Release. Pressure. Animate.

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A series of thumbnail sketches for the sequence where Mr. Incredible jumps from one building into another grabbing someone in mid-air along the way, from The Incredibles (2004). Image from carlosbaena.com Carlos also mentioned that he sometimes relied on the skills of others, letting them make a thumbnail or sketch of a pose and use these as inspiration and guides as well. Any reference footage that might inspire or motivate choices is more than welcome, even preferred. Even feedback in the form of big brainstorm sessions or as small as tiny notations or hints can help the animator get motivated and inspired, but even more get fully focused on what he needs to change, needs to do and how he will do it. Animation is teamwork. It's such a collaboration process, that it really helps to get constant feedback from the other animators. I start out by studying the shot, the moment when it takes place in the film and storyboards if they are available. Then I'll listen to the dialogue if it's a dialogue shot, and try to rough some thumbnails and write down ideas for the shot. Then I'll do a blocking pass with these ideas, and I'll try to get feedback right away from other animators to see if things read right away and people follow where I'm going with the shot. Because of other animators, I'll realize that I'm not pushing a shot enough or that maybe I'm going a little crazier with it than I should. I also try to animate the least number of things at first. I find it hard to change things on a shot if there is a lot of work put in it, so it's much easier to keep things simple right away. If the director likes where you are going with the shot, then awesome, you go ahead and start putting details in it and polish things up. (Baena in Belgrave, 2003, cgsociety.org, p.2) Baena also mentions that because of other animators, their comments on his work and their work at the animation dailies he realizes that he‟s not pushing his ideas and the character – as in exaggerate - far enough. The dailies seem to be a good thing for pushing that, but are also very important for playing down the animation when needed and help reviewing it on basis of the whole film. If the shot‟s overall place in the film is forgotten the final animation can easily end up having to be reanimated or adjusted, which takes a lot of time. (Baena in Belgrave, 2003, cgsociety.org) Especially the review process of the director and/or animation supervisor is very important. The animation dailies are also a great way to deal with the inputs from them as well. In the end, the director is the one always thinking about the film as a whole, sometimes concerned about how the film cuts, other times concerned about staging and other times concerned about the acting. (Baena in Belgrave, 2003, cgsociety.org, p.2) 3. The 3D Animation Workflow 6 8
It‟s important to allow supervision from the director and the team at a regular interval so you‟ll always know what your next deadline is as well as be aware of any feedback rounds to come. With the production process of Mac „n‟ Cheese there was no real distinct director, but as I was supervising animator I often had to check it in the edit and guide the other animators with their animation. The overall supervision often went slow and came out to be a tedious task as we hadn‟t planned regular meeting or times for those and for me often ended up interfering with my task of animating in the middle of the day, often even a couple of times a day. If such a task could be more streamlined or better planned the task for lead animator and supervising animator can be done with greater result and in a shorter amount of time. Also if this is done at preset times I wouldn‟t have to interrupt the animator because he would be ready to receive the feedback at those set moments. I would like to end this with a quote from Victor Navone on what the animators focus on at Pixar. Animators at Pixar just animate. (Navone in Fitz, 2006, planit3d.com) 3.2.2 Animating on Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010) Brendan Body, lead animator on Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (2010) discusses the crunch time 13 of animating on this movie in his blog. He states that even far into production parts of the story changed and influenced the way shots had to be animated. Shots were already starting to be animated, but changed later on – which often ended with needing to re-animate the shot totally. One major change to the film that affected the scene was the decision that the hero (Soren's) parents should not be killed during the film. Up until a few months before the end of the film's production the story had Soren return home to find his family's hollow burnt and abandoned. It was a sad but very beautiful and powerful scene. This was also where Soren was reunited with his snake nurse mate, Mrs. Plithiver (or Mrs P.) who would then accompany him on his mission to find the mythical Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Now that Soren's parents were not killed and he didn't return home, there was the dilemma of how to reunite Soren with Mrs P. As removing her would have impacted too much on the rest of the film. It was decided that she could be reintroduced in this sequence by Twylight bringing her into his home as food for him and his hollow-mate Digger. Who had just met Soren and offered him shelter. (Body, 2011, http://brendanbody.blogspot.com/) This resulted in shots being reassigned to senior and lead animators that could quickly pick up the job and could take responsibility for creating high quality animation in those last minutes nevertheless. Brendan got one of those reassigned shots and took the 13 Crunch time is the interval of time just before a project is due and the production is reaching its deadline. In animation production people often work from early to late at night in the last few weeks of production to be able to get to the product‟s final state in time. 3. The 3D Animation Workflow 6 9
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PRESSURE. RELEASE. ANIMATE. How to
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“Art challenges technology. Techn
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Table of Contents Table of Contents
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Introduction Not a very long time a
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This is all evolving around the mai
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There are two difficulties in discu
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1.2 How can a flow be maintained or
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this piece of art - posing the char
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You know that feeling when you watc
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without any reference or sketching.
