing, which I equally value and appreciate as well!), but otherwise I truly feel something special about this skill that should be learned and practiced constantly "especially" for animators. We don´t certainly need to be Da Vinci´s, that´s not the point, and I´m not stating its "the only way"....Is just that if we need to practice observation, which no doubt is a fundamental need for animators and artists universally, drawing just feels like the most accessible way to compile your observation from "your own core perspective", your own interpretation basically, and materialise it promptly. Is just a good tool and asset to have as a compliment to your skillset I think and I guess it cannot affect dettrimentally to your animation skills.

But this is very debatable when it comes to its "practicality" in a professional environment, with deadlines and style criteria of a project amongst other things. Here is where I see a lot of people fight over it, voice out their arguments either strongly favouring this idea of profoundly against it, or simply ignoring its value. Even to an extent of touching upon the approach towards what to take from when you "observe"... is such a huge topic! Some geniouses of this artform can grasp and observe motion and spacing and make their animation work really stand out because of what I call "appeal in motion"....something very, very hard to do I think, and way more abstract. Others, like myself I think, stick with the most accessible and summarising information of a particular motion, and strip it down to its visual essence to later reinterpret it our own way.... I guess this is where the term "gesture" comes from? I´d like to expose more thoughts about this soon and learn more.
Is a much bigger topic and sometimes can get philosophical or scientific even, but nevertheless interesting!

#ravikamble #rvganimation #athletesofgod #quickposes #quickposes.com #sketchbook #gesture #drawing

From the Eyes of a newbie: up to what extent should an animator rely on live action reference?

A prominent topic of discussion in every art form, and especially when doing it professionally, is the prior preparation work that is required to execute the final piece with maximum success. Animation is no exception at all, and is interesting how in the top elite group of animators the discussion goes to broad extents.

At iAnimate I've been exposed to a lot of top feature studio workflows, ideas and approaches. In Computer Graphics Animation, the level of believability in animated characters demands higher attention to detail and physics of real life, because of how the medium allows us to get a big proximity with real life itself and how accurate and precise the technology allows us to be. But the control over that power still has to come from us animators. I truly think this has a logical justification, and it’s also something I've had to embrace throughout my learning process in the course, to try my best to produce feature quality CG animation.

It was not a surprise to know how heavily live action reference footage is used and massively encouraged by every instructor. What was interesting was to see each one's point of view, and se e how “religiously” some people would follow their reference, in comparison to others who argued very valid points regarding reference as a mere starting tool, but nevertheless an important one.

For a long time I used to think that using live action footage to create animation defeated the point of us trying to achieve “the illusion of life”…that it dangerously felt in the realm of “rotoscoping”, which I did not like without prior understanding of its validity (it definitely has its place).I did always value the training of observation from real life though, and hence I’m a drawing fan (not as good as I´d like to be, but definitely one of the tools in my arsenal that I use when I animate or plan things out). I probably am not alone on this: a lot of people have felt like “cheating” when they used their acting reference (or any researched video) heavily in their work. However, until very recently it did not click on me that it was something normal, and indispensable in many cases, depending on what you tried to animate. The magic of classic Disney movies mesmerizes me every time, but throughout time I’ve come to understand better and better (or think that I do) how artists could get someone to act and move in such a smooth and “believable” way, and how could someone give life to a talking, thinking and breathing character. This also shed some light to my thoughts:



But who deserves credit? The animator or the actor who played the initial reference for Gimini Cricket? This debate is huge....so big that it has got the Academy of Motion Pictures doubting about which category should films like Avatar (or almost every motion captured based character performance movie) be placed in. Some animators accept the reality that at the end of the day the performance and storytelling counts, and the director has the upper hand on that. Others voice their opinions arguing quite valid points. Even Andy Serkis talks about actors deserving award nominations for motion capture performance too, which has led some animators to controversial arguments. Check out this blog post by lead animator Tim Borelli. Very good points stated indeed.

Back in 2008 Carlos Baena, from Pixar fame and one of the founders of well known “Animation Mentor”, came to Gran Canaria to give a talk about his work and promote AM. He showed us some clips of his acting reference for Finding Nemo, and we saw the raw performance of his shots...and how he progressively combined it with reference from various fish to get the characters in the movie to behave convincingly like talking fish. He told the audience clearly that “Using reference is NOT cheating”. Now having embraced it myself so much, I can understand better his statement.

Back then I was still skeptical. A lot of traditional animators criticized the heavy use of live action recording as a reference tool. Kevin Koch covered the subject extensively in a series of great posts in his blog, and I absolutely agree with him about the final conclusions. Is interesting to read his anecdotes about the trends though, like what he mentions about his time doing traditional animation in DreamWorks back in the day, when scanning photos and recording video felt like a crime…that’s how farfetched it got to be. I’ve even heard rumors about animators in certain studios who, as soon as they come to know about someone who is about to show a blocking pass in dailies without having used any reference footage, are discouraged to hand the work and asked to shoot some live action footage to get into the habit…all this of course, ignoring how good to blocking is! Crazy stuff.

