At Last.

More on CarsToons

Looks like there might be some confusion about the broadcast times for these. Check your local listings to see when Haunted Mansion, Phantom of the Megaplex and Scream Team air on Toon Disney, because the CarsToons air right after those, respectively. Also, here's an article with some images and a clip from the 'Toons.

CarsToons!

Want to see what I've been up to for the past 9 months? It means you'll have to watch the Toon Disney channel (but you do that anyway, right?). Our series of "CarsToons", Directed by John Lasseter, Co-Directed by Robb Gibbs and myself, will be premiering over three nights, then will be in heavy rotation on the various Disney Channels as well as ABC Family.

Even if you're not a fan of the Pixar film "Cars" I think you'll enjoy these. They're very short and very silly, and they all feature Mater the tow truck reminiscing about the wild adventures he supposedly had. These are played strictly for laughs, and they owe a lot to Chuck Jones and his wonderful Warner Brothers shorts. For me (and my team as well, I hope!) these were a lot of fun to work on, and a huge learning experience. Rob & I got to work under the close tutelage of John Lasseter, and we were also free to add in our own ideas and really run the production from start to finish. I really enjoyed stretching out and working with all the other departments that I normally don't interact with as an animator. I found that my years of experience working on pre-rendered adventure games back in the 90's really came in handy, allowing me to communicate with the modelers, shaders, lighters, etc. Thanks, Presto Studios! I am also fully aware of how lucky I am to have been chosen by John Lasseter for this role, and what's more, to have had a chance to work with him on a weekly basis. I think our production has gotten more "John Time" than any other this year. He's been extremely supportive and helpful to us in getting these made and making them the best they can be.

The schedules were intense (we cranked out three complete short films in less than a year) but we were lucky to have extremely talented people working in all departments to help us realize these shorts with feature-quality production values. I only had time to animate a few small shots myself, as I was spending most of the time in editorial and various reviews and meetings.

Edit: I forgot to mention that we screened all three at Pixar about a week ago and they looked fantastic on the big screen. The company seemed to really enjoy them, too. It's a shame that everyone else wont be seeing them in a theater. I only hope these shorts get broadcast in HD at some point, and that everyone gets really big HDTV's and 5.1 sound systems for Christmas! They look and sound that good.

Unfortunately these "interstitials" are so short (about 3 minutes each) that they don't have their own program listings, so you can't easily Tivo them. They also run without credits, which is kind of a bummer for all of us who worked so hard on them. Here's the schedule info:

*TOON DISNEY* (all times ET/PT, meaning they air at the same time on both coasts).

*Monday, October 27* (6:56 p.m.) following /Haunted Mansion/

"Rescue Squad Mater" -- Mater is a fire truck that rescues Lightning McQueen from a burning building. When McQueen is rushed to the hospital, he discovers that Mater is a doctor, too.

*Tuesday, October 28* (6:57 p.m.) following /Phantom of the Megaplex/

"Mater the Greater" -- Mater is a famous daredevil who does all kinds of stunts. Lightning McQueen becomes an unwilling participant in Mater's greatest stunt ever.

*Wednesday, October 29* (6:57 p.m.) following /Scream Team/

"El Materdor" -- Mater is a famous bulldozer fighter in Spain. He's so good, he's able to fend off multiple bulldozers at once. Lightning McQueen joins Mater in this Tall Tale just as things are at their worst.


*DISNEY CHANNEL*

All three Toons begin airing on the Disney Channel on November 1st. Each Toon will run daily, totaling more than 20 times per week.


*ABC FAMILY*

Premieres on December 23rd in conjunction with "Polar Express".

The Chestnut Tree

I saw this short on Hyun-min Lee's CalArts student reel a few years ago when she was applying for an internship at Pixar. It's really beautifully done, and has a nice feminine style too it. You can read more about her and the film here.

What I've been up to

Here's a press release on Yahoo about the CarsToon project that I've been working on for the past 6 months or so. I've been up at Skywalker Ranch this week working on the scoring and sound-mixing, which is a whole other adventure in itself, in addition to trying to complete a bonus fourth CarsToon (more on that some other time). It's been a huge learning experience for me, and I look forward to talking about it more here after the shorts premiere in October.

New Old Thumbnails and Radical Clip

I finally got around to posting some more images to my Animation Thumbnails gallery. Nothing from WALL-E yet, I'm sorry to say; I think I'll have to wait until after the DVD comes out to get clearance for that. The new images are drawings I did back on Cars, and looking back I was kind of surprised that I did so many. I remember a lot of the animation on that film was about timing and texture (like with the Muppets), and less about posing. Then again, those characters were basically abstract faces on wheels, so we had to design the face poses very clearly. Kind of a fun challenge, and something that I'm dealing with again on my current project (which I look forward to posting more about next month).


