Thus, I’m going to have to move the content to fastspring.com, the place that I currently sell Animator Friendly Rigging, and probably the best online sales site [...]]]> I just found out that the site that I was selling “Integrating a Creature Rig” and “Fast Animation Rigs” (http://lulu.com) no longer allows downloadable dvds to be sold.

Thus, I’m going to have to move the content to fastspring.com, the place that I currently sell Animator Friendly Rigging, and probably the best online sales site I’ve ever seen. Their support is amazing, and I’ve been extremely happy with their service!

I’ll let everyone know when the content is moved.. and I’ll probably have a huge sale, too just to celebrate!

Please check it out and join in..

Sorry for any inconvenience!!

We know how important this is.. how necessary it is for you to understand why your shot is in the film, and how it relates to your character’s arc and the story’s progression.  We know that without this information you will [...]]]> So that’s the big question.. How do you find the intent for your shot?

We know how important this is.. how necessary it is for you to understand why your shot is in the film, and how it relates to your character’s arc and the story’s progression.  We know that without this information you will probably spend some time flailing about trying everything you possibly can to get the shot approved.  Most likely, you’ll end up showing the shot in dailies more times than you need, and you’ll end up hearing the director repeat him or herself a few times.  You’ll probably end up stressing about getting the shot through, and you’ll be focused on just getting it off your plate instead of adding all the little bits and bobs that make the shot special.. the things that make you geek out over it after you’ve finished.

So how do we find it?

Here are the things I do to try and hone in on the intent.  I would love to hear your views on this, and any tips and tricks you have!

1) Go To Every Dailies Session

I find that the more often I go to dailies, the more my head is in sync with what the director wants.  I start to be able to guess what he or she will like, and I can get a good sense of where the story is headed.  This allows me to gain more supporting information about the whole show and the character’s motivation throughout the movie.

2) View The Sequence Before the Launch

Before launching my shot, I’ll watch the sequence in storyboard and layout.  If possible, I’ll watch the sequences before and after as well.  This will give me direct information as to what is happening and what my shot may need to convey.  I should be able to get a good sense for the rhythm of the sequence, and start to gather any questions I may have about my shot (or sequence of shots).

3) Talk To My Supervisor

If I can, I’ll talk to my supervisor (or head of character animation) about the sequence to see if there’s any additional information they might have.  Usually the supe will have met with the director before the sequence started to get a lowdown on what the point of the sequence is.  They may have some good information that isn’t visible in the boards or the layout.

4) Prepare Questions

I’ll prepare a list of questions for the director that I have ready in case the director doesn’t cover everything in the launch.

5) Practice ACTIVE LISTENING at the Launch

When the director launches the shot, I’ll actively listen to everything that they say, often repeating it to myself in my head.  I’ll watch their eyes and their face instead of stare at the screen.  I will use encouraging body language and supportive acknowledgment of what they are saying in order to draw out as much information as I can.  I will write down key words and phrases in my notebook, especially if the director says “this is important”.  I’ll ask questions about motivation, emotional state, any change of emotion, what other characters are going through, if there’s any physical needs of the shot, and anything else I can think of that will help me discover the key intent.  Finally, once the director has finished, I’ll quickly look at my notes and see if there is anything I am unsure of.  I will try and summarize the intent in a couple of words and repeat it back.  If looking at the notes doesn’t help me determine the intent, I’ll then clarify: “So, the intent of the shot is to show George’s emotion shift from sad to enraged?”  or, “Just to clarify.. the main point want to get across is chaos of 13 characters running in different directions?” or even “The key idea is that Jennifer turns on the radio.. is there any hessitation in her action due to some emotional distress?  Or is she quite happy to turn it on?”

6) Review My Notes

After the launch, I will go back to my desk and play the shot and review my notes.  Sometimes I’ll write the intent in bold on a new piece of paper, and then list the other notes underneath it in order of importance.  I’ve often found that by doing this I can quickly see if I forgot something, or if something isn’t as clear as I hoped it would be.  Note: Without this review session, you might as well not be taking notes at all.  Reviewing them will help you solidify the director’s thoughts in your head.

7) Block As Few Poses as Possible

I’ll quickly rough or thumbnail a few poses for the shot and compare them with my main intent.  I’ll then ask other animators, my supervisor, or anyone else I can if these poses or drawings fit the intent.  This is quick work, and I can quickly correct any sort of wrong directions I may be heading in.

When Lost.. Ask!

The big thing here is that even if you do all this work before you start the shot, sometimes it’s easy to get lost and loose the intent.  Or, you can become blind to your shot and not know if it’s working.  Everybody does this.  The best thing you can do is stop what you are doing and talk to someone else about the shot.  Clarify the intent with your supervisor.  Find another animator and ask “is this reading?”  Watch your shot in continuity with the surrounding shots with another animator and clarify the ideas.  And if all else fails.. ask the director.   Remember, you are both working together to make the shot work.   You both have the same goal.  If you need a question answered or clarified, get in front of them and ask.  I find that most of the time this will clarify things immensely and really help you move forward on the shot.

Anyway, those are some of the things I do to help clarify my ideas.. what about the rest of you?

As someone who has been in the industry for a long time, I’m very used to seeing [...]]]> One of my favorite blogs for helping me become a better professional artist is the Accidental Creative. They do a really great job of coaching on how to maintain creative excellence and deliver a product on time.

As someone who has been in the industry for a long time, I’m very used to seeing artists burn out and become bitter after many years. Listening to the Accidental Creative has really helped me maintain my excitement and inspiration about creating art as part of my job.

Their latest post about developing an “effectiveness obsession” kind of relates to the posts I’ve been discussing recently about quality vs quantity and dealing with time management. While waiting for my next post on finding the intent in your shot, I highly recommend you read Why We Need To Develop An Effectiveness Obsession, and check out some of the other posts at Accidental Creative.

Enjoy!
-jason

No WONDER it was so quiet!

Anyway, I’ve fixed the problem and you should now be able to sign up and chat away!

woo!

-jason

But you’ll notice that the title [...]]]> The past two posts have looked at techniques I use to animate as efficiently as possible. They are common tools for time management, and can really be used for any endeavor. I definitely find them useful for managing my stress level and allowing me to crank out more footage.

But you’ll notice that the title of these posts have also included the word “Quality”. In this post, I’d like to focus on that aspect of this equation, since without quality, quantity means.. well.. poop.

Seriously.  If given the choice, I would rather have an animator on my team who created one frigging mind blowingly amazing shot than an animator who created 15 piss-poor shots.

But those are extremes, right?  In the real world, each animator can’t only produce a single shot in a film, and I certainly won’t be happy if all my animators just crank out pure drivel at a rate of 15 feet per week.  (for those of you who haven’t worked in “feet” before, 1 foot is 16 frames of film.  There are 24 frames per second,  so 2 seconds of film is 3 feet of animation.  At most studios a weekly quota for an animator can range from 3-6 feet per week depending on complexity.  That’s 48-96 frames per week of finished animation).

Crappy animation produced quickly is still crappy animation.

So how do we hit that quality mark that is so important?

Before I answer that, I think it’s important to qualify what we consider “quality” animation.

To do this, I’m going to use a fun technique of organizing ideas that I learned about recently.  It’s kind of similar to a mind map, but instead I’m going to use stickies or “post it notes”.  I heard about this while listening to a class by the “sticky-note-ninja“, a woman named Kate who works at Adaptive Path, a “user experience” company.

The podcast had a whole bunch of really interesting techniques of using Post-its to come to common themes and ideas when designing user interfaces.  I think that the same idea can be used to quickly throw down a bunch of thoughts, and then organize them into common themes for further exploration for animation.

To try and see if I could use this technique to come up with a clear definition of “quality” for an animation shot, I went to the website Edistorm, and quickly threw together a bunch of “virtual post-it notes” that each had a single idea of what I thought of when I thought of a “quality” shot.

As you can see, there are just some random phrases in there like “rhythm”, “contrast”, “emotional”, etc.  You can certainly expand on this and add a few more of your own, but you get the idea.

This in and of itself isn’t very exciting.  What is exciting however is what happens next.  We take each of these “post-it” notes and start arranging them into clusters.  Pretty soon, you can start to see some patterns emerge.

We have grouped this random collection of thoughts about what adds quality to a shot into 3 sections.  I’ll color them so we can see them a bit better:

On the left we have words like “focus”, “intent”, “funny”, “emotional” “connect with the audience”.  To me, these all feel like acting and directing words.

On the right are things like “graphic”, “timing”, “arcs”, “polish”. These are animation terms.. technical and artistic things we do to make the movement look nice.

In the middle are words that I think can apply in both areas.. “contrast”, “entertaining”, “unique”.  Really great acting has to be unique to the character, just as it’s important for the rhythm of each shot to feel unique and special.   I kind of feel that these terms can be defined as over-arching themes for quality work… things I want to be thinking of while working on my two main areas of focus – acting and animation.

What interests me about this image is that even though I threw it together rather quickly, I can easily see that if I want to have a really great shot, I need to focus on both animation and acting.  I know this seems basic and obvious.  The thing is by doing this exercise with stickies I can give myself some concrete goals to focus on to MAKE my acting and animation better.

If someone says I need to work on the quality of the animation on my shot, I can look at these things specifically and say to myself “did I check my arcs?  Is my timing off? What about the rhythm?”   The same is true with acting: “Am I hitting the right emotion? Is the shot funny enough? Am I connecting with the audience?”

We’ve  talked a little bit earlier how making beautiful animation can take time.  Creating nice arcs, beautiful spacing with unique rhythm means that you’re going to have to take the time to finesse the heck out of the shot.  There’s only so much you can do there to make this process go faster, so let’s take a look at the other side of the equation..Acting.

How do we make sure that the acting we’re working on is the best it can possibly be?   There are two things we need to know in order to make sure we’re hitting the mark on this.  The first thing we have to know is who the character is.  We’ve got to understand as much about the character as possible in order to have a clear idea as to what they would do in any given situation.  What was her relationship with her parents like?  Does she have any sort of physical deformities?  If your character was once attacked by a stapler when she was a child, how do you think she would handle walking through an office building?  Does she think before reacting, or does she react and then think?  Would this cause her to lead her movements with her head or with her heart?  Is she open to new ideas?  Closed?  How would she hold her arms in social situations?  Down at her side?  Crossed?  Hand on her hip?  Does she bite her lip when she’s nervous, or pick her fingernails?

All of these things help clarify your character’s style of movement, the acting choices you might make, the way the character will react in a situation where they aren’t the main focus of the shot, the subtle shifts as another character leans in close for a kiss.  Know these answers before you start animating, and you’ll have more confidence in your shots as thus your work will be stronger.

The other thing that is imperative and is probably the most important thing you can do is clarify the intent of the shot.

This… will be the topic of my next post.

Most artists feel that it’s a see-saw.. we all want quality, which means it’s going to take time.  If you want [...]]]> I was sitting with some of the other animators at lunch the other day and the topic of “speed” came up.  Not the drug, but the eternal challenge animators face between “quality” and “quantity”.

Most artists feel that it’s a see-saw.. we all want quality, which means it’s going to take time.  If you want it faster, then the quality will have to drop.

This seems to make sense, as one of the trademark features of really great animation is attention to detail.  Massaging those arcs, making sure there are no pops in the knees, double-checking eyelines, finger contacts, pushing the spacing until it feels just .. perfect.

I don’t think there’s a single animator out there who wants anything less.  We all will take exactly as much time as we have to work on the shot until it’s literally wrestled from our hands and sent on to the departments down-stream.

There are obviously a lot more variables that go into the amount of time it takes to get a shot out the door.. there is the clarity of direction, whether or not the shot is ready, the software speed, bugs in the rigs, camera changes, dialogue adjustment, etc.. all of which are natural parts of the movie-making process.  However, all of that stuff is out of our control.  What we own.. what we work with day in and day out are the poses, the frames, the keys, the rhythm of the shot.

This passion for perfection.. that desire to make each and every frame the best possible frame it can be is what gets my blood pumping when I animate a shot I love.  It’s what drives me when I see another animator produce something that just blows my mind.  It’s what makes leaving on a friday night difficult because I can’t think of anything except what that next pose is going to be, and how would it look if I just broke the elbow for a frame as I cushioned into the next pose?

But the realities of production set in and we have to keep the shot moving, to get it going further down the pipeline.  Those downstream artists are chomping at the bit to make the shot even sweeter, and that next shot is just sitting right over your shoulder, whispering into your ear, pulling at you..

When I became a supervising animator, one of my biggest fears was the fact that I knew I would have less time to animate.  I was excited about working with the other animators, and knew I wanted to spend time focusing on that aspect of the job.. but I sure as hell didn’t want to make my shots worse.  I still wanted to produce good work, and I still wanted to do a lot of work.

I found that I had only 4 or 5 hours a day to animate vs my usual 8 or 9.  Literally half my time was devoted to dailies, reviews, meetings, rounds, and more.  Some days I would only have an hour or two to animate.  To top it all off, this was not a solid chunk of time, but sometimes only 30 minutes here and there spread throughout the day.

For those of you who animate on a day to day basis, you know that it can take 10 to 20 minutes of warming up each time you sit down to really get into the swing of things when you’re animating–especially when you’re dealing with a some complicated acting, or a technically challenging movement.  If I had 30 minutes to animate, and 15 minutes was taken up getting back into the proper head space.. well, you can guess how much I’d be able to do.

I quickly found that I had to learn some way of handling this situation, otherwise I would never get any animation into the film.

I talked to a few animators to see what their tricks and techniques were.  One of our Heads of Character Animation said that even though he only had an hour or two per day to animate, he thought about his animation all the time.  He would be sitting in meetings and would be working out his shots in his head, so that when he got to his desk he knew exactly what he was going to try and accomplish the moment he touched the keyboard.

That made sense to me, so I tried that.  I would picture my shot and try and get the whole thing in my head.  Unfortunately, I found that focusing on my shot like that caused me to have trouble paying attention to the meetings I was in.  I was distracted, because I couldn’t hold all that information and focus on the questions people were asking me.

So I tried something different.  As I was getting up from my desk to head to a meeting I would think about the very next thing I wanted to accomplish in the shot.  If it was a pose, a simple movement, a rhythm, whatever it was I would decide on a small chunk of animation that I felt I could accomplish in about 20 minutes.  In-between meetings (and while the meetings were covering things that weren’t important to me), I would try and get that next idea clear.  Because it was such a small chunk, I could “pause” my brain very easily when I had to focus on outside things, and then hop right back into working out my shot in my brain as soon as I could.

When I then got back to my desk I had a pretty clear sense of direction.  Not only did I have a good idea of what I wanted to do, but I also found that I was able to jump back into my shot really quickly!  I would sit down and within minutes would be back where I was when I left!

I then started experimenting with other techniques to keep me focused.. I stopped listening to music so nothing else was distracting me.  I used my noise canceling headphones to keep out other distractions.  I kept my thumbnails right next to my monitor and made checklists of things I wanted to do before my next meeting.  I analyzed my workflow and tried to remove any other distractions that would take me away from my work (email, web surfing, etc).  I found all of this really helped!

There’s one more thing that I tried that helped more than anything else…

and I’ll discuss that in my next blog post!

I’m really hoping that the community forum becomes a great hub for people to discuss the Animator Friendly Rigging series.  If you’ve bought the dvds, please come chat about [...]]]> If you’ve been watching the site at all this weekend, you’ll notice a few things moving around and some new images coming up.

I’m really hoping that the community forum becomes a great hub for people to discuss the Animator Friendly Rigging series.  If you’ve bought the dvds, please come chat about your experience using them!  If you’re thinking about buying them, come ask questions!

Hope you’re all doing well, and I will see you in the forums!

-jason

Check it out..

Label Align bug fix..

I’ve upgraded the forum to now be using Vanilla Forums which I really like.. it’s fast, easy to use, and seems to suit my purposes quite nicely!

sweet.

I’ve also been working behind the scenes a bit to simplify the site. You will be seeing some changes over the next [...]]]> Howdy kids! Happy saturday!

I’ve upgraded the forum to now be using Vanilla Forums which I really like.. it’s fast, easy to use, and seems to suit my purposes quite nicely!

sweet.

I’ve also been working behind the scenes a bit to simplify the site. You will be seeing some changes over the next few weeks.. hopefully it’ll make everything just easier to find and any issues people have will be easier to fix!

booyah!

For some reason today I’m into typing a paragraph, then finish it with a single word exclamation. I’m not sure why. Must be because I’m hungry for lunch.

Shazing!

Anywhooo.. come check out the community forum! I’ve moved the downloads that were previously under a Downloads heading over to that thar community space.. enjoy it!

You can log in with Twitter, your google id, or just log in regularly. Fancy feast of awesomeness!

I think I’ll have a little time this week to update some stuff after work, and was thinking that it might be useful to update the Animator Friendly Rigging shelf.

My thought is that I would combine all four AFR shelves into one.. including all icons (in png format). The trick is.. [...]]]> Heya folks!

I think I’ll have a little time this week to update some stuff after work, and was thinking that it might be useful to update the Animator Friendly Rigging shelf.

My thought is that I would combine all four AFR shelves into one.. including all icons (in png format). The trick is.. it would check and see if you have the appropriate scripts installed before displaying the icon. Thus, only one shelf necessary to install!

Is it worth it? What do you think?

I’ve added a forum to the site in order to foster better communication between all the amazingly wonderful people who have purchased and/or used the Animator Friendly Rigging tools. I get a number of emails and questions about various tips, techniques, etc.. and I realized that there are probably lots of people interested [...]]]> Howdy folks!

I’ve added a forum to the site in order to foster better communication between all the amazingly wonderful people who have purchased and/or used the Animator Friendly Rigging tools. I get a number of emails and questions about various tips, techniques, etc.. and I realized that there are probably lots of people interested in finding out the answers to these questions.

So I’m trying this new forum software.. it is relatively simple, but the nice thing is that you can log in with your standard facebook, twitter, openID, etc accounts. Cool!

Anyway, let’s give it a shot and see how well it works!

http://jasonschleifer.com/afr-community

thanks all!
-jason

The only version of Maya [...]]]> One of the things that people have asked me about over the years is why are there two different versions of the shelves in the Animator Friendly Rigging series.  There’s an OSX version and a PC version.  They also ask about whether or not there is a linux version.

The only version of Maya I personally own is the OSX version, so I’m unable to test the shelves on anything else.

It used to be the case that the icons on the Mac used to need to be in .iff format, while the pc versions had to be .bmp.

I think that with 2011, Maya allows for .png files for all of their icons, but I’m not positive.  I’ve attached a zip file to this post that has the shelf for part 1 of the Animator Friendly Rigging series with new icons in .png format.

Would anyone be willing to download them and test to see if they work on Windows, and/or Linux?

Thanks very much, I appreciate it!

-jason

[download id="9"]

Sorry it’s been so long since any updates and posts on my site! As most of you know, I’ve been very busy for the past three years as Head of Character Animation on Dreamwork’s  Megamind

. It was quite an exciting and amazing journey, but VERY very very [...]]]> Heya folks!

Sorry it’s been so long since any updates and posts on my site! As most of you know, I’ve been very busy for the past three years as Head of Character Animation on Dreamwork’s  Megamind

. It was quite an exciting and amazing journey, but VERY very very busy!

Once the movie finished, I immediately started working on the short “The Button of Doom” which released with the DVD a few weeks ago.

After that I took a really lovely 3 weeks off to just relax with the family, and then came back to work as a supervising animator on another short that will be released sometime soon hopefully!

In addition to that, I’m working on some new technology at work, AND getting ready to head up the animation for another film at dreamworks that comes out in a few years.

So yeah, I’ve been busy!

Anyway, back to the Animator Friendly Rigging series! I’ve had a number of requests to find out whether or not the series works with Maya 2011. I’ve started working through it to see where the issues are, and one of the first ones I’ve resolved is a quick fix to the js_createTwistySegmentUI.mel script to make sure that the WorldScale Enable/Disable checkbox works correctly.

You can download it here:  js_createTwistySegmentUI

I’m hoping to start blogging again a bit more regularly.. I apologize for slacking so hard!

Now that I’m done with megamind (woo!) I get to wait patiently for the world to be able to see it!

It’s really exciting to start to see posters, commercials, etc. [...]]]> холна секция

Now that I’m done with megamind (woo!) I get to wait patiently for the world to be able to see it!

It’s really exciting to start to see posters, commercials, etc. I can’t wait for the reviews to start coming in!

One of the other exciting things is that the art of megamind book is going to be available soon! Check out this video and the review.. woo!

Sorry for the lack of updates lately! We’re in the final few weeks of finishing up animation on Megamind, and I’m a bit busy at the moment.

I’ll get back on track with updates and stuff after we wrap! Woo!

Plastic Animation Paper – PAP:Pro 4.0 for free.

Woah!  plastic animation paper for free!

sweeeeeeeeeeet!

Comic Con Panel – Megamind with Will Ferrell.

There was a megamind panel at comicon this morning at 10, and the buzz is coming back that it was a lot of fun!  They showed 5 minutes of the movie, which has shots from all through the film.. Everything should [...]]]>

Comic Con Panel – Megamind with Will Ferrell.

There was a megamind panel at comicon this morning at 10, and the buzz is coming back that it was a lot of fun!  They showed 5 minutes of the movie, which has shots from all through the film.. Everything should be on Yahoo movies tomorrow, so hopefully people will watch and enjoy!

I’m super jazzed about what the awesome people at Rigging Dojo are doing to help people interested in character rigging learn more about the craft.  They’re all fantastic teachers, excellent riggers, and just darn-right awesome human beings.  I’m really excited to be able to offer a 10% discount on the

I’m super jazzed about what the awesome people at Rigging Dojo are doing to help people interested in character rigging learn more about the craft.  They’re all fantastic teachers, excellent riggers, and just darn-right awesome human beings.  I’m really excited to be able to offer a 10% discount on the Animator Friendly Rigging DVD series for rigging dojo students!

If you’re a student there, please contact brad, josh, or chad to find out how to get your discount!

Woot!

I’ve modified my toodledo system a tiny bit.  Previously I mentioned that I had 4 folders set [...]]]> I’ve stuck pretty rigidly to my GTD plan these past two weeks and I can really feel a difference in my stress level and my ability to feel like I’m on top of everything on my plate.

I’ve modified my toodledo system a tiny bit.  Previously I mentioned that I had 4 folders set up in toodledo:

1. Inbox
2. Projects
3. Discussions
4. Someday / Maybe

This worked for a little while, but I soon found that my Projects folder was getting a bit overrun, so I decided to change Projects to Areas of Focus.  This lets me separate the areas where I don’t have any overlap to allow me to focus better.

My folder structure now looks like:

1. Inbox
2. Focus – Work
3. Focus – Home
4. Focus – Animator Friendly Rigging
5. Discussions
6. Someday / Maybe
7. Calendar

As you can see I also added a Calendar folder.  This is where I’m keeping things like birthdays and other events that I want to find quickly and easily.

What’s really been helping me keep on track however is being SUPER diligent about not letting my email inbox balloon out of control.  My goal is to get it to zero every night, but that’s not always possible to do before heading home to be with the family.

That means I also don’t skim through and start reading my work emails until I get into work in the morning (or sit down at the computer at night) and have time to process everything.

I absolute refuse to let an email sit in my inbox read.  If it’s sitting there, and I’ve read it, I force myself to make a decision on it.  Is it a task?  Is it an action?  Do I need to read it later and figure out what I’m going to do with it?  Even if that last option is the one I need to do, I make it a project, drag it to my Active folder in outlook, and then make a task in toodledo to read the email and process it.

