What Have I Learnt So Far From Aardman?

I was wondering what I should write about for my next blog post, and whilst browsing through my Learning Diary of what I've learnt on my Character Animation course at Aardman (yes, I do keep a diary of all the things I'm learning each week...is that tragic?), so thought I'd share with you some of my biggest learning triumphs (or Eureka Moments, as we've affectionately started calling them) from the first couple of weeks. So, here they are:
 
1) Lines of Actions and Posing.
If you have good poses, you will be on the way to making good animations. Life Drawing has really helped developed my eye for posing a character, and ultimately creating the right feel for weight and balance. Finding the lines of action in the body, and putting them into my characters have really improved the way that I'm working, and ultimately animating!

Some of my simple Lines of Actions Drawings

2) Check the Silhouette.
It's all very well posing a character, but does that pose tell your story? If you're not sure, check the silhouette. Is the body shape that has been created readable to the viewer? Is the attitude of the character clear? A simple way to check, is to look at the silhouette and simple ask friends or colleagues what they think is going on. As long as you haven't set up any lights, a super simple way to check your silhouette in Maya is to press 7! Easy!

3) Favouring.
If you're transitioning a character from A to B, a much nicer way to pose the body is to make the lines of action in the body favour one side, over the other. So, if you're moving across a plane, lean back from where you came from, then as you cross the half way point, maybe lean towards where you're going, or still towards where you came from...but just don't create a straight line in the middle...ever (well, hardly ever, at least)...it's boring.

4) The Bouncing Ball is Everywhere!
If you've studied animation, undoubtedly, you've animated the bouncing ball. It is a vital part of the animation learning process. The bouncing ball is everywhere. One of my biggest eureka moments, was realising that the bouncing ball is all throughout the body. Especially in the pelvis, or the hips. Of course, it seems obvious, but it wasn't until my tutor pointed at the hips on my rig, and simply said "there is your bouncing ball", that I realised. Keep dem hips moving and a'bouncing!

5) Plant Your Feet.
This is another obvious one, put if you're going to be shifting your character's weight, to make it convincing, make sure the feet are firmly planted to the ground. They can't be floating or sliding. They need to be solid, and supporting the weight, before any weight is moved. Got it? Good!


I'll add more snippets of my learning in another post soon, but for now, that's all...hopefully you can take something away from this. If you do, drop my a line and let me know, and let's share the glory of learning!

Cheers
Marc :)

Personal Development, Continual Improvement...and Aardman!

Back in May 2014, I applied to join a Character Animation course with the National Film & Television School, based at the Aardman studios in Bristol. I didn't really feel very confident in getting a place, but this summer, I was invited onto the course! Right now, we're half way through, with another six weeks to go.

I ummed and ahhed about whether I was doing the right thing in becoming a student again, but right now, today, I know it was one of the best decisions I've made in regards to developing my animation career. The skills I had already acquired were a great starting point, but now I really feel like they're being polished and honed even further.

The course content is fab - whilst working through weekly assignments, we take part in life drawing classes, acting classes, as well as numerous masterclasses from professionals in the industry, such as Aardman's Nick Park and Dreamwork's Shelley Page. In our first week, even the legend, Glen Keane came in and talked to us about his new project "Duet". Needless to say, we're being inspired left, right and centre! I had to pinch myself when I realised that at one point, I was in the same room as Peter Lord, Richard Williams and Glen Keane!

My fabulous Duet print, signed by animation legend, Glen Keane.

At some point, I'll add the work I've been doing to this blog - at the moment though, it's all a bit rough and in need of some more edits and refinement. For more updates, you can always subscribe to my blog, or look out for me on twitter.

Excitedly yours,
Marc

How to Animate a Car...

Well, I'm not expert to assume that I can teach someone how to animate a vehicle...but I did a car this week...it's not bad.

The toughest part for me, was to work out where to put the squash the stretch. Although it's a solid object, you still need to add performance elements to give the overall piece some flow.

The car rig is a nice little piece of kit - it came with a good squash functionality, as well as being able to lift up the bonnet and boot...very nice touches!

I used reference from the gazillion clips that are on youtube, of cars screeching doing stunts and 180 slide turns.