And on a completely unrelated note, here's an amazing video (follow the link to the higher res "HD" video):

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

It's totally awesome in its own right, but I'm sure there are lessons for the animator in there as well. Watch how the skaters can steer the boards with subtle shifts in their center of gravity, and how the different poses help them accelerate and decelerate. Or just sit back and geek out on how crazy these guys are!

Animation Mentor 2008 Student Showcase

Speaking of great student work, check out the latest from Animation Mentor grads:

Oktapodi

Here's another great short film from the French animation school, Gobelins. This one got a lot of attention at SIGGRAPH, though it's been floating around for a while. Great animation, and the rigging on the Octopi is pretty impressive. This clip might not be on YouTube for long, so enjoy it while you can!



You can find the home page and a neat mini-documentary here.

Save Totoro Forest!

A few of the artists at Pixar have started a fund-raising effort to help the Totoro Forest Foundation, a national trust set up by director Hayao Miyazaki to preserve Sayama Forest, which was his inspiration for the film My Neighbor Totoro. Many renowned artists from Pixar and elsewhere have contributed original art to be auctioned for this cause. You can learn more about the auction (which will take place at Pixar in September) and the cause here. Be sure to check out the gallery to see all of the amazing Totoro-inspired artwork.

If you can't participate in the auction, there will be a book of the art for sale, and there are other ways you can contribute as well. Do it for the kids!

Posing

Once in a while a student will ask me this question: "Which of the 12 principles of animation is the most important?" That's one of those questions that's impossible to answer, like "which organ of the body is most important?" You need all of them to live, Silly! But invariably I will try to answer the question, and I start to wonder out loud which principles may be more vital than others. For me it usually comes down to: Posing.

...Or maybe Timing.

Which one? I think that depends on what you're animating - they type of character, the situation, and the style. For this article I'm just going to focus on posing, and hopefully I can talk about timing more in the future.

Okay, I know that "posing" is not one of The 12 Principles of Animation as handed down on stone tablets by St. Frankenollie, but it's really darn important. It's actually kind of an uber-principle, as it combines elements of other principles within it, such as staging, appeal, exaggeration, and solid drawing. Again, it's a foolish pursuit to try to pick the most important animation principle, and you might rightly offer this counterpoint: posing without timing is just a comic book. Touché! But consider this: still images can suggest motion. And a good animator could animate an entire acting scene within a single clear pose. Live actors hold poses all the time. A good pose can communicate your character's physiology, personality, emotion and intent, even when the scene is paused. Animation is storytelling, and a good pose can tell a story.

The thing that really got me wanting to talk about posing is this photo:


I saw this at an art auction (onboard the Disney Magic, of all places) and it damn near knocked the wind out of me. I had to stop and stare at it for a while to figure out if it was real. I had seen lots of photos of Muhammad Ali, but never this one. Incidentally, I've never been a fan of boxing, nor had I considered it much of a sport until I saw this documentary about Ali. Simply amazing. You must see it.

Anyway, back to the topic. This photo is rad for so many reasons, and it's one of those images that gets me excited about animation all over again. The lines of action are so clear, so extreme in this photo, that it almost feels staged or manipulated. You can feel Ali's lean back onto his right leg, and your brain wants to see the invisible arc of that left hook coming around. Look at the way the other boxer's body leans into Ali with a simple curve, while Ali's main line of action is a strong, straight line. The convergence of these two lines at the boxers' feet creates visual tension, and Ali's supporting right leg makes his silhouette huge and grounded. Check out this article from Carlos Baena for more about lines.

I was so excited about this photo that I had to Google some more. I found this:

Boom! Another stunning image. There's a slightly more famous version of this photo in which Ali has his right arm at his side, but I like this one better. This image tells a clear story. The composition is so strong, it feels like it could have been a Michelangelo painting. Granted, I'm talking about posing, not staging, but the two are very intertwined, as I mentioned above. Check out all these triangles:


That's some amazing graphical composition! I love how all the triangles are pointed up like pyramids, except for the right arm, which points down at Liston as if to say, "don't even think about getting up!" You can't help but be impressed by Ali's dominance of Sonny Liston, and the posing and composition are reinforcing that story in every way.

Okay, one more Ali picture, just 'cause he's the man:


To me, this one is all about rhythm. Visual rhythm, that is. The way that line of action snakes up from his left foot all the way up to his head, the way the right leg echoes and supports that line, and the way the two arms complement the line, drawing your eye to their sharp angles, without ruining the flow of the pose. You can feel the twist of his hips, the lunge forward, the looseness of the wrists. There is a sense of lead and follow, of weight and momentum. You can imagine what came before, and what will come after. Your brain wants to see the action - it's begging for another pose, or at least a breakdown!