This works for my physical inbox as well.  I spent a good 4 hours on Saturday going through my entire office and cleaning up all my old files, todo notes, etc.  I got everything current, emptied my inbox, and made sure to have a good clean space that’s enjoyable to sit in.

It’s amazing how just having a clean area and a clean inbox can allow you to focus 100% on a task at hand and really plow through it.

I think I’m totally hooked!

Now.. I still wish I had a cleaner UI for toodledo.. it’s okay, but check this out.. has anyone used smartytask?

Smartytask for GTD (Smartytask.com) from Smarty Task on Vimeo.

It looks super slick.. I’d love to give it a try, but 100 bucks a year is a little steep.

In fact, almost any type of “list” system will work just fine.  The only [...]]]> I know I’ve been talking a lot about toodledo as my current task manager of choice, but there are a number of options out there for people that would work pretty well for what I’ve been harping on so far.

In fact, almost any type of “list” system will work just fine.  The only reason I’m currently using toodledo is because it syncs with the iPhone so well and fast, it’s incredibly easy!

However, in terms of UI they could certainly use a retrofit.

Check out a similar task list in nirvana.. I can compress the window a lot more, only the relevant information is shown, and it just looks way cleaner.

I love the list of projects on the left, the fact that I can use Areas of focus to easily separate work from home stuff, and it’s super easy to see what items I’m waiting for, what’s next ,what I plan on doing in the future, etc.

The only real issue as to why I’m not using nirvana is because I can’t sync with my iphone.  They have a beautiful mobile app, but it needs an internet connection to sync. When I want to get my tasks I don’t wait to wait for an internet connection, I want the stuff there.. immediately!

Google tasks is another possibility.. you can make individual lists, and you can indent.. but as far as I know I can’t search my tasks, and I can’t tag them.  That makes it a no-win for me.

The other thing I like about both toodledo and nirvana is that I can email tasks directly to the inbox.. super sweet!  And with toodledo I can actually process stuff with my email!  I can send with a subject like:

Call bob about new car ideas ! @@call #today

and it’ll show up in my inbox with the context @call and already marked for #today.  I can also add tags, status, folders, etc..

Crazy powerful!  Also, check out all the connections they have. Lots of ways to work with your data.

They also have a fancy “refer your friend” deal where if you refer a friend to toodledo and they sign up through a special link, you can save money on a pro account.. giving you access to all sorts of cool things like subtasks and more.

I just wish it were prettier.

At any rate, I’d love to hear what other things you guys are using!  In fact, regardless of how useful toodledo is, or how pretty nirvana is.. neither still really give me what I want.

What I WANT is something I can host myself for absolute security that’ll sync with my iphone/ipad.  Anyone know of anything like that?

]]> http://jasonschleifer.com/2010/06/01/task-management-options/feed/ 7 http://jasonschleifer.com/2010/05/31/processing-toodledo-inbox/ http://jasonschleifer.com/2010/05/31/processing-toodledo-inbox/#comments Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:46:37 +0000 jason http://jasonschleifer.com/?p=897 In a previous post I started going through my new process for handling tasks that allows me to be email inbox zero.

If you can remember, I funnel everything that I have to do (or need to follow up on) to my toodledo inbox, whether it’s from email, snail mail, meetings, etc.

In toodledo I [...]]]> In a previous post I started going through my new process for handling tasks that allows me to be email inbox zero.

If you can remember, I funnel everything that I have to do (or need to follow up on) to my toodledo inbox, whether it’s from email, snail mail, meetings, etc.

In toodledo I have the following folders set up:

1. Inbox
2. Projects
3. Discussions
4. Someday / Maybe

My default tasks get sent to my inbox folder automatically, so any tasks I add whether it’s within toodledo, by forwarding an email, or by using my own personal python script (I’ll discuss this in another post) all sit first in that inbox folder.

Then, I can go through each item and specify whether the item is a task or project, what it’s due date is, the context (@work, @home, @calls, @wife, etc), what the status is ( next action, deferred, waiting on, etc) and determine if it’s a project, a discussion I need to have, or if I’m going to do it sometime in the future.

Then I move the task to the appropriate folder and I’m done!

Well, done processing anyway. Now it’s time to start doing real work.

Depending on where I am, I will filter my lists by context, so when I’m at work I only see my @work tasks.. Or if I am meeting with my whole animation team I’ll filter to my folder discussions and then check out my @anim items so I know what I want to talk about.

What’s great about this is that I can have a real clear picture of what tasks and projects are relevant to my current state, and I can easily determine what I should be working on at any given moment.

I’ve been focusing on doing this for a few weeks now and my focus has changed considerably. I really feel like I have a handle on most of the things that are taking my attention.

I don’t have everything in this system yet.. For example I know that I have to return my leased car within the next two months but I don’t have a project based on that idea yet.

It’s all a process though.. A journey.

The trick here is not that I’m completing everything in my email, it’s that I’m cleansing and moving it to a single trusted place. That means that no matter what, I have [...]]]> In my previous post I discusses the inbox zero side of my current gtd setup.. Basically processing all my email down to zero.

The trick here is not that I’m completing everything in my email, it’s that I’m cleansing and moving it to a single trusted place. That means that no matter what, I have one single location to go to where all my incoming tasks and projects will be processed.

Of course I was just talking about email previously.. the trick is that I can do this with all types of input.  Email, snail mail, meeting notes, random thoughts, shopping lists, long term goals, etc.

Every thought gets funneled into the same location where I can process, filter, assign, itemize, plan, etc.

The key is to get the stuff to toodledo with a clear action in mind.

It doesn’t help if I just forward an email with a subject like “re: fountains, what a pain!”.

If that ends up in my toodledo inbox I’ll have to re-read the email and figure out what the heck to do about it.  As long as I’ve already made up my mind that I DO need to do something about this (otherwise, why would I be forwarding it to toodledo?), I should phrase the subject as a task that I can physically do, or a clearly defined outcome to a project.

For example, let’s say that what’s hidden in the heart of this email is the fact that there are 15 different kinds of fountains for sale by this company I’m interested in purchasing from, and I need to determine what kind of fountain to get.

Then I’ll forward the email and change the subject to be something like “Choose which fountain I want”.

That way when I look at my toodledo inbox I know that this email is about picking a fountain, and there’s probably information in there for me to look at.

One of the great things about a pro account at toodledo is that I can make sub-tasks for my todos.  So I can break this down even further!

I can create a few very simple subtasks that allow me to really define what’s involved with picking the fountain:

• create a list of fountain names
• find images of each fountain
• put images and names into a google doc
• send google doc to wife
• set aside 15 minutes to discuss options
• etc..

Then, I’ll make each of those a sub-task and add whatever other information is necessary. .for example, add a link to the actual google doc I’m using, etc.

This is where the GTD stuff comes in real handy.  Each of those things are small physical bite-sized chunks of the big project “choose a fountain” that I can easily manage.  Now this project isn’t so daunting!

To be continued..

This past week I’ve been doing my darndest to try and maintain a zero-sized inbox, both at home and at work.  This is an incredibly daunting task.  As work I receive a TON of email every day.  And by a ton, I mean a metric buttload of email.

One quick example.. [...]]]> I’m such a dork.

This past week I’ve been doing my darndest to try and maintain a zero-sized inbox, both at home and at work.  This is an incredibly daunting task.  As work I receive a TON of email every day.  And by a ton, I mean a metric buttload of email.

One quick example.. on wednesday at 4pm I had my inbox down to 0.  That’s right, not a single email in my inbox.  Not one.  Zero. Kaput.  Nada.  Bupkis. I went off to walkies for one hour and when I returned I had over 150 messages in my email inbox.

Yeah.  One hour.  150 messages.  Expand that over an entire day, and you can see that my email inbox is constantly pinging me.   Expand that to a week.. imagine how much information is coming at me that might require some sort of action from me.  Yep, a bunch.

So this week I thought.. you know what?  I’m going to see if I can practice Inbox Zero, and I’m going to use toodledo to do it.

What is inbox zero you ask?

Only the coolest thing ever.

Yeah, that’s right.. cooler than than anything ever.  That’s right.  I said it.

Oh, you want me to elaborate?  It’s simply a way of maintaing your sanity with the amount of email coming at you.  The main idea is to process your email out of your inbox into a trusted system so you’re only taking in this input ONCE.

How many of you have an email sitting in your inbox that you’ve read once before?  What about twice?  What about knowing that there might be an email in your inbox that you might have read that might have something important in it maybe?

That’s sooooo stressful!

So here’s what I do.. I basically follow david allen’s GTD stuff with some Merlin Mann’s inbox zero stuff, and process it into my toodledo system.

First, I set up toodledo so I had a few folders:

1. Inbox
2. Projects
3. Discussions
4. Someday / Maybe

Next, I went to my toodledo settings and told it to put any new tasks directly into 1. Inbox.

Then I went to the tools and services area and configred my email so that I could email directly into my inbox.

Now that toodledo was set up, I went to my email program and created a few folders in there

1. My Projects
2. Others Projects
3. Reference
4. Archived

Finally, I went to my work email and started processing my email.  For every single piece of email I followed a flowchart similar to this one where I asked myself:

1. Do I need this email?  No?  DELETE it.
2. Is it actionable?  Can I or someone else do something about it? No? Archive it – What I would then do is assign this email a tag (gmail) or category (outlook) and drag it to my References folder.
3. Do I have to do something about it? No? Delegate it – Assign a tag (gmail) or category (outlook) drag it to my Others Projects folder
4. Can I do it in 2 minutes or less?  Yes?  Do it

If an email made it through each of these things and was still around, it most likely was a project of some kind. I would then tag or assign a category to the email, drag it to the My Projects folder, and then forward the email to toodledo with a subject that defined the outcome of the project.

For example, if I got an email that said “My AFR download isn’t working”, I would forward that to toodledo with a subject that said “Fix this person’s AFR download”.  If I knew what the absolute next action was that I needed to do I would add that to the notes.  If I didn’t, then I knew I would think about this later and just sent it to toodledo anyway.

Then, I would continue on to the next email and the next and the next until my entire inbox was ZERO.

Then I hopped over to gmail and did the same thing.

The nice thing about this is that I found that I could head to My Projects in my email and list by tag or by category and get a good sense of all my projects that I’m currently working on.  I could also head to Others Projects and see where they’re at on things.  It is a really great way of seeing quickly where everything is at.

The most important thing about this is that I’m now NEVER going into my email unless I give myself time to process what’s in there.  Even if I don’t have time to do those 2 minute tasks, I will simply forward those to my toodledo account knowing that I’ll get to them.  This allows me to get my email down to zero and maintain it being zero.  If I see that i have 30 messages sitting in there, in the past I would start cherry-picking things to read and not read, and I’d end up leaving stuff sitting there forever.  Now I have the strength to say “nope, no time to process.. I’m not going to even look.”

Talk about a stress relief!

In my next post, I’ll talk about how I dealt with processing all my items that are now sitting in my Inbox at toodledo.

Thought it might be interesting to put it up again in case people haven’t seen it before.

Here’s an example of the movie for part 4a:

Now that all of the parts are up and available for purchase either independently, or as a I’ve now added the Animator Friendly Rigging – Part 4 page to the website, complete with example pdf files and links to the example youtube movies.

Here’s an example of the movie for part 4a:

Now that all of the parts are up and available for purchase either independently, or as a bundle, I’m continuing to try and make as much information available on this site as possible. Over the next few weeks I’ll be filling out the FAQ, updating the main AFR page, and hopefully updating scripts and such as they become available.

Thanks again to everyone for purchasing the material, I love that it’s getting out there!

cheers!

-jason

I have some great news!  As of tonight, the entire 8 set of Animator Friendly Rigging materials are available for purchase from my new store at fastspring.com!

You can buy bit individually for $14.99 a piece, or you can jump in with both feet and buy the entire set at once!  If you [...]]]> Heya folks!

I have some great news!  As of tonight, the entire 8 set of Animator Friendly Rigging materials are available for purchase from my new store at fastspring.com!

You can buy bit individually for $14.99 a piece, or you can jump in with both feet and buy the entire set at once!  If you buy the whole thing, you get 8 bits for the price of 7!

I’m down in LA this week, so I’ll be putting the official pages together on how to buy this stuff with example pdf’s and movies and such probably this weekend, but I wanted to get this stuff up for you all now asap!

To purchase the individual materials, please go to the following pages:

Part 1 -> Introduction to Rigging, the bouncy ball

Part 2a -> Introduction to bipeds, the torso

Part 2b -> The torso continued, and the head

Part 3a -> The arm

Part 3b -> The arm continued

Part 3c -> The hand and fingers

Part 4a -> The foot and leg

Part 4b -> Completing the rig: mirroring, ui, presentation, etc

Or you can purchase the entire bundle with all the training materials at once!

I hope this new store works well for everyone and that the material is useful!

Enjoy!

Sorry for the delay in the rest of the AFR series being available. The content is ready, but I’m having trouble getting it available on lulu.com. For some reason the movies aren’t uploading correctly, so I’m not able to make a product for purchasing.

I’m looking into alternative vendors besides lulu.. if any [...]]]> Hey folks,

Sorry for the delay in the rest of the AFR series being available. The content is ready, but I’m having trouble getting it available on lulu.com. For some reason the movies aren’t uploading correctly, so I’m not able to make a product for purchasing.

I’m looking into alternative vendors besides lulu.. if any of you know of good eCommerce websites that will host and distribute content, please let me know!

Hopefully we’ll have this sorted soon!!

The latest trailer has come out and [...]]]> As most of you know, for the past two years I’ve been working as Head of Character Animation on Megamind.  We’ve been working hard, and it’s been a lot of fun.  Animation is cranking away, and I can’t wait to see people’s reactions to the film in November!

The latest trailer has come out and is available online now..

This has been a real epic journey, and a real learning experience for me.  It’s a joy to be able to now have some of our film out there for people to see!

enjoy!

-jason

Go straight to the page, or check out the preview [...]]]> Whew! Part 3b is up and available now! I’m finding that it’s taking about 2 hours or so to convert each section to be available for download through lulu, so at this rate hopefully I’ll be done by the end of the week!

Go straight to the page, or check out the preview video:

Go straight to the page, or check out the preview [...]]]> I’ve started working on getting Part 3 up and available. This morning I finished with Part 3a. This section discusses arms, and how to handle switching between FK and IK. It also looks at locking down elbows, and a whole bunch of fun stuff!

Go straight to the page, or check out the preview video:

There are 2 other parts to section 3.  They continue with more arm work, and also getting into the hands and the fingers.  I’m currently selling each part individually much as Autodesk did (‘cept for nearly 15 cheaper per part).  If people are interested in purchasing entire sections as a bundle, or the entire AFR series as a bundle, I’m more than happy to do it.  Just let me know if this is something you’d be interested in, and I’ll make it happen!

To re-iterate..  Currently the parts break up like this:

part 1 | parts 2a & 2b | parts 3a, 3b, 3c, | parts 4a, 4b

I can sell them all individually, as bundles for each section, and/or as a bundle for the whole.

What would you guys prefer?

-jason

This part focuses on finishing the Torso rig, and gets into the head and neck.  It’s quite a long one.. the movie file that comes with it is over [...]]]> In my continued quest to get all the Animator Friendly Rigging tutorials available, I’ve just finished uploading Part 2b – the continuation of Part 2a.

This part focuses on finishing the Torso rig, and gets into the head and neck.  It’s quite a long one.. the movie file that comes with it is over 800 megs (yipes!), and is about 2 hours and 40 minutes long.

Here’s a preview of the section where I talk about the head:

And a demo of what types of controls you have with the head and torso:

Currently part 2 is broken into two bits.. 2a and 2b, simply because that’s how Autodesk had broken it up originally.  I’m happy to continue providing them as a separate bits, or combining them into a single part 2 if people are interested.  Let me know if that’s desirable, and I’ll do the same with parts 3 and parts 4.

So I uploaded the movie to youtube and put it on the downloads page.  You can also see it here:

Some day I’d [...]]]> A number of people have said how much they enjoy the js_greasePencil script I wrote a while ago, but they’ve been having trouble downloading the movie that shows how it works.

So I uploaded the movie to youtube and put it on the downloads page.  You can also see it here:

Some day I’d like to re-write greasePencil so it’s actually got good drawing tools and isn’t such a hack.. but I probably won’t get around to it for a while.  Of course, if Autodesk wrote it appropriately for integration with Maya, that would be AWESOME, too.

Just as before with part 1, I’ve uploaded an example pdf with about 13 or so pages demonstrating some of the documentation, and also provided a 6+ minute example [...]]]> Continuing with the act of getting the Animator Friendly Rigging series up and running, I’ve now got Part 2a available for purchae from lulu.com!

Just as before with part 1, I’ve uploaded an example pdf with about 13 or so pages demonstrating some of the documentation, and also provided a 6+ minute example video (low resolution, but gives you a little bit of an idea as to what you’ll be getting, presentation style, etc).

And if you haven’t seen the reference I’m talking about in this example video, you can see a low-resolution version here:

Yes.  We do look like idiots.

Thanks again for all the kind words about the series!  I’m going to keep uploading them as I get them ready!

-jason

As I mentioned earlier, the Animator Friendly Rigging instructional series will no longer be available through Autodesk.  It’s been a great run with Autodesk, and they have done a wonderful job selling the series.  However, they decided that they will no longer be selling the DVD online.

I have received such great feedback [...]]]> Heya folks!

As I mentioned earlier, the Animator Friendly Rigging instructional series will no longer be available through Autodesk.  It’s been a great run with Autodesk, and they have done a wonderful job selling the series.  However, they decided that they will no longer be selling the DVD online.

I have received such great feedback on the material, that I decided to keep selling it through lulu.com.  So over the next week I’ll be making sure all the material is available online, and as a special bonus I’m going to be dropping the price for a little while!

I’ve posted the first dvd on lulu.com already, and will get the rest up ASAP.

If you go to the AFR – part 1 page, you can find a PDF and video excerpt to show you an example of what it is you will receive when you purchase the material.

I look forward to getting all the material up and available for people to see!

Thanks for all the kind words and support!

-jason

A lot of people have asked me over the years where they can find the js_greasePencil script for Maya that I wrote a while ago.

This is a handy script that lets you draw on top of your Maya scene. You can use it for thumbnails, roughing out timing, drawing arcs, etc. It’s [...]]]> Heya folks!

A lot of people have asked me over the years where they can find the js_greasePencil script for Maya that I wrote a while ago.

This is a handy script that lets you draw on top of your Maya scene. You can use it for thumbnails, roughing out timing, drawing arcs, etc. It’s pretty basic, but handy to have!

Anyway, I’ve added the script to the downloads page.  If you’re logged in, you can download it here:

[download id="7"]

Enjoy!

I’ve received a few emails from people saying they’re having troubles with some of the scripts from the Animator Friendly Rigging series. I’d like to get all those issues solved, so if you are having trouble, please comment in this post so we can get it all sorted out!

It looks like Autodesk [...]]]> heya folks!

I’ve received a few emails from people saying they’re having troubles with some of the scripts from the Animator Friendly Rigging series. I’d like to get all those issues solved, so if you are having trouble, please comment in this post so we can get it all sorted out!

It looks like Autodesk may stop selling the DVDs on their website soon, so I’m going to try and sell them myself through lulu.. the same way I’ve got the other two dvds selling. Once I make this move, I plan on putting up some specific information on this site about each DVD, including an example of the documentation, a sample of the movie, and quotes from anyone who has used the DVDs and found them useful. If you’re one of those people.. I’d love a quote or two!

Hope everyone is doing well!

Woot!

This past weekend was my 37th birthday and as part of celebrating I got a chance to re-connect with one of my childhood best friends, Alex Wong.  I haven’t seen Alex since we were kids, but have kept in touch periodically here and there over the years.  Back when I was working [...]]]>

This past weekend was my 37th birthday and as part of celebrating I got a chance to re-connect with one of my childhood best friends, Alex Wong.  I haven’t seen Alex since we were kids, but have kept in touch periodically here and there over the years.  Back when I was working on The Lord of the Rings we briefly touched base over email and I found out he was in a band called The Animators.

I purchased their cd also got one of my favorite t-shirts of all time:

Anyway, it was wonderful seeing Alex again and catching up.  He also gave me one of his new cds for a band he’s in called The Paper Raincoat.  I love the music and the design of the cd packaging is brilliant.  Please go check it out!  You can read a review of the band here:

Paper Raincoat at Joe’s Pub | Random Musings.

I’m posting this for a couple of reasons.. first, because I’m really proud of Alex and what he’s accomplished & what an amazing person he’s turned out to be.  Second, I think that he’s a great inspiration for people to really go out there and chase their dreams.  It makes my heart glow when I see someone doing something they love really really well.

Anyway, enough blathering on.. go check out the music! 

-jason

]]> http://jasonschleifer.com/2010/04/05/got-to-meet-up-with-a-talented-friend-from-childhood-whos-an-amazing-musician/feed/ 4 http://jasonschleifer.com/2010/03/20/animation-insiders-available-april-27th/ http://jasonschleifer.com/2010/03/20/animation-insiders-available-april-27th/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2010 17:42:01 +0000 jason http://jasonschleifer.com/?p=693

Animation Insiders is a new series of books dedicated to animation, put together by Patrick Beaulieu.  I’m really excited to be a part of this series.  It’s a whole bunch of interviews with a number of incredibly talented animators all talking about various parts of animation.  This first [...]]]>

Animation Insiders is a new series of books dedicated to animation, put together by Patrick Beaulieu.  I’m really excited to be a part of this series.  It’s a whole bunch of interviews with a number of incredibly talented animators all talking about various parts of animation.  This first book is on Workflow and contains total gems by some good friends, and some people I’m hoping to meet some day!

It’s available April 27th, check it out!

Ugh, another studio shutting down.. just a few days after IMD closes it’s doors.

I just wanted to send out my heartfelt well wishes to those affected by the closure of both studios.. [...]]]> C.O.R.E. Digital Shut Down This Afternoon | Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation.

Ugh, another studio shutting down.. just a few days after IMD closes it’s doors.

I just wanted to send out my heartfelt well wishes to those affected by the closure of both studios.. looks like it’s about 600 artists out of work (450 at IMD, and 150 at C.O.R.E.)

if you know anyone at either studio, please send them a hug & best wishes.. It’s a very small industry, and the closure of any studio, let alone two big ones that had works in development is never a good thing.

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated, life has been busy and exciting. I’m now going full tilt in production on MegaMind and our animation department is completely staffed up. We’re cranking away on shots and it’s keeping me quite busy. Exhausting, but really exciting and fun.

Being a head of character [...]]]> Hey folks!

Sorry it’s been so long since I’ve updated, life has been busy and exciting. I’m now going full tilt in production on MegaMind and our animation department is completely staffed up. We’re cranking away on shots and it’s keeping me quite busy. Exhausting, but really exciting and fun.

Being a head of character animation is a wonderful challenge.. it’s part cheerleader, part strategist, part animator, part hard nosed negotiator, and part flexible team player.. all wrapped up into a single package. Like I said.. Exhausting, but Exciting!

Anyway, I saw this post today and thought I’d show it.. it’s not related to MegaMind, but any professional craftsperson who deals with clients on a daily basis will LOVE it.

js_matchObj.mel and js_matchObjUI.mel.

I’ve heard of others missing these as well, so I added them to the downloads page, along with js_iterator.mel.

