Hi Shawn, I was wondering about Star Wars 3 and proprietary software? Haha just kidding.
I am actually wondering about the hiring process... what was your interview like at ILM, and what was your demo reel like, was it a short movie or a series of clips? I am also curious if you know any tricks to getting one's work noticed at a top company like ILM, which gets 1000's of applicants...or if it's mostly luck of the draw!
If I were to do a bouncing ball exercise, what specifically would you be looking at? like timing and spacing and other things?
If you saw a reel that blew you away, would it most likeley be something simple or some super complex rig with complete facial animation?
Do you see a lot of reels with an animated character composited into a filmed scene with lighting that matches? would that be impressive or are you more looking for pure character animation/acting skills?
Is there a lot of teamwork/interaction with people at ILM?
Do you use video reference for acting things out? and how do you apply that to your animation?
What's the best way to animate that you've found? What do you think about pose to pose and then do straight ahead runs on the different parts using the poses as kind of a template?
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Consistant and unique emotional reactions shared with an audience allows an audience to anticipate and savor the reactions of a particular personality in different emotional situations. Of course you already knew that, didn't you? you silly, silly person.
I was wondering if you have any excercises that you could recommend for someone who is trying to nail down the basics? I feel that many animators (myself included) tend to jump into acting before the foundation of animation is really understood. I would like to go back and iron out some of those wrinkles in my own work. What would you recommend?
I'm a 2d trained animator working as a 3d games animator in Cambridge, UK
I'll start with the obvious questions first!
1. What do you do in an average day at ILM?
2. Do you have any plans for a website? I'd especially love to see those drawn animations you did whilst learning with Wayne.
3. Apart from "The Power of One" and "The Illusion of Life", what other books have inspired and helped you in your journey? I'm currently reading "Building a Character" and finding it very enlightening!
4. How important do you value learning from others, as apposed to learning through self taught practical experience?
5. How do you go about animating your shots? What's your thought process? Do you plan out your animation in drawings first or are the storyboards generally enough to work from?
6. Is there a short in the works from you? If so, when can we see it!!?
Cheers,
Ricky Wood
1. Average day at ILM:
I get here around 9am. (it changes depending on the show and what time they have dailies. You often can't get a whole lot done before dailies, so if your dailies are at 10am, that would change my schedule a bit). I'll check my messages and email, etc. If I don't have anything to do before dailies, I'll shoot the poop with some friends here or use a program we have that lets us see everyone else's "dailies" takes just to see what the other movies are up to...
at 9:30 it's off to dailies to talk about the little green guy. We watch the shots and get the direction/opinions of the lead and supervisor.
Dailies right now are very short, because there are only 5 of us working on him right now, so it's pretty quick. Dailies at ILM can last anywhere from 10 minutes to 2 hours, which I think was the longest I spent in dailies. On average, I'd say they last around 45 minutes.
Then it's back to my desk to get to work! I'll usually spend the morning trying to get whatever dailies direction I got into my shot while it's still fresh in my head. The worst is if you forget something and then the next day in dailies it comes up again and you feel like an idiot! That's only happened to me a couple times, but making the changes first thing helps me avoid that!
From 12:30 to 2pm or so, I'm usually at lunch. We're supposed to take an hour lunch, but I usually work late on a given day, so I don't worry about it too much. One of the coolest things here is that our schedule, in large part, is fairly flexible. As long as I put in my 9 hours minimum per day, go to dailies and meetings, and get my stuff done - no one cares that much exactly when those hours happen. Technically, I think we're supposed to be here from 8:30 to 6:30 with an hour lunch, but personally, I'm probably here on average from, say, 9-9 or so, with a little extra lunch, and a little Halo time on the xbox!
I'd much rather work a little later and take a few breaks during the day to get away from my computer, but that's just my personal preference...
I'll spend the rest of the day/evening working away on my shot!
Depending on when the TD needs your shot, you might have to bust your hump to have things ready as early as 4pm. In those cases, there's no Halo or lunches going on - you're just screaming through things to have it ready.
It's really hard to say what an "average day" at ILM is because it changes so much. Dailies times change, number of meetings change, due-dates change your schedule, etc. All of those can completely change my day. If my shot is due, I might not go to lunch at all, etc.