Posing is an art form in itself. After all, still poses have been around a LOT longer than animation. For that reason, we have a wealth of imagery and knowledge to draw upon. Look at Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Goya... Hell, look at Rockwell!


Say what you will about Rockwell's subject matter, but he was a master draftsman and storyteller. You can tell so much about every character in this picture just by the body language. In this case, the way the poses relate to each other is just as important as the poses themselves. As I mentioned, posing is an art from in itself, and has it's own set of principles. Say what?! That's right, if the 12 animation principles weren't enough, here are 28 from master animator and artist, the late Walt Stanchfield:

pose and mood
planes
straights and curves
shape and form
solidity
primary and secondary
anatomy
arcs
action
model or character
squash and stretch
staging and composition
weight
beat and rhythm
anticipation
line and silhouette
depth and volume
caricature
action and reaction
overlap and follow-through
details
perspective
timing
texture
direction
working from extreme
simplification
tension to extreme
positive & negative shapes

Notice that there are a some overlaps with the list of 12. Yes, you can indicate "anticipation" in a still drawing! A few of these are specific to drawing and don't concern the CG animator as much. I'm not going to go into all of these principles here, and I don't purport to have one one-hundredth the talent and experience of Stanchfield, but I think I know what he's talking about, at least. Walt's copious notes on the subject of figure drawing used to be posted over at Animation Meat, but apparently they've been taken down pending their publication of a book. That will definitely be a must-have title! At Pixar we are lucky (I could just end the sentence right here) to have animator and artist Tom Gately, who was a student of Stanchfield, and now instructs his own weekly figure drawing class. While I haven't been exactly regular in attendance (sorry, Tom), I have found that practicing my figure drawing with an emphasis on these principles has improved my drawing and my animation. Not all CG animators draw, but for a lot of us drawing thumbnails is an important part of planning. Knowing how to improve those initial sketches will help clarify your ideas before you get on to the computer. Personally I find that I push my drawings much further than I would be likely to push a CG character, so it's good to start with an extreme drawing rather than the limitations of a computer model.

In closing here's an image that Disney animator Sergio Pablos handed out during a visit to Pixar a few years back, which shows many of the above principles applied. Notice the similarities to the third Muhammad Ali pic, above. I hope Sergio doesn't mind me posting this... Thanks, Sergio!


That's all I've got to say for now. There went my Sunday night. Thanks for reading this far!

P.S. A good supplement to this article is Travis Hathaway's "my not necessarily the principles" post on Spline Doctors

Nice AWN article on WALL-E

There's a good article on Animation World Network about the making of WALL-E, with a specific slant towards the cinematography and the acting approach (the latter featuring Angus Maclane again).

Alright, I know that posting a series of links to WALL-E articles does not make for an interesting blog. I have some ideas for some original posts, but I'm really slammed with work lately and don't have much brain juice left to spread on this site. I'll try to make some useful posts about posing and timing in the next few weeks. It may just be musings or rants, but it'll be something.

In the meantime, head on over to Spline Doctors - they've always got something good!

Interview with Angus MacLane

Here's an interview with Angus MacLane, who was Directing Animator on WALL-E (not Supervising Animator, as the article erroneously credits). Enjoy!

WALL-E breakdown

WALL-E's been out for over a week, so hopefully you've had a chance to see it. It was a really fun show to work on for me. Because there was so little dialog, the animators had a lot of leeway for adding acting beats and ideas to help further develop the characters visually. Very often I would end up adding time to my shots (sometimes even doubling the length) and really indulging a moment. Here is a breakdown of most of the work I did on it:

-------------SPOILERS AHEAD!---------------

"Day at work" - I did the shots of Wally opening the twinkie and the roach jumping in. Then Wally boxes up, parks in his shelf and rocks himself to sleep. The rocking thing was something I had done in a test animation and Andrew liked it so he had me add it to this scene. I also did the next scene where Wally wakes up, batteries low, and tries to put on his treads. At the time we had a newborn baby, and I wasn't getting enough sleep, so I was involuntarily doing lots of research for the scene.

"Eve arrives" - I did the stuff of Wally coming home, then seeing the red laser dot and starting to chase it down the freeway offramp.

"Courtship" - The scene of Wally watching Eve scanning from atop a reactor, then boxing up as she zooms by and shuts down.

