An amazing reference sheet for animators (or amateur detectives) came across my desk this week: (click here for the full-size-readable version) An artist called Cedarseed compiled all of her notes on facial expression to create a "facial map" detailing the differences between emotional expressions! For example: the difference between a "sad expression" and a "blue expression" is that in the blue face the eyebrows are lower and the eyes' irises are partially covered by the eyelids, whereas in the sad face only the pupils touch the eyelids.
Cedarspeed analyzes 60 different expressions in this manner and offers a great starting point for any artist depecting a subtle expression. Of course, facial expressions are not universal (each culture may express the same feeling in different ways) and the accompanying body language can easily change the meaning of an expression. But for a quick facial cheat sheet, they don't get much better than this!
Moving right along! Came to a stopping point on many of the shots in this sequence so it is time to begin a new one. (and also deal with that couch, after all these years it has gotten old and needs to be replaced)
The movie was fun; imperfect but fun. But the amount of work put into the design and visual effects of the film is mind blowing. Especially considering how easy it is to forget that 95% of what you see is not real and was added later:
This also includes some of my favorite music from the movie. Congrats to everyone at Digital Domain who worked on this!
Today I learned about a man who changed the world and inspired people to take the same the same steps in improving both their physical and mental health as I have taken over the past few years. Yet this man gave his advice to a national audience over 50 years ago and spent a lifetime changing peoples' lives. Sadly, I am only discovering this man due to his untimely death at the young age of 96: Jack LaLanne.
Here are just a few of his numerous accomplishments: starting the first public gyms in America (now Bally Total Fitness), inventing leg exercise machines and pulley weight machines, hosting a fitness show for 34 years, performing 1,000 pull ups and 1000 jumping jacks in just over an hour, creating a vegetable juicer line still sold today, performing over 1,000 push ups in 23 minutes, swimming in handcuffs while towing 70 rowboats with people for over a mile... at age 70. This man could do straight-body finger pushups at age 90, a feat I just tried at a relatively fit age of 29 which nearly resulted in breaking all my fingers (I won't even attempt the one-handed version he did at age 50).
Even with all these amazing feats, what surprises me most is how his life advice from his 50's TV fitness show is still applicable today. This man knew what he wanted in life and chose to share his secrets to achieving happiness and longevity to everyone. And the fact that he happily lived to the age of 96 shows that there may be some merit to his teachings. Here are a few of my new-favorite inspiring videos:
Add color, update the outfits, and change the hair and these videos could be mistaken for current day "self-help" programming. The maladies he mentions, from obesity (from empty calories and man-made foods) to general happiness due to modern luxuries, still apply today. Even his primary rule of nutrition "if man made it, don't eat it" is the basis of many of today's popular diets (and the organic movement).
Thanks to constant technological improvements, scientific discoveries, and general generational gaps, I grew up with the (often erroneous) assumption that the older an advice on health (or self-help, finances, etc ) is usually wrong and I should only read the newest book with the newest advice. It is videos like these that remind me how little has changed throughout the years and that some advice is timeless.
Saw this video and found it quite interesting and vertigo-inducing. It is great reference for climbing, especially for those of you animating for first person games. And even though the video is just a small square on my screen, my body still cringes and reacts as if I was the one doing the actions:
Recently, a lost Mickey Mouse cartoon appeared from 1951 has been liberated from the literal Disney animation vault (not the fake one used to create artificial supply and demand). I love seeing seeing animation from this era in a non-finished form, the art behind the animation is in full view and we are left wondering why something like this has hidden away for 60 years. What is amazing is that the animation is 99% complete and the alleged reason the animators never finished was because the short was considered too long. Since the directors refused to cut anything out of it the fickle Disney execs just canned the crew and threw the animation into the vault with no intentions of anyone ever seeing it again. But 60 years later someone digitized the prints found in the vault and now Jack Kinney's Plight of the Bumblebee is available for everyone to see:
Update: or not :( That's the nature of secret animations, they appear and are pulled down faster than you can write about them. But now that the cat is out of the bag, it is bound to re-appear. When it does then it will be properly linked. Until then check out pics from the short here: http://afilmla.blogspot.com/search?q=plight+of+the+bumble+bee
I am a big fan of creative commercials, especially ones with technical feats that make you go "how did they do that?". Being in the visual effects industry and having worked on set for some visual effects shots by ILM, I try to dissect the videos to determine which techniques they used based on my own experiences. Some of the more interesting commercials (which really don't sell anything) are the Fantasy Football ones where players do outrageous feats (yet they could be "real" with enough skill and a lot of luck) in order to convince you to choose them from your fantasy team. Here are a selected few, see if you can figure them out:
I had my guesses on a few, and it turns out I wasn't far off. Once you figure out how they hand the balls in and hide the transitions it really isn't that difficult. Surprisingly, not as many virtual balls were used as I expected (ILM can create fake hand-held balls that you would not be able to tell the difference, but here all balls in hand are real). Here are the same commercials dissected:
Fascinating!