Basically I just focus on getting my work done, I guess.
As for the website, I'm kicking around the idea of a personal website, but no hardcore plans right now...
Book-wise, I get inspired a lot by Comic Books, to be honest. Not only are they a GREAT reference source for dynamic poses (they have to tell a story in a single-pose, something we should all strive for), but I find the serialized stories to be very inspiring, from a story and idea standpoint. Right now I really like Powers, Y The Last Man, Alias, Daredevil, Fables, Ultimates, Herobear, and Keeper Of The Maser by Frezatto (amazing art).
I have a hard time learning animation from a book, to be honest. I think IOL is amazing, and I still read it today and find cool new things, but overall, I learn a lot better from people than from books. I need criticism from animators I respect and feedback from human beings. Books can get you started on things, but without the feedback from people, I think anyone would have a really hard time getting too far along in this art-form. I guess that's probably why CG-CHAR started in the first place!
5. How do you go about animating your shots? What's your thought process? Do you plan out your animation in drawings first or are the storyboards generally enough to work from?
Whew - another big one! Basically I'll spend the first day or so just in total planning mode. I'll film reference, I'll find reference in DVDs or tapes or online, I'll act it out in a mirror to see and feel how my own body reacts to the motions - what the mechanics are, what leads what, where my weight falls, how my hips tilt, etc. I'll thumbnail ideas, just to get at least some basic ideas down and see if they will work in the scene at all...
If it's an acting scene I'll try hard to get into the head of the character. I think a lot about the subtext of the scene, what the character MEANS rather than what the character SAYS. I'll try to not just imagine what his emotions are or "how" he would feel, but instead I'll do my best to actually get into that mode for my reference. If my character is sad, I won't just think "now I'll act sad" but I'll do my best to make myself become sad. There are different ways to do this - emotional memory, etc - and I find those acting techniques extremely useful when filming my reference.
I'll pay close attention to the scene itself - where it takes place, when it takes place, where the character just was, etc., to really figure out how a character would react in a given situation. You would act differently at 3am than you would just before lunch, for example. Or June vs. December. Or 1634 vs. 2004. These things may not be that important to the scene, but they might be, and it's important to figure them out just in case they give you that extra little idea that makes your entire shot be less cliche.
I'll also figure out what my character WANTS. Often this is referred to as a "scene objective." This is what the character wants in that scene. Each character should also have a "super objective", which is what the character wants overall - what his/her goal is by the end of the film; and each scene objective should take him/her one step closer to the super objective. Knowing these objectives can help you determine the subtext of the scene, etc.
So - for me, all this stuff happens in the planning stages of a shot. I'll figure out all those emotional/goal types of things before I film my reference, so that when I film it, it's as geniune and true as I can make it. Just filming the action right away will help me with mechanics, but it won't do anything for helping me with the acting of the scene, and the emotions and goals of the character will likely COMPLETELY change the actions and mechanics anyway, so just filming the mechanics, at least in an acting shot, is almost useless to me.
After I film my reference (approximately a jillion times), I'll usually go through this process:
- Choose my favorite take or takes. (ideally, you want it to be one take)
- really study it (don't just "watch" it). Find what makes that take unique, or what really made it special. Study how the mechanics work, especially lead-and-follow, weight, etc.
- I'll go through and pick my "key" and "breakdown" poses, which for me are a LOT of poses. I want enough poses that in my thumbnails I can describe the arcs and overlap, weight shifts, head-turns, etc. You DO NOT want the computer to decide these things for you. No matter how fast your CPU is, your computer is the DUMBEST INBETWEENER ON THE PLANET!!! Someone told me that once, and I've found it to be one of the truest animation tips I've ever heard.
- thumbnail-o-rama! I'll redraw those poses, layering the principles of animation onto them. Pushing them further, making them more dynmaic, improving the silhouette, etc.
- I'll write down which frames those poses should happen on. Often, I'll take my frame-numbers straight from my reference, at least as a starting point.