There are still a few tweeks here and there that I want to do to it...but for now, it's not that bad. What do you think?

Spider!

One of my latest animations has been a spider. I wasn't too keen when I first got the rig, this beast brought out an irrational arachnophobic feeling in me. So, immediately I turned him bright pink, and that was fine!

The assignment was to animate the spider on a walk cycle and add some sort of performance. I did two. Weirdly, and most interestingly, the two animations are very similar. One appears more playful, one more vicious. It's amazing what colours and additional set items can do to tell a story - or rather change a story.

Here's the first one, Playful Spider:

 

...and here's the second, Vengeful Spider:

 

See what I mean about them both being very similar? The only real differences are colour, lighting and "prey".

You should also be able to see how much more professional the second animation is? This is because it was the first animation I did as a proper render! From trawling various animation forums, I found a link to this really smart app called "Zeitraffer". Basically, it takes images and puts them together a your desired frame rate, and makes a movie clip. It's so simple. Best thing is, it's FREE!

Righty...off to do more animation now. I love receiving comments, so please let me know what you think...or just say hi!

Thanks :)

My Trotting Horse

Here's the latest installment in my Animation learning. My 22nd assignment with Animation Apprentice was to take the horse rig, and make him trot. We've done the walk cycle, so now it's time to make him move a bit faster.

What do you think?

Some Mental Ray Renders to Salivate over...

On Wednesday, I posted a playblast of my latest Animation assignment, with Animation Apprentice. I've had a look at some renders, and have come up with these.

Don't they make the whole thing look so much better? When the scene is fully finished, I'll render the whole thing out properly, but until then, I'll leave you to drool over these...

How's the Animation Training going?

Me, where the Animation dream got
reawakened, back in 2009.

Things have been moving on for me at a nice pace! I must say though, being honest, for anyone that doesn't have a lot of experience in VFX, doing the Maya course with Escape Studios and doing another course with Animation Apprentice is a lot of work...especially juggling a regular job at the same time.

I've nearly finished with Escape Studios now (it's flown by), only 4 weeks left, but still have a good few weeks left with Alex at Animation Apprentice. If I had to do it all again, I would probably start off with Animation Apprentice, and maybe do a self-learning online Maya course, in my own time to up my skills.

The tutors at Escape are really lovely, and incredibly talented. However, some classes at Escape were, dare I say, I tad boring as we were learning things that bared no resemblance to anything I actually wanted to do with my career (of course, they were useful things to know about, but felt like teaching a drummer how to play the guitar)...but more recently, at Escape, we've been looking at Animation, it's not a patch on what I'm doing with Animation Apprentice. I recommend the course with Alex at AA, 100%!

I'm not phased by what the future holds...yet. I know jobs are few and far between in Animation, but I'm positive and optimistic. I really enjoy Animation, and feel that I'm being true to myself by taking the bull by the horns and retraining to do a completely different career in something I longed for as a child.

I'm leaving work in a few weeks...eeeek...although I will be back and forth, and doing some hours to tide me over, until a job opportunity comes up... I need to take the step and spend more time on my animation and show reel and really focus on landing that dream job! Very exciting! Kinda nerve-racking! Definitely fulfilling!

Books for Animators

I hear all the time, from friends and colleagues, which are the best books for Animators?

The response tends to lean towards a response of "just google what you're looking for" - this is especially the prevalent answer, when asked for the best books to help understand Maya. Maya gets updated every year, so it makes sense to steer away from buying specific books to help with why-won't-keyframes-move-in-the-graph-editor questions.

There are LOADS of great books out there, that become like bibles for animators. Everything from Disney sketchbooks, to the ultimate Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams. So...I made a page especially for them. Take a peek and let me know what you think: Books and Gifts for Animators

Week 12 of Animation underway!

Gah! I can't believe it's been a month since I blogged last! Sorry!

My mind is bursting with ideas for animations and my showreel. I'm not quite half way through the course with Alex Williams and Animation Apprentice yet, so there's lots of time for more ideas to marinade.

I've been working on weight shifts, jumping, showing weight in animation and overall getting a feeling of reality into my work, by how weight and balance works in an environment. Here's a simple weight shift that I animated (note, everything I'm posting currently is still in rough, and not showreel ready...still lots of work to do).