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2.1 Animating like a puppeteer. (St
Page 23 and 24: ond with the character often create
Page 25 and 26: everything done smoothly at the mom
Page 27 and 28: same, hence a „tick‟ of the lig
Page 29 and 30: This paragraph is about what in gen
Page 31 and 32: “Too much action spoils the actin
Page 33 and 34: working clean and keeping your head
Page 35 and 36: think in the ways of those strong p
Page 37 and 38: the motion and action of the charac
Page 39 and 40: this can be a reliable way for „i
Page 41 and 42: It‟s hard to have a clear distinc
Page 43 and 44: the background. Any distraction at
Page 45 and 46: or the mixed approach as described
Page 47 and 48: customizing and tweaking the whole
Page 49 and 50: as the character parts don‟t actu
Page 51 and 52: As with traditional animation and m
Page 53 and 54: example you could divide the pipeli
Page 55 and 56: ecognizable style on its own, but f
Page 57 and 58: issue. “While early production mo
Page 59 and 60: There‟s a need for a strict goal
Page 61 and 62: Simplicity is what animators seem t
Page 63 and 64: Simple thinking Complex effects Ful
Page 65 and 66: creating a thorough plan that doesn
Page 67 and 68: Because using the early computer sy
Page 69 and 70: work you‟re looking at, regardles
Page 71 and 72: we‟ll see. According to a job des
Page 73: day polishing splines, arcs and spa
Page 77 and 78: doesn‟t. For him they were mainly
Page 79 and 80: - Discuss with supervisor. - Animat
Page 81 and 82: the animator (like reviews by the s
Page 83 and 84: By now I‟ve presented the importa
Page 85 and 86: the final movie too. They might see
Page 87 and 88: progression of the shot before star
Page 89 and 90: In management I‟ve noticed while
Page 91 and 92: already know exactly what pose happ
Page 93 and 94: (Autodesk Whitepaper - The New Art
Page 95 and 96: with a limited amount of informatio
Page 97 and 98: information to be (possibly) presen
Page 99 and 100: for. Sometimes it is necessary to a
Page 101 and 102: pop out is simplicity. For every ta
Page 103 and 104: goals (based off of storyboard and
Page 105 and 106: up and shut it down instead of a co
Page 107 and 108: development 22 . Since the tracking
Page 109 and 110: The same accounts for playing the a
Page 111 and 112: animation studios, and if it were u
Page 113 and 114: on it, as well as use it automatica
Page 115 and 116: offer functionality for this in a r
Page 117 and 118: guessing right away what the best t
Page 119 and 120: to focus on only these parts and ma
Page 121 and 122: een developed through the years for
Page 123 and 124: data to handle through the years se
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applying it to your objects animati
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allows you to quickly sculpt tweaks
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quickly and easily check your anima
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without worrying about what and whe
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viewing and commenting accordingly
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stimulation might interfere with ac
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A picture depicting an overview of
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of the animating) could need this t
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tools that really helped with the c
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never really ended up using it as f
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But looking at the character from t
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otate around his head took me at mo
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As stated we worked faster and were
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Conclusion The main focus of my res
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management, start using it and twea
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Reference Sources Animation Mentor
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Hoffman, Hans; T. Weeks, Sara; H. H
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1. Workflow and Pipeline clarificat
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Release. Pressure. Animate.

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