Get Up and Act It Out

Stu in Manet's Olympia.

I got more feedback from a mentor on my workspace, this time from Doug Dooley at Pixar. (He worked on the Academy Award winning short film Bunny back at Blue Sky Studios before going to Pixar). He said: HEY KENSHI, GREAT JOB! WHAT'S GREAT ABOUT YOUR POSES IS THEY TELL A CLEAR STORY EVERYONE CAN INSTANTLY READ.

So I sent him a quick note to thank him for the helpful specific feedback and he wrote back saying, "No problem. I was particularly impressed with what you did with a simple pose test. Actually you gave me some ideas too. Keep up the good work! - dooley" This exchange is a great example of the kind of ricochet effect all this energy is having on people and how AM is set up - ideas bouncing back and forth, everyone helping everyone else grow, learn, and progress. As portrayed in my Manet rip-off above, it's a literal "hotbed" of activity.

How exciting to be encouraged to be different and unique and creative for a change! Going through the Eric Goldberg guest speaker video (he is the animator responsible for Genie in Aladdin) he mentioned that one of the characteristics of a great animator was a sense of personal style and that he doesn't see enough of it in today's animations - putting yourself into the performance instead of cranking out keyframes.

I was completely mesmerized by the Traditional Animation Basics video on the AM site. Watching Sarah Mercey of Pixar hand draw 11 frames of a mouse skipping rope was like having a front row seat at a Masonic Temple ceremony or something - "Am I really being allowed to witness this?" Incredible. I've read about it for years, but nothing could prepare me for seeing it happen for the first time. Just an amazing process.

Some other information I took away from my first week of lectures was the importance of shooting live video reference. A lot of studios have a "mirror room" where animators can go and act out their scenes in front of huge mirrors and videotape themselves. Animator after animator talked about the importance of this. Not that it's a horribly novel idea or anything. The shot of the marine jumping up from laying on the floor was done from reference I did of myself back at Argonaut CG Films. It was just interesting that everyone in the industry does it and does it a lot.

Another no-brainer revelation is the importance of feedback from intelligent eyes outside your own head. I know from my job now doing packaging for video games that staring at an image too long can make you blind to its faults. Just recently in fact, my boss asked me if the pose I had rendered looked a little funny, and I said, "No. Looks just fine to me." The next morning, I re-opened the file and saw that the character really looked like he was going postal. Amazing what a few hours of time away will do for the eyes and mind, not to mention a pair of fresh eyes that are trained to see what works and what doesn't in terms of good animation.