"The plant" - The loooong scene where Eve tries to shoot the Big Mouth Billy Bass, then Wally starts handing her objects to play with: eggbeater, bubblewrap, lightbuld, Rubik's cube, etc. Then she pulls the tape out of the VHS tape and he freaks out. He rewinds the tape and puts it in the machine. It plays back and he presents the video to Eve. She scans it.


"Eve vigil" - Wally and Eve, sitting on the bench. He pries her arm open to hold her hand, it clamps down on his hand, he tries to free himself and falls off the bench. This is a scene that I added a lot of time to, and Andrew let me "go for it".


"Spacewalk" - I did the initial stuff of Wally flying around with the fire extinguisher. He and Eve whiz past each other, then he slowly works his way back to her and sprays her with it. She says to get going, and he instead uses the extinguisher to spin himself around and fly away. The sequence was changed after I finished my shots, so some were omitted and others were reworked a bit.

"Garbage airlock" - I did the shot of Eve staring at the plant for a while, then tossing it and offering her hand to Wally: "Directive".

"Showdown" - My only human scene on this film. I did the stuff of the Captain hotwiring the video system and taunting Auto: "Look what I got, Auto! That's right, the plant! Oh, you want it? Come and get it, Blinky!" Then he yanks the cables out. The cable rig was really hard to work with, so I animated the Captain first pantomiming the action, did some 2D animation of the cables on top of the 3D, then match-moved the 3D cables to the 2D motion on 1's. It was hard.

"Back on earth" - I did the stuff of Wally rebooting after he has just been repaired. Eve tries to jog his memory, but he doesn't recognize him. He cubes some of his souvenirs, then exits, squashing the roach. Eve watches him from the doorway of the trailer, devastated.

-------------END SPOILERS---------------

That's all I can remember off the top of my head. This is definitely the most work I've done on any film so far. Including the Superbowl commercial, I think I did about 7 minutes of footage. I was involved very early in animation (I was on for 2 years, total) and this list doesn't include the test shots I did. When the DVD comes out around Christmas I'll post a reel. Thanks for reading!

Cruise News

I got back from my vacation last Tuesday, and am finally caught up on (most of) my email and stuff. On board the Disney Magic I got to present WALL-E at a midnight showing, and I did two presentations: one about Pixar Animation in general, and one about the Making of WALL-E.

I would estimate that about 80-100 people showed up for the first talk, and overall it went very well. I had expected that it would be open to general audiences, and had therefore included some sillier, kid-friendly material, but it turned out that these events were limited to adults. Nevertheless the audience was receptive to the silly stuff as well and the more sophisticated stuff. This was a Disney cruise, after all! My prepared material for the first talk lasted for exactly 45 minutes, as planned, and then I opened it up for Q&A. They had plenty of questions, and I was prepared to run longer than 15 minutes. At noon on the dot, my microphone cut out and the captain came on the PA to start making some announcements in a droning voice. It was annoying, but funny, and after about 5 minutes I got my mic back and could finish the last few questions.

My second presentation was at 1pm the next day. I expected everything would go smoothly, since we had worked out the tech setup the day before. Of course, that was not to be the case. Around 12:15 as we were setting up my computer crashed, and my Keynote presentation file got corrupted. I could no longer launch my presentation! I tried for about 20 minutes to resurrect the data, but with no success. Luckily I had burned a backup copy to DVD before we left home, so I ran back to our room to grab it. In the time remaining before the presentation started I was able to update the backup with most of the changes I had made over the past week. Always back up your data, kids! From there the presentation went off without a hitch. I think I had more people in the audience this time, and there were many repeat visitors from the previous talk.

I was also happy to see that people didn't seem upset by the portrayal of the human cruise-liner passengers in the film. I'm sure you can appreciate the irony of this venue. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed WALL-E, so it was a friendly and fun experience.

I'm Back

I finally got back home yesterday. I'll post some details about my "press junket" as well as my work on WALL-E very soon, but in the meantime, here is a cool interview with director Andrew Stanton.

Out To Sea

Ahoy Land-Lovers,
I am composing this blog post from onboard the Disney Magic Cruise Liner. I'm on the ship to promote the premiere-at-sea of WALL-E on June 27, and to tour the Mexican Riviera as well. Tough job, I know.

I'll be back home next week, by which time WALL-E will have premiered on land in the U.S., and probably elsewhere. I hope you get a chance to see it (and that you like it)! I worked hard on it for about 2 years and I'm very proud of what we accomplished. You'll also get to see the short film, "Presto", which is worth the price of admission by itself. It has some hilarious and astonishing animation, and is directed by legendary animator Doug Sweetland.

