The Third Reel

Totally in After Effects

Such a pain keeping up with reels.  This is my current (kind of- within the year) TV reel... not to be confused with my animation reel or effects reel.  They're being updated next.  Then there's the website...

When good cards go bad

The story is the jacks take the queens away, and this is a moment in the battle when one King loses his Queen, and the other saves his. It's rather oddly shaped, so I cut it in half to see the parts better. I overplayed the curves, but tried to maintain the "playing card" emphasis in shape, design and color. Interaction between all six cards was key, and drove most of my decisions. Just ignore the feet on the King of Spades...

Bored.

Roughs of what I sit around doing while others are making me wait. Don't get excited about it, the tangents are still in step.
Two guys juggling sounds pretty simple. After all, it's a repeater, right? Well, kinda. It's constantly throwing and catching, mostly everything is in "figure eights." To break up the pattern a little bit, I modified a vibration formula- you make two patterns of action, and then you interleave them together in different combinations. It's an old trick. Tracking the pins was the challenge. I decided to animate them the old fashioned way too. The cheat would be to use a script or expressions for the rotation. Nothing in nature is going to act that perfectly. The thumbnails for the motion of the pins, if you're into how I got them to move with the spin in Maya.

Visual FX

Some of the kind of thing I've been working on lately- blood splatter, artificial props, wire removal, and other VFX stuff. This is After Effects. Red Giant makes some of the best plug-ins for After Effects on the market, and they are reasonable. Check them out. Probably the most essential are Trapcode and Knoll light factory- they'll make working efficiency skyrocket.

Work In Progress

Back in Maya again, experimenting with some of the devices and charts I've picked up from some very classic early cartoons. Mostly from the work of Friz Freleng and Tex Avery. Most of these curves are still linear or step. I've still got about 130 or so frames to animate, some things to refine (especially facial), and then cleanup. I've actually found a way to use some of the blur frame 2d idea in Maya (see rat animation below), but I'm not going to use it here. I'm thinking about using a motion blur on some of the fastest movements and see what it looks like. This piece is cartoony without all the squash and stretch. And I should tell you, there is a naked lady... I've been exposed to too much Benny Hill lately.

I needed a way for this rat to zip around looking for whatever before he snatches this piece of cheese from the trap. First instinct is to inbetween it the "regular" way- using exaggerated squash and stretch frames and a couple of other tricks. But you run into problems immediately. There is not enough time for anticipation, the turn takes too long, you can't read the accent before the transition, you don't get the zipping around visual... So Tex Avery back in the day was experimenting with a three drawing run with blur frames, and he had a character who zipped from one pose to the next. This idea was later built upon and evolved- Chuck Jones had his distorted version of transitional inbetweens (probably one of the more famous). So I spent a couple of weeks dissecting Tex Avery's formula- 5 frame virtual hold on the accent with a cushion back, using three blurs (combining the anticipation, the inbetweens, and the follow through).

Hollywood Screening of "Sleepy Time Pals"