At “Speaking of Animation”, an animation website ran by several Dreamworks animators, most of them instructors at iAnimate too (Benjamin Willis, Jacob Gardner, Stephen Melagrano and AdamStrick), they’ve posted a recent article regarding comparison reels ….how actually showing original reference side by side with your animation does more harm than good. One of the points was very clear: if the reference acting you´re basing your animation on is not good enough, your animation might be technically sound but will not have the optimum performance value.
This same site actually has a lot of info on the subject matter. Some of the podcasts deserve a special mention in this post:

1. Interview with John Hill: John is a supervisor at Dreamworks and he comes from a traditional animation background. John admits barely using reference in his work! But acknowledges the relevance and the need for him to embrace it more.



2. Comedy in Animation: A roundtable of senior animators and supervisors (two of them my teachers at iAnimate, Ben Rush and Ken Fountain) talk a lot about comedy and…usage of reference! Funnily enough they take diverse stances between themselves upon the usage of lipstick cams…again, demonstrating how great guys like them also differ in their opinions.




Big names in animation have also criticized heavy usage of reference. Keith Lango talked about “roto-lite” in his old comment, also on Kevin Koch's blog:

"I’m not a big fan of the results of what I’ve come to see as ‘rotoscope-lite’ - the practice of using video reference as the visual foundation of a scene. It’s slightly different than getting reference as a way to organize your thoughts. Those who employ Roto-Lite will copy exact poses and facial expressions and much of the timing as well. Unless you’re doing something like Gollum I think it is a crutch. But I see a lot of younger CG animators using it in cartoon projects as well. My personal guidelines for reference are simple: Use reference to understand something, don’t use it as the visual basis of your performance. It’s like writing a term paper in school- you use reference (encyclopedia) to understand your topic, but you can’t just copy the text from the book into your term paper. That’s plagiarism and doesn’t show your instructors that you understand what you’re talking about."

Not everyone is against its practice though. Jeff Gabor, one of the most well-known Annie award nominee animators today, did a very recent walk through webinar with the online animation school Animschool. He broke down his workflow on using reference, which was very neat (the people at Animschool where even kind enough to share the video files with the attendees). It’s fascinating to see him do all the prep work prior to his shot: he makes sure he gets the reference damn right. He also did “pose tests” with himself, checking with mirrors whether his pose, silhouette and staging felt right for certain parts of his shot. He would stand around, feel the space around him...make sure he knows the set very well. Sometimes if it was about a cartoony character like Ice Age’s Scrat he would speed up the performance, but usually he kept it raw. He rarely asks others to act for him (unless the character performance demanded a very specific behavior he himself could not achieve…like the minor nuances of some girly mannerisms for example) and he will do reference for a two character shot (or three or four even)all by himself, working out all the eyelines and everything.

So there is this massive contrast in opinions, which to someone initiating into the world of crafting their own soulful characters and making them breathe and think and perform, is confusing. And none of them are wrong.

I think this point of not relying so much on reference is very much valid when we see stuff like this clip that I recently saw, also from old school Disney…

That is fantastic usage of reference. Nothing that looks heavily rotoscoped. The cartoonyness of the characters is so unique, full of creative spark from an animator. The timing and texture in the acting is enhanced from the live action reference.

But Alice stands out compared to the rest… maybe seems to be far more “realistic” in her personality than the other characters. Notice that the mere distinction of Alice as a character who obeys to different physical rules, ones more bound to our world, the real world, demand on her behavior a far greater attention to live action. She is in a surreal place where she actually doesn’t really belong, a magic world full of bizarre occurrences: the story itself demands it. A lot of times having totally distinct styles within one movie breaks consistency, but in this film it never felt wrong to me…Also there is to bear in mind that we can break it down to "motion" and "graphic value": the character design clearly does belong to the world of the movie, but the motion has a more sophisticated, often subtler flavour. That's why it never feels rotoscoped to me: motion itself is a quality to be analysed too. Poses cannot just be analysed in singularity in animation, they need to be looked at collectively as well, to craft good timing, flavour, texture, phrasing, and rhythm.

One of the most influential animators of modern times, Andreas Deja, gifts us very often through his new blog with animation treasures. Take a look at this post about Milt Kahl’s extensive research on some of his Jungle Book work.





Looking into stop motion, there is an interview with Michael Parks at 11 second club blog with very good insight on his work as a stop motion artist. Michael also posted a video of his workflow in which we see him acting the performance out:

Check out this Coraline making of vid too. Clearly animations spiced things up as you can see:



So…what am I trying to get at is the fact that these various notions about the subject brings me to think that we animators sometimes have to adapt to the demands of the story, the shot and the character, but ultimately it doesn’t matter how you get there. To try everything is the best thing for me. Sometimes I’ll shoot reference, sometimes I will just do pose tests, other times straight to thumbnailing, and at times doing both reference and breaking it down into the valuable keys, and redrawing and enhancing those keys, shifting the timing around, etc…last but not least, youtube and google always help :)

But the core has to be the acting. I’ve come to appreciate this so immensely now that I am thinking of talking about live action a lot more, to go in as an animator and try to understand better, analyze and pick what really speaks to me emotionally and break down both the physiological and contextual meaning of the performances.

