How Does an Animation Supervisor of a Big Studio Like ILM, Pixar or Blue Sky Plan the Distribution of the Shots Done by the Animators?

How does an animation supervisor of a big studio like ILM, Pixar or Blue Sky plan the distribution of the shots done by the animators? By sequence, by shots, by continuity shots, by animators's abilities?

This probably depends a lot on the size of the studio, the size of the animation crew, and the diversity of experience levels on that crew. The smaller the studio, the less options available to the supervisor, and the more likely it is that the animators may be thought of as interchangeable artists.

However, you ask about the larger studios, and you're right that it's treated differently.

The larger studios have the luxury of a larger animation crew, probably with a somewhat diverse set of backgrounds and specialties. The process that you're asking about (handing out shots) is often referred to as "casting" at these types of studios, and that's exactly how many of these studios approach the process.

They often view the assignment of animation shots or characters as "casting" those animators in the role that they are most appropriate for. Someone who's shown great comedic timing in the past may be cast to work on a lot of shots that feature comedy relief, for example. Or someone who's shown that they have amazing body mechanics might get cast on a lot of fight scenes.

However, many other factors come into play with casting, and it's rarely as defined and simple as I laid out above. While the goal for any of these larger studios is to use their crew as efficiently as possible, many other factors are considered. Among these would be:

• What the animator is most passionate to work on
• What the schedule and budget allows or forces
• Scene difficulty level vs. animator skill level
• What the surrounding shots are\
• Crunch time
  

These are all important factors, and in any good studio, all would play a role to some degree in the casting of shots.

Near the end of a project, though, crunch time and deadlines increasingly become the deciding factor in crewing a shot or sequence. The project has a deadline, and when it really gets into the final weeks or months of a project, the most important deciding factor in casting becomes availability. Who is free to work on this? If the Supervisor feels that their talent level is sufficient, and they are done with their other shots, they'll probably get thrown onto whatever shot is next in line, regardless of any of the other considerations.

This is totally normal. Many projects at many studios start out by casting long strings of sequential shots to one animator, but by the end, it's natural for the schedule to force a more scatter-shot approach in order to hit the looming deadline.

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 10.44

Continue Reading

How Do You Animate a Fight?

How do you animate a fight? Do you animate both characters at the same time, or one and then the other?

This is a great question! As with any question regarding workflow, there's no "etched-in-stone" answer, just personal preferences and opinions...

However, for me, I'll tackle a fight scene with a mix of methods. My workflow would assume that you have referenced characters you can turn on/off, but you could also do something similar by importing one character into a scene, saving it, and then deleting him and working the other character for a while, re-importing that first character, re-saving, etc.

Basically, I would first do all my reference, study, and planning. Ideally, I'll already know the timing, actions, and fight choreography before I fire up my computer at all. I highly recommend careful planning in all scenes, as you all know, but especially for multi-character scenes with complex choreography. And if those characters are going to physically be interacting with each other? Holy moly - unless you've been animating professionally for quite some time, I really recommend some serious planning before stepping into that minefield.

A fight scene is about as complicated as you can get with physical action, because not only do all of your characters need to move believably, with solid body mechanics and weight, but they will need to each be reacting to the other - both physically and emotionally in the performance.

Obviously, with the complexity here, it's natural to wonder which character you should animate first, or how to approach this scene in the first place.

For me, I start with both characters at the same time, but would use a more limited blocking method to begin with. I'll have both characters in the scene, but I wouldn't block in every key and breakdown yet. Instead, I'll first block in any key moments where the characters interact (getting hit, kicked, throwing, landing, falling, facing off, etc), and otherwise I'd keep things really rough.

Once you have both characters roughed in - with a careful eye towards composition and clear staging - now you can ditch one of those characters and get to work really fleshing out one character at a time. They should generally be in the correct position, so you're pretty safe to really block them in and work out all your keys and breakdowns.

Once your first character is looking pretty good, it's time to bring in his opponent and check your staging. Make any necessary adjustments to get your second character repositioned or retimed to match your new animation, and then go ahead and hide or remove the first character.

The goal here, of course, is to have a scene that you can interact quickly with, and the more characters you have in a scene, the slower it's going to be to work with.

Get that second character fleshed out, and then bring back in your first character.