Update

Hello Dear Readers,

Obviously I haven't posted in a while, for which I apologize. For the last couple of months I've been hard at work on some Cars interstitials for the Disney Channel. I have been co-directing these with story artist Rob Gibbs, and of course we're receiving plenty of good guidance from Mr. Lasseter. The clips are set to premiere in the Fall. More info as I am allowed to relate it. This directing business is extremely time-consuming, as you can well imagine, so I haven't had a lot of time or energy left to post stuff here. It's a lot of fun, though, and I'm really enjoying being involved in all the different parts of production, from story to voice recording to art, modeling, shading, lighting, and of course, animation. Working on a small team is a nice change from working on a behemoth production like WALL-E.

Speaking of which, tomorrow night (June 1st) is the Pixar wrap party for WALL-E! Woohoo! I'm looking forward to getting blitzed and doing "the Robot" on the dance floor.

Animatronic WALL-E spotted in L.A.

Wall-E Spotted in LA! from Blink on Vimeo.

This is about as "on-model" as it gets, folks! A little more info here.

Aardman saves the planet

More brilliant work from my second-favorite animation studio, Aardman. Here are a series of spots for Animal Planet promoting green solutions to help solve our environmental crises. Look for all the hallmarks of Aardman animation: Simple, clear staging? Check. Appealing characters? Check. Charming Brittish accents? Check!

Brad Bird on fostering innovation

An in-depth story on GIGAOM features nine important lessons on fostering innovation in animation from renowned director Brad Bird, who helmed such hits as The Incredibles and Ratatouille. The article focuses on how Bird managed to encourage his crew on his various films to do their best work, and insists that the better the morale of the animators, the better the film will be. He also strongly advocates taking risks when telling a story. “You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail,” Bird explains. “That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

Team Fortress 2 Character Trailers

I don't know how long these have been around, but I just discovered these little vignettes for the characters in the game Team Fortress 2 (which I would definitely play if I still played video games!). The design, animation and execution are top-notch, and the writing and voice acting is hilarious, too! I love how specific every character is. You know generally where in the world they are from, what their outlook on life is like, and their personality quirks all within moments of meeting them. The design, voice and animation are all working together brilliantly to create characters that are clear and appealing. Makes them all that much more fun to kill.

Meet The Heavy (Team Fortress 2)
by nofrag

Team Fortress 2 engineer
by minutemed

Team Fortress 2 soldier
by minutemed

team fortress 2 demoman
by ElectronicArts

Meet The Scout (TF2)
by nofrag

"The Pixar Story" on TV tomorrow

Tomorrow (April 22nd) you can catch this in-depth documentary about the origins of Pixar on the Starz network at 10pm EST/PST . Set you TiVo's! The Starz web site also has some bonus footage that's not in the documentary, involving the infamous "Love Lounge" and Pixar University.

Goodbye Ollie Johnston

Two days ago we lost the last of Disney's Nine Old Men. His contribution to the art of animation was undeniable, and I'll leave to those better qualified to speak about the man. In particular, there's a great piece by Brad Bird on Cartoon Brew.

Here's a photo of Ollie with the Pixar animators taken a few years ago:

Irma's Car

Here's a nifty bit of animation from Crew 972, a studio led by my old buddy and former Pixarian Alex Orrelle. Nice mix of 2D and 3D. Enjoy!

Edit: If the above link prompts you to log in to Facebook, you can use this link instead.

Romain Seguad's new site

One of my favorite indie animators, Romain Segaud, has updated his site. There's loads of great content, both old and new, all with a very unique style. Be sure to check out his short film, "Tim Tom", and the music video "Bip Bip", as well as some of his recent commercials, such as the new "Islands" spot. Vive Romain!

"Final" WALL-E trailer is up

You probably already new this, but the third and final WALL-E trailer is available online. You can find all the trailers (and the Vacuum Vignette) in assorted flavors here. Enjoy!

Cool Stratastencil Animation

It's always fun to see a new kind of animation pop up. This is by animation Javan Ivey at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyan, and you can see how he did it on his site. How long do think it will be until we see this technique used in commercials for banks and cell phones carriers?

Philip Seymore Hoffman Rocks.

Warning: lots of profanity in this clip. I haven't seen Charlie Wilson's War, but I saw this clip of Philip Seymore Hoffman during the Oscars and I had to chase it down on YouTube. First off, the shape of his head is amazing. But that's not his choice. Second, he's an amazing actor. But you probably know that. Third, check out the energy in this clip, especially around 1:15. He's so angry - his gestures hit hard and rattle his torso, his head shakes back and forth quickly, almost vibrating. His attitudes are so clear. When have you seen this kind of energy in animation? I can't recall if I have, but I sure want to try it the next time I have to animate an angry character. Maybe you guys will beat me to it!

