Second Dialogue Test: Final Blocking & Rough Primary Pass

CLICK HERE to view animation.

There are some weight shift problems in the middle of the shot and something funny going on with the hips in the beginning section, too.

The main things I addressed were a) what to do with the legs and b) what to do with the ending.

I needed to draw more attention to the legs in the middle section, but in a subtle way, so after trying out a lot of things that just didn't work, I decided on what you see now with one foot resting on top of the other.

I also simplified my posing and changed the emotional direction of the ending, and effectually changing the tone of the entire piece. I was being too emotionally heavy before.

Of course, this is a subjective call, but I trust the person giving me feedback, so I made it a lot more light-hearted. Instead of resigning herself to her "fate", she is glad about the compliment even though she had to fish pretty hard for it.

Now, changing such a large portion of the shot so late in the game is kind of a scary prospect, but I believe you should never stop asking yourself tough questions when it comes to acting. I am here to serve the integrity of the characters I animate instead of justifying what may be easiest for me to do.

Time Management

There are a lot of new students starting at AnimationMentor in January that have asked about time management, especially where they have jobs and families, so I wanted to go into what has worked for me, and what I plan to do to balance the demands of fulltime work, fulltime school, family, social, and personal life.

Many students have quit their jobs to devote 100% of their time to AM studies, but that's just not a feasible scenario for most people. There are bills to pay, mouths to feed. So how does one balance all that and still get the fulltime AM experience?

Funny you should ask.

When I first started back in March of this year, I thought it would be no biggie. Put in a couple of hours here, a couple of hours there, and voila! - become great at animation.

Wishful thinking at best.

This is an art that takes a lot of dedication and practice to master. You know, actually taking theory and putting it to practice.

The first term wasn't so bad, because we weren't just unceremoniously tossed into the deep water. They waited for the second term to do that. Seriously though, the first class was a cake walk compared to what we were expected to turn out in Class 2. Not to scare anyone off, because it was an amazing experience and I learned a ton, but that's when it finally hit home to me that time management (or the lack of it) is really what makes the difference between sinking and swimming.

Some important things to think about:

There will be hard weeks. There will be easy weeks. Some concepts will really sink in and some you'll really struggle with. Some weeks you'll have crazy deadlines at work like I had two weeks ago that require you to stay up all night finishing a project. Some weeks you'll have family commitments that take you away from animating. That's okay. Do the best you can with the time you have. That's all anyone can ask of you, and that's all you should ask of yourself.

Animation is everywhere, so if you're feeling like you're wasting your time because you're not in front of a computer, stop wasting your time and open your eyes to what's going on right in front of you in EVERY SITUATION. You're at the gym exercising? Observe the forces that happen when people lift weights, or the different walks you see on the treadmills. Notice what is happening in your own body when you're doing your own workouts. You're at a dinner party? Observe the reactions of people to what's being said. Are they bored? What are their bodies doing to show their boredom? Wandering eyes? Focusing intently on a plate of food and nodding without listening? This kind of stuff is better than a lot of reference because it's REAL LIFE. So take advantage of every opportunity. Just make sure you're not doing it to get away from actually animating, and you'll be fine.

If you don't have your health, you're no good to anybody. Sure you can brag about how late you stay up every night animating, but when your eyes are bloodshot and you're too sick to even get out of bed and you have carpal tunnel and a chronically stiff back, I can pretty much guarantee you will not be producing your best work. It's all about balance, so don't forget to take care of yourself! Eat right. Drink lots of water. Get plenty of rest. Exercise.

Enjoy life! Who cares if you can compose a beautiful sentence if you have nothing to say? Animation is just the same. You can polish a shot beautifully, but performances that don't somehow come from inside of you are going to fall flat on their face. Just remember, there's more to life (and animation) than spline shapes and weighted tangents.

Apply what you learn at AM to your current job. I don't care if you are a garbage collector. You will learn things at AM that you can apply to your current situation, whatever it is. Be it better planning, clear communication of ideas, brainstorming and constructive feedback; these are all crucial to successful animation as well as any job you could be doing. Personally, since I do 3D artwork in Maya on video game title covers and other promotional pieces, I have seen a huge leap forward in my skills and productivity. Thinking in terms of silhouette and strong line of action, believable posing and sense of weight of a character, all have made me a more valuable employee at my current job. I get jobs done faster and better; I get "buy off" approval from clients on the first round a lot of times whereas before it would take me several passes to get something with enough personality, character, energy, appeal... Those are second nature now.