Now it's all about getting into the nitty gritty details of how the two are interacting. You'll probably need to keep both characters open during this phase, and really work out the precise contact points, timing, reactions, etc. This is when you'd really flesh out any constraints and physical interactions between the two.

That'd be my workflow - hopefully it's helpful!


Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 10.30

Continue Reading

Reader's Question: How Do You Figure Out the Correct Timing of Your Work Just on Paper?

Personally, I use thumbnails and Flipbook during my planning stages. I quickly explore the poses and breakdowns I want, not worried about drawing mistakes and only concerned with how clear it reads. Flipbook just helps me experiment with the timing of the poses I've figured out on paper, and it's a more intuitive alternative, at least for me, than shifting around that thin red keyframe mark in Maya. Once that's down, I pretty much use that information to transfer into Maya.

How would you go about figuring out the correct timing of your work just on paper? I usually never know until I've seen it in a sequence of some kind, and that's where Flipbook plays its hand. So, something that I think may only need 5 frames on paper, may possibly need more or less. How can you ever be sure when you haven't seen any kind of playback?


Again, this is a personal workflow choice that may change as you gain experience. Animators determine their shot timing using a variety of methods, the most common is using video reference. Your reference will give a good basic idea of the timing of actions and poses. Just remember that as an animator you are exaggerating life, not copying it directly (rotoscoping), so don’t use the exact frame count timing of your reference. Instead, use it as a guideline. Dialogue shots also make timing easier because you have audio timing on which to base the actions. For example, you know that you have 10 frames between the time the character says “You are..” and “…the plague” so you base the character’s “hits” around those 10 frames.

Many animators use the blocking pass to determine their timing. In the same way that you may adjust a frame hold longer or shorter in Flipbook you can grab a blocked pose in your 3d software and shift it left or right in the timeline and playblasting it. You stated Flipbook is more intuitive which is why this is a personal workflow choice, there is no one right answer! Use the workflow that accomplishes the goal in the shortest amount of time! You don’t need the “correct” timing established before your begin blocking (or possibly first pass of splining) your animation. You should have a good idea of the timing but there is nothing wrong adjusting your poses 1-8 frames in either direction during your early passes. But, if you have to adjust your poses 20+ frames to fix the timing, then either you have a really slow shot with no movement or you don’t have enough poses blocked! Again, don’t spend too much time determing the “correct” timing in Flipbook if you are only going to adjust it again in Maya as you move from blocking to splining.

Finally, timing is something that is learned with practice and experience. In the beginning, you may use Flipbook to plan your timing but after a few years you may just know how many frames it takes to move a hand/foot/etc to the pose you want!

Happy Animating!
Animation Mentor Staff

By: Unknown On 09.58

Continue Reading

Describe Your Workflow When You Start Animating a Shot. Is There a Right or Wrong Way?

I think most people will tell you that as long as your shot looks good, there’s really no right or wrong way and I completely agree with that. We all want to do great work. For me, I have a very different workflow depending on what type of shot I’m animating. If I’m animating a realistic shot, I’ll work straight ahead but for a character animated show, I’ll work pose to pose.

In the world of realism, I find diving in is the best way to go. Block in some strong poses as quickly as possible and define the most important actions in the shot. You want to make sure you lead the audience’s eye to the focal points, otherwise the shot becomes unclear and muddy. So, for a shot on Spider-Man 2 where Spider-Man and Doc Ock are falling and fighting, I choreographed the shot so it revolved around three or four very specific events. I knew for instance that they were in the midst of a battle to the death and it had to be violent. But if I’m not careful, the punches and kicks could all get lost if I don’t highlight them with clear silhouettes. So step number one was make sure the big moments of the fight were clear. I animated a simple translation as they fell down the building and animated some very clean poses along the way. I made use of contrasting poses as much as possible. So a reverse C shape on Spider-Man rearing back for his punch, then a C curve for the strike. Those shapes were posed to camera to get the most impact.

I also knew the tentacles needed to be active. One would grab and miss the building while others would engage Spider-Man. Finally, one would latch onto the building for a violent slam into the façade. I made sure to layer these elements in between the major fight actions between the characters, otherwise we wouldn’t know where to look. This was one of the most challenging elements of the shot, but it was a great lesson in how to be efficient with the staging of the fight elements. Once these elements were layered in and working in a broad sense, then I would dive into my finessing pass. I would toggle the visibility of the characters and tentacles on or off depending on what I was animating. I did this so my eye would never get distracted. Once Spider-Man and Ock were working, then I’d turn those nasty tentacles back on one at a time. After many, many (many) versions, I’d hopefully have an exciting shot in the can.