I agree with Kevin Koch: improv. acting classes and acting workshops might not be every animator's cup of tea. Same with drawing skills, not every animator indulges in sketching but nevertheless they're very amazing animators. But having said that, I would never discourage the practice or trial...every life experience surely helps. A lot of animators are music lovers and somehow that comes across in their understanding of timing and phrasing...that's how amazing it is!

I just felt like talking about the subject because of some of the outrageous trends I've heard of in the industry (especially Computer Animation). I just believe that as entertainers we have to think about getting to the audience, and they surely will not care about whether is rotoscoped, mocaped or totally inventive…and whatever helps best the purpose of story and character, will definitely work best. Although maybe not the case 100%, I'm sure they care about empathy, communication, entertainment and meaning: they will value and perceive story, perhaps on their subconscious mind, but probably as much as we care about crafting and delivering it as storytellers.

From the eyes of a Newbie: Character Animation in Feature films nowadays (Occidental Mainstream Animation!!)

Recently I did a presentation at work about the current state of character animation in feature films. My proposition was to look into animation history in order to further understand how we approach animation in CG nowadays (because that is the medium I work on).

I also discussed this topic with fellow classmates at Ianimate and some interesting stuff was covered. I just finished writing a reply on a forum post regarding this matter and I thought it would be good to expose it in public through my blog. Didn´t want things like these to get lost and thought the blog could be a good way to record it.

So here was my reply:

Wow willem, really good insight and truly inspiring. Your views are absolutely right too!

I think what Angelo meant wasn´t the fact that one generation is better than the other, is just that our technical demands have a historical ground and have evolved. By all means, the 9 old men defined what we know as "classical animation", the "classical principles of animation": by classical I mean timeless....a style that defines other styles...the reason why it became mainstream (even more so than Stop motion, which kind of had a slightly different development path at the beginning with timelapse photography and VFX stuff like Ray HArryhausen, which nevertheless was amazing too). That´s why most of the time when I talk to people about classical principles, people easily understand "the disney style"...is normal. And most schools and character animation education is based upon these principles, cause even if you wanted to make something like South Park I guess is important to have a solid understanding of the principles in order to break them and repurpose them. Kind of like Picasso did prior to Cubism, as Ed Hooks points out, he had to master first the naturalistic approach to painting, on the likes of Michaelangelo and such.

It is an outstanding achievement from these people to have "made" this happen. But I do think there has definetely been an evolution. And sophistication in terms of demands....from an audience mainly.

My personal focus for the presentation (which generally went well by the way) was "feature films in western animation" (it would be way too much of a complex topic if we involved japanese anime and the likes of Akira or Ghost in the Shell....which again, in western society wasn´t mainstream back then, and probably it isn´t still...but i might be wrong so correct me if so!!...likewise I didn´t really cover stuff like Hoodwinked, or Fantastic Mr.Fox, or Shane Acker´s 9, etc.)... And to even be more simplistic, I tried to focus on the approach of cinema, and mainly staging, but also some insights on other animation principles such as timing, solid drawing vs. solid modeling and rigging, etc... It was only a 40 mins presentation hence I didn´t have much time to go really deep.

Classical Animation (which back then probably was predominantly the "Disney style", which has defined the nature of mainstream stuff, even I´d say on animation nowadays) originated in a historical context influenced very much by the cultural factors of the time: great deppression, world war, etc... At that time, musicals and theatre were popular mediums of entertainment, perhaps (i don´t know 100%) more than watching a film. And one thing I noticed was that, mostly, the staging in animation is pretty "flat" compared to films nowadays.

Look at "The Illusionist" and you´ll clearly see what I mean (although Illusionist is not a film from the 30´s it heavily draws inspiration from that I think): very rarely you see an extreme closeup, or an over the shoulder shot, or a dutch angle, or a POV....in traditional hand drawn animation I think.

Shots are held longer. Audiences have a chance to "explore the picture"...there are no frequent cuts (well not as much as in a Transformers movie anyways :P). And framing is done almost mostly with full body or mid body, so we see clearly the performances. And that was key back then far more than now: shots were (in my opinion) far more "Choreographed" and performance led. It was all resembling the theatres and musicals. It was all about the audiences entertainment, and by entertainment I mean being disconnected from the materialistic nature of their real world at the time, to get moved by this different world being "played" in the stage they are watching...the animated film in this case.