Congratulations Brad Bird and Ratatouille!

I almost forgot to post: Ratatouille takes the Oscar! Big congrats to Brad and all those who worked so hard to make Ratatouille the Best Animated Feature of 2007! Here's Brad with the animation crew:

CarlosBaena.com

When you get tired of my blog, cruise on over to see Carlos Baena's site! He's a fellow Pixar animator and one of the founders of AnimationMentor.com. He's also a crazy Spaniard with a passion for animation and filmmaking. He's been posting tons of interesting stuff lately (unlike me) so check it out!

WALL-E is back...

...Mostly. The HD version of the Vacuum Cleaner vignette that I animated is now available on ComingSoon.net (scroll to the bottom of the page). I'm not allowed to repost the thumbnails yet, for various reasons. Sorry for the tease!

WALL-E Animation Thumbnails

SORRY, I've been asked to pull these images off for now. I'll post them again later when I get the green-light.

As promised, here are some of the planning drawings I did for the Super Bowl ad. I planned about 80% of the shot on paper and figured the rest out in the computer. WALL-E is really simple to pose and quick to animate, so I often experiment more in the computer than I would normally.

The Full WALL-E

SORRY, I've been asked to pull this clip off my site for now.

Here's the full-length animation of WALL-E that I did for the Super Bowl, minus the Buzz and Woody scenes.

Watch the WALL-E Super Bowl ad online

As expected, the WALL-E commercial for the Super Bowl is available online now in glorious HD and other flavors. The spot is 1 minute long, and I actually did a full minute of WALL-E animation, though they had to cut a lot out to make room for the Buzz and Woody bits. Hopefully they will release the uncut version on the web. We had a very short time to produce this ad, so there are some rough edges, but I think it turned out pretty well. I had about 4 weeks to do the WALL-E stuff from start to finish, and I had some help from Don Crum, Wendell Lee and Sarah Mercey. Luckily robots are much faster to animate than humans and rats! The hardest part was probably animating the vacuum hose. The power cord was simulated, thankfully. I'll post some planning thumbnails when I get the time.

In the meantime, you can check out the official WALL-E web site, which has just been updated.

WALL-E Super Bowl Commercial

If you weren't going to watch anyway... Tune in to the Super Bowl on Fox this Sunday to see a brand new commercial for WALL-E. Game begins at 3pm PST, and rumor has it the ad will run around the beginning of the 3rd quarter. I'll try to post a link here once the ad is online. I did most of the WALL-E animation myself, so I hope you like it!

Congratulations to Animation Mentor Class of '08!

This past Saturday I had the honor of attending and presenting at the graduation ceremonies for Classes 5 and 6 of Animation Mentor. It was a lot of fun to meet many of my students in person and hang out with the other mentors, as well as the founders, Bobby, Shawn and Carlos. I got to present the Student Choice Award for Walk Cycle With The Most Personality. You can get a much better description (with photos) on Bobby Beck's Blog. If you haven't already, be sure to check out some of the graduates' work in the latest AM showreel.

New Miyazaki Interview

Hayoa Miyazaki discusses his upcoming film on ghibliworld.com - they are not using any CG in this production.
Here's an interesting quote:

I always tell my staff that if they don’t like to draw by hand deliberately, then they should give up animation. It’s easy to distinguish if pictures are drawn by machines or human hands. If we give up the tough way, we will lose the richness in our art.

New WALL-E Trailers Online!

Head over to RottenTomatoes and IGN for the new WALL-E trailers. There are two versions, the domestic and international. You can also read Harry Knowles' take on the 15 minutes of footage he screened at the Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 last week. Enjoy!

Ergonomics

I interrupt this blog to bring you an important public service announcement. I've had a few inquiries lately about the foam tubing that I put on my Wacom stylus (people saw it in my 11-Second Club critique and one of my AnimationMentor.com lectures), and that got me thinking that I should use this blog to spread some more ergo knowledge. It's important to take care of your bodies, kids, if you want to be animating for the long-haul! It's not enough to buy an "ergonomic" mouse; you can have all the fancy equipment in the world but you may still get RSI if you don't have proper posture, alignment and work habits.

I first learned about Repetitive Strain Injuries when I started at Pixar in 2000, and wouldn't you know, I got it working on Monsters, Inc. Before that I had worked for 5 years on computers and never had a problem. Self-fulfilling prophecy, Pixar curse, or just a matter of time? Either way, after some physical therapy, accupuncture, ergonomics lessons and regular stretching I'm back to working pain-free. If I push myself too hard the pain returns, so part of the solution is to learn how much your body can take.

