Hi Jason! First off, thanks for having such a large web presence, I think your blog is the first animation blog I ever found (and it's great!). Not to mention the great animation work that you do!
So, I have a couple of questions: 1. Do you have any tips for high school students who want to "make it" in the animation industry one day? 2. Since you've let us know (sort of) what one of the shots you did in Over the Hedge is, that part of the movie (with RJ and Verne) there's a lot of stuff going on and a lot of camera moves. When you're animating, how do effects and camera movement affect how you go about doing it? For example, if I character is not in the shot for a split second do you bother posing it or do you animate everything like there is no camera to make the actions move beleavable? 3. I'm sure I'll have more questions soon...
1. You touched on this a bit in previous responses but, being a "self-taught" character animator, I was hoping you could talk about some of the specific people or events in your animation career that have really inspired or motivated you.
every day I get inspired by the other animators around me. I'm very lucky to have two incredibly talented animators both with different strengths sitting with me at work. Melanie Cordan and Cassidy Curtis both are super-talented, and so easy to work with. When I look at their shots I'm like "CRAP! I GOTTA LEARN HOW TO DO THAT!". So they super-inspire me all the time!
The first time I was really inspired to work in the industry was when I was 17 years old & saw Luxo Jr. at a film festival. I was blown away. I thought "holy.. oh my.. o boy.. okay.. this is what I'm going to do.." it just floored me.
Then, 13 years later I got a chance to meet John Lasseter while working in New Zealand (he is good friends with Randy Cook, the animation director on LOTR). I shook his hand and thanked him for inspiring me. He was incredibly gracious!
Another time I got to meet Brad Bird after seeing a movie here in SF. I didn't want to bug him, but my wife came up to him and said "This is my husband, Jason Schleifer! He's a huge fan of yours!" I was wearing my LOTR jacket, and he said "Oh, we were just in NZ! You guys did a great job" and was very kind. I think I drooled and giggled like a little school girl.
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2. On a more technical note... Why the hell are the Alias/Autodesk people so afraid of Quaternion rotations? I was using Quats in Animation Master back in '98! I just spent half a day sorting out rotate orders to get a rig to behave. Aaaugh! Such a waste of time!
haha I think the problem is what are people used to editing and how do you work with your curves. Does AM actually have curve manipulation that works in quaternian space? how does it work?
Rotation orders can be a pain in the butt.. but they can also be INCREDIBLY useful. Knowing how to use them is a huge huge huge huge huge thing that can really help (or hinder) the animator. I always spend a lot of time thinking about how I want the various body parts to bend.. I just wish that every node had 4 rotations instead of 3.
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Oh - One more thing. I totally feel your pain on the home renovations. My wife and I just spent three months without a functioning kitchen. We tore it down to the studs and redid everything ourselves (even the drywall). It's a kick-ass kitchen now and it's super-gratifying to know that we built it, but it was way more time consuming that I'd ever imagined.
yeah, we didn't have a kitchen for 4 or 5 months.. NOT fun!
The first time I was really inspired to work in the industry was when I was 17 years old & saw Luxo Jr. at a film festival. I was blown away. I thought "holy.. oh my.. o boy.. okay.. this is what I'm going to do.." it just floored me.
Awesome... That's exactly what I did! I saw it my senior year of high school and a few months later a teacher showed me this cool new software called "3D Studio" Up until that point, I was convinced I was going to be an engineer. Ha! I can't imagine doing anything else now.
haha I think the problem is what are people used to editing and how do you work with your curves. Does AM actually have curve manipulation that works in quaternian space? how does it work?
Yep... It's just like your standard curve editor except, instead of X, Y and Z, you've got (if I remember correctly, it's been a while) X, Y, Z and W. As an animator, it takes some getting used to but not having to worry about your gimbals is great. Of course, quats have their own limitations which is why it would be great to be able to switch back and forth, on the fly.
1. Do you have any tips for high school students who want to "make it" in the animation industry one day?
my biggest tip is to learn how to observe. One of the most important things animators do is observe the world around them. Not just watching.. this isn't a free pass to stare at your cute neighbor.. I mean learn to observe what people are doing.. see what it is that gets an emotion across. If someone's happy.. and you can see that they're happy.. what is it about them that makes that come across?
If someone seems uncomfortable, how can you tell?
when two people are in love, how do they communicate? do they touch? how do they lean towards each other? How much eye contact do they have?
Just observe and observe and observe and make notes.
also, DRAW.. every day! take life drawing courses and draw and draw and draw!
And, animate! animate a lot! a whoooole lot! just keep practicing. learn to accept critiques and grow with the crits, not fight against them.
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2. Since you've let us know (sort of) what one of the shots you did in Over the Hedge is, that part of the movie (with RJ and Verne) there's a lot of stuff going on and a lot of camera moves. When you're animating, how do effects and camera movement affect how you go about doing it? For example, if I character is not in the shot for a split second do you bother posing it or do you animate everything like there is no camera to make the actions move beleavable?
good question! if they're not in the shot because the shot doesn't have them in it at all, or the camera leaves them permanently, I don't worry about them after they're off screen (unless their clothing is still on screen, or their shadows will be seen). If they're just off for a few moments, I keep them alive, but don't spend a lot of time on them.
Usually the camera department will get a camera working roughly, then we'll animate, and they'll finesse it while we work. It's best when the camera is finished 100% tho.. makes it easier to cheat moves to make them look perfect.