 

The rig is by Raveen Rajadorai at Creative Crash. It's remarkable how more observant I am becoming. For instance, when someone switches weight from one foot to another, I never really considered the two steps often used, I thought it was just a case of switching the hips. I look at people walking too, in a new way, I'm thinking "How are they carrying their weight? How much do they bend their knee? Is their chest rotating as they walk? Is their head still or moving with the motion?". Doing this animation course has given me new eyes!

Here's another weight based exercise I have done. The suicidal flour sack! I enjoyed animating this, although I found the rig quite tricky to work with. I love how you can get so much character into a relatively ordinary, plain and every-day object. This rig is by key_framer at Creative Crash.

 

A Proud Piece of Animation

I am bloody loving animating! I've created quite a few small pieces, but none of them are really showreel yet - still lots of tweaking to do.

Here's something I'm working on - it's still work in progress, so still some work to do - but I'm happy to show it at this stage.

I took a rig of a big "heavy" character, that comes armed with a machine gun - so typically this is the sort of character you would expect to find roaming the darkened streets killing everyone in sight...so, I decided to turn the character on its head - and give him an effeminate twist. Let me know what you think :)

An Animator's Life for Me...is a Busy One!

Apologies I haven't been on the blog much...the work at Escape and Animation Apprentice is keeping me very busy! If I'm not at work, I've either good my head in a tutorial, or book about animation (...or watching the latest episode of the British Bake-Off...obviously)

I was hoping by now I would have something to show you, that would be show-reel worthy...but alas, I'm not THAT good yet. I have a couple of walks that are proving a success, but still need a bit of tweaking.

I keep seeing trailers for animated films...needless to say, it starts me fantasising about working as an animator in a studio one day. This one in particular caught my eye, Wreck-It Ralph...the latest Disney, and it looks amazing...One day.

My First Ever Piece of Animation

I've done it! I'm so excited! I've done my first ever piece of animation!

I animated a ball bouncing down some steps. It wasn't all that hard actually. Finding my way around the programme was fine, and the tutorials from Alex were very comprehensive and easy to follow. I came a bit stuck when I needed to add some more key frames to my Y axis (don't you just hate it when that happens), but I managed to work it out. So, now I'm just waiting for feedback.

The most simplest thing, was getting the ball. You can't just animate any polygon shape you create. It has to have certain properties that are defined in a rig - which is basically the framework to tell the animator what bits can be moved and how. So, the ball I animated can squash and stretch from the top of the bottom, without losing it's mass. Very clever.

We used a site called CreativeCrash.com which is free join, and allows you use rigs added to the site from it's members. Brilliant, isn't it?

An Animator's Life for Me

I started the animation side of the course this week. I'm on week1 and really enjoying it. The tutorials are engaging and interesting - its so cool seeing images from Disney films I grew up watching, then hearing Alex say "this is the shot I animated from the Lion King" ...it blows my mind a little bit!

Dare I say it, but I'm enjoying this side of my training, so much more than at Escape. It goes to show how some people can relate and respond to different presentation and teaching styles. As I'm writing this blog about to go to Escape, I'm thinking "what will I get shown today, that I won't be able to do". Hmmm - I'm not sure if that says more about me or more about the confidence being given to me as I learn - probably the former.

I'm not sure if I've already mentioned in a previous post, but I emailed the training support coordinator (I think that's their title, basically the person who did our mini induction at the studios) about me not being able to see properly - I'm pretty sure no one in the back row can either, to be honest - but I've not heard anything back. Grrrreat! I was talking to friend about it, it's kind of got to the point where it's gone too far to make a point of it in class...kinda awkward. I'm just going to play it by ear and make sure I'm getting value for money - this course ain't cheap!

So, back to the animation, I'm probably about halfway through the first set of tutorials and I've already been set a deadline and have to submit a shot, how cool is that? I can't wait to get on with the rest of the tutorials. I'll see if I can post a few bits as I go.

We've also been set another text to get hold of...needless to say it's straight on my amazon wishlist.

Why Animation?

