On July 17th, Keith Lango will be participating as the next "Pro" here, in the Ask The Pro forum. For one week, he will be answering questions from you.
Keith has been a professional CG artist/animator for over 12 years. His experiences range from freelance illustration to feature film animation, CG Supervisor, animation supervisor, animation director, director and production manager and nearly all points in between. He has screenwriting credits and voice work credits to go with that list. Studios that Keith has worked for over the years include Big Idea Productions, Blur, ReelFX and DNA Productions as well as a wide variety of freelance projects. He's worked with such properties as 3-2-1 Penguins!, VeggieTales, Gi-Joe, Mickey Mouse, KidsWB, Robots, Willy Wonka and the soon to be released feature film "The Ant Bully". Commercial clients include companies such as Coca Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Uniden, McDonalds & more. His animated short films have received worldwide distribution and won acclaim and awards for years, including his work as story editor and pre-production director for the Academy Award nominated "Gopher Broke". Additionally he is the co-author and co-illustrator of the children's book "The Great Cheese Squeeze: A Gruntly and Iggy Adventure" published by Harper Collins/Zondervan. His animation tutorials have been used by thousands of learning animators around the world and he has served as a guest lecturer at some of the world's top animation schools. Keith is currently functioning as the founder & chief creative force behind kLango Animation Studios, LLC, an animation training, coaching, consulting and production firm with a long range vision to develop positive content for audiences around the world. Keith also likes cheeseburgers.
The forums are closed for everyone except Keith until Monday morning.
Hey Keith, thanks for being a pro in CGchar's "ask the pro"....are you in Braszil now?
i was wondering if you could give us some tips on acting, on making the character alive and real, for making a character that the audience would root for, i know there isnt any "one route for all" advice as to every character has his own set of rules and history, but again, every animator has his own bag of tricks that he gathers throughout his career and i was wondering if you could share some of that with us.
What are the main differences from cartoon animation and realistic?, do you think that is so difficult to learn animate caracter more realisticcally , for who have animated just toon stuff? and viceversa realistic to cartoony?? What animation style do you prefear? .I really like a combination of both..(like incredibles Keith i love your Vts..you are my first "mentor" .
Thanks
PS: when your studio hiring?!
Alf.
« Last Edit: July 17, 2006, 08:51:11 AM by Alf Sici »
I was wondering if you could give us some tips on acting, on making the character alive and real, for making a character that the audience would root for, i know there isnt any "one route for all" advice as to every character has his own set of rules and history, but again, every animator has his own bag of tricks that he gathers throughout his career and i was wondering if you could share some of that with us.
I wouldn't say I have a bag of tricks for acting so much as I have a list of questions I prefer to ask. I do have my preferred methods and techniques and mechanics for doing things that may be described as a 'bag of tricks' (how I time a scene, how I prefer to build my poses, how I make my breakdowns, how I clean up a character, how I do lipsync, etc.) but that's for helping me better do the job after I find the character moment. For acting I don't think you can rely on a repeatable series of formulae. Well, you could, but you'd get shallow and non-unique results everytime (McAnimation!) Personally I like to ask questions about a character to help me figure out who they are in that moment. What do they want that they cant have in this moment? Why can't they have it? What is their emotional response to that tension? Who are they dealing with here? Are they in a position of power or weakness with that person? What would be a good verb to describe their emotional state? (emotions are adjectives- "rejected"- they're passive. Turn them into mental actions instead "recoiling"- make them stronger and more specific) What is an appropriate physical exression of this emotion/verb? etc. When I have dug down into the character's soul I start to get a better mental picture of where they are at that moment. Then I rely on a life of observation and people study to find a physical expression of that emotion that fits. I adust it and apply it to the character. Often I'll have an idea and I'll poke with a pose or an expression, tinkering with it for a good while (30, 60 minutes sometimes) until the character clicks and the emotion literally jumps off the screen at me. So overall it's less about technical things and more about questions, searching and being honest with the answers. I hope that made sense.
-k
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keith lango storyteller/animator www.keithlango.com
I'll try to keep up with the answers today, however I have a bunch of stuff to get done (today is deadline day for the VTS) so I might not get to all the questions until later this evening. We'll see how the day unfolds work-wise. Until then, fire away and thanks for having me!
-k
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keith lango storyteller/animator www.keithlango.com
Hey Keith, This may be a weird question to answer in an open forum. I don't mean to put you on the spot, so indeed skip this one if you want.
I was wondering how you keep your intrest in animation in check. At my church we define worship as "God initiates, we respond" and in that response we can see our worship by looking at where our time, treasure and talent go.
Recently I've been sturggling with focus issues. I feel that I'm called to where I'm headed, but there is so much history, tradition, culture, controversy and changes in the animation world that I find myself getting lost in it sometimes. Really, massive conviction of Idolitry. You are obviously a christian brother in this biz, and I was wondering how make and KEEP what you do about Jesus?
So BLAM! How do you like that one? Thanks Keith! Keep it up with the VTS series. They're grrrrreat! Dennis
Yo Keith, here are... My Questions (feel free to skip the ones you'd hate answering : - ) ):
1 - Wassup! 2 - How's Brazil treating you? 3 - What character did you have the most fun animating? 4 - What character did you have the least fun animating? 5 - How do you approach posing? 6 - Who are your all-time-favourite animators? Why? 7 - Do you think it would be possible to offer the VTS for free? (You have the right to shoot me : - ))) ). OK, let me detail this just a little bit. If it wasn't for the Internet and the free access to information, I could have never trained myself as an animator. Done detailing.
Thanks for doing this Ask the Pro session Keith! And thanks for having all the awesome animation stuff on your website! Cheers!
« Last Edit: July 17, 2006, 11:30:02 AM by Virgil Mihailescu »
Firstly, hope all is going swimmingly over there and I'm looking forward to downloading the 17th VTS, can you believe you have done so many? Did you think it would still be going over a year later?
I subscribe to the VTS and obviously a lot of my questions have been answered and will be, so I am sort of off topic from animation questions, if you could have any living animator work with you on your short film, who would you like? Don't worry, I'm sure your friends won't get jealous
Lastly... If you could go back and chose any career, which would it be and why?
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