If you’re missing them.. enjoy!

note: you must be logged [...]]]> I received an email yesterday from a person who purchased the Animator Friendly Rigging series and found that two mel scripts were missing:

js_matchObj.mel and js_matchObjUI.mel.

I’ve heard of others missing these as well, so I added them to the downloads page, along with js_iterator.mel.

If you’re missing them.. enjoy!

note: you must be logged in to download.

[download id="6"]

Hope it’s a great and relaxing one for you!

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that it’s important to share your ideas as much as possible.  That’s how innovation happens.  It’s how things progress.  It’s how we learn.  I’ve never been afraid to put my own ideas out there because I know I’ll get back more [...]]]>

One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that it’s important to share your ideas as much as possible.  That’s how innovation happens.  It’s how things progress.  It’s how we learn.  I’ve never been afraid to put my own ideas out there because I know I’ll get back more in return.

As soon as I released my DVDs on character rigging, I started seeing them pop up on warez & pirating sites.  People have been sharing them with friends, downloading them from various locations, burning dvds, etc.  While it directly takes away from my own pocket, there’s nothing I can do to stop it so I don’t stress about it.

I figure, as long as people are out there using this stuff, then it’s a good thing.  If they really appreciate it, then maybe someday they’ll send me a thank you email, or a postcard, or 10 bucks, or whatever.  Or they’ll tell others to go buy my stuff.  Or they’ll buy me a beer at siggraph.

Today I got an email from someone who actually created an automated way to create the “Animator Friendly Rigging” rig that I developed for the AFR series dvds.

Automated “Animator Friendly Rigging” – Free Character Scripts / Plugins Downloads for Maya.

Some people would probably think that I’d be offended by this, or ask him to take it down.  After all, they’re techniques I developed, right?  This stuff contains scripts that should really only be available through the DVD series.  It’s my intelectual property he’s messing with!

But I’m not, I’m actually quite stoked that he liked my stuff enough to spend the time to try and automate it.  It means that my ideas aren’t nuts and that they’re worth following.

My whole point of the DVDs wasn’t to say “this is the be-all end-all of rigging technology”, but to say “hey.. this is how I like to THINK about rigging.  You should, too!”

If you just download this script and create a rig with it.. yeah, you’ll have a pretty sweet rig with lots of functionality.  But you won’t have learned the point of the DVD, and that’s how to THINK about rigging.

So, here’s what I say.. download the tool.  Try it out.  See how you like the rig.  If you dig it, or at least intrigued by it.. then go purchase the DVD and see why certain choices were made.  Learn about the process, because in the end.. THAT’s what you need to do to be a good character td.

Speaking of Animation.

A few animators from Dreamworks have started their own animation blog and so far it looks pretty cool!  Go check it out!

Woo!

Integrating a Creature Rig Into a Production Pipeline

First Come First Serve!

Update: 0 invites left!  All gone!

Jeffrey Katzenberg Plans on Living Happily Ever After | Fast Company.

This is a nice interview with JK, our main head honcho at Dreamworks Animation.

The first time I ever spoke to Jeffrey was when I was applying for a job at Dreamworks.  I was actually still living in [...]]]>

Jeffrey Katzenberg Plans on Living Happily Ever After | Fast Company.

This is a nice interview with JK, our main head honcho at Dreamworks Animation.

The first time I ever spoke to Jeffrey was when I was applying for a job at Dreamworks.  I was actually still living in New Zealand finishing up on The Lord of the Rings.  I believe it was a saturday morning, and I was at home showering before heading in to work.  I heard the phone ring & my wife poked her head in the bathroom to say “There’s a call for you.”

“Who is it?”  I asked, massaging shampoo into my hair.

“Jeffrey Katzenberg?” She said.

I nearly slipped in the tub and cracked my skull.

“WHAT?!?!”

“Yeah, some guy named Jeffrey Katzenberg.  Who is he?”

“KATZENBERG?  JEFFREY KATZENBERG CALLED HERE?”

“Yeah.. and he is….”

“KATZENBERG!  SPIELBERG!  GEFFEN!   DREAMWORKS!  SKG!  KATZENBERG!”  I sputtered and slipped and rinsed and threw on a towel and somehow managed to answer the phone.  “Mr. Katzenberg.. *squeek* Hello sir, how are you…”

We spoke for a bit about the company, what Dreamworks was doing, how exciting it is here, and other things.  I think the conversation lasted all of two minutes, but in that time I was immediately impressed with Jeffrey’s passion for animation, his excitement about the studio, and I knew I wanted to work here.

I’ve been fortunate to have been in meetings with Jeffrey a few times in my nearly 6 years at Dreamworks, and have to say that even though it’s nerve-wracking at times (he IS the big boss, after all), he’s always been really engaging, intelligent, honest, and 99.9% of the time completely correct.  I really value his notes and love the dedication he has to his staff.

Anyway, the article great read & really gives some good insight into his head.  Enjoy!

Testing Time-Management Strategies – WSJ.com.

As most of you know, I’ve been spending the past year or so working on time management techniques, trying to figure out ways to keep creative, but still get work done quickly and efficiently.

In my new role, I find [...]]]>

Testing Time-Management Strategies – WSJ.com.

As most of you know, I’ve been spending the past year or so working on time management techniques, trying to figure out ways to keep creative, but still get work done quickly and efficiently.

In my new role, I find that I spend quite a bit of time juggling meetings, animating, giving notes, exploring ideas, family, and trying to find time to relax and work out.  It’s not easy, and things can easily get dropped or fall behind.

I’ve explored a few ways of keeping track of things, and what I’m working with now is a somewhat modified GTD technique, or Getting Things Done for those of you who haven’t heard of GTD before.  It’s a pretty cool technique for managing time developed by David Allen.

It’s working relatively well for me, but I still have yet to find a complete email/iphone/os X/linux workflow that I love with it.

I’ve also attempted the Pomodoro technique a few times, which I really like when I have a whole saturday to work straight ahead on 4 or 5 items.

The main thing that’s keeping me on track is trying to keep my email inbox to 0.  My goal is to do it every day, but some days that’s just impossible.  If I can’t hit it every day, I try and make SURE I do it by the end of the week.

Anyway, the Wall Street Journal has put together an article talking about time management.. it’s pretty interesting.  Check it out!

Seriously, go read them.  You’ll be missing out on some pretty [...]]]> Now on to part III of my series on using OOCalc to track your Magic The Gathering card collection.  If you’ve missed parts 1 and 2, you may want to check them out, since part 3 builds upon those two bits.

Seriously, go read them.  You’ll be missing out on some pretty neato spreadsheet magic.

Go on, it’s okay.  I’ll wait.

…

Okay, you done?  Great!

In part III, we’re going to create the Collection bit of the spreadsheet where we get the value of our cards and calculate how much our collection is worth!

Oh man, can’t wait to sell the whole thing and buy a new Apple Tablet.

Yeah, I know they don’t “officially” exist yet, but I’m allowed to dream, aren’t I?

Okay, our current spreadsheet has two Sheets.. a blank Collection sheet, and our Pricelist that we downloaded and imported in part 2.

The Collection sheet is going to have the following columns: Card Name, Count, and Value. These should be pretty self explanatory, but just to make sure everyone is on the same page here..

Card Name will be the name of the card I want the value of.  It should match one of the names from the Pricelist sheet.

Count is the number of these cards that I have.

Value is going to be the associated price of the Card Name from the Pricelist sheet, multiplied by the Count.

So far so good?  Great!  Here’s an image of my spreadsheet so far with those headings placed at A1, B1, and C1.

Let’s go ahead and just enter the name of a card in A2.  For the fun of it, let’s pick a card that’s worth quite a bit of money.  How about.. Ancestral Recall from the Alpha series of cards.

Select A2 and type:

Ancestral Recall (A)

Obviously nothing happens yet, because we haven’t told C2 to get the price.  We’ll use the VLOOKUP function here to make the query.

Select C2 and type:

=VLOOKUP(A2;Pricelist.A2:B14317;2;1)

Remember.. the first field is the cell we want to grab and the second field is the array we’re going to search.  The third is the column within that array that we’re going to return, and the fourth is whether or not we’re sorting.  Since our pricelist is sorted alphabetially, we’re going to enter “1″ for the sort value.

Notice something special in the second field.. we’re specifying a specific sheet to search for the array: Pricelist.A2:B14317.  This tells oocalc to go to a different sheet than the one we’re currently on.  If we didn’t do this, we would be searching the current sheet, and that wouldn’t do us any good at all.

We’re not quite finished yet, we still need to enter a Count.  Let’s pretend that we actually were really lucky and found 4 of these Ancestral Recall (A) cards.  Go ahead and enter 4 in B2.

Notice the value didn’t update, so we need to update the VLOOKUP function to multiply the value by the count.  Change VLOOKUP to:

=VLOOKUP(A2;Pricelist.A2:B14317;2;1) * B2

Not bad!  However, we still need to make a few more adjustments.  First, remember in part 1 when we copied and pasted our function it would offset the search values?  That’ll happen again if we copy C2 to C3.  Give it a shot and see what you get:

C2: =VLOOKUP(A2;Pricelist.A2:B14317;2;1) * B2

C3: =VLOOKUP(A3;Pricelist.A3:B14318;2;1) * B3

Some of the offsetting is fine.. A2 to A3 and B2 to B3 for example.  But the Pricelist.A2:B14317 being changed to Pricelist.A3:B14318 isn’t going to work.  Again, we need to use the $ symbol to lock down the cells we don’t want to adjust.

Change C2 to:

=VLOOKUP(A2;Pricelist.A$2:B$14317;2;1) * B2

Now you can copy and paste the field without it doing the wrong thing.

BUT you notice that if you DO paste into C3 without putting the name of anything in A3, you get a big lovely #N/A.  That means that the function is working, but it’s not returning a valid value.  That’s pretty ugly, isn’t it.  Let’s fix the display by telling the function to just return a blank string if there’s noting in A3.  We can do that using a Conditional!

We’re going to use an IF statement to check and see if A3 is blank.  If it is, we’ll display a blank value.  If not, then we’ll use our VLOOKUP function.

IF works like this:

IF ( Test; Then_value; Otherwise_value).

For example, if you had a value of “foo” in A1 and put this function in B1:

=if (A1=”foo”;”doo”;”darn”)

B1 would see that A1 does indeed = “foo”, so it would return “doo”.  If we did:

=if(A1=”poo”;”doo”;”darn”)

and A1 was still “foo”, then the expression would see that A1 didn’t equal “poo”, so it would return “darn”.

Does that make sense?

Here’s how we’re going to change our expression in C2:

=IF(A2=”";”";VLOOKUP(A2;Pricelist.A$2:B$14317;2;1) * B2)

Then copy and paste this into C3.  Notice the #N/A is gone?  That’s because we’re using the IF statement to check and see if A2 is blank.  Since it is, then this reuturns a blank string.  That looks much better!

Now let’s go ahead and enter another expensive card name in A3.. this time let’s use.. Badlands (A).

Notice the Value didn’t update.  That’s because we didn’t enter a count number.  If we simply change the value of count to 1, you’ll see the Value gets updated correctly:

Wouldn’t it be great if by default the count assumed it was always 1?  We can certainly do that by adding another function into our Value function.. MAX.

MAX will take a list of numbers and return the maximum number.  For example:

MAX(1;50) = 50

MAX(0;10;20;-5) = 20

MAX(.5;.7;150;10010) = 10010

Since we know that most of the time we’ll have 1 or more cards, we can assume that our anything lower than 1 should be returned as… 1.  So all we need to do is change the part of our function where we get the count from B2 to MAX(1;B2).  Then if B2 is 0, it will still return 1.  If it’s 10, then the funciton will return 10.  Sweet!

Go ahead and change C2 to the following function and then paste it into C3:

=IF(A2=”";”";VLOOKUP(A2;Pricelist.A$2:B$14317;2;1) * MAX(1;B2))

Notice that C3 now returns the proper value of the card.. and if you change B3, it will still add up correctly.

Nice!

The last bit of the tutorial is probably the coolest.. I can’t wait for you to see it!

You’ve probably noticed while scrolling through the list of card names that some of the Magic cards can be quite hard to spell..

It would be really easy to accidentally type in a name wrong and get the wrong value, or no value at all.  We could put in some crazy checking, but with 14,316 cards.. I’d much rather there was an easier way to search and enter card names.

Luckly, there is!

We can use the Validity feature of OOCalc!  It’s a great tool that lets you specify what exactly can be allowed to be entered into a cell.  We’ll use it on the Card Name column to ensure that only the cards shown in the Pricelist can be entered!

To do this, select A2.

Go Data -> Validity

This will bring up the Validity window:

Here, you can tell oocalc exactly what type of item to allow in the cell.  The coolest thing is that you can choose a Cell Range.  That’s right.. we can pick the range of cells that are in our Pricelist that have the actual names of the cards.  Not only will this limit the input to only allow those names.. but it will actually create a dropdown option box so the person entering the names can just simply pick the one they want!

Yeah, that’s a LOT of italics, but it’s so cool!

Go ahead and tell it to allow a Cell Range:

Now enter the range:

Pricelist.A$2:A$14317

Make sure Show Selection List is on.

Click OK

You’ll notice that there’s now a pulldown next to A2.  Go ahead and click on it.. you’ll get a pulldown of all the items in the pricelist!

Just pick the one you want and you’re done!

The rest is up to you.. just copy and the rows as you need them and you’ll be able to get the values of each card!

Enjoy!

If you recall, we ended up with two tables.. a price list and an itemized list of things we’re going [...]]]> In my last post on Tracking your Magic The Gathering Collection, I introduced the technique on using the VLOOKUP function to help find prices for individual objects based on a previously defined price list.

If you recall, we ended up with two tables.. a price list and an itemized list of things we’re going to purchase, complete with the number of each item, the price per item, and the total cost.  Here’s the result:

Now we want to do the same thing, but with the price list for our entire Magic The Gathering collection.

Sweet.

In the last post I mentioned a great site where you can get the current going rate for Magic cards.. http://www.magictraders.com/.  So the this part of the tutorial will be how to take the price list and create an Open Office Calc spreadsheet with it.

It should be noted that I’m using Open Office 3 for this tutorial on OS X.  The same principle should apply for Excel, Open Office 2, and most other spreadsheet programs.  I like Open Office because it’s free.. open source.. and pretty powerful.

Step 1: Download the price list

To get the price list, simply go to the MagicTraders website navigate to their pricelists.

You’ll see that they have a few different price lists you can download.  For my collection, I just needed the Non-Foil Physical Magic Cards, and picked the Pipe-Delimited Format. This looks something like:

Card|Price|StdDev|Average|High|Low|Change|Raw N
AErathi Berserker|0.75|0.00|0.75|0.75|0.75|0.00|1
AEther Barrier|0.40|0.10|0.40|0.50|0.30|0.00|2
AEther Burst|0.42|0.12|0.42|0.50|0.25|-0.00|3
AEther Charge|0.25|0.00|0.25|0.25|0.25|0.00|2
AEther Figment|0.27|0.13|0.27|0.56|0.03|0.00|15
AEther Flash (6th)|0.44|0.20|0.44|0.71|0.25|-0.00|3

By inserting the “pipe” or “|” character between fields, it’s very easy for OOCalc to interpret this and turn it into a spreadsheet.  Simply click on the link (you can go there directly by going to: http://www.magictraders.com/pricelists/current-magic-excel.txt).  This will display the link in your browser.

You can then download this file as a text file simply by going File->Save Page As.. and saving the text file somewhere you can find as current-magic-excel.txt.

I usually just save mine on my desktop so I can find it easily.

Step 2: Load the file into OOCalc

Next, we’re going to load the file as a spreadsheet into OOCalc.

In OOCalc, choose File -> Open

Navigate to your desktop (or wherever you saved the file) and load current-magic-excel.txt.

Oocalc will launch a Text Import wizard that will allow you to specify how Oocalc should interpret the file.

As you can see, right now it’s just importing each line as one big field.  We want to break up the items by the “|” character.  To do that, we’re going to click the other checkbox, and type a | character into the field.  You’ll imediately notice the difference in how the fields will be imported:

Click OK and oocalc will open with the entire price list.  It’s a big spreadsheet, but the whole thing will be in there loaded just as you’d like.  Super sweet.

This is a brand new document that Oocalc created.  If you look down at the bottom of the window, you’ll notice a little tab that says Sheet1.

What we’re going to do is insert another “sheet” so our document contains two sheets.. one that’s our collection, and the other that’s our price list.

Step 3: Making Multiple Sheets

Right-click on Sheet 1 and rename it to “Pricelist”.  That way we’ll have a dedicated sheet that we know is our pricelist.

Click OK

Next, we’ll add another sheet and name it “Collection”.

Right-click next to Pricelist and choose Insert Sheet.

Name the sheet  Collection.

Click OK

Now you have two sheets in your document.. Collection and Pricelist.  By clicking on the tabs at the bottom, you can flip back and forth between the two.

Save your document so you don’t loose any of your hard work!

In the next post, I’ll show you how to create the collection list, and use the super-crazy-handy Validity tool so you don’t have to type in the names of your cards each time you want to add a new one!

Just recently some friends at work have started playing Magic The Gathering again.  MTG was one of the first collectible card games from Wizards of the Coast. I got a bit hooked on it back in the late 90′s and used to play quite a lot with friends.  The [...]]]>

Just recently some friends at work have started playing Magic The Gathering again.  MTG was one of the first collectible card games from Wizards of the Coast. I got a bit hooked on it back in the late 90′s and used to play quite a lot with friends.  The “official” definition from Wikipedia goes as follows:

Each game represents a battle between powerful wizards, known as “planeswalkers“, who use the magical spells, items, and fantastic creatures depicted on individual Magic cards to defeat their opponents. Although the original concept of the game drew heavily from the motifs of traditional fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons, the gameplay of Magic bears little resemblance to pencil-and-paper adventure games, while having substantially more cards and more complex rules than many other card games.

There’s even a YouTube channel that teaches you how to play!

Honestly, it’s not nearly as geeky as it sounds.  In fact, I believe quite secretly that it was playing this game that really made my wife think “wow.. this American’s not nearly as dorky as I first thought!”

Please.  Let me have my delusions.

Anyway, I kind of forgot about the game for the past 6 years or so and was a bit surprised the other night when it came up in conversation.  What was even more surprising was that one of the animators at work mentioned how much his cards were worth the last time he sold them (to protect his identity, I’ll call him “Don”).  Turns out he made quite a healthy buck by selling his cards to a collector over EBay.

I realized that I actually have quite a few cards sitting down in my basement that might actually be worth some money, so I pulled them out and started looking through various web sites to try and figure out how much they might be worth.

This ended up being incredibly tedious.  For each card I’d go to EBay, search for the card type, find a few prices, average out what the card was worth and try and come up with a “good guess” of what the card is going for.  Every card search was taking 5-10 minutes of investigation.

There had to be a better way.

I realized that what I really wanted was to get a full list of all the card prices that I could find, then take a list of all the cards I have and cross-reference them to determine the prices.  I did a bit of searching and found an awesome site called http://www.magictraders.com/ that has updated price guides every day and week.  The great thing is that you can download the lists into a text file that is easily slurped into a program like Open Office Calc!  For example, if you go here: http://www.magictraders.com/pricelists/current-magic-excel.txt you will get something that looks like:

Card|Price|StdDev|Average|High|Low|Change|Raw N
AErathi Berserker|0.75|0.00|0.75|0.75|0.75|0.00|1
AEther Barrier|0.60|0.29|0.60|0.99|0.30|0.15|3
AEther Burst|0.42|0.12|0.42|0.50|0.25|-0.00|3
AEther Charge|0.25|0.00|0.25|0.25|0.25|0.00|2
AEther Figment|0.27|0.13|0.27|0.56|0.03|0.01|15
AEther Flash (6th)|0.44|0.20|0.44|0.71|0.25|-0.00|3
AEther Flash (7th)|0.36|0.14|0.36|0.56|0.20|-0.00|7
AEther Flash (WL)|0.34|0.04|0.34|0.37|0.30|-0.00|2
AEther Membrane|0.29|0.05|0.29|0.37|0.25|0.00|4

Cool, eh?  It has the card name, the price, the average price, high, low, etc etc.  Tons of data.

So once I found this, I figured I could just turn that into a table in Open Office Calc and then cross reference it with my list of cards.  But how to do this elegantly?

I thought I would start by taking the same concept.. a list of items with a price and see how I could build a way of building a list of how many items I had and how much they cost.

I’ll explain in greater detail.  Let’s say I wanted to go shopping and I was going to purchase 3 apples, 2 bananas, and one feijoa.  I want to find out how much that’s going to cost.  I also have a list of a bunch of fruit and how much each item costs.  What I can do is use that second list as data to figure out the total cost of what I’m going to buy.  Let me show you how.

First, I’m going to create a list of fruit and cost by opening up calc and creating the following list:

As you can see, it’s a list of fruit and their associated costs per item.  Then I want to build a list of what fruit I’m going to purchase.  So I added this table to my page:

Now I just typed in the fruit and number of each piece that I wanted to purchase:

Here you can see both the initial list and the items and amount of each item I want to purchase.  Notice there’s no price showing up in my purchase list yet.  This is where the fun begins!  What I want to do is cross reference the item with the price from the list above.  For example, in cell C9, I want the function to answer the question “What is the cost of an apple?”.  Another way to put it is: “Please look at the item in A9.  Find that same item in the list from A2 to A5.  Once you’ve found that item, tell me what the value is from the B column.”

Fortunately, there’s a really easy way to get this information using the VLOOKUP function.

Simply put, the VLOOKUP function will allow you to search an array of cells to match a certain string and then return the result from the specified column.

In other word: VLOOKUP(<string to search for>; <array of cells to search>;<column from the array to return from>;<mode>).

In this example I would do:

=VLOOKUP(A9;A2:B5;2;0)

So let’s explain each section.  The first item.. the “string to search for” is A9.  This is the cell we’re going to look at.  In the case of row C9 we’re asking the vlookup function to search for the word “apple”.

So where do we want it to search?  Well, we have a price list, so we want it to search in that list, right?  We know apple is SOMEWHERE between A2 and A5.  So we should put that as the array, right?  Well, we could.. but the VLOOKUP function wouldn’t be able to return the information we want.  The way this function works is you pass it all the columns the function will be dealing with, then you specify which column it’s going to return from.  We’re looking for both the name and the price of it, so we enter BOTH columns in our search array: A2:B5

Then we enter the column we’re going to return the value from.  In this case, B2 is the value we want.. that’s in the second column, so we enter 2.

Finally, we tell the function that we don’t care about sort order, so we set the mode to 0.

So here’s the function that we enter in that cell:

=VLOOKUP(A9;A2:B5;2;0)

And what result do we get?

Pretty nifty, right?

Now, let’s copy that function and paste it into C10 and see what the result is.  Select C9, hit ctrl+c (or command+c on the mac).  Then go to C10 and hit ctrl+v (command+v on mac).  You should get the price of the banana.

This seems pretty straightforward, right?  just copy and paste.. copy and paste.  However, if you check out the function for cell C10, you’ll notice it’s changed.. the new function is:

=VLOOKUP(A10;A3:B6;2;0)

Did you see the difference?

The range that the function is searching has shifted down a cell.  Previously the range was A2:B5 and now it’s A3:B6.  This is because we didn’t explicitly say what the range should be.  When you enter a cell coordinate into a function, you have to tell open office calc whether or not to shift those cells when you copy and paste.  So how do we do that?