I was considering adding a sports category to my blog, but it seems my only sports posts tend to be funny commercials or science rants...
Finishing my mini-theme of dogs this week is this great reference video shot at 1000 frames per second. As an animator I am always looking for great reference that may help with a future shot, and having slow motion reference is invaluable. Even though we are animating video which plays at 24 fps we have to create it one frame at a time so seeing minor movements played slowly helps us create better animation. I would have never added a "floppy toe" overlap to a dog jumping, but seeing them at 0:39 helped me realize that there is so much more to add to a jump:
The short film: the art student's dream/nightmare. Almost every animation/film student creates a short film, either as their final project or for personal pleasure. For some, this is their dream - an opportunity to create and entire tale that is entirely their own and do with it as they please (a luxury that is not given to animators working on a commercial film). For others, the short film looms ahead as an impassable mountain; those animators just want scenes to animate and don't want the hassle of story creation/layout and the long nights of animating more frames than any sane person would volunteer for. For me, well... I was a little of column A, and little of column B.
Over the past year, I ran in numerous neighborhoods and parks and enjoyed my own improvements and triumphs over the time. A few months ago, my studies of running techniques brought my attention to some interesting facts: the human foot does not need a trendy, padded sole in order to run properly. Actually, the running shoe (a relatively recent invention), encourages people to run improperly by hitting with their heel first. The impact of this running style distributes force in correctly and hurts the knew and shin. The foot is built in a such a way that the ball and arch of the foot absorb the impact before spreading the remainder of the force to the leg. While padded shoes do absorb impact, the actual force placed on the knee is higher than when running barefoot.
I'm sure you are asking "We know that running barefoot is actually better for the legs, what do we do about it? Have you seen the ground outside? There is all kinds of stuff out there that can hurt our delicate little feet. What do we do?" Well, that is where the Vibram Five Fingers shoes come in:
These shoes let you feel the ground just like you were running on bare feet, but protect your feet from sharp objects and surfaces of varying temperatures. I've been running in them for a little while now and you really can feel the different types of ground beneath you. I will occasionally go off track and run on different surfaces to feel them out. And now, running on concrete sidewalks just doesn't work for me so I find myself searching for new paths that are a little gentler. Also, now that I feel every impact I naturally started running one the balls of my feet which has taken some time to get used to. The shoes also force your toes to spread apart into a more natural formation, up until now my pinky toe has been squished next to my "ring" and these shoes finally forcing to carry its (my) own weight. My full report on running with these shoes will appear later this week, but I highly recommend them!
When acting out dialog an animator (or actor) may tend accent every syllable or action with a pose or hand gesture. This is an easy trap to fall into because once we force ourselves to think and analyze conversations, especially when breaking it down to 24 fps, we no longer act "naturally" and tend to add movements and gestures no person would actually do in real conversation. You end up creating a scene with so many accents that nothing stands out and one which confuses the viewers, or worse, takes them out of the movie completely. Watch the clip below of Nic Cage over emphasizing:
"Not one time!"
Remember kids, overacting is bad! (Although it can be quite funny once taken out of the movie and shown to the world)
A few more gesture sketches from this week. Previously, I went to a coffee bar/restaurant a little too often so most of my sketches involved people sitting and drinking/eating. This time I took the sketchbook to a convention where people stood in line so I got a lot of good "shifting weight" poses. Now that it is officially spring, I will be spending more time outdoors where people congregate so more sketches are forthcoming!
One of my favorite possessions is my Signum Italian leather Sketchbook that I found in the back of a small shop in Florence, Italy (and that I couldn't convince myself to buy so someone I deeply cared about bought it for me as a surprise gift).
The sketchbook, along with it's fancy carrying bag, just oozes quality, to the point that I was hesitant to draw in it for fear of my work "not being worthy". Well this weekend that changed.
I am currently working my way through the two volumes of Drawn to Life by the Disney master Walt Stanchfield. One of the emphasis of the books is to focus on quick gesture drawings while in a public place. So I visited the local Barnes and Noble's coffee shop (with a great 2nd story view of the outdoor mall) and drew. I've been out of practice for gesture drawings for about 5 years so there is definitely a learning curve. But I am excited about getting back into it and re-developing my own style! Below you will find my sketches. Note that any sketch with a * is actually a "learning sketch" based on a drawing in the book. During the times that I ran out of subjects, or they were getting wary of a guy with a pencil constantly looking at them (I need to wear sunglasses), I would pass the time by sketching poses from the book. At this point I am better at quick sketching gesture drawings that someone else did than drawing my own from life, but this is only the beginning (and another theme of progression to add to this blog)! Practice, practice, practice!
