"It Gets Better" — Love, Pixar

This video didn't make me cry. I have... Allergies. That's it!

CTN Animation Expo this weekend

The 2nd annual CTNX is being held in Burbank this weekend.  I'll be there, will you?  There will be lots of great panels and demonstrations; I'll be on a panel on Saturday called "Tools of the Trade of a Successful Animator Yesterday Today and Beyond" along with fellow Pixarians Carlos Baena, Aaron Hartline and Michael Makarewicz.  The moderator will be none other than Andreas Deja!  I'll also be hanging out with the AnimationMentor crew; they're hosting a happy hour on Saturday night.  I hope to see some of you there!

Pixar Success

Animation Mentor is hosting an article discussing Toy Story 3 and the work done on it by AM mentors and alumnus.  Included are Aaron Hartline, Matt Strangio and myself.  Enjoy!

Cars 2 trailer online

Here's what I've been working on for the past year or so (and will still be working on until around April).  There are actually quite a few of my shots in this trailer, which I've never had happen before.  Mostly Mater stuff, including his "average intelligence" line and his karate move.

I've already done quite a bit of footage on this show, but now that I'm a Directing Animator and we're heading into crunch, I probably wont be doing too much more.

My Toy Story 3 reel

Now that Toy Story 3 is out on DVD, Bluray, etc. (at least in the USA) I can show you some of my contributions to the film.  I also did a lot of pre-production test animation, but I can't show that here.  Maybe some of it ended up on the DVD; I haven't watched the extras yet!  Anyway, here's the reel, which is about 2 minutes:

And here's a breakdown of the reel:


Operation Playtime - I was responsible for Buzz, Woody and Slinky in these shots.  This sequence was actually completed much later in production, and it was my first time animating these characters.  I found the experience pretty intimidating, and up to this point I had requested to animate the human characters instead.  I think I have a good feel for Woody, but Buzz is always a challenge.


Welcome to Sunnyside - I did all the humans in the first two shots, but I spent most of my energy on Bonnie, as this was her introductory scene.  I referenced my own kids a lot for inspiration.  I had to shoot a LOT of video reference on this film, because I'd never animated such naturalistic humans before.  Getting Bonnie to walk on her knees was kind of a pain because her rig wasn't really built to do that, but I really liked the idea.

In the later shots with Lotso, I animated only Lotso, not Big Baby or the classic characters.  Lip sync on him is really tricky because he doesn't have a tongue, lips or teeth.

Bonnie Playtime - this stuff was really fun to do, and again, I shot a lot of video of myself for reference.  At the time I thought I was pushing the squash and stretch in the face pretty far, but looking at it now I think I could have pushed it further.  This is a pretty typical experience for me.  I did NOT shoot video reference for the running and jumping on bed shot; I decided to work that out procedurally.  I animated in a layered workflow, starting with just her root translates to get the weight and timing of the shot.

I See Andy - I animated Andy and his Mom, but NOT the dog (that was done by Mike Stocker).  This was my first sequence on the film, and definitely the hardest.  I've never shot more video reference for any other scene that I did for this one.  I knew I would have to do a lot of research to pull off convincing full-body humans, and having them pantomime a conversation on top made it even more challenging.  I think I blocked the scene 3 times before I hit on what the director wanted.  It's a shame the characters are so far from camera...

Spanish Buzz - These shots were also hard, but for a different reason.  Trying to find the right balance of cool, crazy and love-struck for Buzz took a lot of work.  We were all animating in the shadow of Carlos Baena's scenes of Spanish Buzz, and I was just trying not to screw up what he had started!  I actually animated these shots to a different voice recording, then when the final actor was ADR'd in, Carlos helped to clean up the lip-sync.  The slo-mo turn of Jessie was fun; I referenced a lot of shampoo commercials for that one.

Goodbye Andy - I didn't animate Andy in the first two shots, but I did all the rest.  The animation on Bonnie's parents isn't the greatest, I know.  I was hoping the audience would be focused on Bonnie, because she's what I spent my time on.  I was glad to get to do a lot of Bonnie work on this film; it's satisfying to feel like you had a hand in shaping a new character, and she will always make me think of my own daughters, who inspired her performance.  For the final shot I was given the freedom to figure out how she and Andy would play together, which was fun.  Getting Andy to fall back and raise his legs up like that was a real technical challenge.  Looking at it now the spacing on his legs feels off, but otherwise I'm pretty happy with it.  Note the Totoro toy sitting at the base of the tree.  That felt like the best place to put him.

The McGurk Effect

This goes to show how important it is to hit those "b" and "f" shapes in your lip-sync animation. Fascinating stuff!