Tonight was the premier for our show "Sleepy Time Pals" at Chaplin Theater- a screening theater deep in the bowels of a place called Raleigh Studios on Melrose in Hollywood. From the corner of Bronson and Melrose, you have this view of the Hollywood sign on Mt. Lee. Across the street, you've got legendary Paramount Pictures. You may have never heard Raleigh Studio (Producer's Studio), but if you know anything about Hollywood, this is one of the oldest studios around. This place was here twelve years or so before Paramount. It's changed names a couple of times, but the Clune building is still there. You've seen sets at Raleigh Studios if you've ever seen "The Closer" on TNT or maybe you watch "Private Practice." Parts of "Ironman" were shot here. Way back when: "Gunsmoke", "What Happened to Baby Jane." The place has atmosphere; it's fantastic. There are about a dozen different stages on the lot. A bunch of offices, equipment rooms, a large silver cow, trailers... there is a lot going on at this little place. Some of the pictures are pictures of pictures from my Blackberry (I left the USB cable on the computer at work and I'm too impatient to wait). I invited friend and designer (animation) Micah Lewis.
This is the sign on the corner of Bronson and Melrose. What's neat about this lot is you can see how the place has grown and evolved. The newest buildings on the lot kind of follow this design- with mirrorized windows. The older parts I think are the most interesting- the Bronson gate (below) has a lot of personality. Through it all, this place has made it's money renting stage space to other studios, which is brilliant. The theater is named for Charlie Chaplin, who was himself something of a living cartoon character. It was a classic theater with the projector house, drapery hanging, the lights, the seats, and the place had a pretty good crowd.
The show was about 20 minutes. I worked on this a little less than a year, but I know it was longer than that in the making. Probably about 30 people or so at one point or another had their hands on it. A lot of work and anxiety and frustration and love goes into something like this. It's time away from your home, family, friends, pets, reality. Production consumes your life, and when you finally get to see your work on the big screen, all rendered with the textures and composited, and you can turn to your friend and say "that's mine...that's mine...this scene was ours..." it finally seems to be worth it. Sleepy Time Pals is a live action 3d composite cartoon designed to get kids in a bedtime routine. There were literally all age groups there to include a population of children, and I was impressed with the audience response. People laughed at the jokes and the gags, answered questions to the viewers, and seemed to enjoy the story (The title is "Softbear has a Secret"). It's really a relief from the animator's perspective when you get the response you were hoping for in the theater. Success. When it's over, its nice to see your name in the credits, but the most rewarding experience for me is seeing the characters on the screen, and being convinced. My first Hollywood screening in animation was an incredible experience. Part of me wishes I could sit down and watch it again- or at least relive this experience, I feel super good about my art right now. I had the opportunity to work with some very dedicated people, we threw our talents together for this project, and it came together very nicely. Awesome job, STP Production Crew.

Not Just Another Walk Cycle

Character walk work-in-progress of a rotund man walking toward the camera, adjusting his pants. Right now I'm modifying a chart for a walk on 16's (legs and body) and I'll chart the arms and hands a little differently. Overall, I'm pleased. The silhouettes are easy to read and the arcs support the action.

Butterfly wing test - Rough

It needs some inbetweens and some tweaking, but so far, so good.

Butterfly Wing Flutter Plans

Went crazy looking for a good way to animate this butterfly flying. Left plenty of room for overlap, broke a few joints, picked out strong poses and an interesting breakdown. I condensed it down to a classic run on 6's- where drawings 1 and 7 are close. I put the body on a different chart than the wings, just for some variation.

Planning my poses

Just planning some of my key poses for this little animation I'm putting together. My plans have changed a little bit over the past few days and I'm trying to organize my thoughts.

Eric Goldberg Talks About Ken Harris

I found this video digging around You Tube. I've ripped off so many charts from Ken Harris- he's my favorite animator of all time. The Animator' s Survival Kit is a Ken Harris/Art Babbitt animation chart goldmine. Animators spread rumors about where to get notes, who has the notes, who wrote stuff down. Because it is valuable information. There are legends of reams of Art Babbitt notes floating around- I'm telling you, read the Animator's Survival Kit. It will save a lot of time, the charts apply to everything, and it's already been proven to work. Memorize some basic charts, draw well, and read all the notes you can. Start with Dick Williams and then go straight to Stanchfield.

Some Ken Harris art- I like looking at this kind of thing. And here is a picture of the master. Pretty intense expression...

Animation Time

Still ironing out problems with the butter fly rig. The MEL script for the wing flutter is giving me headaches. The lizard rig is WIP as well. I'm working out some teeth and tongue issues, and the blendshapes are non-existent. I atleast want some basic emotion to work with. Right now the jaw opens and shuts... and that is about it. The body is okay. Thinking seriously about gutting this rig and starting over. The butterfly is so small, a few issues won't really matter (which is why it lacks a normal map and some of the other things 3d models normally have). But the lizard, my main squeeze for this sequence, needs some personality. I'm already planning my shots for this animation, and I'll likely post some of my planning.

Butterfly screenshots

Posed the butterfly in some paint effects grass and branches in maya. Still trying to figure out the MEL script. Digging through the outliner, mostly, trying to make syntax jive. What a pain... may give up on it and do it the old fashioned way.

