Live Jam Session with the BOOM

Bobby "BOOM" Beck


So, since I had technical problems with my first Q&A with my Charles Alleneck, I got to participate in a makeup session with Bobby Beck today. He is such a positive, energetic guy - so awesome to be interacting with these amazingly talented guys that have no ego at all and are really just there to train up the next generation of animators.

I got to ask him some questions live. How it works is that you submit a question in the queue and the speaker just takes questions as they come. When it's your turn, he'll pull up your webcam and then you're on the air, talking back and forth. There is a few second lag, but it's pretty much real time. Kind of mind trip, knowing that you're talking face to face with someone hundreds of miles away, when it feels like you're in the same room. It's so science fiction turned science fact. Very surreal.

So I asked him stuff like, "You said that Finding Nemo was a big breakthrough for you. What about that experience made it such a breakthrough?" And he went into how for the first time for him, the characters seemed to be animating themselves. Much more intuitive than before. He termed it animating "from the inside out" where the characters' inner thoughts and feelings were driving the performance rather than the "outside in", which would be the animator posing the characters and making the mouth move in hopes that they would appear to be living. He said it was animating on a whole new level.

I also asked about IK vs. FK arms (inverse kinematics vs. forward kinematics) - which method of working he employed. Of course he pointed out that IK and FK have different functions and in a lot of character rigs, you can switch from one to the other, but he works mainly in FK - he feels he gets better arcs that way and more control. There's something about having the shoulder go first, then affect the elbow, then the wrist, etc. that appeals to him when he animates it seems, rather than switching to IK, where you basically grab the wrist, move it, and then rest of the arm follows along, much like a marionette.

The last question he addressed had to do with the short film process. I wanted to know how much we would be responsible for and how much would be provided, specifically in terms of the rigs. He couldn't go into too much because it's supposed to be a little bit of surprise, but he did divulge that there will be a catalog of sorts that we can choose from when we go to do our short film - stock characters, I think, which will be created based on the input and ideas they get from us as we are developing our story ideas.

Before he went on to the next question though, I asked about facial animation - if we would ever get to that. And he was kind enough to go on and explain how all of the assignments build off of each other - starting with a ball, then a ball with a tail, then a ball with one leg, then two legs, and then spine and legs, and finally full biped character and later with full facial controls. Should be interesting to see how this all plays out, but that won't happen for another year (the last two classes).

He also mentioned a book by Desmond Morris called Manwatching that went into body and facial language from more of a technical standpoint. I'm really fascinated by that kind of stuff, so I'm going to try to track it down and study up on it. Bobby mentioned the "triangle" on the face from either corner of the eyebrows down to the nose and how that's where 90% of the emotion of the face is transmitted from.

He went over a lot of other stuff, but those were the main points I was concerned about. The vibe was very, very good - very positive energy, very sincere and made sure he was addressing everyone's needs while still making personal connections with students.

I can see why they call him BOOM.