Now, what about using video reference for realistic animation? Personally, I try not to use it if I’m animating human characters. Insanity you say? Perhaps. But I prefer to act out what I’m animating and feel what’s happening as opposed to trying to visually match my performance. If you have to animate a character throwing a ball, repeat the action several times and pay careful attention to what your body is doing. You don’t have to look at yourself on film to feel your body and chest leading the action with the arm lagging behind. Then when you sit down to animate, you can apply that knowledge in a much more meaningful way. You’ll understand the full impact of the body mechanics on all sides as opposed to just what you are looking at from the camera’s perspective. Give it a try sometime and if you really get stuck, you can always break out the camera and tripod for troubleshooting.

My workflow for character work is pretty much the opposite. I usually just do a whole bunch of thinking in the beginning. I’ll listen to the dialogue over and over again until some very clear acting choices emerge, then I’ll start locking down some poses. In the beginning, I prefer to go with as few poses as possible on my first pass because that gives me more flexibility to explore new ideas. As soon as I have some poses running with the audio track, my mind starts finding new approaches. I point this out because I don’t worry so much about ensuring the whole shot is thumbnailed or blocked out before I start. It’s a very organic workflow and not for everybody. At the very least, I don’t run into the issue of having too much going on. Sometimes an animator will put so much into that first pass it ends up being hard to assess. This way, my shot builds naturally and I layer the detail on in subsequent passes.

Another technique I make use of is to avoid lipsync and facial animation on my first full pass. The reason is simple. I want to focus 100% on the poses. Do they reflect his mood? Are they strong and clear? A sad face makes a character look sad, but can you achieve that without the face first? If my poses convey the emotions clearly without facial animation, then I know the addition of expressions will only serve to augment my work.

Finally, I will add most the texture and finer detail to the shot at the very end. I guess you can call this the business of the shot. The reason I add it later is because I like to make sure the guts of my shot are successful. If I throw in a bunch of detail early on in my shot while I’m still trying to figure out the broader mechanics, then it can sometimes make it more challenging to troubleshoot. Also, it’s possible that you can put too much business in a shot. Quantity does not always equal quality.

Guest Blogger Chris Williams

By: Unknown On 14.25

Continue Reading

What Is IK? How Do I Animate in IK but Avoid "That IK Look" in Certain Situations?

Great question!

I'm a big IK guy. I like IK, I like working with it, and hate the counter-animation that I feel I have to do if I try to use FK for the arms.

Yeah, yeah - I know, I know. Everyone likes FK for the arms. Good for you. Maybe someday I'll join your FK cult, but for now, I'm an IK guy. :)

So, how do you use IK without letting them LOOK IK?

Well, as far as I'm concerned, you've hopefully done some planning and know what your poses are going to be on what frames, at least generally speaking. If that's the case, then you're just going to a frame, sculpting your pose, and then saving a key on everything, and then moving on to do the same thing a few frames later or whatever, right?

Hopefully, that is the way you are working. If you are only in the first five or six years of being an animator or are a student, then I strongly believe you SHOULD be working that way.

So, if that's the case, then sculpting a pose with IK arms should look exactly the same as sculpting it with FK arms, right? As long as you are carefully crafting your breakdown poses to control the arcs of the arms, the overlap and follow-through, etc, -- then the IK and FK versions of the shot look look EXACTLY the same. Your breakdown poses on the arms and torso will probably need to be different, depending on IK/FK, but the end result should be identical.

If you are getting some kind of "IK look," then my guess is that you are letting the computer do too much for you. Remember, the computer is the dumbest in-betweener on the planet, and it will ruin you every chance it gets! You have to use the computer's in-betweening abilities wisely, and that basically means not letting it go more than a few frames (max) without having a key on SOME part of your character.

Remember, YOU control the arcs that your character's wrists take. YOU control the way that arm moves and looks! Don't let the computer trick you into feeling lazy. It likes to whisper in your ear and say, "Hey buddy... you don't really want to save all those keys do you? Why don't you let me handle it for you? It'll be awesome, and you'll finish quicker! Trust me!"

