Your Weekly Comments: Delivered

This week has been really testing my might in 3D, but I'm starting to really meld well with this new concept of art and animation.

I really enjoyed learning to use inverse kinematics. Makes so many jobs much easier in the long run, and animations smoother and easier to produce.

It's disappointing to know how difficult and how long it takes to make a humanoid model. But with Maya in my possession for another 3 years, at least I'll have time to master it.

What I learned most importantly is the relative style that Maya is built on. There's many different paths to reach the same conclusion which makes the software great for all kinds of animators.

I don't know whether I'll do 2D or 3D, but I'm definitely looking forward to learning how to lip synch.

I wrote my essay on Nick Park, and as a treat, I found a good excerpt from his student film A Grand Day Out featuring some of the best animation effects I've ever seen in stop motion. Seriously, they're really good!

It Only Takes a Few: Hooking the Audience

I am a cinemaphile at heart, and as such I do take my time to understand what goes into making a successful piece of film or animation. Here we'll be covering arguably the most crucial: The opening sequence. Chances are, the majority of your favorite movies have a strong, memorable beginning that really pulls you in and exposes you to the world on screen. The best movies are able to do this in a matter of seconds, and those first seconds are important in determining if an audience will get right into what they're watching, or lose interest over time and even stop watching.

-Preaching to the choir. Your production is gonna be aimed at some group of people, and no matter what that group is, you will always have to have elements that will specifically entertain them. This applies just as much to multi-aged audiences. Do you have sophisticated and thought provoking dialogue, comedic characters, or an intoxicating world? Well hold up now, because you still have to make sure your interpretation of anything you make has its own identity and personality. Star Trek and Star Wars are of the same genre and have similar ideas in many aspects, but they've both got their own unique characters and interactions, and situations to roll with. Don't fall into a pit of clones over an already well known and "superior" film.

-Look for the connection. People like relatable material and stories that can reflect some piece of their life, so make sure to get them invested in that as soon as you can. If you wait too long and just stick with focusing on secondary issues or unimportant events in your animation, you've just about lost whatever link you had. You need to expose a bit at first to give the audience a big enough taste to sit the rest of the time.

-Be unpredictable. The more you do that isn't expected is usually for the better. The best visual gags tend to be something that an audience would never see coming, and plot twists are extremely useful in the event of a drying continuation.

The deal with animation compared to tradition filmmaking is the fact that you have far more flexibility in what you can do with characters and environment. Because of that, I feel one needs to be most aware of the smallest details in making an animated feature, even more so that a real world piece.

Catering to your audience doesn't mean bending to their will. Remember, what you make is still yours. What happens is up to you and what you are happy with is what really matters. It's very important to have appealing features that many can enjoy, but your audience should not dictate your choices.

What caused us to focus more on these important movie elements in animation anyway?

New Ideas Through Old Ideas: Analyzing the Lego Movie

Let me first say that I still have yet to see The Lego Movie as of yet, and haven't been in a theater for months now, but from the trailers and critical responses, I can at least pick off some important information to discuss. With The Lego Movie, I'm seeing all kinds of great stuff from the perspective of an animator. Namely the use of stop motion and Lego bricks. For some reason they seem to work really well in that medium. So what has the movie presented to us?

-It's a ghost in the shell. No, not like the anime, but like the phrase, that we have the organic concept of using Lego bricks put into cinema, but done so through a large amount of digital 3D animation believe it or not! I do mean large part rather than entirely of course as smaller sets and elements do use real bricks to give that uncanny vibe we always have with stop motion. It's a cool concept that I haven't seen executed in anything before.

-Not too far down the uncanny valley there now. Yes it's done heavily with digital soft/hardware, but don't think the filmmakers haven't made sure the movie sticks true to our image of Legos. A "digital perfection" as they put it just doesn't seem right, so the inclusion of real bricks was important to show the real-world worn and well-played with look of real life Lego bricks. When you see the reflections and tiny dents or scratches in the bricks, it brings you to a more familiar, comfortable place. A good choice if you ask me.