Performance led shots are very challenging, and hence the brilliance in traditional character animation is far more appreciated. The simplicity of the reality (by simple i dont mean easy at all!) was accepted far more than nowadays. It was a lot about how "appealing" the personalities were on screen. You talk to a kid now and i´m sure he can tell you what is good or bad animation "technically". Back then I think it was about the personality of these characters far more, and you wouldn´t care if in a stop motion piece you could see wires and imperfections on the character.

Look at this "The wrong trousers" example, if you are a bit of an animation geek (like me!)you´ll start to pick on things like the overlapping action on the ears, arcs and squash and stretch, etc...but that is clearly not the point at all in this type of animation!



You are led by the character´s performance. You wouldn´t get Eddie Murphy doing Donkey´s voice...the voice actor of Donald Duck was "The Donald Duck guy!" for me (two in this case I guess).

This is a contemporary example of the whole performance led thing:



This opinion kind of came to me after looking at these storyboarding notes by Hat Liebermann. He talks about Theatre staging vs. Cinematic staging, and the goals you achieve with both:









Now if we look at the first two pictures... doesn´t the framing resemble some of the disney classics animations? and I mean mainly from the 30´s throughout the 50´s. Wasn´t this predominantly the type of framing you would get in shots? The audience is just looking from their seats, being distracted with this "entertainment", but they´re not "emotionally intimate" with the characters as they would be in contemporary films. Look at both the physical and "abstract" gap between audiences and the film. That gap has a lot of meaning...and a lot of impact in the way we suck the film experience! Cinematic techniques of nowadays allow us to be far more "intimate" with the characters...although if overdone it just look like fancy cinematography and you end up having "style over substance" i guess...

This again, is subjective. The way each one of us gets to that emotional engagement is different. Im just talking in this case about staging, but it can purely just be through character animation... Here is an example of this flat staging approach (variations on how tight we get with the characters are there, but angles are still flat)



This might just be true to all of cinema, not just animated movies...but when I think about stuff like Hitchcock I tend to avoid talking about live action. Hitchcock was a genius, and the whole thing gets too complex hahah :P

Now why all this changed? In the "Thinking Animation: Bridging the gap between 2d and 3d" book I think there is one chapter where Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff mention how in the late 80´s and early 90´s VFX started to dominate. CGI just played with our everyday reality and "enhanced it". Photorealism is just one of the many things you can pursue in CG. Things have far more detail of sophistication (which one is harder? I dont know, thats a different question though,and personal to the artist. Im not here to say if 2d or 3d was harder...is just a medium, an artform, and a way to communicate, and it depends on the artist´s imagination how hard it can be...thats what I think).

To me, audiences just where getting saturated with the old classic fairy tales...animation started to become more corporate, and people where trying to do more stuff and cheaper. That´s how cartoony TV animation from saturday mornings developed...but more than a business need, it also had an impact in the artform itself when things like Tex Avery stuff or Tom & Jerry kind of cartoonyness started to come out. Even in terms of stories, "The secret of Nihm" or any Bakshi movie, were deviating slightly from the "all family audiences" idea and exploring new themes, perhaps closer to real world issues. Audiences clearly were asking for "more intimacy", more emotional connection with the characters and stories, "more empathy".

Again I´m talking about "western features" animation, because things like Miyazaki´s stuff adress really mature stuff sometimes in a beautiful way, but is just this whole idea what was "mainstream" in western society. And likewise Disney´s films maybe pursued really mature themes as well...but the presentation was in a way that was "easy to digest"...which to older generations started to become more of a "kiddie´s thing"...this is why a lot of adults think that cartoons and animation are the same thing and that they´re "just for kids". Is this whole idea of trying to entertain, but the entertainment standards were different back then...hence also the "principles" were slightly differently approach (they are the same, just applied differently).

So, Disney throughout this transitional period (since walt disney died, up to the 2nd golden era) suffered quite a bit i guess, because the industry demands were changing but they didn´t cope up with it as well as they should have. Black Cauldron is cited as a great example of the least success in Disney.

This whole thing was, again, led by audiences demands. People wanted more. People wanted real world issues to be discussed, and identify closely with stories. VFX stuff started to develop and now adults could enjoy animation as much as kids would. Look at Jurassic Park or Terminator 2, or Aliens, or Star Wars...

This was reciprocal...it had an impact on the 2nd golden era of disney I think. If you look at animations from the 30´s and 50´s, they were far more musical and rhythmical in nature than maybe "Lilo & Stitch" or "Mulan" were. But the later two were drawing far more reference from real life than stage acting and showmen. Look at Mulan for instance in terms of story, it deals with the strenght of a woman against a male dominant society. That´s a slight deviation from the classics I think, and that I believe is what Angelo meant? Is more human, and artists are daring to caricature the human characters far more, in order to reflect these themes.