OOcalc has a nifty way of locking those cells down.. simply by entering a $ in front of either the Cell or the Row.  So in our case, we need to actually change our initial function in C9 to this:

=VLOOKUP(A9;A$2:B$6;2;0)

Now, if we copy that and paste it into C10 the function will look like:

=VLOOKUP(A10;A$2:B$6;2;0)

Notice that the search area stayed the same, ensuring we’re searching the correct cells, but the cell representing the string we’re looking for shifted appropriately (A9 to A10).

The next step is to simply copy that function to all the other slots in the C row that are appropriate.  In the case of our list, just to C11, but if you wanted to buy more produce.. add more lines and go for it!

Now that we have the cost of each individual item, we need to tally up the cost based on the number of items we’re going to purchase.  To do this, select D9 and enter the following function:

=B9*C9

This will give us the actual cost of each item of fruit.  Copy that function to D10 and D11 and we’ll get the cost for each item we’re purchasing.

Finally, we want to sum up the total cost.  Here, we’ll use a simple SUM function to get the number of items we’re purchasing, and the total cost (minus taxes, shipping fees, etc.).

In B13 enter the following function:

=SUM(B9:B12)

And then copy that function to D13 and we’re done!

Now you can see how easy it is to build a list of items based on an initial price list.

In the next post, I’ll talk about how to extend this to creating a really useful way of tracking your Magic Card Collection and value.

That being said.. the [...]]]> Today Dreamworks released the trailer for our new film How to Train Your Dragon. I’ve been trying to stay away from watching too many shots and sequences from this film because everyone working on it is really enjoying it and I want to be surprised when I see the final piece.

That being said.. the trailer looks great!

Big congrats to Simon Otto and everyone else on the animation crew (and other departments too!).

Another georgeous and awesome cousin Zeva Bellel has a great site called Paris By Appointment Only.

Now, one of my cousins from my dad’s side of the family has started this [...]]]> I happen to have some incredibly talented cousins.. you’ve all heard about my fab photographer cousin Erica Berger.

Another georgeous and awesome cousin Zeva Bellel has a great site called Paris By Appointment Only.

Now, one of my cousins from my dad’s side of the family has started this really cool project called The Grok Project.  Starting in november, Ian is going to spend three years steping through the entire history of science and technology by re-creating and experiencing as much of it as possible,  blogging about the whole thing (yay internets!).

Some of the cool things he plans on doing to “grok” science are:

• Make stuck stone tools
• make copper tools
• make woven cloth
• visit a copper mine
• impress cuneiform writing on clay tablets
• Measure earth’s circumference/diameter using eratosthenes’ method
• make a blowgun
• build hand-cranked rotary fan
• build a trebuchet
• measure the speed of light
• hot air ballooning
• assemble an internal combustion engine
• scuba diving
• build a telephone
• build a vacuum tube
• extract/splice DNA
• build a humanoid robot

and more!

Check out the project as it moves forth.. I smell a TV show coming on!!

My cousin Erica has been featured on Rock ‘n roll Bride!  Go Erica!!

I’m not one to usually covet microsoft products.. but oh man this looks amazing.  I love my tabletPC.. I’d love it more if it were a mac.  But this.. this.. this may pull me away from mac..

I’m SUPER jazzed and excited to see Bluetoo venture’s Todoist application for the iPhone.  As many of you know I’ve been researching GTD applications and trying to come up with as system that works for my needs.

I’m currently using Toodledo which is [...]]]>

I’m SUPER jazzed and excited to see Bluetoo venture’s Todoist application for the iPhone.  As many of you know I’ve been researching GTD applications and trying to come up with as system that works for my needs.

I’m currently using Toodledo which is a very nice application.. it’s well documented, has tons of support, and the development team is great.  The only problem is that I’m just not a fan of the web UI. It’s difficult to use.. the sub-task support is complicated and feels buggy. I’m not saying it is buggy.. it just feels funky when i use it. Oh, and the UI just doesn’t make me scream with joy.  There are a lot of great things about Toodledo.. it really is a fantastic product.  However, for day to day use I keep coming back to..

Todoist.  It is a much simpler application but I LOVE the UI.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t had an iPhone application to match, therefore making it unusable for me in production.

Well, Bluetoo Ventures is about to release “Doings”.. their todoist iPhone application.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m VERY excited.. can’t wait to give it a shot!

]]> http://jasonschleifer.com/2009/09/21/bluetoo-ventures-todoist-application-for-iphone/feed/ 8 http://jasonschleifer.com/2009/09/13/on-running-a-successful-and-creative-team/ http://jasonschleifer.com/2009/09/13/on-running-a-successful-and-creative-team/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 23:27:20 +0000 jason http://jasonschleifer.com/?p=559 As our production has begun, I’ve been talking to our animators about my goals in running the animation department for the show. It’s been an interesting process, one in which I’ve learned a lot about myself, my values, and how I feel our department can be most sucessful.

I’m not going to get into specific [...]]]> As our production has begun, I’ve been talking to our animators about my goals in running the animation department for the show. It’s been an interesting process, one in which I’ve learned a lot about myself, my values, and how I feel our department can be most sucessful.

I’m not going to get into specific tricks and techniques for what we’re going to do (this is a public blog, after all), but I thought others might find it interesting at least to hear what I feel are the 3 areas of focus that are important to having a creative, successful, and happy team dynamic. I think that these values probably apply to almost any team dynamic.

You’ll notice that I’ve labeled each area A, B, and C, not 1, 2, 3, because I don’t think there is a hierarchy as to which area should be considered first.  Each area is of equal importance, and while not every decision one makes can have each area “win”, I believe if each area is considered while making decisions, in the long run you can achieve growth and success in all of them.

Area A: The Best Quality Product

This area of focus is on making the best quality product (whatever it is you’re creating.  In my case, the best animation and acting we can produce).  Here, all of your decisions should be focused on the good of the product.  This include things like – who do you have working on the most key components of your product?  Have you done your research?  What is the end goal?  What tools do you need to reach that goal?  What are the possible pitfalls that can get in the way?   When I started on this show I pictured the end result of what we would need to have a successful show.  What would our rigs need to do?  What specific tools would we need?  Who knowledge would I have needed to have?

Picturing the end result allowed me to work backwards and ask important questions about the features we needed.  If the rigs had to support “x”-feature, then what do I need to do to ensure that could happen?  How much planning do we need to have?  Are the tools even available to support this feature?  Who do I know that can create it?  How much time would it take?

By asking these things at the head of the show, I could build a path and plan on how to ensure we would be ready once the show started.  Knowing that it’s impossible to foresee every eventual hurdle and hiccup, we also created a plan for how to handle problems we don’t know about yet.  It’s important to realize that something will happen that will try and keep you from reaching this goal.  Instead of being surprised and reacting to it, create a plan ahead of time so when it occurs, you have a method for dealing with it that keeps everyone sane and “happy”.

Area B: The Happiest and Most Productive Team

Of course it’s impossible to create a great product without a great team behind it.  This second area of focus is all about your team and how it works together.  You have to think about what THEY need to achieve this goal.  What can you do to help the team morale (always an issue when people are working hard and putting their hearts on the line every day in dailies).  How can you help them grow together, learn to trust each other, and work in harmony?  How can you remove any of the political back-stabbing that can happen in group dynamics and help them nurture each other instead?  How can you ensure that perception of your team is one of compassion, cooperation, and inspiration?

Area C: The Individual

Of course, each team is made up of unique individuals, and if every person isn’t feeling satisfied and creative, then it’s difficult to have the team work successfully.  And if the team isn’t working, then there’s no way you’re going to achieve the best product you can.

I like to think broader than that, though.  I’m not just trying to help animators be great so this particular film is great.  I want the animators to be happy, creative, successful, fulfilled, empowered, and passionate because that’s the kind of environment that I feel is a great place to work.  I want every animator to feel like they’re growing, that there is a future for them, and that they “control” that future.  I know that I always work my best when I feel like I have a personal stake in the results of what I’m doing.  I want every animator to have goals that are greater than their current abilities, and know that they’ve got a team of people supporting and encouraging them to achieve those goals.  Knowing that it’s okay for them to reach and fall, because we’re there to help pick them up and allow them to reach again.  If your team doesn’t feel safe reaching and failing, then they’ll never reach and achieve.

Growth.. personal and professional are important to me.   That’s why we’ve asked each animator to create a list of goals for themselves.. for the show, for their careers, for their personal lives.  They can share it with me or not, but I want them to at least think about it.  Then, they should think about what the next physical action they should take that would help them achieve the goal.  This is actually something I did a few years ago when I was animating on Shrek the Third.  I had a goal to become a supervising animator, but I felt like I didn’t quite have the acting chops to achieve it.  So I thought about what I needed to reach this goal.  I wrote to my Head of Character Animation and my Department Supervisor and said that I had an eventual goal to be a supervisor, but felt like I was lacking in subtle acting ability.  In order to achieve my goal, I wanted to focus more of my animation time on subtle shots so I could learn and grow.  I wrote about what things I would be doing personally to become better in this area, and then asked for their support and the opportunity to try these more challenging shots.   Sure enough, I was given more subtle shots and was pushed beyond my comfort level.  I knew I had their support to grow, and felt okay failing because they were behind me.  It was hard, but I worked at it, and I soon became a supervising animator (and now a Head of Character Animation).

Making Decisions..

As I mentioned earlier, not every decision we make can support each area of focus.  Sometimes we have to give certain shots to animators we know can achieve the level required in the short time we have.   Sometimes we can’t afford a training class for the entire department even though it would be incredibly useful and in the long run would help everyone become stronger.  Sometimes an individual animator’s goal on a particular shot or sequence will not work with our current schedule and we can’t accommodate them.  However, we are always thinking of each area of focus with every decision.  We try hard when there are conflicting goals to find a way to still achieve a desired result by looking at things over the course of time.

Maybe this particular shot can’t go to this particular animator, but we can give that animator two simpler shots, and then on the next sequence we’ll give them the shot that will really push them, and in order to support them in their growth, we’ll make sure the supervisor has extra time put aside to help them and work with them so they’re supported and not just left dangling in the wind.

Maybe once in a while we’d have to work saturdays during crunch in order to get the show done on time, and maybe that means that parents won’t get to see their families as much.. but what if everyone in the department took a few bucks every day and put it in a pot, and then we took some money from the department morale budget and set up a family picnic one saturday every month with food and drinks and games for the kids to play?  And what if we personally thanked all the family members for their understanding and patience?

Maybe we have to make hard decisions that make some people unhappy, or it may take longer to achieve their goals.. but I firmly believe that by focusing on these three areas with every decision, and letting the teams know that we’re actively doing this, we can really help create a creative, supported, artistic, professional, forward-thinking, engaged, successful team that will produce the most amazing work possible.

At least, that’s my thought.

I’d love to hear yours!

This past weekend my wife spent some time working on the blog for her business.  She runs an interior design company – Penelope Jones Interior Design – and is quite amazing, I must say. Her sense of color, texture, form, and light blows me away.  I love watching her [...]]]>

This past weekend my wife spent some time working on the blog for her business.  She runs an interior design company – Penelope Jones Interior Design – and is quite amazing, I must say. Her sense of color, texture, form, and light blows me away.  I love watching her step into a room, look around, and immediately her brain starts churning as she works out what walls need to go, how the flow of the room should work, and what the place should feel like.

We recently renovated our bathroom, and I was in the lucky position to not see any of it until it was done.  I was blown away.  She took this really disgusting little room that I hated being in & turned it into a gorgeous, elegant, and beautiful room that just feels “right”.  AND she did it on a budget, not that you can tell by looking at it.

Enjoy!

You can access them and other items in the store.

I’m often asked if these titles are still relevant in the industry today, [...]]]> People have been asking, and I’ve finally gotten around to providing both my Fast Animation Rigs DVD and Integrating a Creature Rig within a Production Pipeline DVD as downloadable from LULU.com.

You can access them and other items in the store.

I’m often asked if these titles are still relevant in the industry today, and I have to say I still think they are. They’re obviously older techniques (they came out in 2001 and 2002), but many people consider them to be really great learning tools and I’ve had amazing feedback from them over the years.

I hope people find these useful!

Right off the bat I am definitely liking the ability to quickly add tasks using the simple “a” hotkey.  You can [...]]]> Now that I’ve done a week of using GTDAgenda, I thought it would be good to try another web-based todo list and compare my experiences.   This week I’m using the AJAX-based todoist.

Right off the bat I am definitely liking the ability to quickly add tasks using the simple “a” hotkey.  You can also organically add contexts as you work by simply typing something like:

Email ron@happyhollow.com about the backpacking adventure @email

and it will quickly add the context for you.  Very handy!

You can also have nested projects, and you can color them to make it easier to tell them apart. Below, you can see my task list for the next 7 days.  Notice how clean it looks?  I love the nested projects, the clear color separation, the projects & contexts.  It’s just clean and easy to read.

Now this doesn’t mean I don’t have any issues with how todoist works currently.  Firstly, switching a task between projects isn’t as easy as it could be.  Currently you have to click on a little down arrow, choose “move to another project” and then choose that project from a list.  It would be better if you could just drag it to the project.. after all, it’s listed right there on the left!

Also, you can’t do group edits yet, you have to edit things one at a time which is frustrating.

When entering a task, you have to click on the date field.  I wish I could just tab over to the date, or just enter “wednesday”.. but right now I have to click on the date field.

Of course the biggie.. there’s no mobile application for it yet.  Arrgh!

Since I’m an animator at heart (even though I do more managing and meetings now), I decided to try adding tasks to make notes of each fix I wanted to do on a shot I’m currently working on.

I created a project specifically for this shot, [...]]]> And so begins day 3 of GTDAgenda testing.

Since I’m an animator at heart (even though I do more managing and meetings now), I decided to try adding tasks to make notes of each fix I wanted to do on a shot I’m currently working on.

I created a project specifically for this shot, and then started listing tasks.

I went stream of consciousness to add as many tasks as I could, just scrubbing back and forth over the animation, adding a task for each.  I was able to add a lot of tasks relatively quickly.  Click Add Task, type, click Save.  Not too bad.  It could be faster if I could enter a bunch of tasks at once, but it’s certainly not a deal-breaker.

The problem came when I went to then order the tasks so I could tackle them most efficiently.  I couldn’t find a way to order them quickly and easily.

In fact, I don’t think there’s any way other than editing the task and changing priority. It literally takes 4 clicks to change the priority from 1-5 of a task.  The other tough thing is that you need to be aware of all other task priorities to make sure you set this task’s priority correctly.  Is the eye tweak a higher priority than the nose tweak?  They’re both facial priorities, so maybe they both go under a priority 3.  But then there’s another eyeline change I want to tackle.  So that’s priority 3 as well.  The big problem there is that I can’t re-order within that level 3 priority to plan my attack.  Very frustrating. * See the update below for a faster workflow!

This is quite the problem for me, it means I really have to think about the tasks as I log them and make sure I do it in the right order.  I don’t want to work that way.. I want to tackle the order of tasks as when I’m in the mode of processing them and figuring out what I have time and energy for.  I could just sort of skip around through the task list itself, but that means that I have to keep re-evaluating each item to see what I have energy for.  I’d rather make the plan once, and then just go through tick tick tick.

I’m hoping that I am missing a feature somewhere, or that the Developer is working on this.  It could certainly make it tough for me to use GTDAgenda to handle shot tasks.

Anyway, here are a few other thoughts that came up throughout the day.

??????
• Notes per task – need more room than just 1 line.
• Really missing the ability to create a whole bunch of tasks at once.
• Too much mouse traffic with the clicking on Add Task, filling out all the data, and then having to click Add Task.  Would much rather a system where I do quick-add & add @contexts and .Projects at the same time.
• The ability to submit tasks via Twitter is really cool.  It allows me to enter tasks much faster, and then head to GTDAgenda to edit them.
• You can also apply tasks via email.  The subject is the name of the task, and the body is the note.  I don’t know if you can automatically assign the email tasks to projects or not.. it would be great if you could.

Hope people are finding these posts useful!

Update -

Dan contacted me with an update to some of the notes I have above.  I thought I’d include his reply here because there’s some really great news for you gtdAgenda lovin people!   I don’t know when these issues will be released, but the fact that Dan is working on them is great!

One of the next features that will be released is the possibility to insert multiple tasks at once.

Regarding changing priorities, it can be done faster if you select the task(s) and then use the drop-down menu (More Actions) for this action. No need to edit.

When you send tasks by email, it’s not possible to assign a project to it, or context. However, each project and context has its unique email address too, and if you send tasks to its email the task will be added to that project/context.

This is from my example of my “Fixing the bathroom” project in my previous post.

One of the tasks was to “restock the bathroom with supplies”.

So [...]]]> I thought it might be fun to explore another example of using contexts for those of you who’ve never used them or seen a benefit from them.

This is from my example of my “Fixing the bathroom” project in my previous post.

One of the tasks was to “restock the bathroom with supplies”.

So in the course of processing that list, I figure it’s a good idea to make a list of all the supplies I might possibly need. Let’s just mind-sweep this and get everything out.

• toilet paper
• soap
• soap dish
• extra toothpaste
• deodorant
• bath balls
• kids soap
• towels
• plunger
• kids toys
• candles
• shaver
• shaving cream
• face wash
• contact lens solution
• tooth brushes

There’s probably a bunch more, but this is enough for now.  So, I’ve made my mind sweep of all the things I might need for the bathroom.  However, we’re about 4 weeks out from having the bathroom ready to be stocked and used because we still need to clean it out, paint it, etc etc.  So should I wait to purchase these things?   Maybe, maybe not.  It all depends on my schedule, how busy I am, where I’m shopping, what my travel schedule looks like, etc.  It could be that I’m going to be heading to a shop where it might be really convenient to get this stuff while purchasing paint (for example) to paint the bathroom.  If I’m already there, I should pick up stuff that’s convenient, right?

But how do I know what’s convenient?  Should I keep this list with me at all times?  Probably not.  If I keep the list this way, every time I go to the store I’ll read through the entire list and re-process everything to see if there’s anything there that I need to buy.  What a waste of time!  Instead, let’s process this list by adding contexts!

• toilet paper @supermarket
• soap @supermarket
• soap dish @Bed Bath and Beyond
• extra toothpaste @supermarket
• deodorant @supermarket
• bath balls @Bed Bath and Beyond
• kids soap @Babies R Us
• towels @Wash
• plunger @Home Depot
• kids toys @Babies R Us
• candles @Scent-amental
• shaver @supermarket
• shaving cream @supermarket
• face wash @drug store
• contact lens solution @drug store
• tooth brushes @supermarket

The cool thing about this is that if I’m going to the supermarket, I can bring up a list of all my items that are tagged with @supermarket and pick them up right away.  Then I just store them until I’m ready to use them!   When I’m getting painting supplies at Home Depot, I see that I’ve got a plunger I need to buy.  So I get it then.  It simplifies my life because I’m able to create lists that are totally dependent on context.

It’s also possible to tag all these things with a context like @errand, so you can run over them quickly if you’re going to head out on some errands.  Then you can say “oh, I’ve got a bunch of things to pick up at Babies R Us and it’s on the way home.  I’ll head on past!”.  While you’re in the store, you check your @babies r us and grab everything you may need for any project you may be working on.

So friggin’ cool!

It’s a common problem in the animation industry.. We have to be creative, unconventional, unique, exciting [...]]]> I have been thinking a lot about personal time management and how it can help artistic people handle the fact that they need to produce artistic work in a timely manor while still having time to explore and experiment.

It’s a common problem in the animation industry.. We have to be creative, unconventional, unique, exciting and so does our work. We try hard not to resort to cliché and formulaic animation, and in order to do this we need the time and freedom to experiment.

We are also charged with meeting very specific and hard deadlines whose very nature can make it difficult to be in the head space to be creative. The closer the deadline, the more pressure, the harder it is to be creative and the quicker we resort to animation tricks and techniques to try and get a step ahead.

While sometimes necessary, I have often wondered if there is a method for handling notes and changes better to be able to keep our focus on being creative, and not on the looming deadline.

I found that by following a specific methodology for blocking my shots I could worry less about the technical alpects of animating and could focus on the performance. I discovered the same thing about moving to first pass.. Keep strict control over my methods, and any anxiety over process is gone, again allowing me to focus on the tAsk at hand.

Focus.

That really is the key to this whole thing. Having the ability to focus on the right thing at the right moment for the right amount of time.

So how do we work on our ability to focus? How do we cut out all other distractions and make sure we don’t have anything else bogging us down?

Getting Things Done

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about something called “Getting Things Done”, or GTD. This is based on a book by David Allen. It’s a pretty interesting concept, and I think it could work really well for helping animators focus on their notes and tasks, getting them done quickly and on time/budget/etc.

David like to talk about this idea of “mind like water”. It’s getting everything out of your mind and into a trusted system so you don’t have all these little “oh I’ve gotta..” and “oh, that reminds me..” and “what was that thing I had to do..” thoughts floating around in your head. Once that stuff is down somewhere, you can easily review it and know exactly what things you can do in any given context, and most importantly what the next action is that you need to do on any project to move it along.

A quick example.. let’s say we do a mind sweep about fixing the bathroom and we come up with the following tasks:

• clean out bathroom
• paint the wall
• strip the drawers
• put up blinds
• put up artwork
• mop the floor
• re-stock the bathroom with supplies

Those are a good list of tasks, but some of them are more involved than others.  Before starting any of these that are now in our “inbox”, we should go through and figure out exactly what each of these tasks involves.  We can look at each one at a time and then figure out if they’re one task or multiple.  If each of these is actually too complicated to be a single task, we can make it a project and then create a list of sub-tasks for each project that will help us achieve it.  Then we’ll mark the “next physical action” we can take on any of those projects, and also specify the CONTEXT in which the action takes place.  I’ll demonstrate:

• Clean Out Bathroom

This task seems simple, but there’s a lot of junk in there.  In fact, there’s so much old junk, that we really need a debris box in order to effectively clean out the bathroom.  So here’s what my new project “clean out bathroom” becomes:

• Clean Out Bathroom
  • Order Debris box – Boxes ‘R Us – 555-2121 @call @next
  • Ask brother for help @call @next
  • Haul everything out to debris box @bathroom
  • Ask to remove debris box 555-2121 @call

As you can see, I’ve broken up the “Clean out bathroom” task into 4 separate tasks that are actual physical acts that I can do.  I’ve also added “contexts” to each of these.  For example, I have 3 @call contexts, meaning that those tasks need to be done when i’m near a phone and can call somebody.  The @bathroom context means I need to be at the bathroom to do the task.  The @next context means it’s the next action I can take in this project.  I actually have two @next actions, because I can do both of them next, and it doesn’t matter really which one I do first.

Why do I need to add a “context”?  Simply put, the GTD method asks us to do this type of planning with EVERY task/project/thought we have.  It doesn’t matter if it’s as simple as buying soap at the super market, or as complicated as planning a corporate takeover.  The thought is that if you get this stuff out of your head into a series of lists and trusted systems, you free your mind to have more thoughts and be more creative.  Once you’ve got all this stuff out, you can make smart decisions about what to do.  You make those decisions based on the “context” you’re in.  For example, if I’m near a phone, I can look at a list of @call tasks and start making phone calls.  If I’m not near a phone, then I should need to look at that list and I shouldn’t be bothered by those things I can’t physically do.  Just like the @bathroom context.  Why should I be thinking “oh, I need to clean out the bathroom” if I’m on an airplane flying to bombay?  Once I’ve got that task down, I shouldn’t need to think about it until I’m in the situation where it comes up.