Don't trust him! He's a liar!!! He's trying to fool you! Just tell him to mind his own business, and make sure you've put the appropriate breakdowns in place to create the arcs and paths of action you are expecting.

Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 10.40

Continue Reading

Students of Animation Need to Start Working Smarter, Not Harder

For example, I see students most of the time do the absolute highest frame count allowed for a particular assignment. Let’s say the frame count suggested is 150-300. Guess what? You’ll learn TEN TIMES as much if you do two 150 frame shots than a single 300 frame shot. Yep. Betcha didn’t think so. Why is this? Because whenever you start a new shot, you are resetting the part of your brain that organizes, retrieves and implements your workflow. You are starting fresh, but your brain has to reenact all the steps to take based on your experience. Putting yourself in as many new situations is the most sure-fire way to put the most demand on your workflow. If it’s not working, it will break. If it breaks, you will have to fix it. And if you’ve fixed a part of your workflow, you are exponentially better for it.

Another example: When it comes time to animate a dialogue shot, most new animators try to choose a piece of dialogue that is rife with emotion and subtlety. This is commendable, but what invariably happens is that student falls into the trap of putting the character in a chair, behind a table or desk, or in some other low-energy situation. This is a huge mistake. It takes much more time to animate a character on his feet, I know, so shorten the clip to make it doable in the time you have. But stand them up, and animate the full body performance of that dialogue. Why? Dialogue is not just a pantomime shot with added lip sync. It’s so much more. A person’s idiosyncrasies come out to such a great extent when they are balancing control of their gestures, and forming complete sentences at the same time. If you do not practice animating the subtle ways a character moves their body to reinforce, combat, play off of, or betray their words, you are only getting half the practice. What I see frequently is a 500 frame dialogue shot with a person speaking a mile a minute in a diner booth. What I should see is five 100 frame dialogue shots of different characters, head to toe, performing with their whole person. Work smarter, not harder.

One last example: When it comes time to create a short film, reach out to friends and colleagues who can help you with the effort. Modeling, rigging, texturing, lighting, rendering, compositing, and many more processes go into the best short films ever created. There is no need for your film to be a single stock character performing against a white wall, but the planning stage of a compelling story is no time to also be learning about the paramaterization of NURBS curves. Accept all the help you can, and seek out the talented artists who can help you create your vision.

Guest Blogger Kenny Roy

By: Unknown On 11.12

Continue Reading

What Do You Do When You Come across an Animation Problem That You Cannot Solve?

There is no replacement for experience. This profession is not exempt from that simple fact! Smart animators immediately seek out experience when they hit a wall with their work. On the job when I get stuck, the very first thing I do is to spin my chair around, and ask all the animators around me! When I was starting out, I had the very good luck to be placed in some offices large enough that there was always somebody around who had experience with the problem I was dealing with, but small enough that everyone helping each other out was not too distracting from the work of the day. That was always between 6-9 people to a room. If you are in a situation like that, there will always be somebody around who has dealt with something very similar who can point you in the right direction. And even if you are not in a production environment yet, you are never alone when you have the internet! I learned every single technical skill I have from a forum that I visited daily when I was first interested in CG. Not unlike the Animation Mentor forums, this place was filled with individuals pursuing the craft like me. If they didn’t have an exact answer, they at least had a unique approach to the problem that would get me thinking more innovatively.

If there is literally nobody around, no time to wait for a forum reply, and you are truly stuck, there are some little tricks that might get you back on track. First, if the problem is technical, all software has more than one way to achieve nearly every effect, so check the documentation for those other paths you might take. If it’s a performance issue, then ask yourself what made you choose the performance that is not coming across in the first place. Try making a different acting choice and seeing if it was the stronger one all along. If you can’t see what is wrong, but know something is, then take a break! You need fresh eyes to diagnose the situation. Take a walk, leave the shot, and when you come back you may just have a new idea. There are millions of hurdles that an animator may encounter. So I cannot give advice for everything. All I know is that there is a solution for all of them. So never give up.

Guest Blogger Kenny Roy

By: Unknown On 15.58

Continue Reading

What is Your Workflow to Polish a Shot? What Makes it Polished?

When I'm polishing a shot, that means that all of my timing and movements are working and approved and I'm just adding the very finishing touches to the shot before I'm finito. So when I start my polishing pass, I am certainly not going to be making any big changes to action or timing.

