Summer in Paris

(image from Ratatouille, Pixar Animation 2007)

click on the rat to get to Paris

Too few weeks of summer in Paris studying animation. Join me?

The only breakdowns should be in your animation planning

During first semester in 3D classes we were animating using the Jason Ryan technique.

Boiled down, and for animators at the start of our 3D animating careers, the technique is all about planning our animation sequences fully before we open the 3D software.



Despite trying to encourage understanding of this animating method, I still observe animators absolutely bursting to turn on their computers and open the 3D 'animation' software to, what they think is, 'start animating'.

It is quite a challenge to communicate/ demonstrate to animators, despite the software titles, that animation does not happen in the 'animation' computer program.

The core of animation occurs in our planning. And that is where we should concentrate our style, time and effort.

Back to the Jason Ryan technique: Draw story telling poses, then add 'extremes', then start the break down process so that the whole animation is planned before employing the "computer inbetweener". Pretty much don't let the computer do more than 2 or 3 inbetweens as you plan out your early 3D animation explorations. That is what we should get the hang of as we are learning.

This is where I'll bring in Shawn Kelly from AnimationMentor. He is a big gun.

"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."

This comes from a post by Shawn discussing how he prefers animating hands using inverse kinematics (IK) rather than forward kinemetics (FK)... Read more

Chish and Fips

After the lecture roadtrip adventure to QUT, the animators settled down for a feast of chish'n'fips!


Does anyone else have publishable photos of this excursion?

EAPS!

This is a compilation of some works-in-progress clips from the 2nd year animators (WiPs). They are continuing to polish their work after a critiquing session we had in class. You can see their final work posted on their blogs. Links on the right of page.

I am quite proud of what they have learned working through this first Essential Animation Principle (EAP) exercise. Please critique their work.

Some works in progress by 2nd year animators.

Some work by 2nd year animators that had to be handed in by a deadline. "Animation is never finished, it's just handed over"

Aaaarrrrrgh! Max is caught in the fog!

When Max for Maya is opened, he is a massive rig and sometimes disappears in a grey wall of 'fog'. This is how first year animator Braden taught me how to fix that problem.

The beans are coming! Snowboarding ones.

It is nearing assessment time and I'm working through some submitted work by animators. In the modelling process part of the task was to create blendshapes for facial features (1st years didn't have to do this part). Unfortunately it appears that quite a few animators didn't take the opportunity to animate their character's facial features using blendshapes.

So... I had a bit of fun with one bean as I was checking the character rig. Did I ever mention that it is fun being an animation teacher? I hope that the animators' relationships with their first ever built character rigs haven't soured due to the metaphorical blood spilt during modelling classes? You didn't create Frankenstein's monster. Love your beans, please. Give them life... boohahahahahaHAHA!

Garn, I urge you to get your beans out for a few short animation exercises... See Mitch's handy chart!

I wanted to test if a student's character rig blendshapes worked on a spacing exercise animation. They work just fine.