So, how does this apply to animation?

Well, I’m wondering if making these types of lists and contexts can help when dealing with notes or fixing shots.  I’ve often suggested to people that they make lists of all the changes they want to do on their shots before they start making those fixes, allowing them to get a better idea of what types of changes they’ll need to make in the amount of time they have.  This then lets them determine WHAT is the most important thing to fix.  Maybe if we include this idea of @contexts, we can enhance this process.

Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say you show your shot to your director and you get a series of notes.  You put all these notes in your inbox and it looks something like this:

• Check your weight
• Raise the right arm higher
• There’s a pop on frame 42 in the torso
• Feet could use a little work
• Add some eye blinks after the word “Boingo”
• Fix the lipsync
• open the jaw more in the start, but it’s kinda flappy at the end
• Don’t forget the overlap in the fingers
• Tighten up the timing around frames 173
• Exaggerate the eyes
• Soften the third wink.

First of all, good for you on writing all these notes down.  That’s the first step!  But now, instead of going through the list and DOING the notes, let’s process them into various contexts.  We can break them up any number of ways.. off the top of my head I’m thinking @body, @face, @lipsync, @finesse but you can really do whatever you want.  Maybe break it into sections of the shot, maybe into characters, do whatever works for your shot.  Anyway, let’s process this:

• Check your weight @body
• Raise the right arm higher @body
• There’s a pop on frame 42 in the torso @body
• Feet could use a little work @finesse
• Add some eye blinks after the word “Boingo” @face
• Fix the lipsync @lipsync
• open the jaw more in the start, but it’s kinda flappy at the end @lipsync
• Don’t forget the overlap in the fingers @finesse
• Tighten up the timing around frames 173 @body
• Exaggerate the eyes @face
• Soften the third wink. @finesse

Once you’ve done this, you can now figure out the order of approach for handling these contexts.  Obviously, anything relating to the body is going to be very important, because it affects everything else.  So I’d re-order my tasks based on the context.

• Check your weight @body
• Raise the right arm higher @body
• There’s a pop on frame 42 in the torso @body
• Tighten up the timing around frames 173 @body

• Add some eye blinks after the word “Boingo” @face
• Exaggerate the eyes @face

How fun!  Recently there was an image posted on AICN from the project I’ve been working on for a while.  It was announced last week as Oobermind, a film to be released on Nov 5, 2010.

Unfortunately I can’t comment much on the film, the image, or [...]]]>

How fun!  Recently there was an image posted on AICN from the project I’ve been working on for a while.  It was announced last week as Oobermind, a film to be released on Nov 5, 2010.

Unfortunately I can’t comment much on the film, the image, or anything else really at this point except that it’s a blast to work on and I’m really enjoying my role as Head of Character Animation on the project.  We’ve got some great people on it, and Tom McGrath (the director) is hilarious and awesome to work with.  His enthusiasm for animation as an art form is very inspiring for me.

Anyway, I’ll periodically post what I can as we keep going on the project.. in this case, here’s a link that I found where people are discussing the plot and the show.  Like I said, I can’t say anything.. but love reading what people think.

io9 – Nothing Can Stop The Ultimate Victory Of Oobermind Except Oobermind Himself – Oobermind.

I’m incredibly upset about Prop 8 being upheld.  I’m glad that my mother and her wife are able to stay legally married, but I’m very upset that the courts decided that gay and lesbian couples are less “valid” than heterosexual couples.

I [...]]]> Court upholds Prop. 8 but lets marriages stand.

I’m incredibly upset about Prop 8 being upheld.  I’m glad that my mother and her wife are able to stay legally married, but I’m very upset that the courts decided that gay and lesbian couples are less “valid” than heterosexual couples.

I want to post all of my thoughts and feelings about it, but I don’t have the energy right now.  All I will say is this:

How dare one group of people remove the rights of another.

The fact that the court upheld this proposition disgusts me.

The place where I snagged this one is: http://www.webdesignlessons.com/

I tend to look at new themes quite often, testing them out, seeing how they work, and ultimately deciding [...]]]> I’ve had a number of people request the name of this new theme, so I figured I’d point you to the wonderful site where I got it!

The place where I snagged this one is: http://www.webdesignlessons.com/

I tend to look at new themes quite often, testing them out, seeing how they work, and ultimately deciding not to change mine.  However, this one I felt was really fun and nice, and I love the featured blog post up at the top of the page.  Definitely go check out some of their other themes!

Oh, I did make one slight hack to this theme, and that was to add a link to the comments from the little bubble next to the post.

That was done by taking this line:

<h4><?php comments_number('0', '1', '%'); ?></h4> 

and replacing it with this one:

<h4><?php comments_popup_link('0', '1', '%', 'commentslink'); ?></h4> 

.post-top h4 a {

     color:#cdcdcd;

}

I think.. I believe.. that I’ve fixed it.

See, I read in passing that people [...]]]> So suddenly THIS site started getting malware errors.  Determined not to let the hackers punt me out of my own website AGAIN, I went on a rampage.. investigating and trying to figure out what was going on.

I think.. I believe.. that I’ve fixed it.

See, I read in passing that people like to use iframes to include hidden pages.  So I did a quick search on my site for iFrames, and found a post that had one in it that I wasn’t expecting.  So I removed it.. and now I’m not getting those errors anymore!

Sweet!

Please let me know if you see more malware warnings, and what page you were going to when you found them!

Thanks!

Hey folks,

minor change to the theme for my site.. okay, not really minor, pretty major. I was getting tired of the old one, so put in this new one which feels more lively to me. 

Anyway, nothing much more to report at the moment except that I went to see Fleetwood Mac [...]]]>

Hey folks,

minor change to the theme for my site.. okay, not really minor, pretty major. I was getting tired of the old one, so put in this new one which feels more lively to me. 

Anyway, nothing much more to report at the moment except that I went to see Fleetwood Mac with my lovely wife, my wonderful mother ‘n law & her awesome scottish hubby.  I was suprised.. wasn’t expecting much from the show, but they TOTALLY rocked.  We had a great time & my ears are still ringing.

If you’re even remotely familiar with their music (like me.. just remotely), go.  It was a great performance and many times I was like “oh.. THAT song!  I remember that song!”

Wow.. my old office is now a museum!  Crazy!!

If anyone goes, I’d love to see photos.. I’m curious if my old desk is still there & if they have maniquins representing the animators “working at their desks”.  Is the ping pong table still there?

You can see the repost here:
http://www.11secondclub.com/helpful_hints/the_fear_of_moving_past_blocking/

I thought it was a great idea. I hadn’t actually re-read my post in a [...]]]> A few weeks ago my friend Eric Scheur asked if he could re-post one of my posts about the Fear of Moving Past Blocking to the awesome website http://11secondclub.com.

You can see the repost here:
http://www.11secondclub.com/helpful_hints/the_fear_of_moving_past_blocking/

I thought it was a great idea. I hadn’t actually re-read my post in a while, but was very happy to hear that it had a great influence on him & other animators he spoke with. I just read through it now & realized how much relevance it actually has on my latest “obsession”.. trying to better manage my time & prepare for production.

See the show I’m currently Head of Character Animation on starts animation production pretty soon & I’m in the last stages of making sure everything is ready for our crew so we can just kick butt the moment we get our first sequence. There are a lot of little loose ends to tie up, threads to follow, and loops to close and if you take a 40,000 foot look at everything it can become pretty daunting.

Just like trying to move from blocking to spline animation can appear daunting at times.

So I’ve been investigating various task management theories.. the one that’s sticking with me the most is the Getting Things Done methodology that was started by David Allen.  It’s all about creating a process for handling all the various forms of “input” that you get, and then managing that stuff systematically.

What I love about it is that you can take a seemingly daunting task.. say, getting your email inbox to zero, and approach it a step at a time until it’s done.

The other thing I really like about it and this method of moving from blocking to first pass of animation I wrote about is that once you fully commit yourself to this method of working, it totally relieves all your stress about the task you’re working on.  Now that I have this method of animating that I completely adhere to, the only stress I have about my shots is whether or not the animation and ideas are any damn good to begin with.  Not whether or not I have the chops to take them from blocking to first pass, which is where most of my stress was before.

So with this method of handling my inbox, as long as I completely follow it and stick to it religiously, I won’t have any stress about there being any loose ends I’ve dropped, or balls I’ve left untied.  Instead I can focus on the pure excitement of a deadline coming up that we can’t change & the knowledge that my team and I are getting ready as best we can.

For someone who likes to react to things emotionally and intuitively, this systematic stuff is actually pretty cool.

*note:  in case you’re wondering what that picture is.. It’s Alex Wong from the group “The Animators”.  He and I went to elementary school together & is an awesome musician who also likes to draw.

Captain Zoom

For those of you who grew up in the 70′s and 80′s, you probably [...]]]> When I was younger my parents used to play this Captain Zoom music to me and my brother for our birthdays.. Kyle sent me the lyrics today to say “happy birthday”, and Todd Elliot found an mp3! Sweet!

Captain Zoom

For those of you who grew up in the 70′s and 80′s, you probably remember this song.. it’s just too awesome for words.

Anyway, to celebrate my 36th, Penny brought the kids into lunch which was really lovely. They also brought Sprinkles cupcakes.. which are DELICIOUS.

Aurora got me a beautiful purple Ukulele with a dolphin on it. Sweet. And pen’s promised a guitar! woot! now I can learn to play guitar and become a rock star if this whole animation thing doesn’t work out.

Tonight is dinner at one of my favorite restaurants (Red Lantern in Redwood City.. YUM!), and sunday is passover with the family. Nice!

Oh! And the funniest part.. walking into our department meeting with the entire animation department at PDI singing Happy Birthday INCREDIBLY out of key & sync. It was…

well, it was bloody awful, but I loved it anyway. Thanks everyone!

there, I said it. That’s right. you heard me.. it sucks.

I can’t tell what company is coming or going, our retirement plans are worth 1/3 of what they were only a year ago, stocks go down, up, down, down, uuuuuup, and then down again.  Mortgage rates are.. well, actually they’re [...]]]> The economy today sucks.

there, I said it. That’s right. you heard me.. it sucks.

I can’t tell what company is coming or going, our retirement plans are worth 1/3 of what they were only a year ago, stocks go down, up, down, down, uuuuuup, and then down again.  Mortgage rates are.. well, actually they’re getting better, so yay!  But getting a mortgage sure isn’t fun.

Every day there’s news about another ponzi scheme that suckers people out of their money.  Jobs are being lost.  Wages cut.  CEOs getting fired.  It’s all a bit crazy.

So we’ve decided to downsize a little bit.  The past few weekends we’ve been slowly (and I really mean slowly.  It’s tough to do anything quickly with two kids) going through all our stuff and trying to separate things into 3 piles.

1) Keep it ‘cuz we love it

2) Give it away or sell it

3) Junk it.

I’ve always had a hard time getting rid of things.. I always think  “This picture I drew when I was 8.. somebody somewhere is going to want to see it!”.  Or “This shirt doesn’t fit anymore.. but .. someday it might.”  Or “I love briefcases.  I never use them, but someday it might be cool to carry one to work.”

I have stuff from 15 years ago that I thought I’d use again someday.. but I never really do.  So finally.. finally I’m getting it through my thick skull that it’s not worth hauling this stuff around with me everywhere I go, and it probably doesn’t need to sit in the garage for another 15 years.

So we’re downsizing.  We’re not moving.. we’re just selling, donating, and getting rid of things we most likely will not use for a while, or ever again.

and it feels so good!

Another way I’m downsizing is in the weight department.  183lbs today.. that’s down from my peak of 199 in early december!  Yeehaw!

It’s our first offical 3d project.. animated from the beginning in 3d, aware of stereo the whole darn time.  I was lucky enough to be on the pre-production team for the show.  I got [...]]]> — MONSTERS VS ALIENS : In Theaters March 27, 2009 —.
That’s right.. Monsters vs Aliens starts today!

It’s our first offical 3d project.. animated from the beginning in 3d, aware of stereo the whole darn time.  I was lucky enough to be on the pre-production team for the show.  I got to work closely with the Uber Head of Character Animation David Burgess, and the incredibly talented Supervising Animator Line Andersen for a good couple of months.

Most of the time I focused on B.O.B.. (rigged by the AMAZING Terran Boylan) helping figure out how his controls should work, doing animation tests, etc.. but I also did some pre-production animation of Susan, Dr. Cockroach, Link, the President, and a really fun generic man test.  Oh yeah, and the cable car.

It was a ton of fun working with the crew in LA.  The character tds were great (lead by the dynamic Duo.. Kevin Ochs and Kevin Rogers.)  I really wanted to make t-shirts for them that said “I’m with Kevin” and had arrows pointing to each other, but never got around to it.  D’oh!  I hope I get a chance to work with them again sometime.. good times all around!

Seen the movie twice now and it’s a good fun flick.  The stereo is really cool, and I think is done in a way that pulls you into the picture and lets you really experience it nicely.  There are a couple of sequences that just blew my friggin mind when I saw them come together.. huge props to everyone in FX & lighting for those.. you know who you are.. well done, your kung-fu is mighty!

Go check it out.. worth the price of admission, in my opinion!

Please go check it out ‘cuz it’s totally awesome!

I found it so inspiring and exciting to watch people in their everyday activities.. Noticing how huge crowds are like fluid noise.. If you stare at any one person you [...]]]> Ever since we went up to San francisco to shoot some vide reference a few weeks ago I have been craving another video reference trip.

I found it so inspiring and exciting to watch people in their everyday activities.. Noticing how huge crowds are like fluid noise.. If you stare at any one person you see how unique and individual they are, but if you pull back and blur your eyes it’s as if everyone swims along with each others current.

It reminded me that every character has a unique story that leads them to the moment you are observing or animating them. Someone walks in front of you.. Where are they headed? Where did they just come from? What are they doing that night? Whom are they in love with? When was the last time they had a good talk with their best friend? Where are they from? How long are they in town?

So many questions.. So many opportunities.. So many possibilities.. Its really quite exciting!

So today we went to the zoo with the kids.. I was hoping to get a bit more reference shot, but instead spent the time playing and laughing with the kids. In the end.. It was more inspiring and exciting than video reference could ever be.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/04/MN6I16807P.DTL

My personal opinion is of course that prop 8 was insane. I feel very strongly that two loving consenting adults should have [...]]]> Today prop 8 (the proposition to make marriage illegal for gay couples) is back in court with both sides working to determine whether or not the ballot proposition was constitutional or not.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/04/MN6I16807P.DTL

My personal opinion is of course that prop 8 was insane. I feel very strongly that two loving consenting adults should have the same rights as anybody else.

I would be absolutely livid if my marriage to the woman I love (who happens to be a kiwi), was invalidated because some else thinks that marriage should be between Americans tells me that my marriage is no longer valid. They want to break up my loving family because of something THEY believe.

Screw that.

I’m sorry, but I think that prop 8 is a violation of a basic human right. My mother and her partner were married in september, and it was a beautiful, wonderful event full of love, joy, excitement, and validation of an amazing relationship.

Their relationship has nothing to do with anybody but themselves and their family. We all support it, so leave them alone Ken Starr.

http://www.hrc.org/endthelies/index.html

coffee!

I have been working out pretty much daily since I found out I was within a pound of hitting 200 pounds.. Yikes!

Well after nearly 2 months of cardio and weights I have hit 189!

Woo! Now to hit 180!

I’ve been trying to write a really cool spreadsheet that will allow me to keep track of various phases of a project. I’ve got some fun [...]]]> So lately I’ve been trying to expand my knowledge base and work on my time/project tracking abilities. One of the tools I’m using is open office calc (it’s free!).

I’ve been trying to write a really cool spreadsheet that will allow me to keep track of various phases of a project. I’ve got some fun things working, but have gotten stuck with one of the oddities of the way open office handles conditional formatting.

For those of you who don’t know, conditional formatting is a cool features that allows you to change the style of a cell based on the content. For example, I can make a cell “yellow” when the project is launched, green when it’s in progress, and black when it’s done.

The problem is that there are only 3 conditional formats allowed.. and there are WAY more than 3 phases to a project.

I’ve detailed my problem in the open office forums here, but if any of you have any suggestions I’d love to hear ‘em!

Cheers!

I came to Dreamworks for a few reasons. One was because I [...]]]> Yesterday marked my five year anniversary at Dreamworks Animation. It is hard to believe how much my life and career have changed since I got here. I have learned more than I can imagine, and it feels like my journey is just beginning!

I came to Dreamworks for a few reasons. One was because I had been in New Zealand for over four years and missed my family. Another was my desire to continue my animation education surrounded by some of the best character animators in the world. I had a great desire to focus exclusively on animation and not do any technical (rigging) work, and I knew that since Dreamworks was a propeiatary platform there wouldn’t be any way I could get sucked into that side of things again.

I came to learn, to absorb, to grow, and to become the best animator I could be.

Over the course of the past five years I have animated, supervised, worked closely with the rigging and development teams, spoken at events, given interviews, travelled, taught classes, brainstormed for the future of animation, and now I am heading up the character animation department for a new show. I have also bought and sold houses, performed major renovations, had two amazing children, and daily get the best hugs and cuddles ever invented.

Life is really quite wonderful and I can’t wait to see what comes in the next five years!

Thanks to my lovely family, my great friends, and to the people at Dreamworks for giving me opportunities and support beyond what I had ever dreamed.

11 for 11 I believe!

Congrats all!!!!!

I occationally read this great blog called Margaret and Helen.  It’s written by two lovely and honest old women who have been friends for over 60 years.  They have no qualms about speaking however they feel, and I love it.

I don’t even know how many times [...]]]> Yes. We did. « Margaret and Helen.

I occationally read this great blog called Margaret and Helen.  It’s written by two lovely and honest old women who have been friends for over 60 years.  They have no qualms about speaking however they feel, and I love it.

I don’t even know how many times they called Palin a B*tch.  Or Anne Coulter.  Or Elizabeth Hasselbeck.  Or Hannity.

It’s great.

Anyway, Helen just posted a great bit about how we as a country have moved past politics of old.. and poor rush, poor anne, poor elizabeth, poor sean.. they’re stuck in the past.

Welcome back America.

I love this post in the New York Times by Christoph Niemann about his absolute love affair with coffee.  Partly because the images are so cute, and partly because I, too, have an intense love affair with the amazing beverage.

Yes, I am a coffee fiend.

I [...]]]>

I love this post in the New York Times by Christoph Niemann about his absolute love affair with coffee.  Partly because the images are so cute, and partly because I, too, have an intense love affair with the amazing beverage.

Yes, I am a coffee fiend.

I love the stuff.

I think it all started back when I was working at this Gas Chromatograph company called Dionex back in the summer after my first year in University.  My job was to take the results of the gas analyzations and turn them into slides to be used for presentations.  It wasn’t incredibly complicated, but there was a bit of graphic design work that I could do.  I got to use computers, have a cubicle, drink machine coffee from a paper cup, and look forward to casual friday when I could exchange my daily “slacks ‘n tie” uniform with the kick-back “slacks ‘n no tie” outfit.

I think I owned 2 ties, so being able to not wear the same tie more than twice in one week was very exciting.

The whole atmosphere of “cubicle life” was exciting to me.  I loved the office gossip.  The different personalities.  The politics.  It was all really fascinating to a 19 year old kid interested in psychology and art.

I remember one day I got invited out to lunch with a group of 4 other cube-mates.  We went to this great Vietnamese restaurant down the road.  At least, I think it was great.. it was the first time I had ever eaten Vietnamese, so to me it was delicious.

One of my co-workers ordered something I had never seen before.. a Vietnamese coffee.

If you’ve only had drip or machine coffee before, the ritual of a Vietnamese coffee is quite enticing.  It’s a glass with a finger or so of condensed milk.  The coffee is in a little metal cup that sits on top of the glass. When the waiter put it down, he poured the hot water into the metal cup, and over the next few minutes the coffee slowly dripped into the glass, mixing with the condensed milk in a way that I can only describe as looking like liquid silk.  It was a beautiful carmel color.. soft, moving, gorgeous.

When my co-worker offered me a taste (I think I was staring), I sipped it and immediately ordered one for myself.

It was delicious.

Of course, it was also the strongest coffee I had ever had, and I spent the rest of the afternoon talking a mile a minute.  I probably wore out the ball bearings in my office chair, just spinning and spinning and spinning..

To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever had that same buzz from a cup of coffee than what I had that first time.

Anyway, this article by Christoph reminded me of an art project I did back in University.  I wanted to do something obsessive, so I purchased about 50 white t-shirts from a t-shirt warehouse just south of Santa Barbara.  It was the kind of place where you can get 5 shirts for 10 bucks.. so not too expensive!  Every morning for a month or so I would wake up, grab a fabric pen and a shirt, and draw myself a new cartoon about how much I love coffee.  I would then wear the shirt to school.  The next morning, I would do another.  And the morning after, another.  You get the picture.

I ended up with over 30 unique coffee-related t-shirts.. and I still have them sitting in a box somewhere.

Maybe I’ll start scanning them and displaying them on the web site.

Or maybe I’ll make my wife happy and sell them on ebay & get rid of the box.

Btw.. I do have “some” coffee merchandise for sale on Zazzle.com.. if you’ve got a few bucks to spare.

Coffee. Yellow teeth are sexy. by jschleifer
design a mug With Zazzle.com
More Animation Comics Mugs

Animation Tips & Tricks.

My good buddy Kevan Shorey posted some great content on the http://animatinotipsandtricks.com website today.  It’s about using contrast in animation.

For me, contrast is best used when trying to heighten an emotional beat.  For example.. if I’m trying to animate someone being “sad”, what do I do?  How [...]]]>

Animation Tips & Tricks.

My good buddy Kevan Shorey posted some great content on the http://animatinotipsandtricks.com website today.  It’s about using contrast in animation.

For me, contrast is best used when trying to heighten an emotional beat.  For example.. if I’m trying to animate someone being “sad”, what do I do?  How sad do I go?  Does “this” pose represent sad?  What about “this” one?  It isn’t until I show a change from one pose to another that the real emotion comes out.  Sad is only sad when it’s compared to a previous pose.. or contrasted against another emotion all together.

I mean honestly.. if you look at droopy dog, one of the gags is his depressed saying “you know what?  I’m happy..”  Well, maybe to him.. that IS happy.. imagine if he were depressed!

Oh wow.. talk about a great book that every animator should get.

Amazon.com: Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes, Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures: Walt Stanchfield, Don Hahn: Books.

As a 3d animator, I’ve had many people ask [...]]]>

Oh wow.. talk about a great book that every animator should get.

Amazon.com: Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes, Volume 1: The Walt Stanchfield Lectures: Walt Stanchfield, Don Hahn: Books.

As a 3d animator, I’ve had many people ask me what software they should learn, or what school they should go to, or what skills are necessary to be a “3d animator”.  I respond time and time again that the biggest thing they can learn is to observe others, and translate that observation.  Whether it’s acting it out, drawing it, or speaking about it we must be able to create a picture that represents the idea or emotion we are trying to represent.

Sketching is one of the fastest and most effective ways to communicate an idea.  I don’t sketch as often or as well as I should, but I can’t tell you how helpful it’s been to be able to draw to communicate over the years.  Even though I don’t draw my animation, I do use sketches and thumbnails to think about it.  I also will draw a quick eye pose to try and get across an idea to an animator when I’m giving them notes.

