shhLIFE!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

Read more…

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!

Went to the animation department bbq this weekend.. and aurora got.. well.. filthy.