On a side note, I must say I am really digging this leather book retro-trend. Some of my recent enjoyable nights involve curling up to a nice leather book, drinking Earl Grey (a Picardian influence from my childhood), listening to a nice passacaglia, and letting my imagination fly.
Well done, sirs, well done. I watch a lot of shorts every year but currently this is the best I've seen in a long time. The animation style, music, set design, mood, and story work together to create a beautiful piece of art. Now excuse me while I watch it again...
Looks good so far, although I was surprised about the inclusion of a few scenes in the trailer. While it is not the first poop joke in a Pixar movie (Nemo's "we're swimming in our own- 'Shhhhhhhh'!" comes to mind), the "Lincoln Logs" joke is the first time Pixar used bathroom humor in a trailer. Not really a fan. I do enjoy the "Nice Ass(cot)" line though, Pixar occasionally uses this joke pattern of saying something benign that sounds like a dirtier word (see the "sshhhhhh!" line above). Still odd to see it in the trailer. Finally, I didn't care for the "secret meeting" shot that (possibly) gives away the villains in the movie. It would have come much more of a surprise if that hint was not shown. Then again, it may be an intentional misdirection.
The Oscar nominations were announced this week and I definitely have my opinion of the "Best Movie" and "Best Animated Movie" nominations (more on that later though). But with all the hoopla about animated movies and dramas, the one animation category people forget about is the animated short film section. The mainstream audience (heck, even most animators) hasn't seen any of the films nominated and usually doesn't care about them. But if you are here then you likely know me and so it is my job to educate you (and myself) on the nominations so you can root for the one you deem "best". I am rooting for the Wallace and Gromit film ("Matter of Loaf and Death") and if you were a betting person you would too: A Nick Park film has never* lost the Oscar when nominated for either short or feature animation.
Sometimes the biggest difference between a joke being funny and a joke falling flat is the contrast used. The contrast can be in the timing (leaving a pause before the punchline/action), action (one movement among stillness), delivery (quiet lead-in to explosive delivery), character (see funny pairs: Laurel and Hardy, Felix and Oscar, Lucy and Ricky, Buzz and Woody, etc), or pretty much anything else in the composition and acting.
Watch the video below for a few extreme examples:
First of all, why is this funny? Contrast in Setting Why it works: The overall humor in the theme is seeing athletic giants performing their required actions (which require speed, precision, strength, and focus) in a state that is completely contrary to their norm (slow, tired, weak, and confused). Not only do they perform terribly, but the rest of the world is seemingly oblivious and carries on as if nothing is different. How it could have failed:If played realistically, this game would have been stopped within 5 seconds of someone collapsing to the ground in a drug induced stupor. As funny as it is to see players lumber around like idiots, it is the obliviousness of the rest of the world that pushes the humor. The contrast between our own reality and this fantasy game keeps us interested.
Contrast in Action Sleeping Man Why it works:One of the constants in this entire piece is the sleeping player on the field that contrasts the main subject. In every shot the sleeper appears the screen is full of movement (some of it small) yet he remains in the same position each time. He is the constant that keeps us "grounded" in the video as everything else around him changes. He may even get the biggest laugh by being featured as the only person on screen after the big hit at the end. His sleep contrasts our own reactions by being oblivious to the world we are laughing at. As the entire world collapses in chaos and pain around him he remains unaware and peaceful. How it could have failed: Not having him present would have changed the video into a collection of somewhat random mini scenes of crazy football players. Having him him move or react to the world around him (other than a small jump in his sleep) would have broken the contrast to the world around him and the viewer.
Contrast in Character/Emotion The Teams Why it works: When two or more characters share a scene and one character is "straight" while the other is "looney" you have humor: the goofy player interacting with the unfazed ref, the comparison shots of the offensive and defensive lines (serious white players, amused red players), the wiggling man and the stationary laugher (whose utter collapse the contrasts the stationary wiggling), and the happy, peaceful ball carrier vs. the serious and violent tackler. How it could have failed: Having both teams acting goofy would be amusing but not as much as with contrast. Some of the least funny scenes (in my opinion) are the shots of single players doing different actions. Maybe one or two work, but by the time we see the 4th red player twitch and fall asleep standing up we are tired of the gag. If a few of those scenes had a white player angrily staring at red player as he giggled/twitched/yawned/bit-his-tongue the scenes would be much stronger They could also cut a scene of a single white player being serious prior to cutting to the corresponding goofy player across from him.