Hi Jason, thanks for taking out ur valuable time for this.here's a bunch of questions : 1)I come from traditional animation and i m not a technical guy,in ur opinion, how important is for an animator to learn rigging and mel? 2)How do u choose between the acting choices that comes to ur mind ,for a shot?do u have a process of filtering the choices out? 3)how do u build an international appeal into the characters?people behave diffrently in diffrent parts of the world,the key to any art is observation.I get to observe people of my culture and country ,who have diffrent mannerism then anyone else in the world. 4)how important is it for u,to get away from cliche`s. I have a seen a lot of cliche`d moves in movies latelty. 5)Looking back at the recent releases from the major animation houses lately,the animation is top notch but i find the stories r not that great.Looks like they r being made just to release one movie a year.I'm talking about movies like chicken little ,shark tale here(this is just my opinion).stories that r being made here in asia have much better and original ideas ,like Spirited away.Disney has the same type of stories that they have been making,nothing out of the box there.What is your opinion on this?When do the industry majors in the westcome up with some thing out of the box?your views? thanks again
« Last Edit: June 22, 2006, 11:01:48 PM by tarun jain »
First of all I would like to thank you for the huge amount of inspiration you have given the CG community! It has been great following your progress as an rigger/animator! Now, enough of that nonsense
When not working I'm trying to find the time to animate as much as possible and hopefully become a better animator. My question to you is: How many people do you tend to show your animations to for critique and and are these people all professional animators?
I love showing my WIP in CG forums but sometimes I feel lost in all the different opinions.
Great questions and great answers. Trying to absorb it all the way to my cellular structure so that it permeates my very being!! Ok, that's a bit much.
I have another question for ya since it seems pretty light compared to other Q&A's you've done. When blocking a shot and hitting your major poses, do you ever come acorss a situation where you don't leave yourself enough space to get your character from place A to place B? For example, I was trying to animate a practice piece last year of a character who was acting drunk. He just had his "bell rung" from an explosion and his equilibrium was off. So I had him wobbling from spot to spot. But when I went to break down the steps inbetween there didn't seem to be enough room to get him where he needed to be and have the strides look natural. I hope that makes sense.
Also, if you have some animation that needs to be changed (it just isn't working) and it's smack dab in the middle of a zillion splined keys, how do you go about changing the motion. Do you edit the keys in Graph Editor? Do you delete the keys and start that section from scratch, tring to match the beginning and end of the other animation?
AND another one...it just occured to me, how many breakdowns do you do (on average) between your key poses before you convert to spline. I've read about some animators who key entirely in stepped mode until they have keys on every frame. CRAZY! But it gives them control over every frame of animation so the character is hitting each pose and the arcs are clean. Just wondering how many breakdowns you add.
Thanks and congrats on the new (impending) edition to the family!
Art
« Last Edit: June 23, 2006, 04:51:14 AM by Art Curry »
thanks for sharing this!!! and all the other cool things you write about, I just finished reading the thread, and I was expecting... to see 10 times the number of pages...
so let me ask some more stuff, since it's not too crowded...
1. How do you deal with... microscopical motion, when you need to adjust just a tiny tiny bit of something, but especially when you have to adjust a ton a tiny tiny bits, frame by frame... like when working on a moving hold... and translating or rotating the joint is by default tooooo much. Is there a way to do it in Maya, like entering a "slow-mode", where you could move things slower than usual...? I have a pen and tablet, and I still find this difficult to do (in "normal-mode", where a tiny hand movement equals a relatively significant translation/rotation of that joint).
2. I can't believe nobody asked about working on Gollum's face (maybe too many have asked this before...?...) - how long did you work on an expression, how hard was to get an expression right, how hard was to get things flowing right, how did you handle all that detail, how much knowledge of anatomy did you have at that time, how was everything organized - what kind of workflow did you have, how does it compare to other facial rigs you've used since?
3. Can you talk a bit about the facial rigs in Madagascar? I presume they're a combination of techniques, joints, clusters, blendshapes... but could you elaborate a bit on that, if you're allowed to... like what exactly were the clusters used for, or to what extent they used blendshapes (for correcting shapes only?)...
4. To get back on my older question you've answered a few days ago... how... really, man, oh, it... wow, aaaaah... duuuuuude, how in the world do you animate furry faces without being able to preview the furry end result...?
Thanks Jason, for answering, for sharing the knowledge, for the rigging DVDs, for the great advices and all the awesome stuff you do for the animation community!!!
Yo jason, thanks for the reply earlier, right now I'm working on a short for myself. And finally finished lighting the set ,camera set up and the characters 4 kids and a teddybear a little girl carries are waiting to start. So I'm really siked to animate finally, I have ref vids of the actions in the shots ,an animatic >>>http://hganimation.blogspot.com/ its "the haunted house" A goonies type adventure story. And right now I'm doing the 3d animatic, there is no camera moves just fades, no dialouge heard (2 shots character saying something to be understood in pantomine) the rigs are simple ik-fk, the teddy bear has splines and clusters to control his dangle. My delimma was how to approach this group animation , they will all be moving on the own momentum of thinking and subtle movements. (stepped key each character and eyeball varied movement?) can you give out a good work flow? any help is appreciated.
It's been great seeing your lectures on AM as well as listening to some of your crits, kudos.
As a husband and a father i am always concerned about quality of life at a given studio. I moved from on-set film production to post-production because i was working 15 hour days, 6 days a week, and was physically exhausted. Since i've been in the game industry i've managed to stay with companies that believe it's important to schedule properly and manage the overtime and crunch times so that the artists don't burn out. However, I've heard plenty of horror stories about other companies and I know that it's something that appears to be "the norm" in film/TV/game production.
So my question to you is, how would you characterize you quality of life at PDI? and the same question for Weta?
Obviously working weekends and working past midnight can be something that is brought on by the individual (ie. endless tweakers; slow workflow; perfectionists) but in some cases it can be the director or the studio that forces the situation (re-writes, date changes).
In your experience, would you say that the workload/hours of your fellow animators was within their own control, or more in the control of the directors/studio?
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