Even if you “can’t draw”, you should try and learn some of the tricks and tips that Walt Stanchfield talks about in his notes.  They’ll really help you communicate your ideas!

I do wish there were a multi player option though…

I’ve included snaps of my last game. I am blue..

Someone at work found this video from Autodesk (previously Alias) on YouTube about weta’s use of Maya..

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMM_-rYc1T8

I remember the time of this shoot… it was right after we had finished Lord of the Rings, Return of the King.  I had finished my contract at Weta and [...]]]> Originally posted: Monday, 19 March 2007

Someone at work found this video from Autodesk (previously Alias) on YouTube about weta’s use of Maya..

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMM_-rYc1T8

I remember the time of this shoot… it was right after we had finished Lord of the Rings, Return of the King.  I had finished my contract at Weta and was on a two month holiday.. probably the longest vacation I’ve had since I was about 14 years old.  It was amazing.. every day I’d get up.. go for a run with the dogs along the Eastern Walkway, come back and just hang out.

About three weeks into the holiday I was sitting back on the porch in our house, drinking a gin & tonic , and listening to a Loop cd.  The sun was beating down, but there was a slight breeze, making it possible to sit out and not get immediately drenched with sweat.  The secadas were a lovely backdrop to the rhythmic beats coming from the stereo, and for the first time in nearly 15 years I realized that I was completely and utterly relaxed.

I had nothing to “get ready” for.

There was no work on monday, no “how am I going to solve this problem” thoughs running through my head.

I wasn’t stressed about what Peter was going to say about my next shot, or whether or not I’d actually be able to complete the shot in the time provided.

There were no Mel scripts to fix.

No renders to check.

No shots that could use just a little more love.

The only thing I had to do, at that moment, was scratch a tiny itch that I had on my right shoulder.

But I let it sit there for a few minutes.. just slowly itching away.. because I was enjoying doing–and thinking about–absolutely nothing.

Just the sun, a drum beat, a cold glass in my hands, and a spider slowly crawling across my shoulder that would scare the crap out of me in about 47 more seconds.

I hate spiders.

So I think I’m just the luckiest guy around.

Seriously.  I couldn’t have wished for a better day yesterday.  It all started a few weeks ago as I began to get prepared for hitting the big “34″.

Yeah.. that’s right.. on tuesday I turn 34.  That’s 1 year [...]]]> Originally posted: Monday, 02 April 2007

So I think I’m just the luckiest guy around.

Seriously.  I couldn’t have wished for a better day yesterday.  It all started a few weeks ago as I began to get prepared for hitting the big “34″.

Yeah.. that’s right.. on tuesday I turn 34.  That’s 1 year closer to 40.. only 6 years away.  eep!

So while thinking about what i wanted for my birthday, my wife and I were talking about various things I might like.. but nothing really stood out.  I mean, I’ve got most of the “little” things I want.. it’s really about making our family life easier.. you know, a nice bbq.. getting the garage finished.. putting on a second story.. hanging out with the entire family.. the types of things you can’t really “ask” for for a birthday gift.

So I kind of put it out of my mind & thought “well, maybe we’ll just go out to dinner or something.. and then use the birthday as an excuse to buy something nice for the house”.

Then on thursday I got an email from my brother inviting me to go play badminton on sunday.  I thought “hey, that’d be fun.. last time I couldn’t walk for two days, but it was good to go hang out and hit a birdie around.. but my wife & baby just got back from NZ, and I’d like to hang out with them and maybe do some yardwork or something around the house..  So I replied “yeah, maybe.. I’ll check with P and see what she says..”

Then I promptly forgot about it.

On friday night, P asked “hey, what do you want to do on sunday?”

“I dunno,” I replied. “I’ve got some work to do on the DVD series.. it’d be nice to finish recording part 2.. maybe do a bit of gardening.. go to a park with AJ.. you know, something like that?”

“Hmm.. you know, I was thinking how much fun it’d be to learn to play badminton sometime..”

“Oh!  Kyle invited me to play on sunday.. maybe we can all go?”

“Nono, you go have some quality bonding time with kyle.  It’ll be good for you guys to hang out.”

“Oh.. okay, I’ll let him know.”

So I made plans with kyle to get together around 12 to play badminton.

Saturday we cleaned up the house a bit.. did some gardening.. talked about how nice it would be if we could actually use our backyard.. maybe have a bbq the next weekend.. etc.  But our only bbq is a baby weber-q.. a tiny thing that’s kinda busted and a bit overused (since that’s all we had to cook with while we were renovating our kitchen.. for 6 months..).  But you know how it is.. you start working on a part of the house and start   thinking “hmm.. wouldn’t it be nice if…”

Then sunday P head’s off to the store & I’m watching AJ before heading off to meet Kyle for Badminton.  She gets back around 11, we kiss goodbye & I head off.

Kyle & I end up playing tennis (the badminton court was closed) and throwing around a frisbee for a bit.  I suck at tennis, so it was fun remembering NOT to use my wrist (unlike badminton & ping pong).  Around 1:30 I said “Okay, I gotta get back.. P’s going to be needing help with the baby”, so I hop in the jeep & head back home.

Pulling into the driveway I notice that my dad’s car is parked in front of the house.

Odd.. I didn’t know  that they were coming over today.. oh well, maybe they wanted to see the baby?

I get out of the car and notice the gas bottle to the bbq sitting on the front steps.  I remember that P had talked about getting it filled, so I figured maybe she had gotten it filled but left it there for me to bring upstairs (with the baby and everything, it’s sometimes easier to leave thing down at the car for whomever comes by next to bring it up).

I grab the gas bottle and start up the stairs when my dad’s wife comes down holding the baby saying “hi jason!  you have to go get some gas for the bottle!”

I look down at the bottle.  It’s pretty damn heavy, and I can tell it’s full of gas already.

“Uh.. I think it’s full..”

“No no, P says you need to go fill it up.”

Knowing I shouldn’t go against my wife’s wishes (I’m a smart husband), I get back in the car & start to back out the driveway when I notice my mom’s girlfriend and my brother walking towards the house.

Hmm.

I drive towards them and my mom’s girlfriend goes “what, you’re not coming to your own party?”

Party?

heh.

sweet.

“nope, didn’t know I was having a party..” I say as I drive off to go fill the already full gas bottle.

At the gas station, the guy tells me “This is already full.. it doesn’t need to be filled up.”  So I call home and say “hi.. the gas bottle is full.. do you want me to drive around a bit?”

My dad’s wife replies “yes!  drive around and enjoy your sunday.. for about 15 minutes or so.. and then call back..”

I smile and cruise around the neighborhood with the top down in the jeep for about 20 minutes.  We live in a very rural area, so it’s fun getting lost to see what kind of house  are back in the boonies.

After a while I call back and am told that I can come home.

So I go back home and when I get in the whole family is there with champagne.. we toast and I’m all smiles.  Then P says, do you want to see your present?

Sure!  So we head out back and lo and behold.. a brand new weber bbq.. a NICE one.. and an outdoor table and chairs and umbrella and pillows and some paper lanterns.. the whole backyard is all set up for a party!  Not only can we have a bbq.. but we can have people over and kick back and relax and actually enjoy ourselves.

So awesome.. I was so excited and stoked!  It was more than I expected and way more than I had even dreamed of.

And the best part.. it was all planned from the beginning.

When my wife got back from the store with a ton of meat she said “I thought I’d freeze this so we don’t have to worry about getting meat from the store this week..”  nope, it was for the bbq.

When I was knocking at my brother’s door and he was taking a while to respond, I thought he had been in the bathroom.. nope, he was calling everyone saying “he’s here!  Go! Go! Go!”

While we were playing tennis, my dad and his wife were hurridly putting together the new BBQ in our backyard.. in record time.

The new table was stashed at our neighbors and was quickly brought over and assembled.

The pillows had been stashed in a cupbord that I (for some reason) hadn’t looked in for the past few days.

The chairs were hidden behind the laundry.. a place I had walked past repeadedly the day before and hadn’t even noticed.

The whole badminton thing was a plan to get me out of the house.

All the comments and discussions of things to do in the backyard.. even a conversation my wife and I had about birdhouses had been specifically planned to get my reaction and see what I would say.. and of course I had said exactly what my wife had expected.

I’m just in awe of the planning and deception that went into this.

P, Kyle, Mom, El, Dad, & Leslie (and of course little AJ who didn’t give anything away, even when I tickled her).. you guys rock!  Thank you so much!

This friday I’m going to be speaking at the Digital Media Arts College graduation ceremony.  I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to write a speech about owning your career & working towards a goal.  It’s been quite fun driving around, pretending to give the speech, realizing [...]]]> Originally posted: Tuesday, 22 May 2007

This friday I’m going to be speaking at the Digital Media Arts College graduation ceremony.  I’ve spent the past few weeks trying to write a speech about owning your career & working towards a goal.  It’s been quite fun driving around, pretending to give the speech, realizing that I have WAY too many stories that are WAY too long to fit into a 15 minute talk.

Next week I’ll post the finished speech here for people to read, but in the meantime I thought I’d include one of the stories I had to cut.  This isn’t a “funny” story, but it’s meant to illustrate a point:  that it’s possible to achieve a goal if you understand how to work towards it.

When I graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1996, I was working for a 3d animation software company called Alias|Wavefront.  You may have heard of them, they created the software Maya – one of the most popular 3d animation software’s around.   I had been interning at Alias|Wavefront for 6 months, learning the ins and outs of Maya and was on the track to become the key tech support person for the product.  This is because every other tech support person was focused on supporting the legacy products: Power Animator, Wavefront, Kinemation, Dynamation, TDI, etc.  I was new, so instead of training me up on their older products, I spent my time learning Maya.

At the time, Maya was in Alpha stage, meaning it was so brand new it didn’t even have a file->save option.  Seriously.  You couldn’t save a file.  Since Maya was not even out the door, there wasn’t much to support so I spent most of my time testing the code & making little demos.  At one point I was in a video conference meeting with some developers in Toronto when I heard about this guy Bubba who was making a short film in Maya.

My ears immediately perked up.

Short Film?  Here?  Somebody is making a short film?

I didn’t even know that a job like that was POSSIBLE at Alias|Wavefront, let alone that someone was doing it.  I immediately thought “man, that guy is so LUCKY!  I want that job!”

I knew that my career at A|W wasn’t heading in that direction, I was headed to become the guy explaining to the customers that the drink holder on the computer wasn’t too small to hold their coke, the can didn’t fit because it was a CD drive.

So I set about figuring out a way to switch departments.  I didn’t want to just leave the current job for a number of reasons.  First, burning bridges is bad.  It’s the worst thing you can do.  There’s a saying, it’s not what you know but who you know, right?  There’s a third part to the saying..  It’s not what you know, but who you know and how you treat them.  So I didn’t want to piss off my boss.  Second, I didn’t know if Bubba needed anyone else on his team.  Third, even if he wanted another person, there was no way he’d know about me.

I realized that the first thing I had to do was solve the problem of my boss being upset if I left.  Since I was one of the people in the support department with the most knowledge about Maya, it stood to reason that I was going to be the main support person once Maya got released.  If I wasn’t there, then the team would have to scramble until everyone else got up to speed.  So I spent the next few weeks writing up a course explaining everything I knew about Maya and how it worked.  It was designed to help people who already knew other 3d software understand how Maya worked so they could get up to speed quickly.

Then I went to my boss and told her that I’d like to teach the class to the support crew in Toronto.  Kind of spread the knowledge around so we wouldn’t be hit too hard once Maya went out to beta customers.  She thought it was a great idea & sent me to Toronto the next week to meet with the team up there.

While there I introduced myself to Bubba.  I told him that I heard he was working on a short film & said that if he needed any help I’d be happy to help out.  We talked for a bit & I showed him a few things in Maya that I had picked up over the past few months.  He invited me out to sushi with the other two members of the team (Corban and Adrian) so they could tell me about it.  We talked, and ate, and drank sake, and beer, and had more sake and more beer, and more beer, and more sake, and at the end of it they said that they’d be happy to have me help out.

They were also happy to stick me with the $300 bill, but I was so happy I didn’t even care.

6 months later I moved onto that team full time & stayed there for 3 years, creating demos, short films, and generally getting to travel around the world & talk about Maya.

This experience demonstrated to me that just wanting something isn’t enough.  You have to actively go out and seek it.  To work for it.  And most importantly, do it in a way that doesn’t piss anybody off.

So after finishing recording of the videos, I decided to record myself creating a walk-cycle with the AFR rig.

Enjoy!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zrObqm4Fm0

Some of you may remember a website called 10 second club which has been around for a few years as a great testing-ground for animators. The concept was brilliant.. every month post a sound file and then let animators try and do their best to come up with [...]]]> Originally posted: Wednesday, 12 December 2007

Some of you may remember a website called 10 second club which has been around for a few years as a great testing-ground for animators. The concept was brilliant.. every month post a sound file and then let animators try and do their best to come up with the most unique and entertaining animation for that audio.

Unfortunately, 10secondclub is no more.. but fortunately, some excellent friends have opened up 11 second club (it’s one better!) which is basically the same thing, except this time it’s hosted by AnimationMentor.com!

Animation Mentor has provided a completely rad prize for the winner each month.. an official eCritique from a real animation mentor!  That’s right.. it’s a chance for the winner to get a critique just like the ones that we give students at the school.. but not only that, everyone can see the critique and learn from it!

What I love about this is that it gives the animator a great tool to improve themselves, and it also gives everyone a chance to see what an eCritique actually looks like.

The first critique was done by the famous Victor Navone, a hugely awesome person and animator who is just so talented it almost hurts.

The second critique was done by yours truly.. a very fun experience & I hope that Kevin (the november winner) finds it useful & informative!

Anyway, go check out 11secondclub.com and enjoy the experience!

I’m not sure how long the page will stay up with me on it, so I’ll quote the interview here:

Who is your favorite character that you’ve animated and why?
Most definitely Julian the [...]]]> Holy wow, I didn’t even realize I was the featured mentor this month at AnimationMentor.com!

I’m not sure how long the page will stay up with me on it, so I’ll quote the interview here:

Who is your favorite character that you’ve animated and why?
Most definitely Julian the Lemur King from Madagascar ( and now Madagascar 2: the Crate Escape). He’s just so much fun to animate! He’s a bit over the top and dramatic. And totally unafraid to do something completely asinine. So it’s just a ton of fun to figure out ways to make him act that are completely outrageous.

If you could do one thing differently on your journey to becoming an animator, what would it be?
I probably would have gone to an actual animation training program, I feel like a lot of my learning about actual animation technique was self-taught through many, many hours of making mistakes and trying again. I didn’t really start learning until I was actually working with animators every day.

How has the Animation Mentor experience been for you so far?
It’s been incredible. The amount of joy that I get from watching the talent just explode from the students is amazing. I absolutely love it when the students learn something over the course of a semester, and can’t wait to work alongside some of them at a studio! The joy and love of animation is totally palpable from Animation Mentor, not just from students but from everyone in the organization.

What inspired you to become an animator?
Actually, I think it all dates back to something that happened to me when I was about three years old. I was having these horrible nightmares about spiders, and would wake up screaming, crying, and totally terrified. My parents were trying everything in their power to get the nightmares to stop, but couldn’t do anything about them. Finally, after one horrendous episode, my mom took out a box of crayons and some paper and told me to draw the spider. So I did. Then she said “now draw yourself killing it.” So I drew myself killing the spider, making sure it would never come back to hurt me. What she was doing was teaching me to have power over my fear so I wouldn’t be affected by it. But what I think was actually happening was that I was learning to tell stories through art. And that’s what’s stuck, throughout the rest of my life I’ve absolutely loved listening to and telling stories whether through art, spoken word, film, cartoons, etc. The idea that it’s possible to think up an idea, a thought, or an emotion and transmit those feelings to others simply by “telling” them about it is just amazing to me.

Hmmm. Okay, I guess that doesn’t really answer the question completely. It explains why I love telling stories, but as to what inspired me to use animation to do this? Probably it’s watching cartoons and just falling in love with the medium. For me it’s like this thing…I don’t know…like when I watch something move and it just moves beautifully it just feels right. It hits me right in the heart, you know? That’s probably why I like animating. I love the idea that we can tell any story and get any mood across. I can play both characters in a serious drama, or be a crazy lemur that makes children laugh until they pee themselves. There aren’t too many jobs where you can have that sort of variety! “Honey! I’m home! 37 children between the ages of 5 and 7 wet themselves when they saw my shot of the guy jumping up and down in the tree! Let’s go out and celebrate!”

What was your first animation job?
The first animation job I ever got paid for was when I was in my senior year at the University of California in Santa Barbara. I was a teaching assistant for the animation course in the Art Department. It wasn’t much of an animation course, it was more like a “here’s access to the software, we don’t know how to use it, but try and figure it out by creating a short film, oh and by the way we only have 2 machines that run this software, but the engineering department has some machines, so maybe you can go over there and use them” course. Anyway, back at my apartment I was playing with this cheap 2d animation software I had picked up at a computer event somewhere called Disney Animation Studio. I used to play around a bit, creating really short crappy 2d animations not worth much of anything. One day there was a notice up from a local illustrator who was in need of a student to help her produce some 2d animation for a children’s educational CD-ROM called Kid Phonics. I gave her a call and she came out to my apartment to check out some of my work. I showed her a few drawings and the animations I had done and she hired me to produce the work for this CD-ROM. So that was my first gig, about six months of creating little animated characters that would move when children clicked on them. I had a blast doing it, and proceeded to work with Karen (the woman who hired me) on a number of other projects over the next few years, including designing a puppet for Jonathan Winters!

Who would you consider your mentor to be in animation?
I’ve got two definite mentors. The first is Randy Cook, my first animation director. He really is the one that I give all the credit to for allowing me to move from rigging to animation. Without him I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity and I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.

The second is my current animation director, Rex Grignon. Rex is one of those guys who really puts his heart out there to try and make the environment the best it can be for his animators. He’s also got the magic ability to notice when someone’s doing a good job and instead of pushing them down out of fear for his own job, he builds them up and helps them achieve their goals. I appreciate the opportunities he’s given me every single day, and am constantly watching him for inspiration.

What is your favorite Animation Mentor tool?
I love everything about it, but also can’t wait for the next releases of the eCrit tool and the live Q&A. It seems to keep getting better and better each term! Go team dynamite!

I always love it when an Animation Mentor student does well.. and I love it even more when they land a gig at Dreamworks Animation!

We’re making the most rediculous video of all time.. it’ll either be great, or.. well.. stupid.

Edit:  I finished shooting the video & editing it together.  It’s available on youtube.. and if you purchased the Animator Friendly Rigging DVD series, you’ve seen it.   Enjoy!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvHG0OkCWJ4

Ah, I love it when articles come out touting the awesomeness of new technology and get the facts so wonky that it makes it seem like anything would be possible, if it weren’t for those darn pesky artists!

The New York Times has a new article about Image [...]]]> Orignally posted: Monday, 16 October 2006

Ah, I love it when articles come out touting the awesomeness of new technology and get the facts so wonky that it makes it seem like anything would be possible, if it weren’t for those darn pesky artists!

The New York Times has a new article about Image Metrics, a software company that has figured out a way to make facial motion capture a thing of the past.. they’ve got some crazy 2d image mapping technology which actually captures the SOUL of the actor, not just points on the face.

You can read the article here .

Now I’ve never seen the software work, so I can’t give a “yay” or “nay” either for nor against it.. but I can look at quotes like this:

In a C.G.I. film, he said, “every time someone would say something, banks of people would have to figure out how the lips move, how the eyes move — and it’s not even that good.”

“Now we don’t have to spend three years having people meticulously hand-animate Charlie Sheen’s lines,” he added. “He says, ‘Food fight!’ in real time, live action, and it’s applied, via Image Metrics technology, to the character.”

So whereas a film like “Cars” cost $120 million and took dozens of animators five years to make, Mr. Kasanoff says that “Foodfight!,” which has not yet begun production, will be finished by February.

.. and immediately assume that either the author of the article mis-quoted Kasanoff, or that he really doesn’t understand what it takes to actually create an animated motion picture film.

First of all.. I’m not even going to dignify comments like “banks of people would have to figure out how the lips move, how the eyes move — and it’s not even that good.” with a statement other than “if you hired people who WERE good, then it WOULD be good.”

If you want quality, hire quality.  You’re not going to hire jim-bob-jimmy-hossenfifer to have a major role in a feature film if he can’t act.. why hire crappy animators who can’t act and then be suprised when the work is sub-par?

Second, facial animation is NOT the most time-consuming part of an animated film.  What about art? story?  Layout? Modeling? Rigging? Texturing? Lighting? Rendering?  Effects? Compositing?  Sound? Editing??

Or can we blame the cost of CG movies and the time it takes soley on the animators?

I highly doubt that a film like “Foodfight!” will finish by Feb if it hasn’t begun production yet.

And if it does.. I highly doubt that it will make the money back that it claims it saved by getting rid of a few animators.

BESIDES the fact that you’re immediately going to run into problems when the director decides they want a different “take” on the line than what the actor performed.. which they inevitably do.  What happens then?  Do you get someone else in to act it out?  What if their performance isn’t right?  What if the actor isn’t available?

Sigh.

EDIT: This post was originally written in 2006. It’s now 2009.. I heard that the movie was completed in 2008.. looking forward to seeing it!

So this weekend my lovely wife, gorgeous baby girl, and my homely self headed over to Florida so I could speak at the Digital Media Arts College 2007 graduation, and receive an honorary doctorate of animation.

It was a really great time.. the college put us up in [...]]]> Originally Posted: Monday, 28 May 2007

So this weekend my lovely wife, gorgeous baby girl, and my homely self headed over to Florida so I could speak at the Digital Media Arts College 2007 graduation, and receive an honorary doctorate of animation.

It was a really great time.. the college put us up in this swanky resort (the Boca Raton.. WOW!), & treated us really well.  The size of our bungalo sweet was actually larger than the main living area in our house.. AJ loved it.  So much space for her to crawl around & play.  It was really nice.

On Friday, we met the ever-helpful LaRee who took us to the graduation site where we met Scott, Cynthia, Tony, Andres, Lesley, and a number of other really helpful and nice administrators & teachers.    I donned my cap and gown (and cape), and got ready to give my speech.  Waiting outside, I met a couple of the students, including one incredibly talented masters graduate, Carlos, who was kind enough to give Shrek 3 a plug during his speech.

The graduation started & I was quickly introduced by Cynthia (the president of the college).  I was a bit nervous before speaking.. it’s been a while since I’ve given a talk w/out any visual aides.  But it went well.. there were lots of laughs, and I had a great time giving it.

What follows is the speech I wrote.. it’s a bit different from what I delivered, due to the nature of how I give talks.. kind of off the cuff, rambling, full of random assides & ad-libs.. but you get the general idea from it.

Digital Media Arts College graduating class of 2007, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you here today!

I’d like to offer my sincere congratulations to every graduate.  You’ve worked incredibly hard to come this far, and it’s a feat of which you should all be proud!  You deserve to celebrate today. You’ve stayed up late, worked crazy hours, learned the joys and hardships of “crunch time”.  You did your homework, forgoed parties, and drinking.  You flossed daily, ate three well-rounded meals per day.  And probably developed an unnatural addiction to coffee.   Mmmm… coffee..

You can officially add the title “Artist” to your business card.  It’s a powerful addition!  Imagine introducing yourself at the next party.. “Hi, I’m Joe.  Artist.  Good to meet you.  If you need anything.. you know.. ‘artistic’, just give me a call.  Artist here, happy to help”.