Interview with Toy Story 3 director and writer on NPR

Terry Gross interviews Lee Unkrich and Michael Arndt on Fresh Air.

11 Second Club eCritique

Every month they hold an animation contest over at 11secondclub.com, and the winner gets a free AnimationMentor ecritique of their work by one of AM's mentors.  This month's winner is Jim Kachelries, and this month's guest mentor is yours truly.  You can see my critique of his (really nice) shot here.

World's smallest stop-motion film

Thank you, Aardman!  Be sure to watch all the way to the end:

Animation Mentor 2010 Student Showcase

Speaking of great new student animation, here's a highlight reel of some of the latest AM student work, including shots from a wonderful short film by recent Pixar hire, Jude Brownbill:

Gobelins films

It's time for the next annual batch of beautiful short films from the students of Gobelins in Paris.  Note: some of these may be Not Safe For Work.

Duel

This was posted to YouTube almost a year ago, but it's new to me. Hope it's new to you, too! Wonderfully simple staging, and clear acting with rudimentary characters. Notice how the timing and the line of action differs between the two duelists, and what that tells you about their attitudes.

Friday awesomeness

This is the only Clash of the Titans remake I approve of:

Thanks to Lineboil for the find.

Rough animation from Chomet's "The Illusionist"

I always love seeing good rough pencil animation, which is why I've subscribed to Pencil Test Depot (and you should too!).  Recently they've featured some clips from the film The Illusionist by Sylvain Chomet, who also directed The Triplets of Belleville (Belleville Rendez-Vous).  I confess I haven't seen Illusionist yet, but it sure looks beautiful, and I'm glad to see 2D animation of this caliber is still being done!

Scottish Drunk Rough from Victor Ens on Vimeo.

Sensology

I normally don't go for experimental animation (or experimental jazz) but I found this clip to be mesmerizing.  It's by animator and auther Michel Gagné, whose style you may recognize, if from no other place than the visualizations of flavors in Ratatouille. He also had a hand at designing some of the VFX in The Incredibles. He's got a wonderful sense of design, timing, and entertainment, all of which come through in this short clip. You can learn more about Michel and this clip over on Cartoon Brew, where I found it.  I suggest you watch it full screen in a dark room, and turn it up!

Perfect Imperfection

Over on Cameron Fielding's "Flip" blog there's an interesting article that analyzes arcs and spacing in real life vs. animation.  He has some really great examples of how "dirty" arcs and spacing can be in live action footage, and how this extra level of detail could bring more realism to your work.  I know I'm definitely guilty of over-polishing my arcs and spacing (and splines) from time to time.  Of course these are all choices we make based on the style of animation for a particular production and our intent in a given scene.  The info in this article wont apply to everything you do, but it's a valuable exploration of natural physics.  I also find it interesting how the arcs and spacing in the dance footage are much more "animation-like", which makes sense because I've always thought of dance as stylized movement, much like animation.  Anyway, enjoy the article!

Congratulations AM graduates!

This weekend I had the honor of attending another graduation ceremony for classes 15 and 16 of AnimationMentor.com.  It was also the 5th anniversary of the school, which I am proud to have been affiliated with since it's launch in 2005.  The gala event was held and the gorgeous Palace of Fine Arts Theater in San Francisco, walking distance from the Presidio (home of ILM and the Walt Disney Family Museum).  If that wasn't cool enough, the commencement speaker was none other than Lee Unkrich, director or Toy Story 3.  It was great to see all the excited graduates and meet a lot of my students face to face.  Congrats, guys!

Dan the Man

I just love this:

Clever use of a specific animation style, good storytelling, and a great ending!

New course at Gobelins

I've often posted clips of student work from the french animation school Gobelins on this site.  I'm consistently impressed by their originality and technical skill.  Apparently they didn't even have a specific course for CG Animation, even though they produce lots of it!  Well that's changing as of this September, and they've asked me to mention the new course on my blog.  More info below:

Call for entries: GIRAF Independent Animation Festival

The folks at Quickdraw Animation in Canada asked me to pass this along:

Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival (GIRAF)
Wednesday, Nov 3-7, 2010
at Plaza Theatre, Calgary, AB

Call for Submissions

The Giant Incandescent Resonating Animation Festival is the only exclusively independent animation festival in Canada, with a focus on experimental and self-produced animated film. GIRAF plays an essential role in the promotion, education and appreciation of independent animation from around the world, exposing hungry local audiences to the best animated content from at home and abroad.

Important Note: Submission deadline August 2nd, 2010

Visit

http://www.giraffest.ca/