-Great minds don't think all that much alike. People who are really really good at building with Legos tend to have very different methods from each-other, and with those different methods becomes a nightmare of conflicting efforts in making a movie composed entirely of Legos. This was proven as the team attempted to build a submarine collaboratively, but ultimately came out with a colossus of some kind of submarine mountain star destroyer war machine.

As someone who actually used to fool around with Legos daily, I'm still amazed at what the filmmakers did with this movie, and I still haven't even seen it. Combining 3D with other elements in animation isn't a very new idea, but with stop motion is certainly uncommon. I think we should see a little more of this in future stop-motion works. It could create a pretty cool experience.

I do feel the flaw of creative differences in building stands pretty tall in creating movies like this, but in the case of animation, this probably isn't a problem that hasn't plagued other efforts before.

Will we see more works done with real life and digital combinations?  I could only hope so.

Week... Ahh I lost coulnt

The year is half over, and I feel like a sort of professional. Kind of.

Working with Maya really is an experience since most kids won't see this program for another 2 years. Granted they're doing animation. Definitely a good point.

I did not enjoy the multiple issues I ran into going from PC to Mac in the competition project, which had me somehow duplicating with the move tool at one point.

I learned that 3D animation is really a completely different animal, although much more tame in many cases.

I'd love to learn how to properly map fur and hair soon.

And now for this week's thing: Remember rotoscoping? Of course you don't want to, but this one is just plain hilarious. Hope you like Double Dragon!

Cloudy 2: Pushing the Bar another 20 Feet or So

Sequels are just... geez, I can't even start out this blog with a good sentence on them. You either love or hate them. Or both I guess. Well, the bottom line is that in animation, it's a completely different process than with live action.

-Updates! Technology has advanced since the first Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, but not enough to invalidate the first movie. Character models and scene elements are recycled and refurbished in the new animation engine with polished textures, hair, and structures. It's always a good idea to recycle.

-Turning the volume to 11. With new tech comes more room to explore, and the animation team does just that. Taxing their machines to their limits, renderings which would be impossible just a few years ago are done with incredible effect. It's good exercise to keep testing your boundaries.

-You can't copy paste all of this stuff of course. Environments and scenes all have to be original and new. That means fresh concept art, and a whole lotta brainstorming and storyboarding.

It's really incredible to see how we do new things with just about every new major animation that comes out. I feel like before this class it was harder to realize the differences in fluidity and clarity in so many movies, but when I compare something like Toy Story 3 to the first movie, it's an incredible difference.

It really is a good habit to reuse what's still useful in future projects. Time and money is saved, and you can still impress and audience with the same stuff in a new situation.

The method into making Cloudy 2 is pretty professional if you ask me. How do other studios go about this?

Introversion Cinema

You know that Briggs-Meyers personality test that determines your behavior characteristics and social behavior? The terms 'introvert' and 'extrovert' have some bit of association, and have become pretty widely known as a result of it. Extroverts being socially outward and confident people, and Introverts being more reserved and laid back. So in our fantastic world of media, wouldn't the more socially outward people have more involvement with things like, I dunno, cinema?

-Introverts tend to have some really complex and well developed minds, not to speak less of the extroverts, but statistically you'll see more creativity and originality come from an introverted mind. When you're more contained to yourself, you tend to have more original ideas, whereas someone who is constantly among others will eventually, sometimes even unknowingly, borrow, or remake the ideas of others.

-Having space helps. Introverts like solidarity to some extent, and this is really good for focusing on work and getting ideas down clear and concise. No distractions, no suppression. The quiet and singular work space is a huge ideal, and it's the introvert's favorite environment.

-Going on and on and on. Introverts are pretty efficient people, and because they waste less energy, they can devote it to getting more stuff done to a higher standard of quality. Whereas the average extrovert may become exhausted from combining long conversations with odd bouts of work, the introvert has no fuel wasted and can work continuously to a better length of time.

It's quite clear in any work situation that we'll have a mix of personalities, and it's inevitable you'll have a combination of introverts and extroverts, which I believe is a good thing. Both types of people have qualities that are detrimental to getting a film done.

The idea of introversion does seem a little overlooked in the business world, likely because of the social emphasis a lot of jobs have. It should be better explained all types of careers with have both types of social behaviors.

So, what kind of help can we get from even more specific personality types? ESTJ? INTP?