I had a really good time at Escape last night - the modelling is making more and more sense with each session. I also discovered that sitting at the front of class, was a hell of a lot easier to follow what's going on...all this time, and now I can actually tell that there is text on the front screen!

Our tutor explained how this type of work can be demanding and gruelling, and some students start at 9:30 in the morning, and often don't leave until 10pm (this didn't phase me one bit, in my "day job" I hold my first meeting at 7:30am, and often don't leave the office until 8pm, and often work weekends too). He went on to say that this type of job has to be more than "just doing a job" - working in 3D, has to something that you need to do.

It reminded me of the advice, from a lady called Cecily, who was on the panel of auditioners at a Drama School in London. She would ask the auditionees why they wanted to be actors, but there was only one response that she regarded as "the right one": "I don't want to act, I have to act".

Image credit: 
http://www.animatormag.com

It got me thinking about why I want to animate.

When I was little, at Infant school, I distinctly remember having to draw a picture of the job we want to do when we grow up. I wanted to be a Clown (...don't ask). Then shortly after, when I went to Junior school, I decided I wanted to be an Animator. I was obsessed with cartoons, drawing, painting, anything art related. I became an avid viewer of Rolf's Cartoon Club and shows like Art Attack. 

Growing up, Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, was my hero - I would draw pictures of Garfield all day long. I would be given Garfield books as gifts, and I would paw over each page. It was from my love of Garfield and watching my recordings of Garfield and Friends, that I knew that I wanted to make cartoons. I wanted to become an Animator. I was given stacks and stacks of books on Animation. Everyone at school thought I was bonkers and didn't understand why I didn't want a "proper job".

As I got older, I got completely distracted by drama and theatre. I still kept my art up, but all aspirations to animate disappeared. Theatre was my life. At university, I didn't want to give up on art completely, so did a combined degree in Theatre with Art. When leaving uni, I worked on some shows, and sold my art, whilst working in the family business for a day job.

I held my own art shows, and worked on 3 professional theatre productions (2 in the West End)...I am lucky enough to say I achieved 3 of my dreams in one job (long story, for another post, probably). After that, I began to think "...What now?"

I love Disney, but had never been to Disneyland. My partner is also a massive fan and had been to the parks many times. In 2010, I booked us a long weekend, Disneyland Paris, for a birthday treat. It wasn't until we went through the Animation zone (the big blue Mickey Fantasia hat), that all my memories and affections for animation came back. Then we sat at the little Mickey Animation desks (you know the kind, with a big square, backlit section to trace through) and a guy taught us how to draw Winnie the Pooh. Then, at that moment, drawing on the desk, I knew it was what I had to go for my earliest childhood dream.

I don't want to Animate, I have to Animate. 

It's sinking in...

It's been a busy week. Work (day job) is gearing up for one of its busiest times of the year, and obviously I've cut my hours, to dedicate time to learning how to become an animator. I've got lots of plates spinning, but I'm cool with that...I'm pretty good at keeping everything afloat.

I had a great class at Escape on Tuesday night. We finished off our bottles with texture and colouring, and moved on to the next project. At first (as you could probably tell) I was quite nervous and daunted by what I had let myself in for, I felt like I had put myself well and truly in the deep end, but now I'm feeling more and more like I can start taking the armbands off, and float with more ease.

I've figured and excepted that the course IS going to be tough, but as long as I ask the right questions, or know where to look to find the answers I need, and as long as I keep up with the work, and put effort in, in my own time, I'll get there.

Escape recommended a couple of website to keep an eye on, and join their forums - apparently the people are helpful, and it's a good space to learn things from each other. I need to check out:

1. www.vfxtalk.com/forum/
2. forums.cgsociety.org 
3. www.2-popforums.com

So, consider those well and truly on my "to click" list

My Maya tutor is helpful at keeping us all on track, but I don't panic if I missed something, I just make a note, and refer back and find out what I need to know. If you're thinking about doing a course like this, don't forget a notebook and pen - incredibly foolish, I forgot on the first day, but managed to transfer my notes in time for the second class.

Today, I also got a glimpse of the modules I'm going to be taking for my actual animation training, I'm really excited and can't wait to get going!