Updated Caricatures Gallery

I've added a few new drawings to my Caricatures gallery, including this one of Carlos Baena:


These are mostly pics of other Pixar animators, so you might not recognize any of them.

Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode 2

These are simply too genius not to post. Some nice animation in them, too! Make sure you're not drinking any hot liquids while watching them...

Interview with me on Animated Views

Here's an interview I gave about WALL-E and Cars Toons, in case you care. And if that's not enough for you, the same site has an interview with Angus MacLane, Directing Animator on WALL-E and Director of the original short, "BURN-E", which is featured on the WALL-E DVD.

Coraline

Here are some sneak peeks at the upcoming stop-motion feature, Coraline. It's directed by Henry Selick ("Nightmare Before Christmas") and these documentary vignettes are beautiful to watch. I hope the movie is as good! Type in these passwords to access 6 different clips:

stopmotion
buttoneyes
moustachio
puppetlove
armpithair
sweaterxxs

Update: Here's the trailer!

Happy 10th Birthday, Blit!

I'm not sure of the exact date, but I'm pretty sure that I finished my first animation test of Blit Wizbok (who would late go on to appear in Alien Song) in November of 1998. I don't give Blit a lot of thought any more, but I have him to thank for getting me in the door at Pixar. Blit was modeled and animation in Animation: Master, which I loved using, but I haven't had a chance to touch it (or Blit) in years.

So I've been doing character animation for about 10 years now; looking back at this first clip, I'm happy to say I've learned a few things in that time!

"Up" trailer online

Update: See the HD version here!

Here's a trailer for the next Pixar feature. So far I'm not working on it... Yet...
Enjoy!

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.