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 […]
In the last post I spoke about achieving quality in our work. We separated the idea of a “quality” animation into two main things – great movement & technique (arcs, spacing, timing, rhythm, etc), and great acting. Through an exercise with sticky notes, I broke acting up into two areas – character and intent. Character […]
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 […]
In my previous post I talked a little about the challenge we all face when trying to decide whether to spend our energy on quantity of animation or quality. The conventional wisdom says that you can’t have both. Given a set time period, you can either get a few shots great, or a great number […]
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 […]
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 […]
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:
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]