Contrast in Timing Collapsing Man Why it works:A player laughs at the strange, fluid movements of his neighbor then suddenly collapses in the same manner. Yes, there is contrast in character between the shaking man and the pre-collapse man. Yes, there is contrast in action with their two stances. But the genius of this shot is the timing of the collapse. The player remains upright long enough for the viewer to survey the scene, laugh at the humor in the wiggling man's actions, and right when the interest in him wanes the "grounding object" of the shot collapses. Without the viewer realizing it, the seemingly normal player builds anticipation for the unexpected (he is the only character not acting abnormally) and once the humor wanes from the other element of the shot he rewards the anticipation by suddenly collapsing into a heap. How it could have failed: By immediately collapsing without giving the viewer a chance to interpret the scene. Or by waiting too long and collapsing after the viewer grew tired of the scene. A similar gag did fail too, as the Mascot also collapses in a similar fashion but it happens immediately when the shot appears. An earlier shot established the Mascot as being stationary but since he was not the main focus of the shot most viewers never noticed him. If the shot gave the viewers enough time to see all the elements in the scene before Mascot fell then the scene would be successful (although the spooning players add humor through contrast in reality) .
Contrast in Composition Running Man Why it works: My favorite shot, all the players are stationary (but fidgeting, except the sleeping man) and one player begin running in the wrong direction. What makes the shot work excel is not the contrast in action, but the contrast in the composition of the shot: We see the widest shot of the entire piece and the camera is stationary (just after tilting and shaking in the previous shots) when suddenly a very small portion of the screen has a major movement. How it could have failed: Yes, the contrast in action is funny, but if the camera was a close up shot and panned as the guy ran it wouldn't work. The humor is in the placement of the characters and lack of movement in the shot which is suddenly broken in a small portion of the screen.
These are just a few examples of how contrast in this commercial makes it as funny as it is, see if you can pick out more...
Living in the dorms we loved watching Family Guy. A few years after it was canceled you could find the entire series (at the time) for less than $30. Due to high DVD sales, probably to other college students like me, Family Guy was brought back on the air. But by the time new episodes aired (it can take a year to produce an episode) I had graduated and moved on to the animation industry. Suddenly I couldn't stomach Family Guy...
After focusing on animation, I saw how "cheap" Family Guy was. The writers literally wrote storylines that used the least amount of animation possible, sometimes freezing a pose for 30+ seconds or even randomly switching to live action sequences just so they didn't have to animate. Characters would shift to the same poses and freeze repeatedly while rambling awkward phrases that were only funny in a certain mindset. A job working as an animator on Family Guy did not sound like a good job, nor one that required much talent (at the very least the work stifled strong talent).
This week's episode involved a plotline where two characters visited different universes with versions of the Family Guy characters. One of those 'verses was a Disney-drawn universe:
If this was animated by the normal Family Guy animators (and not farmed out) then I am very impressed. And angry! If the animators can create this, then the producers need to allow more opportunities for animators to create high quality work! Yes, the final joke is crude and based on urban myths proven false. But the animation, for a TV show, is superb. I would love to see a Family Guy movie animated this well. It doesn't need the Disney character styles, but if the current character designs moved and flowed as well as they do here it could be a very entertaining movie.
The Robot Chicken joke afterwords is funny too, especially since the voice of Chris is the creator of Robot Chicken.
Saw the new Sony movie this week and absolutely loved it. The basic story structure held few surprises (no one is changing any formulas here) but the execution was flawless and the characters were highly engaging. Mr. T's character was the unexpected star and I love his animation.
Speaking of the animation, I love, love, LOVE this style. The characters move so fluidly and then stop completely and outrageous poses, something I've only seen done successfully in Pocoyo. Entire body part will contort 2-3x their normal size to emphasize the emotions/mechanics needed in the shot. The eyes (or, in the fathers case, the lack thereof) were superb:
And the colors... oh my, the COLORS... they really did a lot of warm color with cool shadows (or vice versa) and in some movies it can be overdone but it worked wonderfully in this film. The clouds in the scene above are a perfect example of this. And the following scene shows the fluid movement of characters in action. Flint doesn't just move to his next pose, he flows...
I must buy this movie a dissect it scene by scene when it comes out. I will likely post one on these scenes (if they aren't taken down first) in the near future, but for now I am just going to bask in their glory a little longer.
I really hope more movies adopt this UPA style, I must animate in it!