It works great as a pickup line, too.  “My gosh, you have beautiful eyes.. what are they, green?  Yeah, I can tell.. I’m an artist.  I’m good with pigments.

You’ve started your career off on the right path, by following your passion.  You’ve graduated, you’re now an artist, and you’re ready for the next step:

becoming a successful artist.

Success can be many things.  To some it’s having the ability to create whatever art they want.  To others, it’s being able to financially support their families.  And to some it’s a combination of those and other reasons.  Each of us has a unique definition of success.  But I’ve found there are at least two things that every successful person has in common.

First, they know what it is they want.  Whether it’s being a photographer, animator, set decorator, photoshop-ier (it’s a word).. whatever it is, they recognize that there’s a goal they want to achieve.

Second, they work their butts off to get there.  They look for opportunities.  If they can’t find an opportunity, they make an opportunity, and they work like crazy until they achieve their goal.  Whether it’s an hour, 10 weeks, or 15 years, they work until they get there.  It may be a straight path, it may be kind of a meandering path, but eventually they will get there.

In short, they take personal ownership of their careers.

It sounds surprisingly simple, but not many people actually do it.  What tends to happen is that we all work hard to get into a good school.  Then we work all throughout school, doing our homework, skipping parties, studying until all hours of the night.. eating a well rounded healthy breakfast, staying away from drugs and alcohol..

Then we go out and find a job.  Maybe it’s the dream job, maybe not, but we work hard, get hired, and then proceed to do whatever the boss tells us.

So far so good, right?

But then what?  Most people settle in and work to prove themselves to those around them, to show that they’ve got “it”, they’re passionate, talented, and are a valuable asset to the team.  Fantastic!  That’s exactly what people should do when they get a job.

But then as time goes by,  they sit and wonder why they aren’t being considered for the “Johnson account”, or why they keep getting pigeon-holed into the same style of work over and over.

They’re waiting for someone to notice all their hard work and give them that promotion, the raise, the chance to really shine.

They’re letting someone else own their careers.

I remember when I was 14 years old I used to have this dream that I would be the best car window washer in the world.  No, seriously.  Whenever we would pull up to a gas station, I’d jump out of the car and wash the windows.  I would scrub and wipe and flick and scrub.. all the while daydreaming that somebody would notice and go “hey, that kids a great window washer!  Hey!  Kid, do you want a job?  You’re hired!”

Of course nobody ever offered me the job.. I never asked for a job.  I just washed windows assuming that someone would eventually notice and offer a job.  That’s not taking personal ownership of my “career” or goal.  It’s just being hopeful, which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s certainly no guarantee that I’ll get what I’m after.

Let me give you an example a bit more relevant to my current career.

When I graduated from university in 1996, I got a job as an intern for a 3d animation software company called Alias|Wavefront.  You may have heard of them, they created the software Maya – one of the most popular 3d animation software’s around.   I worked there for a number of years, working my way up from an intern that had to share a desk and computer with someone else, to a Product Specialist – an in-house animator that got to travel around the world, demonstrate Maya, and create mini in-house productions.

After working at Alias|Wavefront for three and a half years I realized that I was doing what I wanted.. I was making shorts, doing internal production work, having a lot of fun travelling, but I felt like I was lacking in actual film production experience.  Some friends were talking about a company that was going to be making a movie out of a series of books called “The Lord of the Rings”.   I had heard of the books, but never read them.  But I wanted some more production experience, so I filled out the online application form stating my experience with Maya, and then promptly forgot about it.

A month or so later I got a call from the recruiter.  They were looking for people with extensive Maya experience & were wondering if I’d be interested in coming down to LA for an interview.  I was in the middle of crunch preparing for a trade show called NAB, National Association of Broadcasters.  It’s an event that’s held every April in Vegas.  I had been working 7 days a week for the past month in preparation for it, and was really swamped trying to get ready.

I declined the invitation, saying that I was just too busy to come down.  They insisted, I declined again.  They said “come on.. it’s just a half hour on a Saturday.  Just drive down & see what we’re doing.”  So I said “Oh, okay…” (thinking back now I almost want to smack myself for being so blase about it).

I went down and had a half hour interview with the visual effects producer & the digital effects supervisor.  They showed me some amazing video of sculptures they were working on.  We talked a bit about the project & about my experience.  At the end of the interview they said they’d be in touch and I drove back up to Santa Barbara ready to work like crazy for the next month and a half to get ready for NAB.

At NAB, I was doing a “back room demo”.. it’s not as salacious as it sounds.  It’s simply a demo for “key customers”.. i.e. those spending a lot of money.  I was on my second day of demos when I noticed John, the digital effects supervisor, sitting in the front row.  I immediately started acting “casually brilliant”, trying to impress him.  After the demo, he came up to me & gave me his card saying “meet me at my hotel tomorrow morning at 8am”.

The next morning I showed up to his hotel room & knocked on the door.  He opened it, wearing his bathrobe.

My first thought was, “how badly do I want this job?”

He invited me in & proceeded to show me a tape of more work they were doing on Lord of the Rings.  Then he made an offer.  A really nice offer.  One that involved moving out to New Zealand in August.

I left Vegas very unsure of what to do.  On one hand I really wanted production experience.  On the other hand, I loved my job & where I lived.  But the Lord of the Rings opportunity seemed like it could be good, but then I didn’t know if the movies would be successful (remember, this is before the movies even started filming.  Yes, there was a time when we thought people might hate them.)

I was totally conflicted, so my friends and I decided to drive around in the desert a bit on our way back from Vegas.  On the way we saw a huge sand dune & decided to climb it.  Nothing like exercise and sand to clear one’s head, right?  So a bunch of us start climbing up the dunes and when we reach the top there’s a guy sitting there on a carpet drinking a glass of red whine.  I thought “huh?” and just looked at him oddly.  Then I noticed his friend, sitting next to him eating an apple.

I thought they were suitably odd, so whom better than to ask about my future?  So i told them the entire story & the guy with the wine (I’ll call him Jim), said “well, why not?”

Why not?

PAUSE

He was right!

Why not take a chance?  See what happens?  Here I was being offered a chance to have what I so desparately wanted.. and I was balking at it.

After all, worst comes to worst, I’d have an amazing experience that I could talk about at parties..  “yeah, I went to go work on that ‘rings’ movie.. but it’s so difficult to make a movie when the electricity is generated by hamsters”

We should always be open to taking chances.  We’re artists, right?  By definition we should try and stretch ourselves, reach for what we think we can’t achieve, push ourselves beyond previous experiences.

That’s my message to you today.  Know yourself.  Know what you want.  Work towards it.  And enjoy the journey.

You will make mistakes, learn from them.

You may fail, you may loose your footing, you might be publicly humiliated.

You may even have to crawl backwards a few steps.

It may take years to get where you want.

But in the end, as long as you’re working towards a goal, you can’t ever really loose.   The simple act of taking your career, your life, your passion into your own hands.. actively working to achieve your dreams is one of the most satisfying and rewarding things you can ever do.

Finally, I’d like to leave you with a few words of wisdom from someone who’s been around the block a few times.

Always treat everyone around you with respect and compassion.  The intern fetching your coffee this week may be your producer in two years.

Be  generous with your praise.  If someone does a good job, tell them!

Be honest.  If you make a mistake, own up to it.

And please, wear deodorant.  Smelling good is always appreciated.

Thanks very much graduating class of 2007, congratulations!!!

After the ceremony we got a chance to chat with the students, & I met a number of really nice and wonderful students that I hope can take their talents & passion & start spreading them through the industry.

Angry Jew.. dave.. please send me your stuff!

Carlos, your work is awesome.  Thank you for the books!  Don’t forget to check out http://www.otherthings.com/grafarc/

Paul, thanks for coming up and speaking with me!  I know it wasn’t easy, and I really appreciate it!  I have your card & I look forward to seeing more work from you!
Alex, definitely get a reel together & send it to me.  You guys did some astounding work & I can’t wait to see it again!
Everyone who came up to talk to me, I really appreciate it!  And if I gave you my email, please send me a note & give me your latest works.. I look forward to seeing them!

Thanks again Cynthia, Scott, LaRee, Andres, and everyone else who made the weekend so memorable!

A lot has been posted over the past few weeks about Beowulf and whether or not it should be considered “animation”.  I do know a few incredibly talented individuals who worked on it, and am sure they poured their hearts and souls into the film, delivering whatever was [...]]]> Originally posted: Saturday, 24 November 2007

A lot has been posted over the past few weeks about Beowulf and whether or not it should be considered “animation”.  I do know a few incredibly talented individuals who worked on it, and am sure they poured their hearts and souls into the film, delivering whatever was asked of them in a timely and professional manner.  They don’t deserve the lambasting and flaming that they’re receiving from the animation community.

You can read various arguments for and against Beowulf’s animation credibility at all sorts of sites, including Cartoon Brew,  Mark Mayersen’s site, etc.  I won’t rehash those arguments here.. I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I can’t comment on it as a film.  Nor, do I want to argue over semantics about wether or not it’s animated, as I’m sure MUCH more keyframe animation was done on the movie than is being publicized.  Most likely it’s the same sort of PR that was done for Gollum.. you know, the blitz that says it’s all mocapped instead of being keyframed.  For some reason the media seems to get a hard-on over the idea that our beloved actors can simply show up somewhere, act for a few hours, and then a bank of computers can magically turn that into the performance we see.

I don’t get why the idea of animators working hard to create a performance isn’t sexy to them.. but, whatever.  It is what it is.

Anyway, I DID want to post my thoughts about what films like Beowulf mean to the animation industry as a whole.. so I’ve included my comment from Cartoon Brew here, so you can see what I think is likely to come in the future.

——————————————–
Quoted from comments of Cartoon Brew:

You know.. I haven’t seen B-wolf yet (but I plan on seeing it sometime this week), so I can’t really say anything about the film.

However, as an animator.. I DO have to say that I’m not really all that threatened by b-wolf. I worked on LOTR & on Gollum and was able to directly see what worked & what didn’t, and I know there were incredibly talented artists both tweaking the mocap data & creating animation from scratch.. all of it working towards Peter’s vision. That’s what made gollum so good.. peter, fran, andy, and randy cook pushing us towards creating the best performance possible.

As for whether or not performance capture will replace animation.. I think the live action people have more to “fear” than those of us creating stylized animated films. See, in live action you’re completely constrained by location, time of day, the physicalness of what was shot WHEN it was shot. What props are available, what costumes can get created by the time it’s shot, etc etc etc. Then, once the scene is shot it’s SHOT. You’ve got the coverage you have, from the angles you’ve got. Any kind of “tweaking” or anything you have to rely on 2d techniques, or clever editing. You can’t easily change the camera angles.. lighting.. costumes.. anything. I say “easily” because you CAN do quite a bit with compositing & other techniques.. but currently that’s expensive &amp; time consuming.

Let’s pretend that in 10 years the “performance capture” technique has improved to the point where it actually DOES capture everything we’re saying it’s missing today.. meaning, it’s so damn good that you really can’t tell the difference between a live action actor and their digital counterpart. Well, you CAN tell the difference.. but only if you suddenly change the angle, adjust the lighting, give them different clothing, etc etc. See, the director/art director/dp/etc will all have the ability to tweak what was shot until it meets their “ultimate vision”.

But what if they want acting changes? Well, not only will they capture the physical acting of the actors, but they’ll be analyzing that data.. capture the actor long enough & they’ll be able to build a fuzzy logic brain to go along with the actor. Soon enough we’ll have enough data about keanu in order to recreate almost any reaction to any given situation. So while you’d still have to get the actual performance for any of the important beats.. much of what happens can be figured out by the fuzzy logic system.. think “massive” (the crowd simulation program written for LOTR, now used all over the place) but a bit more advanced with a LOT more data running through it. Of course, we’ll still have frame-by-frame control like we do now, so even if the performance isn’t 100%, we can still go in and tweak things to make it perfect.

Directors will have ultimate freedom to create “their movie”. THIS is where the technology is going.. it’s going to affect live action films way more than our cartoony stylized ones.

I’m not saying this is a “good” or “bad” outcome.. I’m just saying that this is where it’s headed. And for some directors, it’s already there.

So for me, I’m not concerned about mocap. As long as there’s still an audience for funny, stylized characters that do things that people can’t do.. animators jobs are safe. No matter how talented any performer is, he’s never going to be able to have the ability to get from point A to point B in as many ways that I can dream up in my head.

So I had some pretty strict commenting regulations when I started this new blog to try and reduce the amount of spam.. but I noticed that I haven’t been getting many comments at all.  So I’m easing up the restrictions a bit in the hopes that it’ll mean more people will comment.

If [...]]]> Howdy folks!

So I had some pretty strict commenting regulations when I started this new blog to try and reduce the amount of spam.. but I noticed that I haven’t been getting many comments at all.  So I’m easing up the restrictions a bit in the hopes that it’ll mean more people will comment.

If we get overrun by spam, then I’ll have to tighten it again to needing a login/password in order to comment.. but until then, hopefully we’ll get a few more people talking!

Of course, it could just be that I’m not posting anything worth commenting about. 

My answer, of course, is “you think my acting ideas are good? aww, shucks!”

Actually, coming up with ideas is one of my favorite parts of the animation process. It’s something I [...]]]> One of the things I get asked about quite often from new animators is “how do you come up with good acting ideas”.

My answer, of course, is “you think my acting ideas are good? aww, shucks!”

Actually, coming up with ideas is one of my favorite parts of the animation process. It’s something I think a lot of animators don’t spend enough time focusing on in the beginning of the shot-making process. They’ll usually spend a few minutes thumbnailing ideas, maybe acting things out in video reference, but they won’t really explore the multitude of possibilities. This is especially the case in production where you usually have a very limited amount of time to work on your shots.

What I recommend is trying to set aside some specific time to think about all the various things your characters can do before you even start thumbnailing or shooting video reference.  One way to do this that I heard about from legendary animator Simon Otto is to play the game of “What If”.

What is this magic game, you ask?  Simple.  It’s a technique used to help you free your mind (woah) and think of all the potential possibilities of any situation.  Let’s say, for example, you have a shot where your character has to tie their shoe.  You can either animate the character bending over to tie the shoe and be done with it.. or you can make it really special.

Here’s one way it could go.

What if the character were really old?  What if when they bent down to tie their shoe, their back went out?  What if they were then frozen halfway between standing up and sitting down?  What if just at that moment, a really beautiful woman walked by?  What if they tried to stand up, but only hurt themselves further?  What if they fell over?  What if they didn’t fall over, but fell on the beautiful woman?  What if instead of a beautiful woman coming by, their bus came?  What if A bus came, but they couldn’t tell what bus number it was?  What if they were trying to read the bus number?  What if the bus door closed, just as they realized it was their bus?  What if they were trying to run after the bus, but then tripped on their shoelase?

See how it goes?  Your mind just starts going crazy!  The cool thing is that many of the ideas won’t really be useful, but the exploration, the exercise of opening your mind most definitely will be.

So along with exploring the idea of playing “what if”, I’ve also been looking at using various mind mapping tools to do it.  If you’ve never used a mind mapping tool, they’re pretty cool.  Basicaly a mind map is a diagram representing a series of ideas or thoughts.  Check out more about them on wikipedia.  I’ve been looking into using them to play “what if”.  It’s actually really fun!

As a test, I spent 5 minutes on http://bubbl.us coming up with a quick mindmap for an example where someone drinks a cup of coffee.

As you can see, some paths I explored more than others.  It’s a pretty rediculous situation, but it does a really nice job of letting your mind kind of explore all options.  The cool thing is that you can really adjust the granularity to whatever makes the most sense for your situation.  For example, with the bending down to tie the shoe exercise, you can simply do:

See?  Some much more simple options.

In the end, you may end up making the exact same choices you would have made without this exercise, but at least if you do, you will know that you explored other options and really came up with the best solution.

Ah, and as an added bonus.. here’s a really cool blog conveniently titled.. “what if”.  It’s got some fun ideas, I recommend checking it out!

a number have people have suggested that I repost something I wrote way back in november of 2005..

so here it is..

November 16th, 2005

The more you know, the more fear you have.

Seems [...]]]> Hey folks!

a number have people have suggested that I repost something I wrote way back in november of 2005..

so here it is..

The fear of moving past blocking..

November 16th, 2005

The more you know, the more fear you have.

Seems to be a rule true of many things.. tree climbing for example. Before you know about gravity and how much breaking an arm can hurt, you really don’t worry that much about falling out of the tree, you just sorta climb on up there and monkey around. It isn’t until you see your friend slip and fall and break her arm when you think “ohh.. wait.. this can be painful…” and you start to worry.

The same is true about animation.

When many animators first start animating they just move things around willy nilly, making things go this way.. that way.. etc. They have no fears, they just move things.

Granted, their animations may looks like ass squished up against a large pile of roadkill, but at least they have no fear.

Once an animator learns about the various stages that professional animators use to work through their shots.. i.e. blocking, first pass, second pass, and polishing.. that’s when fear starts to set in.

It’s a pretty frightening prospect to spend a lot of time getting a blocked animation to look right.. make it feel perfect, get the timing all snappy, the poses to sing, and the intention to come across.. and then convert everything to spline and suddenly it feels like total poop.

So many animators have a really hard time making the transition from clean blocking to clean first pass animation.. it’s easy to become overwhelmed and just start throwing keys in randomly to try and make things look good, but they have no plan.. no process.. they know the stages, but they don’t know how to use the stages to their best advantage.

What I like to do is think about animating like painting a room. You want to be creative, but it’s important to be creative within the confines of what the client wants.. and give them the right information at the right time.

For example, if the client says they want a warm room with an accent wall that really brings out some dramatic intensity, a painter wouldn’t run to the room, grab a few buckets of paint, and start mixing them on the wall right away to try and get the right look. If they did that, they wouldn’t be able to guarantee the right color, the right walls that the colors would be on, they’d get paint all over the fixtures in the room, and the client might be pissed off.

No, they’d block things out first.. they’d find the right colors for the walls and show color swatches to the client in the environment they’re looking at. Then once the colors were approved, they’d tape off the fixtures and floors so they don’t have to worry about getting paint on them. Then they’d prep the walls, then paint one coat, then a second coat, then remove all the taping.

They would work in stages, so at the stage they’re currently at.. say painting the first coat of paint.. they’re not worrying about things they should have focused on earlier.. whether or not the paint is the right color, or if they’re getting paint on the floor, or if the walls were prepped. They work systematically.

Animation works the same way.

When we block our shots, what we’re doing is telling the director “This is my intention. I want the character to be here.. thinking this idea.. at around this time. Then they’re going to be over here.” Some shots require more blocking and explanation than others.. but in the end, the whole idea is to let the director know what’s in your head, and make sure that what’s in your head matches what’s in the director’s head.

When you move from blocking to the first pass of animation.. this is where a real systematic approach comes in handy. It’s what allows you to animate quickly and with consistent results that will help the director trust you.

What I like to do is first break my shot up into distinct beats. This doesn’t mean that the shot will stay in this pose-to-pose style.. what it means is that I’m simply breaking my shot down in to easily discernable chunks. All I want to do at this point is move from a step-curved blocking method to a clean, easy-to read first pass. So my shot is of a character sitting who then reaches over to pick up a glass & takes a drink, I’d break up the shot into three sections. Maybe frames 1 to 20 are of the character sitting. Frames 21 to 28 are of him reaching forward to get the glass. 29 to 35 are the character bringing the glass back up to his lips, and 36-45 of the character taking a sip. Now in the final animation, a lot of this motion will be blended together to feel like one solid action, but at this point my desire is to make these general sections feel right.. I want the change in direction to work, and the arcs to work, and I don’t want to be distracted by trying to animate the whole shot the whole time.

So I’ll shorten my timeline from 1 to 45, down to 1 to 20. Then I’ll look at what’s driving the motion. Usually this will be the torso… so my first step is to clean up the torso’s motion and make sure it’s nice and clean.

So I hide the arms and legs. I know that in the end I’ll need them to work correctly, but because what the body is doing affects them, it’s really easy to become distracted by their motion when I really should just be focusing on what the body itself is doing and making that clean.

Then I’ll convert the body curves to “clamped” or “spline”, whatever I feel is going to work best for this motion. I’ll analyze what it is I want the body to do & make notes before starting to move keys around. This way I have a plan. Then I’ll go through curve by curve, adjusting them as necessary to get the feel of the body moving forward to work correctly just for the lean forward. I can’t stress this enough. While I know the whole animation consists of a lot more than just moving forward, that’s all I’m focusing on at the moment.

I’m breaking down the motion into easily digestible chunks.

Once the body is working correctly for that section, then I’ll show the arm which is reaching forward and work with the animation of just that arm for those first 20 frames.

Now this may or may not be the final animation that I’ll be keeping.. all I’m doing is making sure that this section is clean and easy to work with.

Next I would move on to the next section of animation.. say frames 21 through 28 when the character leans back with the glass. So I’d change my frame range to start at 20 and end at 28. Then again, I’d hide the arms and legs and just get the body moving correctly. Then I’d show that main arm and get that working correctly just for the section.

Once those sections are working, I’d move onto the next one.. and continue until I have the animation clean for each individual section. Then I’d playblast the entire thing and watch the whole animation, making notes of what changes I’d need to make for the transitions between sections to clean them up. Maybe it involves delaying the arm, or adding more overlap into the body, or changing a pose, or adding or removing some time.. but at this point it’s easy to make these changes because we’ve gone about the whole thing systematically.

So if you can learn a technique like this.. or come up with something that works for you.. you can start to reduce the fear of going from blocking to first pass animation.. and begin thinking more about acting and the art of animating, instead of sweating the technical details.

Well, check this out..

What was really impressive is that he did all the effects in Photoshop frame by frame. Nice stuff!

Back to it now after a lovely holiday break.Spent the entire week playing with the family and relaxing.  I had all these plans to do work.. to come up with unique topics to post.. to finish the kitchen remodel (that we started 2 years ago).. to develop my wife’s website.. to learn to [...]]]> Howdy folks!

Back to it now after a lovely holiday break.Spent the entire week playing with the family and relaxing.  I had all these plans to do work.. to come up with unique topics to post.. to finish the kitchen remodel (that we started 2 years ago).. to develop my wife’s website.. to learn to draw again..

But instead I spent the time playing with the wife and kids and having a blast.

We had a ton of family gatherings.. for chanukah and for christmas.  It was great!  And of course, having the amazing Erica Berger in the family to take pics doesn’t hurt.

I do hope everyone had an amazing holiday and I look forward to speakin with you all in the new year!

Happy holidays everyone!

This is the coolest interface for drawing curves.  I love it when people start thinking outside the box about interfaces and how we work with our computers.  I can’t wait to see what the future holds.. especially when you start looking at this type [...]]]>
ILoveSketch from Seok-Hyung Bae on Vimeo.

This is the coolest interface for drawing curves.  I love it when people start thinking outside the box about interfaces and how we work with our computers.  I can’t wait to see what the future holds.. especially when you start looking at this type of thing, combined with a multi-touch interface..

Another example is Jeff Han’s multi-touch demo at TED in 2006.  We have this type of thing available now with microsoft surface and with the iPhone.. sooo cool.

Today I had a 9 am meeting so I couldn’t make it to the gym until about four.. So I just finished my workout.

I [...]]]> So I have now been working out consistently for about three weeks.. Hitting the gym every morning before work in an effort to create a routine I can stick to.