Butterfly rig

Wanted a flying animal rig and finally broke down and made myself one. Decided on a butterfly over a bird mainly because of billows in the wings and advanced rig things that I'm not prepared to try yet. Modeled a lot of the mesh myself, but got some help on the legs and body tweaks from modeler Heather Berry. The texture I threw on there just for the visual. There is nothing special about it.
The rig is a modified advanced skeleton file. I used the quadruped setup and then added the extra legs, the antennae, the wings (there are four) and joints for the proboscis. The legs are separate pieces, as are the wings. Plan to use this in an animation soon. Looking to check out a MEL script I've found for wing flutter- hope it works out.

The Future of American Animation

Tooling around at the CTN Animation Expo in Burbank this weekend really inspired me to look again at the way I draw, how I get ideas- everything about the conference was very well put together. Except how small the venue was. There was a lot of interest and it was very crowded. Artists from everywhere- insane. There were a couple of studio unions around the same time, which brought Don Bluth and Gary Goldman into town.
If you don't know who these people are and you are in animation, then shame on you. Criticize, if you feel like it, a few of their projects. The fact is, they learned from brilliant talent in animation, and they themselves are considered in my business to be living legends.
I stood around watching his tutorials and finally got to introduce myself. He's a living caricature- broad forehead and skinny little nose. I mentioned maybe that I adored The Secret of NIMH as a child, and we used to play NIMH all the time. We were the rats and we would hide in the "rose bush." He laughed. He asked if I was working, so I told him. He asked the question:

Do you think there is a future for 2D animation in America?

God, I hope so. But lets face it. American animation is in a crisis. What happened, I don't know. I think what happened mostly is that we all lost the connection with the characters we work with. We (animators) are not emotionally involved with them as we should be. Lately, it seems people remember the writing more than the art. The animation on a certain network seems to be incidental. It relies on clever writing and the animation is more of a visual guide for the audience- so hurry up and get it done. How sad. We threw away decades of discovery. There are a few older guys left, and they are desperately preaching the same things. Maybe it's time to listen: No more s***y animation.
So I got a critique on my 3d animation from a 2d legend, he looked over my life drawings, and I got some good insight on how I should think about my drawing and my acting, and some new inspirations for my new projects. Exciting weekend- glad I got to attend.

Demo Reel

Not everything is redundant. There is some new material.

Playing with rigs

Who knows. Maybe sheep do walk on their hands...

I changed a few things about these monsters before I started my scenes. Some eye control issues and strange scalers I couldn't figure out. What I learned, I think, from working with these rigs daily for the last several months is that you have to work with what you got and it is what it is. If you know enough about the rig and know what the limits are, you can get some pretty flexible action from the worst skeletal setup. Of course, it better have principles. The only way to really know what kind of action you're going to be able to get out of a rig is to make it do things you may never have to do in an actual scene. Then when you sit to plan, you know ahead of time what you're up against.

Good animation I think makes up for a bad rig. Really doesn't go the other way around. Bad animation makes the best art bad. That's the hard part about 3d. Got to love that kind of challenge if you're an animator.

Early Rig Tests for STP

Here are about half of the rigs I've been dealing with the last few months. There is also a pillow (female), a toothbrush (male), a bookmark, a chart, and a stuffed sheep. There is a bear too. This is just a test where I have them move around and stand on a line, kind of like a lineup. I've hidden the visibility of the other characters until I can clean it up a little. Looks like I've got one more scene to do before my contract expires. About 910 frames.

Two More weeks of Vilppu

Just to recap...

The top drawings are two minute poses completed on the first day of Vilppu's 2009 Life Drawing Class at The Animation Guild Office in Hollywood. People who have drawn with me know I like fast gestures (fifteen seconds and less). Sometimes I lack the patience to sit through the longer poses. The bottom drawings are the fourth class. The center drawing is a ten minute pose and the marker drawings are half hour. The ten minute pose and the two minute drawings aren't all that different- just a tad more built up. The goal is to have the initial gesture completed very loosely, very quickly- in about 10-15 seconds. Then you build using your shapes. You just keep building it like anything else. Then time runs out.