Is true that reference footage was used also back then for animation reference a hell of a lot, but the approach you have now is in my opinion different. It almost leads you to question whether you could potentially be "rotoscoping" your live action reference!! Back then people would either call up the subjects on the studio (animals for BAmbi or Lion King...or showmen, entertainers, stage actors, etc...) to draw them and do gesture and life studies....or to record them perform with cameras at half speed I think (again, correct me if I´m wrong cause I´m not 100% sure!). And rotoscope was there too (Snowwhite...) but it was different I think. I mean, our instructors here worked on MEgamind, and they tell us about how the whole thing was first shot in liveaction....the whole thing!! And even if animators are not happy with one particular aspect of the performance, they get up and shoot the thing again, or that particular part of the performance...the easyness of using the technology allows us to be more demanding also. You end up "frankesteining" your reference (thanks for the term to Joost Van Schaik, fellow classmate :D )

Also...CG uses computers...and computers are by nature logical...therefore they always have a tendency to be "perfect". And too much perfection is what we kinda fight against in CG in a way, to make things more organic. But...at the same time, we are so minimalist...that we try to mimic "perfect imperfection"....or something. How to Train your dragon is a great example.....the ambient animation there is insane. I think for instance you wouldn´t get that kind of minimalism in hand drawn animation, OR (to correct myself) you wouldn´t approach the
minimalism that way...you would present it differently. You see what I mean?

On a minor note, notice the technicality of the lip sync in Shere Khan on the previous jungle book clip....he is just perfect! But if we try to do that kind of lip sync in CG is just gonna translate to jaw opens and closes. We have to work out the little shapers and things to bring the flesh and volumes out in a more detailed approach in CG I think.

[b]BUT[/b]....CG can let you "mimic" other styles too!! Or create new ones deriving from others, for that matter. You can emulate and repurporse other styles within CG. Some quick examples I could come up with:









Animators back then drew a lot from showmen, entertainers, comedians on stage...theatre play, musicals, musicians, jazz players.....it really was about "Rhythm" a lot of times.

Now I think is a lot more about live action, improv actors, cinematic direction, real personal engagement and deeper subtexts. Instead of rhythm it has become more about "Texture".

By the way, for me animation terminology sucks. Is really confusing hahaha. Because to me these two things are essentially the same: variation in timing right? right?...hmmm....dunno.

There is this ongoing debate at work about what film was better and which one deserved an Oscar, "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" or "Up". The argument being, what was the point on making a film like "UP" when is so close to live action, when you could have done it with VFX and real actors....whereas Cloudy is far more fun and "animated"....

My contribution to that was that they are JUST DIFFERENT. Is like comparing Philip K. Dick to Kafka or to Agatha Christie. The medium is animation / writing novels. And the themes and stories are different, therefore the style/writing style has to reflect that. And fair enough Up draws alot from Live action but ITS STILL ANIMATION: you are personifying archetypes, you are playing with film timing in a far greater range than live action could do, and you´re bending the laws of physics far more than with live action I think (even more than Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon´s flying kung fu hahaha). So, to me, Up is just as unique as Cloudy. And i can really see why it won an Oscar, although Im not here to say "because is better"...but is again, this whole idea of reaching the audience far more. Going back to the staging example, if you read one of David Anthony Gibson´s posts in his blog, he talks about staging in Cloudy and how it was an overall style decision from the directors to "flatten things" more:



Is all intentional, and super cool. And the directors know they want that effect because they know is gonna play well with the whole story, the design and the character´s performances. Is all serving its purpose reeeeeally well. I love this film, and I also love UP.

Read the post here: http://davidanthonygibson.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/cloudy-animation-now-with-more-meatballs/

And this post at the "Temple of the Seven Golden Camels" relates alot to what staging can do to the nature of a film: http://sevencamels.blogspot.com/2009/01/flat-is-funny-depth-is-dramatic.html

Someone on the comments even says that is like life itself. That´s such an awesome analogy!: the more we try to undestand life the deeper and deeper we get, the more superficial and "ignorant" we stay, in a way the "happier" we could be? HAha...well sounds pessimistic really. But I can totally understand this point of view.

But yeah...so thats where it is I think, that´s what I kind of covered in my presentation. Is just an evolution of things. Is not that one is better than the other by all means. The 9 old men were amazing pioneers. But the new animators are also amazing, you cannot discredit some of the stuff we´ve seen from Pixar or Dreamworks, or BlueSky, or Sony. You cannot compare, is just a whole bunch of factors that have influenced the course of things.

BAAAHHHHHHHH looks like I´ve done the whole presentation in written form! hahaa

I love healthy discussion, please enlighten me more if I need to...I love animation and I love to learn!! :)

I would love to let the authors of their respective works posted here in the blog entry that by all means it was all done for educational purposes, and please feel free to let me know if you don´t want me to talk about / show your stuff here.

Thanks!

From the eyes of a newbie...What is a cartoon?

Scott McCloud is a comic author and theorist, who has pushed the boundaries of comics (and all the visual arts in my opinion) to unimaginable dephts of understanding and innovation. I just recently came to know about his work and I regret so much not having familiarised myself with it before. Thanks go to my director at Red Star studio, Benjamin Smith, for the recommended reading... cheers Ben!!