Today I had a 9 am meeting so I couldn’t make it to the gym until about four.. So I just finished my workout.

I am really loving http://gymimee.com for keeping track of and finding new workouts. I tend to get bored quickly and the ability to subscribe to new workouts and give them a try is really cool.

Plus, I can record every workout from my iPhone. Loving it!

Today I started a new routine that I thought would be relatively easy, but for some reason it kicked my ass. I am beat!

I don’t know if it’s the routine, or the friggin huge afghani lunch I had with the rest of the animation department.

I don’t think 5 pounds of meat and coffee prepare you well for exercise.

Ugh.

Friends with an animator?  Married to one?  Want to be an animator?  Confused about what to get yourself or your loved ones for the holidays?

AnimationMentor.Com (one of the best animation schools in the world by far) has a great list of products available for your loved ones!

Normally I wouldn’t [...]]]>

Friends with an animator?  Married to one?  Want to be an animator?  Confused about what to get yourself or your loved ones for the holidays?

AnimationMentor.Com (one of the best animation schools in the world by far) has a great list of products available for your loved ones!

Normally I wouldn’t be all “oh!  you GOTTA get this cool shirt from this school..”, but AnimationMentor is something different.  They’re more like a family than a school.

Seriously.

They’re an awesome group of animators, enthusiasts, and just friggin talented and wonderful people.

Be proud.. wear your AnimationMentor.com gear!

AnimationMentor.com: Home: Zazzle.com Gallery.

Laika lays off 65, shelves CG film – Business – Oregonlive.com.

I just heard about Laika the animation studio in Oregon laying off 65 employees.. don’t know much else about it, but it’s a real shame when something like this happens.

Does anyone know any details [...]]]>

Laika lays off 65, shelves CG film – Business – Oregonlive.com.

I just heard about Laika the animation studio in Oregon laying off 65 employees.. don’t know much else about it, but it’s a real shame when something like this happens.

Does anyone know any details other than “Jack and Ben” being shelved?

My heart goes out to those affected.

Oh yeah, and happy holidays!

She’s taken tons of photos of my kids, and they’re always spectacular.

Her eye is just awe-inspiring.  She is able to capture such emotion and heart and love in her [...]]]> My cousin Erica Berger is one of the most fabulous photographers out there.. her work is consistently amazing.  Always blows me away.

She’s taken tons of photos of my kids, and they’re always spectacular.

Her eye is just awe-inspiring.  She is able to capture such emotion and heart and love in her work, it’s great!

And I’m happy to say that she was the photographer for a featured wedding in The Knot!  Click below to see some of her work for that wedding.. and go here for her blog!

The Knot – My Real Wedding – A Celebration of Love – Photo.

It’s a little bit cheaper than buying the DVD, and  way more convenient!

If there is interest, I can also make the individual dvds downloadable as well.. just let me know!

This is so helpful.. it’s something that’s been frustrating me quite a bit.  I mean, I’m a HUGE apple fan.. I love ‘em.  Great computers.. great interface.. great design.. but they just piss me off when it comes to DRM.

For example.. I own lots of music.  And [...]]]>

This is so helpful.. it’s something that’s been frustrating me quite a bit.  I mean, I’m a HUGE apple fan.. I love ‘em.  Great computers.. great interface.. great design.. but they just piss me off when it comes to DRM.

For example.. I own lots of music.  And I want to listen to it at home, or at work.  Sometimes I’m at work and I buy music on my mac there.  But I can’t connect my work mac to my iphone to sync because you can only sync your iphone to ONE MACHINE.  AGH!  hell, at home I have 3 macs that I could possibly want music or movies from, but it still only lets me sync with one machine.

I also own dvds from all over the world.. but I can only switch regions 4 times on my mac.  Why?  WHY??  It’s my mac.. they’re my dvds.. let me switch regions to play them!

GAH!

Anyway, this post helps with some of the frustrations…

Copy Music from Your iPhone or iPod to Your Computer for Free.

If you don’t know, GTD is short for “Getting Things Done”.  It’s a technique that David Allen developed to .. well.. get things done.  Many “todo” applications [...]]]> For those of you who are self-help/management nuts, this might be an interesting book for ya.  I’m just sort of getting into this whole GTD side of things.

If you don’t know, GTD is short for “Getting Things Done”.  It’s a technique that David Allen developed to .. well.. get things done.  Many “todo” applications use this method to organize data.  I haven’t spent that much time reading into it, but I keep thinking I should.

Anyway, David’s got a new book out about being a good self-manager.  Could be worth a look!

David Allen: What Kind of Self-Manager Are You? | BNET.

Some really beautiful hand poses available here from Flip.. gorgeous stuff.  Just look and enjoy!

Flip: Hands.

Jim Levasseur was kind enough to compile them into a handy PDF.  Enjoy!

Animator Friendly Rigging Fixes

Note:  I’ve now added a Downloads page to the website where I’ll be putting the mel scripts and [...]]]> There were a number of fixes on my old site relating to the Animator Friendly rigging DVDS.

Jim Levasseur was kind enough to compile them into a handy PDF.  Enjoy!

Animator Friendly Rigging Fixes

Note:  I’ve now added a Downloads page to the website where I’ll be putting the mel scripts and the pdf itself.

As you can see, there were times when I wasn’t able to record what I was doing, especially wednesday.. a tough day.  But in general I got about [...]]]> So this week I tried to keep a solid log of all of my time spent throughout the day using the incredibly useful Toggl.com website.

As you can see, there were times when I wasn’t able to record what I was doing, especially wednesday.. a tough day.  But in general I got about 8 or 9 hours recorded.

You can also see that this was a very productive week for me.. over 15 hours of directly productive work.  That includes animating, giving reviews, etc.

Strategic mettings went well too, 11 hours of strategy.. planning for the future and making sure that I have stuff ready for.. you guessed it.. production!

Admin time is nice and small.. about 3 hours over the course of the week.  That includes email, time sheets, working on spreadsheets, etc.  You want to keep that admin stuff as small as possible, otherwise you’re wasting time!

And the thing I’m happiest about is the ME time.. 7 hours i was able to devote to bettering myself.. 5+ of that being gym specific time.  Some of it having lunch, or going for a walk.. VERY important to have that time when you can get it!

I’m going to continue the experiment next week and see how it goes!

After many requests and finally having a few moments to check into it, I was able to create a Downloadable form of the Jason Schleifer Rigging Bundle available on lulu.com! It’s a tiny bit cheaper than the DVD one since LULU doesn’t have to press and send dvds.

You can get [...]]]> Howdly folks of folks!

After many requests and finally having a few moments to check into it, I was able to create a Downloadable form of the Jason Schleifer Rigging Bundle available on lulu.com! It’s a tiny bit cheaper than the DVD one since LULU doesn’t have to press and send dvds.

You can get it here:

Jason Schleifer Rigging Bundle – Downloadable

Enjoy!

Go visit it at http://rigging101.com/forum !

I was making a bottle for toby this morning while simultaneously holding him and trying to clean his nose and I realized that ever since I became a father I [...]]]> Along with focusing on time management, becoming a better supervisor, and prepping for the holidays, I am thinking a ton about character development.

I was making a bottle for toby this morning while simultaneously holding him and trying to clean his nose and I realized that ever since I became a father I had picked up a new skill.. Doing complicated actions with one hand.

It’s true.. I can now hold a squirming child with my right arm and with my left I can pour a hot coffee, mix in milk and sugar, put on a lid, and drink away all without dropping the child or spilling my hot tasty beverage.

IF one of the kids does a massive crap (if… I mean WHEN), I can somehow hold them down, distract them with a toy, take off their pants and diaper, keep their feet and shoes OUT of the crap-filled bundle of fun, grab another nappy, shove it under them, hold a doll in front of their face to distract them and keep them from rolling over, grab some wipes, clean up the poo, fold up the old nappy and poo and wipes, put on a new nappy, and redress the child all with far too few hands.

It’s a new skill!

So what does this have to do with animation?

Well, now that I recognize this skill, if I were to be animating a parent, I would know that parents can do more with one hand than non-parents.. So if given the opportunity, I should use that as an actin choice to make the character more believable.

It’s all about making the right acting choices for each individual character.. And the only way you can find out what those acting choices should be is to either live it, talk to someone who lives it, observe someone doing it, or really think about it.

Another thing I can’t wait to try and add to a shot of a parent… The daddy/mommy sway. If you’re a parent, you know exactly what I mean.

So like I mentioned before.. I’m really trying to get in shape this time, and so far I’m keeping to my schedule!  I’ve worked out 7 days out of the past 8 (took saturday off to go to two birthday parties, and almost make it to the dreamworks holiday [...]]]>

So like I mentioned before.. I’m really trying to get in shape this time, and so far I’m keeping to my schedule!  I’ve worked out 7 days out of the past 8 (took saturday off to go to two birthday parties, and almost make it to the dreamworks holiday party).

So far I’ve lost uh.. half a pound.  D’oh!  See, I lost a full pound, then gained 2, then now I’m down to 198.5.  But supposedly your weight fluctuates all day long, and based on how much you drink, eat, poop, etc..

you get the idea.

So I guess I’m not that fussed about the weight thing.. just going to keep on kickin it with the exercise & making sure I do it every morning before I start work.

Hopefully if I keep this up then I’ll be back to a healthy 175/180 by the time siggraph rolls around.

Because Siggraph is in New Orleans this year.. and I GOTTA be fit enough to eat all those beignets..

Testing posting from my flickr account.

<br /> <img src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/noscript?tag=jasonschleifer-20″ mce_src=”http://www.assoc-amazon.com/s/noscript?tag=jasonschleifer-20″ alt=”" /><br />  

One of the things I’m working on in my position as Head of Character Animation is learning how to straddle the roles of being a “Coach” and a “Player”. You see, as an animator, my role was to be the best animator I [...]]]>

One of the things I’m working on in my position as Head of Character Animation is learning how to straddle the roles of being a “Coach” and a “Player”. You see, as an animator, my role was to be the best animator I possibly could be. To learn, to grow, to develop as an artist. Sure I would try and help out others as they needed, but mostly I was judged on one thing – my shots. The better I did as an animator, the better I was seen at work. This is pretty common in pretty much every job.. you do your job well, you succeed.

When I got promoted to being a supervisor, I understood that my role had changed, that now I was being judged not just on how I was doing as an animator (since I still had to animate), but also on how my team was performing. If I was kicking-ass and doing great shots but my team was struggling, then I wasn’t doing my job well. I had to learn how to manage and develop my team, help them grow as artists, and help them achieve the results the studio required of them. This meant developing more management skills. An incredibly helpful man told me that a manager’s job is to basically identify and remove the roadblocks and problems that are inhibiting your team from getting their jobs done.

This is the roal of the “coach”. The one on the sidelines doing everything in their power to help their team be the best they can possibly be.

The problem here is of course that it’s difficult for artists to make this transition. When you’ve worked your entire life to become a skilled artist, to feel success when you create a meaningful performance it can be hard to suddenly change your view of success to be that of your team creating great work. It doesn’t sound difficult.. it sounds like what you would expect any manager to do. But it is difficult.. subconsciously you will look at their work and even though you can be proud and satisfied when they do well, there’s a tiny part of you that goes “oh man, I wish I could have done that shot..”.

You won’t be thinking this because you think you could do it better, or because the person didn’t do a good job. You’re thinking it because you miss animating. You miss being able to put 100% of yourself into a shot and get mired in the gritty details.

I’ve seen people respond to this in a number of ways. One way is to completely stop animating and just become a manager. To focus only on supporting your team. To just be a coach.

Some people try and animate through their team. They will give note after note that reflects not necessarily what their animators are trying to achieve, but what they want.

I have found that both of these solutions cause problems. If you’re just a coach, you’re not really supervising and leading your team. Part of being a good supervisor is understanding what it takes to get a shot to a certain level. You have to stay in the game to do this, you need to be animating to keep up your skills. You must be able to give a detailed note of “this finger needs to be delayed by 2 frames, and push the arm here to get this silhouette.”

If you try and animate through your team, you’ve got another big problem.. you’re not letting your animators bring anything to the table. You’re treating them all like assistants. This can work for a little while, but it’s important to remember that your animators are artists. Your goal as their supervisor is two-fold. One, to make the best possible movie ever, and two, to help them grow and achieve their dreams as animators. If you’re just pushing your ideas through they will grow weary, loose interest, and never learn to develop ideas on their own.

The best solution is to be both a “coach” and a “player”. You need to be a “player” (animator) so you can keep up your chops. You need to be able to create animation yourself to be personally artistically satisfied. You also need to be a “coach” (manager) and help your team deliver top quality animation that makes them satisfied. They need to feel supported by you, that you’re helping them achieve their goals and reach their vision. You need to talk to them about what they want to achieve, and then work with them on a long-term plan to reach that goal.

You also must be able to take pride in the work that they achieve that has nothing to do with you. I don’t mean you should take ownership, I mean that you should be satisfied and happy when people on your team perform well. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be able to present the work of a member of your team to your director and say (for example) “Here’s a shot that Bryce has been working on. He and Carlos were talking about how the character would react in this situation, and they came up with this idea. I think they’ve got something exciting going here, what do you think?” and have the director say “That’s GREAT!”.

You may have had nothing to do with this specific shot that bryce and carlos are working on, but by being a supportive and collaborative supervisor, you’ve given them the space to be the best possible artists they can be.

And THAT is something you can definitely be proud of.

Oh, and as for the book listed at the top of the post.. this has been one of the best books I’ve ever read and has really helped me develop as a supervisor and manager. I highly recommend it to anybody who works with other people.

Check this out if you own a chicken!

See more funny videos and funny pictures [...]]]> This is crazy.. it may be something that only animators & riggers get, but check out this crazy chicken-head-ik action. I never knew that chickens worked this way.. I wonder if other birds do the same thing??

Check this out if you own a chicken!

What is an ocarina you ask? It’s kind of like a flute.. But it is so damn cool… Just downloaded it and I am blown away!

You just gotta try it [...]]]> Holy wow… I knew the iPhone was pretty darn cool, but this application is absolutely amazing. It is an ocarina foe the iPhone!

What is an ocarina you ask? It’s kind of like a flute.. But it is so damn cool… Just downloaded it and I am blown away!

You just gotta try it yourself!

I think the first movie was a lot of fun, but I feel that this one is way better.. The look is stunning and [...]]]> This past weekend we released Madagascar 2 to much fanfare! It is very exciting.. I supervised a few of the sequences in the movie. A very fun but challenging task.

I think the first movie was a lot of fun, but I feel that this one is way better.. The look is stunning and the animation is really amazing in many spots.

I love makunga.. The team really did a great job with him and I wish I had an opportunity to animate him!

Congrats to all who worked on it!!

Have you ever been in a situation where you [...]]]> One of the things I have been working a lot on lately is learning how to get my actions to lead to my indended results. If this sounds confusing, I’m not suprised.. It’s a bit hard to explain. But I’d like to try, so here goes:

Have you ever been in a situation where you want something, so you act in a way to get the thing you want, but the result is that you cause more trouble than you thought?

I will give a specific example.. We all know the story of “the boy who cried wolf” right? Kid keeps calling wolf when there isn’t one there, pissing off the villiagers until one day a wolf shows up, he calls “wolf” and nobody appears to help him.

Why do you think he kept crying wolf? Was it to get eaten? No, probably not.. It was probably to try and get some attention. He was bored, lonely, and pobably never expected that people wouldn’t actually come if a real wolf was there. So his intention–have some fun, get some attention, etc–caused some unintended consequences.. It caused the villiagers to think he was a git who didn’t deserve their attention. Thus, he got munched. Oops.

What does this have to do with animation? Well, every day we work with a number of people.. Animators, coordinators, directors, producers, etc. Everything you do, say, act, etc has some sort of consequence. For example, let’s say you are showing your shot in dailies an the director asks for a change. You think “huh.. Okay.. That goes against what I was thinking.. But.. Whatever..”. So it’s not a big deal, but it’s a bit of a tweak. I means the shot will take an extra 3 hours to complete. You let out a little sigh, make your note, and say “okay.”. Then you get up, and walk out of the room.

What do you suppose your intention is here? Probably to just go back to your desk, make the fix, and be done.

How do you think you are perceived by the producer who just heard the sigh?

Right.. Probably not like someone who has to just make a little tweak, but more like someone who is a little bit frustrated.. Maybe a little stressed. Maybe the change is a bigger deal than they thought? Maybe you are overworked? Maybe this shot will push past it’s scheduled date? Maybe they should pull the shot and give it to someone else if you can’t handle it? Man, maybe you can’t handle these types of shots at all.. You seem like the kind of animator that need serious care and hand holding.. Not going to be their go-to guy, that’s for sure..

See what I mean? Your action caused a totally unintended and inaccurate response.

This kind of thing happens all the time.. We do it to others, they do it to us, it’s amazing how easy it can happen.

You can break down the cycle this way:

Intent -> action -> result

You have an intention or desire. You perform an act to try and achieve a result.

Now here is the tricky thing.. You are aware of your intent.. It’s yours, you know what you intend to do. You pick the action and perform it.. You are aware of that aspect of the equation.

But here is the kicker. The response is whatever it is. You don’t have direct control over it. You may see some of the response.. But there may be some hidden part you are unaware of.

Quick example. You are at work and you need to fax something quickly. You go to the macine and see that there is a 10 page outbound fax in front of you and the person faxing it isn’t there. You make a note of the number, cancel the fax, fax your document which takes 5 minutes, and then resubmit the other persons fax. No harm no foul, right? You had a desire-to fax, you performed an act-canceling the other fax, and the result was that you got your fax done first.

So what do you think some unintended conseques might be?

Well, the first thing to do is put yourself in the shoes of the person who put the fax there in the first place. Why do you think they were faxing something from work? Why would they start it and then leave it to finish? What reason could there be to such a large fax? There are probably hundreds of answers to these questions, but none of them came up when you cancelled their fax and sent your own.

What if they were running late for a meeting and had to send off this time sensitive fax to secure a loan for their house, and by postponing it for ten minutes they missed their application window and now won’t get their dream house?

Maybe that is a little far fetched, but it’s a possibility, and you get the idea.. That was an unintended consequence of your action.

So, again with the diagram:

Intent-> action -> result

You control an influence the intent and the action, but can’t control or even sometimes see the result.

So here’s the big question.. How do you stop getting unintended results?

If you can’t control the result, you have to change something you CAN control.. Your intent or your action. Obviously changing the intent isn’t what we want to do.. After all, you are trying to achieve something specific. You have to change the ACTION. You must change the thing you do to achieve the intent.

But how do you know how to change your actions to get the result you want?

The answers is so simple it’ll kill you. Seriously.. I wish I had thought of it. Here is the magic formula… You ready?

You ask.

Yep, that’s it. You ask the person if your action was the right way to get the result you desire.

I know. Crazy, right? But it works! Just ask! You will learn quickly if your actions are correct, or if you are headed down the wrong path.

It’s called feedback.. And we can all use it to make sure our desired intentions are realized.

So… Here goes! I am posting all this stuff for two reasons.. One is because it helps me learn it. Two is that I feel like it can help other animators learn these things we don’t often get a chance to learn.

Is it working? Are you finding these posts useful, or am I coming across like a giant gassbag?

I’m hoping that it’ll let me forgo the need for a true forum.. I’ve been having trouble keeping it up to date, as i just don’t have the time to really devote myself to a forum, but I do want people to be able to [...]]]> So there’s this new commenting system we’re using called disqus.com.

I’m hoping that it’ll let me forgo the need for a true forum.. I’ve been having trouble keeping it up to date, as i just don’t have the time to really devote myself to a forum, but I do want people to be able to post questions & have them answered..

The cool thing about disqus is that it can handle threaded comments, and it’s possible to view everything as if it were a forum.. sort of.. just not sure exactly how it works.

time to investigate, I guess.

This year they’ve put some of us at Leo decaprio’s hotel The Standard.

Very nice [...]]]> Made it to siggtaph last night just in time to get to the amazing Dreamworks party… It was good fun getting to see people I normally only see over video confrence, and meet a bunch of new people as well.

This year they’ve put some of us at Leo decaprio’s hotel The Standard.

Very nice hotel… I feel like totally not cool enough to stay here

Off to breakfast…

Of course, bbpress will have to release the newest version (0.9) so it’s compatible with the current version of wordpress.. but hopefully they’ll do that soon [...]]]> With the new update to wordpress 2.5, I’m thinking that instead of going to drupal (my previous plan), I might just stick with wordpress and bbpress for the forums.

Of course, bbpress will have to release the newest version (0.9) so it’s compatible with the current version of wordpress.. but hopefully they’ll do that soon and I’ll be able to upgrade.

It’ll be nice to get away from joomla/smf and have something smaller, faster, and easier to work with.

In the meantime, here’s a photo.

компютри втора употреба

Went to the animation department bbq this weekend.. and aurora got.. well.. filthy.

So Jazz sent me to this site.. kiva.org.  Basically it’s a  great site that allows average people like you and me to give small loans to people who are in need of money to create a business.  They go for the idea that a large number of people can give [...]]]>

So Jazz sent me to this site.. kiva.org.  Basically it’s a  great site that allows average people like you and me to give small loans to people who are in need of money to create a business.  They go for the idea that a large number of people can give small amounts of money that will make a real difference.. and then earn a return on that money!

What a great concept!

The hostess looked at [...]]]> So today at lunch I had to run off to go get my car smog-checked.. as you do.. and I quickly went to grab lunch at the local chinese place.  I just wanted to sit and eat in peace, but when I went in all the tables except one were taken.

The hostess looked at me and the guy behind me and said “you two sit together?”

We both looked at each other and then back at her and said “no, we’re alone.”  She replied “yes, but only one table.  You sit together?”

So I shrugged and said “sure.”

We sat at a table together and started looking at our menus.  I smiled at him & he suddenly stood up and walked to the front of the restaurant.  The lady then came and took my order & picked up his menu & napkin.

I figured that he decided to just go eat elsewhere or something, but then 2 minutes later she sat him at a table 2 feet away from me.

I thought.. wow.. he was so afraid to meet someone new.  What if we had happened to have an amazing conversation & we both learned something from it?

It’s a shame, really.

Right now, the templates are similar, but not the same.. that’ll change as I have time to work on the site more. I also haven’t copied over all [...]]]> This is going to be where the new shhLIFE website is located. At this point, I’m just working on the integration between the forum and the blog.

Right now, the templates are similar, but not the same.. that’ll change as I have time to work on the site more. I also haven’t copied over all the old content yet.. again, that’ll happen as we keep going.

In the meantime, I’d be really happy to hear any comments/suggestions/problems/etc that you face!

Just added it!

enjoy!

yeah, she’s a friggin cuuuutie!

okay, it didn’t work.

we’re back to using categories but changing the title to tags.

There’s a tiny mirror in her toy phone.. so AJ can see her favorite person.

It’s about time, eh?

So I’m going to be re-organizing the site to handle things better.. jonhandhisdog will still exist, I’ll try and create an archive of the data from the original forum (w/out spam).  The new forum from [...]]]> So I’ve finally bitten the bullet and started changing my site from jonhandhisdog.com over to jasonschleifer.com.

It’s about time, eh?

So I’m going to be re-organizing the site to handle things better.. jonhandhisdog will still exist, I’ll try and create an archive of the data from the original forum (w/out spam).  The new forum from jonhandhisdog.com will be copied over, and old passwords and usernames should hopefully work just dandy!