- Finally, I'll sit down in front of the computer and plug my poses and breakdowns in. I'll just take the poses I drew and put them on the frame numbers I decided on. On each of these keys and breakdowns, I'll save a key on every possible controller on the body, so that pose will always be right on that frame. Usually it's rare for more than a few frames to go by in a shot that doesn't have a key or breakdown, for me.
- Now I'll push the timing stuff and break away from whatever my "reference" timing may have been, unless, in rare cases, it just works so nicely that I don't want to futz with it.
If I've done my planning correctly, I've already planned out any important arcs, overlap, secondary stuff, etc., so when I block in those poses, all of that stuff should be pretty much built into my poses already!
The scenes I've done this way and really planned out ahead of time are not only my best scenes, but are the ones I've finished the fastest.
6. Is there a short in the works from you? If so, when can we see it!!?
I'm working on a side-project right now, but I can't really talk about it much yet... maybe in a few months or so!
shawn
« Last Edit: November 17, 2003, 10:54:24 AM by Shawn Kelly »
1. What is your method of animating? Is it similar to Bobby Beck's Drawing -method?
2. Could you tell us, what kind of test's you created with Wayne Gilbert? (Just that rest of us could try to do similar test's)
Thanks for doing this Shawn!
V-A
Bobby and I have very similar styles, actually, yes. We are both big fans of planning ahead, of using reference, of blocking in our poses and breakdowns like "drawings." "Drawings" is a great way to put it. I've heard him call them that, and I think that's a perfect way to look at it!
Incidentally, anyone who hasn't read Bobby Beck's ask-a-pro stuff, get over there asap! His posts were awesome! That guy really knows his onions.
2. Could you tell us, what kind of test's you created with Wayne Gilbert? (Just that rest of us could try to do similar test's)
Sure! Wayne and I did a lot of traditional animation tests - many of which are pretty standard at animation schools. Things like a box-lift, reed waving in the wind, side step, jump, hop, side-jump, dive, cracking a whip, using a sledge-hammer, etc. Tests that let you practice all the fundamentals without worrying much about the "acting" stuff at first.
Along those lines, it's SO important for you newer guys to focus on the mechanics stuff FIRST. To me, assignments like the ones above are SO ESSENTIAL to learning animation. If you skip over these and start doing dialogue tests in your first year of animation, you aren't doing yourself any favors.
-shawn
« Last Edit: November 17, 2003, 12:11:25 PM by Shawn Kelly »
Is there a certain character/s that you have particularly enjoyed giving life to and why?
What would you say is the most and least (if any ) enjoyable part of your job?
I'm sure you've had much experience of working with mocap data, so I'd like to know what your opinions are of the use of mocap in films these days. (sorry if thats a bit of a too general question )
thanks a lot
chris
Hi Chris!
>Is there a certain character/s that you have particularly enjoyed giving life to and why?
So far, my favorite has been E.T. (in the 20th anniversay special edition). We got to spend a lot of time focusing on the acting and in creating a facial performance that kept the magic of the original, but upped it a tiny bit, made it more cohesive, more emotional. That was a really fun challenge, and of course it was a thrill to work on something that inspired me so much as a kid! Other characters I've particularly had fun are Marfalump (4-armed alien from an old Star Wars Pepsi commercial), various characters in AI, and one of the pirates in Pirates of the Carribean, which I didn't get to work on much, but had a lot of fun anyway!
>What would you say is the most and least (if any ) enjoyable part of your job
The most enjoyable part of my job? For me, it's the people.
Here's the thing: I sit in a room surrounded by guys who have not only become some of the best friends a guy could hope for, but they inspire the hell out of me on a daily basis. Guys like Glen McIntosh, who would be embarassed to read this, but in my opinion is one of the best animators working today. He sits right next to me and I pick his brain every day about my shots. He's taught me SO MUCH, you know? I sit with guys like Kevin Martel, who could tell me more about lip-sync than most animators will ever learn, or Delio Tramontozzi who has the most positive energy you've ever seen creammed into any one person other than Bobby Beck. Greg Kyle, Jay Rennie, Rick O'Connor - honestly, ALL amazing animators.