From the vast amount of amazing facts and theories that Scott explains, I wanted to post here something that has bugged me for years, since childhood, and probably the main reason that things like animation and drawing, as we all understand it in a commercial sense, are mainly tagged as "something just for kids"....one of the many "million dollar" questions...

What is a cartoon?

Most people will relate cartoons either to animation or drawings, and will not take it seriously at all (most people that I've met in real life anyway) since its main element is most of the time "humour". But I always thought the definition of the word "cartoon" had much more depth than such a simplistic assumption, and finally, thanks to Scott, I can safely say that it definetely comprises a much richer meaning.

The word cartoon, as defined in wikipedia, has changed and evolved over time. But its main essence, and the reason why we instantly think "2d" when we talk about cartoons, is because it's nature is that of an icon...it "resembles" whatever the creator of the cartoon wants to represent, in whatever level of detail desired. Scott Mccloud states that "by stripping down an image to it's essential meaning, an artist can amplify that meaning in a way that realistic art can't". What does this mean? In my opinion cartoons can reach different depths in telling a story than realism can. Obviously the opposite could also be true (I'm not a liveaction film maker nor photographer so I don't understand the full capabilities of such mediums, and I don't mean to dismiss any of these by comparing them to cartoons), but many people like me, who love animation and cartoons, who create their own and who try to tell stories through such mediums, identify themselves with the cartoon not because of its simplicity and efficiency to reach an audience in emotional ways, but also because of its universality.

Scott McCloud simply states that when who the messenger is matters less, what the message is matters more. That's why cartoons are so simple, rounded, childlike, efficient and understandable. Cartoons deal more with inner realities than the physical appereance, and this is why we can bring inanimate objects to life, because we emphasize in the idea we want to represent, not the original thing we want to represent...we can idealise our own little world, create our own stories, and populate them with our own characters....we have the freedom to play like gods....yet we can risk to go way too abstract as to no one understanding us...and this is when the element of "cartoon" kicks in: by getting inspired from elements of our reality, borrowing their essence, their appealing features, and whatever we want, we enrich and humanise those phantasies far more than a photoreal representation. We enhance the emotional value, the appeal, the empathy, and the communication of our story.



This is what cartoon is, and further more, in my opinion. This is why I'm doing animation, drawing and whatever releases my creative juice, because I feel free creating my own visions. I don't necessarily feel that cartoons should be just about humour. Is a form, not a genre. Is an artistic medium to express, whether animated or still, the essence of it is always "drawing". Drawing is predominantly 2d. And since I love drawing, I love cartoons too!

That's all for now. As a conclusion, I'll recommend to those of you haven't heard of Scott MCcloud yet, to purchase his book "Understanding comics", and absorb all that knowledge he exposes there...is pure gold. And don't think just because it has the word "comics" in the tile it limits itself to that medium...we all know that comics are another artform and therefore share lots of conventions with any other art...including animation!!


And here's a video of him giving a speech at TED.com about the power of comics, and the bright future that awaits.



Adios

From the eyes of a newbie...Martial Arts and Animation

Martial arts have always been one of my interests, not directly as a practice but as a big influence in the development of my tastes. With the advent of Kung Fu Panda, I've been intrigued by how the profound meaning and methodology of these arts could be related to animation somehow. And so I went on to join some classes for a start and, I’ve got to admit, it has played a major role in the way I perceive things.

Firstly I would like to give my insights in Kung Fu Panda. Such an inspirational masterpiece... A lot of things worked so well together and every frame of that film felt like a great painting/photograph you could easily have framed on your wall. From my experience, being a CG film, sometimes this is really hard to achieve. Lots of people I’ve talked to complain about how simple and straight forward the plot is....but that for me is the greatest element of it. Such a classical approach yet innovatively well put together, with really interesting personalities and rich environments. And the choreographies were spectacular, in terms of animation, direction and composition. I've also managed to purchase the "Art of" book and the amount of planning and conceptualisation is vast and rich. Every single element, from why some of the characters are dressed the way they are, to what kind of colours certain locations should convey in order to transmit specific moods and feelings for specific scenarios...everything is so well thought out. Some tend to justify by saying that obviously a lot of talented artists were involved, and that they can afford it with their ridiculous budgets. But even though if that was the case, I believe it's not easy at all have such coordination, vision, agreement, and energy to keep going till the end. If we start being picky we could mention things like how some of the characters remained very much kept in the background of the story and were not given more relevant challenges (i.e. the furious five), or how some gags were kind of predictable and perhaps a tiny little repetitive (i.e. Po’s colloquialisms), but these didn’t bother me at all and I think is a very good example of an analogy with the concept of a hero’s journey in “The Hero with a thousand faces” by Joseph Campbell. I really love this film. I love it.