There are many kinds of RSI, the most publicized being carpal tunnel syndrome. Mine manifested more in the muscles in my shoulder and neck rather than the nerves in my wrists, but it's no less serious. I found that for me yoga and swimming are really effective in relieving the soreness and stiffness. I was lucky in that I work for a company that is very proactive about preventing and treating RSI, and we have people on staff to help us set up and use our workstations. You may not be so lucky, so please try to educate yourself. Below are some links to articles written by my friend and former Pixar Ergonomist, Shelby Cass. I hope you'll give them a read and evaluate your own work habits. Stay healthy out there!

Are You Ergonomically Correct?
What is Ergonomics?
Shelby's Web Site

Freaky Francomation!

The students at Supinfocom in Arles, France always put out good work, and this latest one, "Musicotherapie" is no exception. Really original style and, uh, story. I don't know where they come up with this stuff...

James Baxter's work on "Enchanted"

Beautiful stuff. What else can I say? Kind of embarrassing to have my own drawings so near these gorgeous ones in my blog. I should have put some blank posts in between to separate them more!

More on planning

There have been a few questions about my thumbnail post below in the comments and by email, so I thought I'd elaborate some more here.

Hans Brekke asked:

On a few of the pages you mention that you used other movies for inspiration, like the shining. I thought that was very interesting and its an approach I haven't tried before. How do you make a scene, that is from another movie, relate to your scene, and what do you look for in those scenes? It would be very helpful to hear how you plan your scenes by using material from other movies.

This is a good question. Let me start by saying that I'm not looking to steal someone else's performance for my scenes. Rather, I'm looking for ideas that I wouldn't have thought of on my own. I can only go so far on my imagination; pretty soon my characters will all start to move and behave like me! Therefore I find it important to look outside myself for inspiration and reference, be it in other films or in real life. When doing research for a character I try to find live actors who resemble the character somehow, in personality and/or physiology. In the case of Syndrome, Brad Bird had suggested several actors, including Jack Nicholson. Nicholson's performance in The Shining is over-the-top, perhaps even cartoony, so I thought I might find some interesting ideas in there. I was looking for poses, facial expressions, gestures, bits of timing, anything I could find to make Syndrome more creepy and threatening (and a jerk). For the scene where Syndrome says "I'll give them heroics; I'll give them the most spectacular heroics anyone's ever seen!" I drew inspiration and reference from The Shining, Paul Gleason in The Breakfast Club, Ratigan in The Great Mouse Detective, and of course, my own imagination.

Jonathan asked:

Maybe this is too in depth, but how do you decide how far to take a thumbnail? I mean, many times I have very loose thumbnails, and i wonder if it is better making them more refined. Like, even the stick figures have all of the motion etc defined and of the correct proportions for the character.

The purpose of a thumbnail is just to communicate the important facts about a pose. For instance, the angle of the hips and shoulders, the curve of the spine, the placement of the feet, etc. Some rudimentary facial expressions may also be in order, depending on the shot. As long as you can clearly communicate these things to yourself (and anyone you may need to show them to) that is far enough. I think it's also important to convey the basic proportions of the character you're animating, otherwise you may draw poses that the model can't really achieve. That said, as someone who likes to draw I often find myself embellishing my thumbs with more detail than they need, just because I enjoy the process!

Jorge "Jay" Garcia asked:

Once you get your boards, how close must you follow them when planning and thumbnailing?

It depends on the story boards. Sometimes they're very specific and indicate exactly what the director wants, so I try to match them as best I can. Other times the boards are loose and just suggest the main beats of the shot, so I try to make it my own. The director and I will discuss the scene before I begin planning, and he'll let me know what he expects and how closely I need to follow the boards.

Animation Thumbnail Gallery Added

I periodically get requests from students and others to see some of my planning drawings, so I've put together a little gallery of some of my favorites from past projects. They're not meant to stand alone as good drawings, but you might find them interesting as an example of the thinking that goes into my work at Pixar and AnimationMentor.com. I've included a bunch from my one Ratatouille shot, which I linked in a previous post.

More on the Great Debate

There's a good article on the AP website that further explores the debate about motion-capture as animation. You can read the full article here. Below are some quotes that I found interesting.

The creators of "Beowulf" don't call it animation, nor do they intend to replicate real life.

"It's a new art form that is performance-based," producer Steve Starkey said, echoing comments Zemeckis made about his 2004 effort, "The Polar Express" (a performance-capture movie that had many traditional animators shuddering for its characters' lifeless eyes and stilted movements.)

"If one were to call it traditional animation, I think it would be a disservice to the brilliant animators of the like that worked on 'Roger Rabbit,' that brought those characters to life. I also think it would be a disservice to the performers like Ray Winstone, whose performance lives on-screen."