Tom St. Amand sits less than 10 feet away from me and he animated pretty much everything that ever inspired me to get into this business in the first place! His demo reel is INSANE. ET flying in front of the moon, Indy on the railroda cars, AT-AT walkers, it just goes on and on.
Even the new guys who sit in here like Jon Collins and Wes Mandell - they have so much excitement about the art, and so much drive to learn more and more about it, that they inspire and teach me too, you know? None of us will ever know it ALL, and we can all teach each other - that's the coolest thing about this art.
SO I'm surrounded by people who are fantastic friends and also happen to be incredibly talented animators. I can't think of anything more inspiring than that, and it's one of the MAIN things that makes my job easy to get up for. (Especially for a guy who has a ***REALLY*** hard time waking up in the morning to begin with!)
The least enjoyable part would be when a director just don't know what he wants in a shot and changes his mind again and again. It can get extremely frustrating to keep redoing what is essentially the same shot. That doesn't happen too much, but with certain directors it can be a real problem.
>I'm sure you've had much experience of working with mocap data, so I'd like to know what your opinions are of the use of mocap in films these days. (sorry if thats a bit of a too general question )
I actually haven't used much mocap here at ILM. I used some on Hulk, but only on about 1/5 of the shots I worked on. And I used a bit on Day After Tomorrow. Other than that, I don't have much experience with it. I've done mostly keyframe work here.
Okay, just for kicks I just counted up my shots (first time I've ever done that!). I've done 133 shots so far here at ILM, and 8 of them involved mocap.
Opinion-wise, I think that mocap can be extremely useful for background far-away characters, and for rough blocking of a hero bipedal character, but very often, it seems to be more trouble than it's worth.
Mocap, especially bad mocap, lacks so much of the magic that is animation, in my opinion. Enough massaging and it can look "real," but a lot of the time it lacks the spark of life that animation would have given the character.
More often than not, when you read/hear that a big company used "Motion Capture!!!!" to create a character, it's more PR than anything else. To say Golem was "Motion Capture!!!" is extremely misleading. To say JarJar was performed by Ahmed Best is extremely misleading. To say Hulk was "Motion Capture!!!!" is, to say the least, extremely misleading. The Hulk DVD has tons of documentaries about how Hulk was mocap, with hardly a peep about animators. Yeah, mocap got us 1/3 of the way there in many of shots, but nearly as often the mocap gets chucked out all together or was never used in the first place. Mostly it ends up being a little bit of everything - a little mocap, a little keyframe. It's just another tool.
I think mocap has its place, and as the tools get better and better, it's becoming more useful these days. It's definitely a tool that we are going to continue using here for human creatures - it does get you a fair way down the road towards your blocking, and has the added benefit (if the director directed the mocap performance) of starting out as something the director has supposedly "bought off" on, which can save us time in "trying out ideas" that the director may not like.
If you're using mocap, I think you have to be even more conscious of injecting life and the principles of animation into that performance - pushing the poses, adjusting the silhouette, fixing the arcs, etc., or you end up with a dead performance that moves realistically but has no life. Mocap can be like "rotoscope" in 3D, and that's what we have to watch out for.
shawn
« Last Edit: November 17, 2003, 01:14:38 PM by Shawn Kelly »
Ok just a few questions if thats ok? Bobby has taugh me tones in the past and is still doing so, I hope I can get as much out of this as I did Bobby's
Ok here goes
1. Could you go through some of the more advanced techiques in animation that you teach?
2.What would you say were the most important techiques is that wayne taught you?
3. Once an animator has a storng understanding the fundermentals. Whats the next best route to go from there in terms of acting and dialougue tests? What do you start with first? Do you do an animation to show a character thinking? Then being mad? To show acting?
4. Do you have a website? Bobby's one is going up soon so he say's (Bobby you said Nov where is it i'm dieing to see it man)
Thanks Shawn. As always I really appreciate you sharing your Skills you Guys rock!
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JOHN LEE Character Animator EA Games / Criterion My Website
Since I am working on a dialogue piece right now, I have a question about that.
What do you consider to be good dialogue for an animation exercise (emotion change within the dialogue, etc.)? What should we avoid using (well know voices or scenes from too well know movies, etc.)? Could you give us examples of good dialogue so we know what have to look for?
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