Now to the martial arts stuff. I started on some classes of "Jeet Kune Do" (JKD) last week. JKD is a martial arts philosophy and discipline invented and introduced by Bruce Lee, so is quite a modern variation of Kung Fu which doesn't deal with any of the traditional routines. From the beginning of the lessons, I instantly felt so familiar with a lot of their principles. I'll mention some of these and I bet animators will be able to draw a lot of analogies that make perfect sense:

- JKD’s fundamental core is nothing but simplicity and effectivity. Quoting the master himself: "My movements are simple, direct and non-classical. The extraordinary part of it lies in its simplicity. Every movement in Jeet Kune-Do is being so of itself. There is nothing artificial about it. I always believe that the easy way is the right way. Jeet Kune-Do is simply the direct expression of one's feelings with the minimum of movements and energy."

- JKD’s training methodology evolves to suit ones needs. You start with what everyone knows by logic: punches and kicks, body mechanics. You pass on to usage of those in practicality (combat), and how the same mechanics can be used for different variations. Then you learn the flow, how some combinations could be entries and how others could be finishing moves; how ones are peaks and others are subtle moves. Finally, you interpret these yourself and you build your own way to get by.

- The essence of JKD relies in the way you develop it's elements further, so that your JKD skills will be enhanced and richer in depth. Such elements are mainly timing, distance and position (anything familiar here fellow animators?)

- Execution of most body mechanics starts from the hips. The bigger the recoil in the root, the bigger the anticipation of the upcoming move and the stronger such move will end up being. Also tension and rigidity must be avoided in order to let ourselves loose and avoid breaking of joints and articulations, and therefore having a smoother and more fluid motion. When executing moves, you should not do them one step after the other but rather let everything flow in an overlapping sequence to develop speed.

-Last but not least, if you listen to this interview there are some key points that Bruce Lee mentioned himself that you will find, although not really innovative, quite well put together and wisely spoken:


These are just a couple of observations I really wanted to share with everyone. I’m not an expert to evaluate these from every martial art’s perspective, hence I kept it to what I’m currently doing which is JKD. But I’m sure at least some of these are applicable on every art, being traditional or modern. Martial arts were created for combat but have evolved into other major forms as well, including dance, theatre, acrobatics and many other…and for me personally, has to do with how we canalise our inherent human aggressivity in a beautiful and healthy expression…an artistic expression, with no restraint in style. And at the same time, animation is not just about how we move things about to put them in motion, but rather how we express ourselves through such art…

Wow…A bit of a philosophical post….blame Dreamworks and the awesomeness of Kung Fu Panda!!

From the eyes of a newbie...Small talk about the biz

The world of Animation is so vast and limitless, and it's becoming even broader as time goes by. But one of the key things is the market at which is aimed at. When trying to make a living out of animation, I always think about the word "business", and this fundamental triangle comes up in my mind:


(sorry for the crappy image, it was a quick photoshop job :P)

I have to thank mr. Paul Peppiatte, creative director of VTR North (www.vtrnorth.co.uk) and lecturer at the University of Bradford (UK), who taught this concept in more extension during my final year. As far as my understanding goes, the key is to keep the balance within this triangle to obtain best results, since every element compliments each other:

- If you pursue money, you will need time and a good skill set to produce something decent and consistent.
- If you want a long piece, you will need a big budget, and good quality on your work (by quality I'm not necessarily limiting the possibilities to the technical side of things, but also to its efficiency towards the market that's aimed at).
- If you are aiming to produce good quality work, resources and time are essential.

You can have a high profile film made, with outstanding quality and lots of time to spend, but you will surely need a massive budget for it. Similarly, if you were already provided with the budget, you could surely hire a lot of talented artists to make it splendid, but your deadlines will need to be tighter. Usually in this kind of cases I think you would pay the artists based on either the man hours invested to produce the work, or the amount of work itself being produced (for animators, measured in "animation seconds"). Otherwise you will need a hell of a lot of time to finish. On the other hand, your schedule could be very short and the payment could be very tempting, but most likely the quality won't be great, since animating (or any other task) in a rush most of the time has a negative effect on the end result (I say "most of the time" cause I'm no one to fully confirm it as a fact, and there are always exceptions to the rules), the word "rush" being very relative, as you may observe by reading this old post from Keith Lango's blog: http://www.keithlango.com/wordpress/?p=544 .

These are just a few possibilities I came up with from my own experience, but obviously there are lots that could illustrate it better.

Some examples of "commercially" successful animation projects where this triangle has been kept balanced:
- The Incredibles: A high profile movie with ground breaking visuals, 3 to 4 years of production and massive budget, but nevertheless ended up with a worldwide gross of more than $630M...
- The Simpsons: Tonnes of episodes and entertaining stories with lots of following. As the series started to gain popularity, a growth in quality could be seen with an evolution on the drawing style and a debut on prime time TV, with a consequent increase in budget that allowed production subcontract to several studios to create most of the animation.
- Pocoyo: Visual quality and assets are simplified, saving time and money to make the series quickly but yet keeping a consistent and marvellous style.