My One Shot on Ratatouille

I only animated one shot on Ratatouille. I was working on Cars promotional material and WALL-E during most of Rat's production, but I begged them to give me a shot on the film because I knew it was so special (and I wanted to work with Brad Bird again). I figured they'd give me a simple acting shot or some little gag, but instead they gave me a full-body shot of humans on rollerskates! It was pretty challenging, and I did most of the work on my own time. I did a lot of research and worked out some ideas with my wife (who used to skate competitively), but I ended up throwing most of that out and going from my imagination, because the shot was so short and needed to be broad. The only direction I had was that Colette is a bad skater, Linguini is a good skater, and they need to exit frame right. How this happened was pretty much up to me. I'm happy with how Colette's spin and fall worked out, but I think the weight of Linguini lifting her still needs work. Ah well, animation is never finished, only abandoned.

"The Pixar Story" screening in SF again

"The Pixar Story" will be screening in SF, this week:

NOVEMBER 13-15, 2007

San Francisco
Lumiere 35
1572 California Street
San Francisco CA 94109
415-885-3201

Daily Screening Times:
November 13, 12pm & 7pm
November 14, 12pm & 2pm
November 15, 12pm & 2pm

Sample eCritique at the 11 Second Club

I'm sure you're familiar with the 11 Second Club - a monthly animation competition that follows in the footsteps of the late 10 Second Club. The prize for this month's competition, sponsored by AnimationMentor.com, was a critique by a professional animator, in this case, me! Here you can get an idea of what an "eCritique" looks like for students who enroll in AM's animation courses. Every week the mentors review the students' assignments in this fashion. It's a pretty neat setup, allowing the mentors to analyze students' work frame by frame and even draw on it. Students and mentors can be anywhere in the world (that has an internet connection), and there is also a weekly Q&A conducted live via webcam. Hope you enjoy the eCritique!

The Rat vs. the Dragon Slayer

The film "Beowulf" has been approved for submission for the Best Animated Feature Oscar by the Academy. You can read more about it here. I haven't seen Beowulf, and I usually keep my negative thoughts off of this blog, but I find this a disturbing development.

To my mind, submitting a motion-captured performance as "animation" is akin to submitting a heavily retouched photo as a "painting". Let me back up a bit and say that I'm not wholly opposed to motion capture (or "performance capture", as Mr. Zemekis would have me call it), just as I'm not opposed to Photoshop and digital collages; these technologies have their places. The fact that I have yet to see a compelling or life-like performance created with motion-capture is beside the point. The question becomes, "what is animation?" I'm sure that many animators worked on Beowulf to clean up the capture data, massage performances and animate non-human characters elements. But does this extra work beyond the raw capture data make it animation? Where do we draw the line between recorded action and creative animation? Between the retouched photo and the painting. The more I ask myself this, the more I realize that these are the wrong questions to ask, because the answer require a level of semantics that distracts from the more important question: "Which is the best film?"

As visual effects and digital cinema become more advanced the term "Animated Feature" loses its significance, at least when judging the merits of a story, because the line between performance and visual effects is becoming blurred. I believe the category of Best Animated Feature should not exist, because it creates an arbitrary distinction between mediums and ultimately ghettoizes animation into a separate category so that it can never compete for Best Picture. If you want to make distinctions, do it by genre, not by medium. Ratatouille is the best reviewed film of the year, but it will never compete directly against the year's live-action films because the Academy has it squarely seated at the kids' table.

But wait, there's MORE!

Going to be in the San Francisco area this Thursday, November 8th? Check out the new documentary, "The Pixar Story" at the 2nd SF International Animation Festival. It's a great film and an intriguing look at the genesis of Pixar. Yours Truly is the first face you see in the doc! Woohoo!

Director Leslie Iwerks will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A.

Screening Times:
6:45PM and 9:30PM

Location:
Landmarks Embarcadero Theater
One Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level
San Francisco, CA 94111
(415) 267-4893

More details and ticket info: www.sffs.org/events/index_series_sfiaf07.html

Oh, and by the way...

Cars is out on Blu-Ray today, too!

Ratatouille on DVD and Blu-Ray today!

Go get yours! Includes the short film "Lifted" and an new short, "Your Friend The Rat", which includes 2D and even some stop-mo animation!


Also available today, "Pixar Short Films Collection, vol. 1" on DVD and Blu-Ray. Start your Christmas shopping now!

2007 Animation Mentor Showcase

Check out the latest highlights of the work being done by students at AnimationMentor.com. I'm teaching there again this semester and I'm always amazed at the talent they attract.