Up to this point, I've been a part-time student. I'm embarrassed to admit that I have let a lot get in the way of me actually applying these principles of life management and becoming a true fulltime student, whether I can spend 40 hours a week at it or not. That's not the point. Look at the word "full". What images does that conjure up for you? Brimming over, satisfied, expansive, complete, 100%...

You can't give anything 100% of your time, even fulltime work. Life just doesn't work that way. But the time you DO give, make it full. Make it full when you're with your family, full when you're on the job, full when you're animating, full when you're listening to a friend.

That's why I take back what I said in my last post about waiting til January to really pursue this FULL time. It's gotta start now. You wait for tomorrow, for January, for when your schedule "frees up" (it never will, by the way), for that faster computer, for whatever...and it'll never happen.

Like my favorite little green person once said, "Do or do not... there is no try."

So welcome all you newcomers. Part-time or fulltime, make the MOST of it.

It'll be over before you know it.

Second Dialogue Test Blocking

CLICK HERE to see the animation.

Here's rough blocking with quite a few breakdowns. I think I need to get into this character's head a little more. I know she's fishing for a compliment but I haven't decided why. It's easy to overlook that kind of stuff when it's a single shot with no context, but I do believe that the more real the character is to you, the more you will be able to convey that in a shot.

I'm getting the sense that you really have to prove yourself once you get in a studio. They just won't give you the "money shots" until you have proved you can do the simple ones well and fast. So I'm trying to speed things up - getting better faster.

I really need to be doing a lot more exercises on my own above and beyond my assignments. Especially in the area of body mechanics. That's why I'm really looking forward to doing Animation Mentor fulltime starting next term.

A lot of catching up to do for Mr. Kenshi....

Thumbnails For My Next Shot

The dialogue for this next shot goes like this: (another female character by the way)

You've got to work with what you've got, well we...we all do. I mean, you know I,I...I wish I had the legs so I could wear short skirts, but... (Offscreen male: Your legs are beautiful!) No they're not

It'll be a really understated piece, if I do it right.

I'm having the character mixing up a batch of brownies with a wooden spoon while she is delivering the lines. Like my classmate Anthea (who was just recruited out of the ranks of AnimationMentor by Walt Disney Feature Animation) said about it, "youth and beauty lost, like at one time she was a hot tamale in a short skirt but now she cooks and cleans all day." That's exactly who she is.

She is fishing for a compliment here. She delivers the line like it's no big deal and she doesn't really care, but inside she desperately wants to be attractive and good enough for her husband. She says she's resigned to the "hand she has been dealt" in life, but she still wishes. She still desires. She still wants to be desirable, and the fact that she ostensibly downplays the attractiveness of her legs just screams "VALIDATE ME!!!"

The trick will be contrasting the subtext with the dialogue and making it clear without being cliche or too overstated.

Intro to Acting - First Dialogue Test Polishing

So here's my almost final, but not nearly done first dialogue test. CLICK HERE to see the animation (no more of this self-loading movie nonsense that takes forever):

I'm not super happy with it. I feel like I took some steps backwards in a lot of ways with this, but I blame most of that on not blocking in stepped mode (which treats the poses more like still, held drawings with no smooth computer-generated inbetweens). The copy paired method where i held sets of poses with about 4 frames worth of transition in between just confused me. It made the initial stages go really fast and the final stages really hard, but since that's the way I started the shot, I was encouraged by my mentor to finish it out that way and see what happens.

By the end there, I felt like I was polishing a turd. I was getting lots of "this looks great. just polish it" comments from classmates but not much advice on specific problems in my shot or how to fix them. Frustrating.

I had the hardest part nailed, which is acting choices. There are basically two kinds of acting choices as far as I'm concerned: weak and strong. One can have animation that's polished to the nines that has no life, no soul without effective, believable, convincing acting choices. The polish is more technical - easier to critique for that very reason - than acting, which is a much more emotional, intuitive process. So if polish is so easy to learn, why do I suck at it so bad? It's not that I don't have an eye for detail.

I'll give anyone a nickel that can answer that question for me.

I know, the answer is probably: practice, practice, practice. Or patience, patience, patience. One of those "p" words. I think it mainly boils down to finding a more systematic approach to the polishing process. I've been using the machine gun approach when I need to be more precise and organized - like a sniper.

You live, you learn.

Sticking to stepped mode on the next shot.