However, when we talk about "business" we obviously talk about the stuff that makes money, and when we talk about "good animation", making money is not always present. Which is a real shame because there are so many great works out there deserving attention and remuneration (Iron Giant, Gruesomestein's monsters, Grave of the Fireflies...).

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves"...a Shakespearean quote I read in a post of thedrawingboard.org by "stingicide". People here have discussed a lot about cartoons on TV nowadays and how is all, like artist Elliot Cowan has put it, "a f*%$&·* cacophony". Society is like a modern day, consumerist, unfit and spoiled person who always wants easy fast food that, although it might taste good, it destroys your health slowly.

I better get back to work, since I´m still a newbie doing just "small talk"!!

From the eyes of a newbie...What's good or bad? Part 2

Questioning the old methods, the traditional ways of learning from the old school guys and coming up with different ways to enhance our creativity other than the conventional ones is always beneficial towards learning. This has been a topic I've been discussing lately, where people from different backgrounds come to the same goal at the end: animating. Bakshi talks about 2d vs 3d and mentions a very good analogy between animation and music:

"I always thought the difference between my films and the Disney ones was the difference between rock n' roll and a symphony. I love them both if the music is right."

This whole discussion adds up to my previous post, "what's good or bad". It's strange how people who come from schools get so obsessed with the medium and the workflow they adopt, and discuss a lot about it being "right" or "wrong". People like Caroline Leaf, Piotr Dumala, and Yuri Norstein have proved such constraints do not exist at all, and that as creatives we should embrace any form of expression. These personalities work in their own way because they feel comfortable creating like that, not because they were taught to do it in such way explicitly.

I think that when we start to patronize, we close doors. Both commercial and indie works can be as good. I love to hear from both sides as long as the product satisfies me. I do understand though, that big enterprises tend to spoil creative possibilities for the sake of marketing. After all, when you talk about business, audience demand is what counts... however, as many other great animators, I would love to just be free and create what I please, and enjoy it to the greatest extent. What shall the balance be? Process, or product?

There is also the aspect of "learning". This interesting read from Krickfalusi's blog states how learning to draw can be approached in a different way other than life drawing. Similarly, Keith posted the "Stick Figure Fundamentals" article where he stated that drawing is not restricted to be only done with a pencil, but you can "draw" within the medium you work on (in this particular case, 3d software), encouraging those who don't feel confident with traditional medium. It surely defies the conventions, which creates some hardcore debate between experts who have been doing it "the normal way" for years. Isn't this kinda confusing for newbies? As a beginner you will always be asking what's the best way to learn, what's the best workflow, how do you approach certain things the best way, etc...

I guess what I want to say is that I don't like to be snobby about these things...I find interesting to read opinions of people about certain mediums, what do they find lacking, what do they feel about it, but I certainly find it confusing when people talk about "succeeding in the animation industry" and, in conclusion, "what's good or bad"...

From the eyes of a newbie...What's good or bad?

I'm gonna start to write some personal views on the world of animation, and talk a bit about myself and the experiences I'm going through (good or bad, who knows), within this context.

It would make sense to say that every person is a different world. Animation encompasses such a huge array of methods and ideas that each and every single "animator" can have it's own perception of things, making this popular statement even more evident. This might be why in order to be "good" you should adopt a "habit of knowing" (Eric Larson on "Our work habits"). I assume this is common in every single art form, but animation somehow is enriched even more by the combination with all other ways of expression like drawing, painting, sculpting, music, dancing, acting, acrobatics,... It doesn't go away from being another medium to "express", but at the same time is even broader and has a deeper effect, its disadvantage being that is harder and more time consuming to create.

Which at the same time makes it even more difficult to criticise. What are the judgement criterias when we talk about "good" or "bad" animation? Is it about "the torso needs to be rotated on the right position and moving the arms a bit higher can give a balanced pose with good arcs", or is it simply about having success at giving an emotional message to the audience? Is it about expressing yourself the best way you can, or approaching certain techniques and styles for the sake of matching a designated "look"? Maybe in something like "South Park" you wont need to apply the "12 principles of animation" from Walt Disney but it certainly is animation because it's visual content being "created" and brought to life on its own way, faithfully delivering emotional effect.

Another element to consider is the bias towards a medium, an example of this being my self claim as a "3d Character Animator". The initial reason behind calling myself like this was because basically my foundation in animation has closely been attached to the Computer Graphics Imagery tools, and I'm very familiar with it since most of my portfolio of work consists of "3d" animations, being able narrow down the market in which I wanted to focus on to get jobs. However I do not consider myself being dependent on the CGI toolsets if I want to "do animation", because the principles and processes are shared within every medium, and that's what I'm trying to do as an animator: to create based on such principles. So I guess is something vital I've realised now, that I should rectify once I update my portfolio of work.

To conclude this post, I would like to share a link with all of you out there who bother reading my blog, where you can appreciate some really unique animation work, not mainstream at all, and that is amazing and worth knowing about: http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.2/3.2pages/3.2student.html