The first thing I do when I'm going into polishing, is a little "good shot hygiene" as one of my former lead animators used to call it. I select each and every control, and go through the attribute curves one by one in the graph editor, and smooth out any bumps or tangent strangeness. You'd be surprised how many things you can catch by scaling in and out horizontally and vertically that you wouldn't see upon the initial examination. This generally gets rid of all kinds of tiny hiccups that have been accumulating as I've been editing my animation in previous passes.

Only after that is done for every animated control, do I continue on and just double-check all of my arcs and finesse overlapping action and perhaps even add tinier details. I will playblast often, and look for anything that catches my eye when I'm watching it on 'loop'...usually if something catches my eye, it means it's not quite smooth enough - so I'll check the eases and the overlaps to make sure nothing 'hits.'

Then, after I've polished all that up, I go through and look at the curves again on everything I've polished, to make sure they're all smooth so I won't give the director any excuses to send the shot back to me again for any more touch-ups. :)

Playblast again to check...fix anything that's still catching my eye, make sure the curves are smooth, playblast again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Until it's squeaky clean.

Handing in sloppy files is very unprofessional! One thing I've learned is to never expect that you'll fly anything by the director...they *always* notice the teeniest little bumps! And they'll call you on it...oh yes they will.

Guest Blogger Dana Boadway

By: Unknown On 16.18

Continue Reading

How Much Average Time Does It Take to Create a Shot?

That's a difficult one to answer. Each studio has its own set of deadlines and expectations, which will also vary wildly by medium (games vs. television shows vs. advertising vs. films, etc). Generally, as you move into larger studios, the deadlines tend to become more realistic (read: a little more spaced out). The larger studios can charge clients more money, which the clients are willing to pay because they know the trade-off is a higher standard of quality. The studio knows that more quality will need more time, so deadlines become a little less intense once you get to a top-tier animation studio, generally speaking.

However, even the larger studios are increasing their productivity all the time (via new technologies, faster machines, better artists, etc), and the "average time to do a shot" is getting less all the time, it seems.

Of course, the biggest X factor in all of this has to do with the content of the shot. I've done a shot in a couple hours (of a hand, in the movie A.I.) but I also got bogged down for about 6 weeks on a shot in Hulk. On Transformers, we had a really streamlined situation with a really fast feedback loop, a lot of amazing animation tools at our disposal, and terrific animation rigs, all of which helped us get our animation time down dramatically. One shot I did of Bonecrusher on the highway only took a few days, while another took closer to 4 weeks - so, yet again, it all depends on the number of characters and what they are doing in the shot. It's always going to take longer to animate a giant robot tackling another robot in slow motion than it will to animate one robot skating down a highway. (There's an example I never would have thought that I'd have at my disposal! ha ha ha)


Shawn :)

By: Unknown On 08.00

Continue Reading

What Kind of Workflow Do You Use?

Everyone has their own workflow that they find comfortable and works for them. For me, this is what I usually do:

1. Get assigned a shot.

2. Research and study. Learn about the character, the required actions, what my character wants, where he came from and where he's going. If it's just action or is a creature, then I study the physiology of that creature, figure out how he should move, etc. As much as possible, it's good to find reference of a similar creature that exists in real life. (For example, if you're animating a dragon, you can study eagles and lions)

3. Do my thumbnails and video planning (so I know which poses will happen on which frames - at least roughly, and include breakdown poses). When possible, I'll show this planning (or video reference) to my animation director for feedback.

4. Then I simply recreate my thumbnail drawings in the computer, thinking of each pose as a "whole drawing," where I'll pose out the whole character and save a key on every single controller, even if it hasn't been moved. At this stage, I'm also exaggerating the timing of the motions and pushing the poses into something more dynamic and interesting, but keeping to the same basic body mechanics I've just studied.

5. At this point, you should be 80% finished, if you've done your planning correctly. (See my very first Tips & Tricks articles about this). This is when I'll show my shot again for more feedback.

6. If they like my blocking, then I start cleaning up my curves (making sure all my tangents are correct in the graph editor, removing any redundant keys, etc) and polishing the animation, doing the hands, feet, fingers, toes, tail, whatever else needs to be done.

7. Then I do the face.

8. Then I do the mouth.

9. Then I show it again and hope to hear the magic word "Final!"

- Shawn :)

|

By: Unknown On 09.31

Continue Reading